May 28, 2025 • 43 mins
Gut health is one of those wellness terms we hear all the time, and honestly, it’s popular for a reason. Our gut isn’t just about digestion. Like the rest of our organs, it’s connected to the brain, which means it can both reflect and impact our mental well-being. The gut-brain connection shows up in everyday life. Feeling queasy before a big meeting? Or so stressed you don’t have an appetite? The two are always in constant conversation whether we realize it or not. So today, I’m excited to welcome nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Andy Watkins to the show to help us demystify all things gut health. We’re chatting about what it actually means to take care of your gut and how doing so can help support your mood and your mind.
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The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
(00:32):
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
(00:57):
for joining me for session four thirteen of the Arapy
for Black Girls Podcast. We'll get right into our conversation
afterword from our sponsors. Gut health is one of those
wellness terms we hear all the time, and honestly, it's
(01:18):
popular for a reason. Our gut isn't just about digestion
like the rest of our organs. It's connected to the brain,
which means it can both reflect and impact our mental
well being. The gut brain connection shows up in everyday life.
Feeling queasy before a meeting or so stressed you don't
have an appetite. The two are always in constant conversation,
(01:39):
whether we realize it or not. So today I'm excited
to welcome nutritional psychiatrist doctor Andy Watkins to help us
demystify all things gut health. We're chatting about what it
actually means to take care of your gut and how
doing so can help support your mood in your mind.
If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please
share with us on social media in the hashtag tvg
(02:01):
in session, or join us over in our Patreon channel
to talk more about the episode. You can join us
at community dot therapy for Blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation. Well,
doctor Andy, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
You're welcome. Thank you for having me today do our joy.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, so, I would love for you to get us
started by telling us a little bit about your background
and what brought you to the intersection between psychiatry and
good health.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah sure. I am a North Carolina native born and
raised in an environment where focused on community was the
forefront of how we lived our lives. My father is
an licensed professional clinical counselor and it really kind of
helped me to understand the importance of mental health, and
so when I went into medicine, I wasn't sure that
I would be a psychiatrist, but over and over again,
(02:49):
being able to understand everyone's full lives was kind of
what really motivate made me to go into this space.
I really was driven to go into gut health due
to kind of a frustration around not being able to
true treat the root cause of a lot of symptoms
for mental health. I felt like, you know, my patients
were missing true treatment options that really leaded them to
whole healing. And so through research and continue to understand
(03:12):
a little bit more knowledge around the impact of nutrition,
I was able to stumble upon the knowledge base of
the gut micro biome access and learning a little bit
more about how gut health really truly is the root
cause for a lot of noncommunical diseases, including psychiatry disorders.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Can you say more about some of the frustrations that
you were seeing with some of your patients?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Absolutely so in my space, right, So, if someone comes
to you for depression or anxiety, they oftentimes have other
comorbi medical conditions, and so where you're doing in a
full evaluation, you learn a little bit more around their diet,
you learn around their life stressors, and you also understand
a little bit more about what risk factors they have,
and I would give an antipsychotic or you know, an
(03:55):
antidepressant to treat some of their symptoms. And oftentimes, even
if people had some improvement in their symptoms, I was
not getting seeing full recovery. And oftentimes when people were
on antidepressants for an extended period of time, they would
lose their effect, and so then we kind of go
back to the drawing board, and I got really frustrated
because I thought there should be more to this, and
(04:17):
also kind of when I was doing my one on
one visits, I would always do I would educate around
nutrition because many people know that there are side effects
of antidepressants and antipsychotics, and a lot of them could
be metabolic side effects. People would experience weight gain or
it changes in their appetite, and so part of our
routine management was kind of giving some guidance around what
foods to eat. And I noticed for the patients that
(04:40):
were eating healthier and kind of following a dietary of changes,
they also improved in regards to their overall psychiatric symptoms.
At the same time, the scientific literature was coming out
around inflammation being and root costs for a lot of
noncommunical diseases, and also looking at gut health as a
basis for the root costs for psychiatric disorders. So continue to,
(05:00):
you know, do additional research. I thought, well, this is
probably the route I need to go in regards to
my treatment approach.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
And so you described the work you do as nutritional psychiatry.
So what might a typical session look like for you?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, so a nutritional psychiatrist would do a full evaluation.
You know, we want to know everything about the patient.
We do what we call a diagnostic evaluation. So we
would look at family history, social history, understand a lot
about your lifestyle, what your current stressors are, and we
also would do routine laboratory evaluation, just looking at the
(05:33):
basis of your health. And then, of course what's essential
for a nutritional psychiatrist, so we would recommend looking at
a food law. You know, we want to know what
are you eating every day, what are your dietary patterns,
and what are the things that happen in your daily
life that lead you to eat what you eat? And
from there, you know, we can kind of have a
full assessment of what are the respectors for what you're
(05:53):
experiencing and what are some of the treatment approaches that
we need to make to get you to whole healing.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And Doctor Andy, is there a lot of operation maybe
with like somebody's primary care doctor, Like let's say they
are already working on like managing blood pressure or clypsol
or things like that. Are you working a lot with
the primary care physicians? Also?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Absolutely, it's an integrative approach because many people, as you know,
we have this compartmentalized way of treating patients in the
healthcare system. But you know, patients come for one thing,
but they also typically have other homer medical conditions. So
I would want to be able to speak with their
primary care physician. I even do consultations with their therapist
(06:32):
to understand what's going on with their life stressors and
kind of what maybe potential trauma they might have experience,
and so making sure that you know, we're all working
together to ensure that the patient is getting a comprehensive
management of their treatment plan.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Got it? And what do you think makes really focusing
on the guts so important, especially for the black community.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I think what makes it so important for the Black community.
It's just our respectors. So with gut health and it
being the base is for inflammation, we have to think
about it in regards to how stress leads to gut
dysfunction in our community. I think there's lots of stressors
coming at us, whether or not it's just from your
(07:14):
experience as a person of color, whether it's not generational
trauma that may be passed down, or just day to
day stress at work and other things like that. And
I think it's important to understand that all of these
things are competing against overall health because it does impact
our gut. And so part of what I do, in
addition to changing what we eat, is understanding what your
(07:36):
stress life is, where the stressors are in your life,
and how to mitigate those stressors. Having a full understanding of,
you know, what kind of things can we do to
manage our coping skills and get ourselves to a place
where stress does not end up being a day to
day experience for people and that typically is unfortunately an
experience for people of color often more than not.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
You know, So we've talked a lot about the good,
but we haven't even done like a proper, like setting
the foundation for like what do we mean when we
were talking about the gut, because I think a lot
of us think, like, oh, digestion, like that is the
real function of the gut. But can you say what
you're referring to and like what is the function beyond
just digestion.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Absolutely, so most people think about the gut as far
as digestion. The gut is essential for absorbing nutrients. Whatever
we eat, the gut kind of takes us their gens
out and make sure that it's delivered to other parts
for our body, and we have access that for energy
and fuel. The other thing about the gut is that
it's sometimes called the primitive brain. It is comprised of
what we call the intert nervous system, and it's made
(08:38):
of the same part of the central nervous system actually,
and so it connects our entert nervous system, and the
gut is connected to the central nervous system. So it's
constant communicating to our brain what's going on with our bodies.
And it also is the first on a defense. The
majority of our immune system is actually in our gut.
So if you think about it, it makes sense, right,
you know, you eat something that's unhealthy, our gut is
(08:58):
telling that's like, no, we got kick this out. So
gut's responsible for doing that. The gut also keeps good
things in right, and so the gut does more than
just absorb nutrients. It also is our helps moderate our
immune system, and it also helps manages our mood, and
since neurological signals all throughout our body to help us
understand what's going on in our body.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And you mentioned after any of that, in your early
days of practice, like you were learning more about like
the connection between the gun and mental health. And I
also feel like I've only started to hear more about this,
Like I feel like maybe in the last five to
seven years, can you talk about how this has developed
in the field of mental health and maybe why it
was so overlooked in previous years.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Absolutely, I think one of the reasons why I will
start first with why I think it might have been overlooked,
I think it's because it really is one of those
things where it's individualized, meaning if you're looking at how
you would develop a treatment plan in regards to gut health,
every person is different, and so the medical field is
really we're really reliant on treatment algorithms. Most of our
(10:01):
studies are based upon things that can be something works
for one, it must work for all, right. We know
that that's kind of the way that our scientific studies
are created. We also know that there's gaps in that,
and so I think that probably has been a big
barrier in the way that many medical professionals have not
taken on nutrition as a method for treatment in their
patient population. Also, I think just being able to get
(10:24):
enough data. A lot of the studies traditionally were done
outside of the United States, so European studies have the
most data in regard to looking at nutrition as a whole.
Big pharma is big in the United States, and so
finding more natural ways of treating chronic conditions is taking
a while for us to get back to that. It's
kind of kind of intuitive you think about it, right,
(10:45):
because medication is actually newer food as medicine is nothing new.
So I think because people were so excited around being
able to have a pill or being able to have
like something really specific for a diagnosis and to treat symptoms,
that has kind of in the cultural norm. So going
backwards to say, actually we have access to things that
can help mitigate our health is kind of needing to
(11:08):
be back reinstated into all culture.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Thank you for that. So another term that you use
was the gut brain axis. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, the gut brain acxis is essentially what it so
means that the gut connects with the brain. There's also
a third component to it which is becoming newer in
the science, which is the gut microbiome axis. And when
I talk about the microbiome, what I mean there is
these tiny bacteria that live in the gut. We know
that there's a nervous system that previously referenced with entire
nervous system, which is where our veg is nervous, think
(11:38):
about it, but the sympathetic nervous system. When we get
stressed or anxious, you know, your stomach might feel, you know,
a little bit bubbly or a little bit off right,
because our gut is the first line of defense against
stressed so it talks to us and also will tell
your brain, oh, I'm anxious, you know something's going on
or I'm stressed. But also what we now know too
is there are these tiny bacteria that are just as
important and commune ducating with our nervous system. So we
(12:02):
have these within our microbiome. We have a diverse group
of bacteria that not only communicate but the nerve cells
and are but also secrete Neuer transmitters. So these bacteria
develop and modulate things such as gabba, ludamate, even serotonin. Right,
So it's the gut, the microbiome that's proprised of the
(12:23):
gut and also the brain. All these things are communicating
constantly to help manage our overall health.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
And so I wonder is this why?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
You know?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
I think a lot of times people will go to
their primary care doctor when they have like upset stomach
or maybe headaches, and then they're actually able to diagnose
maybe a mental health concern even though it presents us
more of a physical concern.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
That is absolutely right. There's a lot of overlap between
mental health symptoms and GIS symptoms. And I think we
don't actually talk a lot as much as we should
about the physical manifestations of psychiatric disorders. So it's common
to see constipation and depression, It's common to see constant
or even diarrhea, and you know, vowels that are not
(13:04):
consistent in anxiety, and so that that's honestly a common symptom,
and a lot of times people don't think about the
cognitive manifestations as much. So maybe they don't think much
about what their thoughts maybe, but they have more physical
symptoms and when you do a deeper die what being
is as an underlying psychiatric diagnosis. There also is a
significant overlay between other gut disorders and autoimmune disorders and
(13:26):
psychiatric disorders. So, for instance, autoimmune related gut disorders such
as chrone disease, oftentimes we see anxiety and nutritional changes,
and gut restoration can have a positive influence on both,
similar with autism. Right, we know that, you know, diet
and food sensitivities also overlay between psychiatric manifestations and some
(13:47):
of these other autoimmune disorders. So really there's continued talk
around the gut being, you know, the basis for a
lot of different non communical diseases.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
And I guess when I hear you talk about that,
it sounds very cyclical, right, Like, Okay, I have like
a disruption in my gut, then maybe I have symptoms
of anxiety. Then that leads to something else, and so
I think it feels hard to know, like where do
you start the intervention, like do you think you always
start with the gut or can like my anxiety then
result in gut issues.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I understand what you're saying. I think it's important to
break it down by symptom and root cause versus diagnosis.
And my former thought the root cause is always the gut. Right,
So when you engage in stressful activities or their environmental stressors,
that can cause people to have symptoms of anxiety, right,
And so over time, stress can be so consistent that
(14:44):
it causes a breakdown and the integrity of your gut.
That will cause long term sentence of anxiety. It will
be normal to have intermittent periods of anxiety, you know,
maybe you are up for it to do a large speech,
or maybe you feel like you're about to be attacked
by dogs. Normal, Right, those are normal stressors and a
healthy environment. And if your gut is healthy, then there
(15:05):
would be restoration of that and you would not help
ongoing symptoms. But when you have someone coming in with
consistent symptoms of a mental health disorder such as anxiety
and depression, that right now will tell you that there
has been some impact on the gut. So what I
want to do is explore what's going on with this
person's gut. I would want to get more specific around
what they're eating because it's essential in order to get
(15:28):
restoration of the mental health symptoms, to restore the gut,
and to get rid of any gut this biosis that
may be going on.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
More from our conversation after the break And how are
you assessing this doctor, Andy, is there like a labs
that you're asking the person to give? How do you
even assess some of this part of it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Is do diagnostic evaluate right, so you know you can
ask them. Sometimes the story is and what people are eating, right,
tell me a little bit about your diet. Other parts
of the story are in what other chronic medical conditions
that they may have in analogies, right, what food allergies are,
sensitivities you have, what family sensitivities. And then of course
you know lab values, so you may ask someone to
(16:20):
do routine blood screening to look at if there's any
nutritional deficiencies. That right there will tell you perhaps there
are improper absulption of nutrients. It could be either due
to what they're eating, or it could be maybe due
to genetic risk factors where they maybe cannot betabolize nutrients properly.
You can do specific microbiome testing and so you can
do stool testing. But for some people that's necessary, right
(16:43):
perhaps even what changes in their diet, then you're not
seeing the overall results that you should be seeing, and
so that would make you think maybe there has been
a really large insult on the integrity of the gut
and they maybe they would need more specific treatment. And
that really kind of works when someone needs maybe restoration
at the microbiome there, you would need specific probotics. You know,
(17:06):
not every probodic is the same, and for some people
they may have an imbalance and the types of bacteria
that are in their gut. So maybe there's an overgrowth
of one type of bacteria and an undergrowth of the other.
And so microbiome testing will help us to understand what
bacteria are there, which ones are not, and which ones
we need to restore.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And is microbiome testing? Is that a blood test? No?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
It actually is a stool test.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Oh yes, okay, got it? Got it? And so are
you doing that as a nutritional psychiatrist or would they
go to their primary care physician to do that.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
You can actually do those testing at home yourself, and
you can send those laboratories in, but you also can
work with the functional medicine doctor to do that. Many
functional medicine doctors do do microbiome stool testing as a
general part of the work up. So I either refer out,
I can order the test as well, but they are
done in an independent laboratory.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Got it. So earlier when you were talking, you were
talking about like the vagus nerve as a part of
like the central nervous system. And I'm not sure have
you heard the term around like nervous system regulation and
like people talking about your nervous system needing to be reset.
Have you heard that terminology?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
I have heard people talking about that.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yes, And so I feel like, based on what you're
talking about, really we can't talk about like a nervous
system reset unless we are actually talking about looking at
our nutrition.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Absolutely. I think you know, you can do many things
to try to balance your nervous system. You can exercise,
you can do yoga, you can do meditation, but if
you're not eating healthy, it's going to be very hard
to do that nervous system reset. The idea of nutrition
and diet I think has been the culture around it,
I think is a little bit offset because what what
(18:49):
we I think oftentimes don't understand is what you eat
actually drives the health of your nervous system. So you know,
how you eat fuels these bacteria in your gut that
helps moderate these newer transmitters that keep your nervous system
healthy or unhealthy. And so that's an essential tool to
what we will call nervous system reset or I like
(19:11):
to thinking more about it as nervous system homeostasis. We
shouldn't expect always to feel calm or always at peace.
I think sometimes that's in this number, but it's really
around the resiliency of our nervous system and being able
to be able to manage these signals and stay in balance.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
So this may be a difficult question because it does
sound individual lives, but maybe you can help us think about,
like how would somebody get started? How should we be
thinking about food? Like are there certain groups of certain
foods that we should be eating when we're thinking about
how to kind of maybe reset our good Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I think it's actually not so difficult a question to
answer because I think you can think of it in
two different ways. So there are some people that have
gout dysfunction that would require a more specific treatment plan.
But then there's also very general things that you can
do to take care of your overall wealth illness and
make sure that you are taking care of your gut
and taking care of your mental health. So I would
(20:04):
recommend you know, Mediterranean traditional diets we know are newer
protectif against depression and anxiety. Eating a diet that's what
we would call anti inflammatory. Anti inflammatory diets are things
that are low in processed foods and high omega three
fatty acids and low end transvets. So we know that
if you eat a diet comprised of omega three to
(20:27):
a mega six ratio, meaning you don't have to, you know,
eliminate all of your omegasysets and omega sixes are examples
of canola oil or vegetables, but you do want to
have less of those and more of your more healthy
omega three fatty acids, and those things are found in
walnut seeds, olive oil, faty fishes. Eating diets fie that
are going to be newer protective. It's be healthy for
your gut and you're going to be less likely to
(20:48):
experience you know, symptoms of depression anxiety based upon your respectors.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The other thing is making sure that you eat fermented foods.
We know those are also very healthy because it keeps
a very healthy gut microbiome is essential for me. Make
sure that you have very diverse gut floor and eliminating
sugar as much as you can. Sugar in itself can
be very neurotoxic, and the more that you have sugar
can cost these end products that can across the gut
(21:14):
barrier and lead up to the developd brain barrier and
can cause all types of psychiatric symptoms. So I think
those are some really objective tools that people can take
away and that if they subscribe to that that can
at least be a good start to managing gut health.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And when you say fermative foods, what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Souur, kraut, yogurt, pickle, vegetables, All those things are good
options for fermented foods.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Pickles, got it. And so in addition to talking a
lot about nutrition, you also talk a lot about like
yoga and movement as a part of a kind of
complete treatment plan. And can you say more about the
importance of.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Those Absolutely, So when we move it helps with gut motility, right,
and so when you have good gut motility, it helps
with the absorption of they trends. Also, it kind of
helps signal to your gut and send signals to your
brain that things are more balanced, and it helps secrete
things such as b D and F. It helps with
neural health and also neurogenesis. These are what we call
(22:10):
happy neurons. Right. The other thing about movement, every things
such as yoga helps restore overall vagal tone. And we
talked a little bit about restoring your nervous system balance.
If you're feeling like your age is all the time
or that it's hard to kind of calm down, bringing
your parents tofit nervous system is essential, and so practices
such as yoga, bringing in breath work and you'll be
(22:31):
surprised how just bringing in movement that brings in breathing
can calm the nervous system down and overall help with
your overall gut health.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
And you've talked several times about like the component that
the impact that stress has on our gut and our
overall mental health. What kinds of things are you typically
talking with your patients about in terms of managing stress.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, I think it's important first that having an awareness.
I think in society today, people are just always on
the go, So we may be encountering stressors throughout the
day and don't even know that we're stressed, and then
by the end of the day it's time to quote
unquote wind down, and it's hard to sleep, and it's
hard to even feel arrested even if you do go
to sleep. For the first thing I like to do
with my patients, it's just an assessment. You know, what
(23:15):
is your day to day, take an full evaluation of
how you feel throughout the day, and have an awareness
of what types of things are causing you to feel
stressed out. Oftentimes it may be interpersonal relationships, right they
call stress. It could be work. Other times it could
be family dynamics. So I just like for people to
understand what are the stressors and when you're trying to
(23:35):
manage that, what are some things that you can do
throughout today so that the stress doesn't continue to build up.
So oftentimes that may be looked like breaks throughout the day, stretching, journaling, meditating, walks,
And it really is dependent on the person because not
everything works for everybody, and so just being open to
exploring a couple of different things and not overwhelming the
(23:58):
person so that they feel like they have to do
a full overhaul of their day to day life, but
just finding some very small key techniques that really help.
I find and most people that movement helps. And when
I say movement, it doesn't have to be something prescriptive.
You don't have to say, oh, I'm going to start
going to the gym every day, or I'm going to
start doing this workout class. But what if you just
(24:20):
decide that you're going to take ten minutes to go
outside and take a walk, right, and I'm going to
do fifteen minutes in between meetings at work, or I'm
just going to take ten minutes to do some breath
work and I'm going to do it alongside a video.
I like to start small right that way, people are
not feeling more stressed about needing to have implement these
changes because if we don't want that, but also making
(24:40):
it something that can be easily implemented in their day
to day routine.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Doctoranny, you mentioned the term inflammation a couple of times.
What does that mean? Because I think we do hear
that a lot like, oh, this can lead to inflammation,
But what exactly is inflamed?
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Absolutely so. Inflamed means that cortisol and adrenaline have been
released in your body for or an extended period of time.
And what happens is it starts to wreak havoc over
your immune system and it can be triggered by a
variety of different things. For some people, that could be
a foreign pathogen, it could be bacteria, it could be
(25:13):
some type of toxic substance, or it could be ongoing stress.
Our body doesn't really differentiate between it, and depending on
your genetic makeup and your risk factors, some people are
more likely to have inflammatory response than others. Right, it
could be an allergy. Either way, your body is saying
that something is going on and we need to fight,
and that continued fight or fight response is what leads
(25:36):
to overall inflammation and it leads to several different I
don't want to get too scientific, but inter lincolns and
several different things that leak into your body that looks
like toxins, and over time, your body starts to attack
its body. It thinks that we're under attacked. We're going
to attack everything and they lose the specificity around what's
normal and what's not, and that's really the basis of inflammation.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Another term that I feel like we've heard before is
a leaky gut. What does that refer to and how
is it connected to the other things you've discussed.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Sure, So, a leaky gut is we have these tiny
things called tight junctions in our intestinal system, right, and
so they keep good things in and bad things out.
Over time, things such as stress, toxins or any type
of pathogen or bacteria can cause us to lose the
integrity of that gut lining. And so when that happens,
(26:30):
that means that bad things can get in and bad
things can get out. It may not necessarily be bad
inside the gut, but it's bad when it leaves the gut.
And so leaky gut means that we are no longer
absorbing nutrients are perfectly which means even if you are
eating healthy, your body is not absorbing yet because those
nutrients are crossing that gut intestinal lining. Also, bacteria that
(26:50):
are supposed to stay in the guts start to go
over the gut and enter into bloodstream and in some
ways have access to the blood brain barrier. And these
is where we start to see neurological manifestations that we
talk about in regards to depression, anxiety, dementia, Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
You know, as you've been talking un to Andy, I
can't help but think about like the last five years
in the world and thinking about like how much stress
everybody has been under, right, like the pandemic and just
all the chaos. Are you aware of any work that's
been done or any studies that you're aware of that
are talking about like what people's guts kind of look
like these days and how that's been impacted by the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I think it would probably take time past the pandemic
to be able to do that work, if that makes sense, right.
I think right now we're doing a lot of catchups.
So even the current studies are looking at gut work,
are you know, currently not as up to date as
I think they should be, right, And so I think
it probably will take quite some time for the really true,
the full see the full manifestation of what some of
the stressors that COVID and a lot of things have
(27:52):
been going on in our environment today and how that
has impacted the gut. What I can say is they
are numerous studies that show the up ticket up rise
in the prevalence of mental health disorders. We know that
expands across not just adult population, but even children, and
we have seen an incredible increase in the amount of
(28:12):
depression and the amount of anxiety. I can't help but
assume that we also would see a similar impact. And
the gut reason being people were moving less, people were
eating it from the television, the rate of substitute disorders
rose significantly. That all works together. So I'll be interested
to see what specific gut cities that are related to that,
(28:33):
but I think it's easy to make the assumption that
it will very much parallel similar studies that we see
in regards to the prevalence of mental health disorders and
the increase of that related to COVID.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
More from our conversation after the break, So, as a
nutritional psychiatrist, actor Andy, when you are doing your assessment,
are you starting with like nutrition in the diet and
(29:05):
then saying like, Okay, let's do this for three months
and then we can kind of reassess and then discuss
whether we're going to try antidepressants anti anxiety. Are you
doing those together, like how do you decide what the
like the steps are and how long can you expect
to maybe be trying a new diet before you see
some impact or results.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
That's a great question. The answer is, for as far
as treatment approaches is all of the above, because it
really is. It depends on the person. So some people
may come to me and they've been on an antidepressant
for a long time, and with that awareness, my first
approach would not be to just stop the antidepressant and
go straight to changing their diet. We would do both
(29:45):
at the same time, right, and so the goal would
be to reduce the amount of medications that they take
and hopefully to be able to be medication free. Depending
on the diagnosis, some people may still need to be
on some form of a medication, but maybe the diet
is going to get them to the place where they
help full recovery your symptoms. So we do both, but
at the beginning of each session, the goal is always
(30:06):
to look at your diet, look at your nutrition, and
make recommendations in making doing that from a step wise approach.
So for some people it may look like, first to
start with, you're drinking a lot of sugar sodas, and
maybe just first stop stopping that, because that in itself
can be overwhelming and your body has to get used
to that. But I always also like to do it
from approach of not just reductionism, meaning we're not just
(30:29):
taking things away, but what can we implement or add,
And so it will look like, how do we add
some of these more science and evidence based forms of
nutrition that we know will help support your nervous system health,
and how do we do that on scale and scale
that to the point where we see symptom remission and
you feel better. The overall goal varies, and it also
(30:50):
depends on what people's comorb medical conditions might be. In
a perfect world, someone will be eating healthy and off
into their pressens and thriving and doing well.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, and I appreciate you saying that because I think
for people who may be enjoying our conversation, the idea
of like, oh my gosh, I gotta like change all
this stuff can feel very overwhelming. You talked about like, okay,
like maybe let's look aod like how much soda you're drinking?
Can we like cut that back? Can you give other
maybe like manageable, actionable steps for maybe people who are
listening and they're thinking, like, I don't know how to
(31:23):
decrease all of this, Like where can people start?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, And one really simple thing is drinking. Increasing your
water intake, making sure that you drink at least ten
cups of water a day, bring your water jump with you.
I think it's one very simple actionable thing that people
can do. The other thing is just increasing the diversity
of the ann or fruits and vegetables that you eat
throughout the day. I tell people you can choose from
a food map, try to choose five fruits and vegetables
(31:48):
that you eat every day. And if it's the same
things every day, that's fine. At least it's a step
towards the right direction. Maybe adding more spinach, more kale, asparagus, whatever,
the grain of your choice, adding some fruits and vegetables,
some additional vegetables and fruit mangoes, grip options. I always
love berries because they're full of antioxidants, they taste great
(32:09):
when they're in season, and those are things that you
can just throw on your salad and you don't feel
like you overwhelm, like you have to cook something right.
You can just add berries into your diet. And also
if you don't have ano allergy. I think that's an
easy step too. Of course that maybe choosing walnuts, almonds,
and seeds pumpkin seeds or something that I like is
a really easy addition to your day to day routine.
(32:29):
So just making small things. There are things people love. Chocolate,
I would just say go with dark chocolate, try a
small sample serving of that every day, and try to
choose an option that has a low sugar content. Try
cooking with olive oil instead of other traditional oils. It
can be very simple things, and over time I think
it becomes reinforcing and you can go to next step.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Now. Before we started recording after Andy, you were talking
about this smoothie that you had, and so is juicing
in smoothies a good option to get in some of
these fruits and vegetables or is it preferred to do
the you know, like whole vegetable or whole fruit.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I like the whole vegetable the whole fruit because of
the fiber. It doesn't mean that you can't have access
to some fiber if you juice it, but depending on
where you're juicing, you will have less fiber. And also
being aware that if you juice fruits, then there's more sugar.
So you know, fruits are meant to be combined with
the skin because it helps with absorption and it reduces
(33:26):
the sugar spikes because you are eating a whole fruit, right,
So if you just drink apple juice, really you're just
drinking the carbohydrate content first. If you're eating the whole apple,
then you're getting the pectin, you're getting the skin, You're
getting all those things in. Your digestion is being improved.
You're getting all of that fiber and your guts are
able to eat that. So it's a little bit different.
Now if you're juicing something that's vegetables, right, so maybe
(33:47):
your juice is celery, cucumber, then I feel like that's
a little bit better just because you are not getting
a lot of that sugar, and then you still get
a little bit of fiber content from that. But I
prefer to go the SMOOTHI route because you don't eliminate
the fiber, so you're just blending it together. It still
tastes great. I usually put some green in there, so
I'll do spinach or kale. I'll add in some type
(34:09):
of nut or seed option, and then I also will
do a couple of fruits in there for my antioxidants
in my berry. So I still getting their fruit. I'm
getting several different servings all at one time. It's digestible
and it tastes good and it's easy.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Right, right, So, like, do you feel like newer like
or psychiatrists now being trained to look more at like
the more holistic approach where they're looking at like the
good and thinking about movement, or do you feel like
the field still kind of has a way to go
in terms of training people to look at all of
these things.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
The field has some way to go with the training,
but I think that we are committed. Interestingly enough, the
APAs theme is us lifestyle medicine this year, so this
is the time right for us to start really be
focusing out integrating movement and dieting nutrition in the treatment
plan for our patient. And actually a study and recommendation
(35:03):
came out in Psychiatic Time is about nutrition management as
a modality for treatment. So it's real. It's part of
the landscape now for psychiatrists. I do think it will
take time for it to evolve because people will have
to change their approach and they will also have to
change the way that they have to implement that time
with patients. It looks very different to meet with a
(35:25):
patient and talk about diet and lifestyle modification versus, you know,
some of the more shorter interventions where were you are
really just talking doing medication management, what are your side effects?
And then seeing you for fifteen minutes. So that's a
little bit different. So, you know, being able to incorporate
that is going to take some time, and I think
maybe some people will use that approach, maybe others will not,
(35:47):
but I definitely think it's something that we are committed to.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
So much of this does feel like a public health effort, right,
like really focusing on prevention and like what kinds of
things can we be doing to have better health? What
kinds of conversations would you'd like to see more of,
especially as it relates to the Black community in terms
of gut health.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
I would like to see multi disciplinary discussions. I was
recently at a talk where there is a nutritional oncologist, right,
So when I talk about gut health, I'm coming from
a psychiatric perspective, but it goes across all fields. And
I've even mentioned before in this talk around how autoimmune
disorders typically are related to can be related to gut
health as well. So what I like for our community
(36:27):
is just to really look at gut health as a
basis for looking at their root costs for a lot
of different medical conditions that ail our community. And I
want us to really start to talk more around preventative
measures and also looking at mental wellness. We want to
be protective around our bodies and be proactive instead of
being reactive. And so I would love for us to
(36:47):
have a multidisciplinary approach where you know, we have different teams,
all different types of clinicians talking around the importance of this,
and that's all kind of working together and using this
as a treatment modality as a way of education with
the community from all different aspects. I also would really
like for us to understand how access should be addressed.
So I think it can be served as a barrier
(37:08):
in regards to good health in our community. And so
how do grocery stores talk about making sure that we
have access to healthy fruits and vegetables regardless of where
you live in their community. How do we make sure
that community partnerships where they are working around feud and security,
make sure that when we are feeling those gaps that
we are soo making sure that in our community we're
(37:30):
offering foods and vegetables that are going to be nurishy
to the gut and protect up against the entire body, right,
And so those are the conversations I would love to have.
I think the conversations could. There's so many different areas
in pockets and niches where I feel like this can go.
But I think that will be a great start.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
So, doctor Andy, I just want to do a little
bit of a roundup of all the foods I feel
like I've heard you talk about that we may need
to try to add into our nutrition into our plate.
So you talked about fermented foods, you talked about omega threes.
Is that what you said?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yes, three fatty.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Accents, okay, you talked about the green of our choice
that we talked about more fruits, especially berries. We talked
about dark chocolate. Is there anything I'm missing or anything
else that you want to add to our plate to
kind of have people pay attention to.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I will be remissed if I didn't bring up in
the importance of Kirkerman. So turmeric is a great anti
inflammatory option, and so whether or not. I like to
drink what we call golden milk. That's a combination of
turmeric powder with dates and also osha waganda, which is
a strong anti inflammatory nutrient. You could put something like
(38:39):
that in milk. I think that's a great option. What
else am I missing? I think those are the major things.
And also probotics. And when I say probotics, they're not
all made the same. So we want to find a
product with live probodics. We see a lot of providics
being sold where it's on the shelf. Essentially, you want
to get one that's refrigerated because we know these are
live bacteria, right. You want to look at the content
(39:03):
on the back of the label to look at the diversity.
The most common probiotics that you will see will have
lack to pascillas, But there are so many more bacteria
and you're good other than lack tovascillas. So you want
to make sure there's a diversity of strain. So you
want to look for something from bacterioids or bacterium, other
types of strains other than Lacti bacillus. So it's diverse,
so you make sure you're getting the full spectrum of
(39:24):
what your gut needs.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Is there any danger of going too far with too
many like probiotics, Like can you overdo it in terms
of like too much of something?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
You know? I think it's really around diversity. I think
it'll be hard to go too forward probotics unless your
body already has an overgrowth of a certain bacterial strain
and you're getting it more of that, right, So it's
really around diversity. If you find a probotic product that
is diverse and most of them, if you find a
good one that's in it refrigerated, it should be I
(39:56):
think that's great. But I think the risk would be
not that you're going to fall that. The rest would
be that you're not going diverse enough. So for instance,
like I said, a lot of them just have light
to the cells. That's not enough, and that's just one strain.
So you just want to make sure that you're reading
the back of the label and that you're seeing there's
a diversity and the amount of in the microbiome the bacterior
that they're put in.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
So got it? So, doctor Andy, you're the first nutritional
psychiatrist I have met, and I would imagine probably many
other people have not even met a nutritional psychiatrist or
even know that this field exists. So if somebody wants
to work with a nutritional psychiatrist, like, where do we
find you? Is there a directory? Is there? Like? Can
we use our insurance? Is this a specialty that people advertise? Like?
(40:37):
How many people find maybe somebody in their area?
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Unfortunately, I would say that I'm kind of few and
for art in between, there are not many nutritional psychiatrists.
Me personally, I'm actually in the Black Girl Therapy the
directory director, yes, uh, so you can find me there.
But also I think you can probably look specifically for
a nitiational psychiatrists. You would just probably need to just
outreach in the community who uses this approach, even if
(41:02):
someone is not coined, and as your psychiatrists, they may
be able to use dietary approaches as a treatment option.
I think that's important. And then also what you can
do too is work with a functional medicine doctor who
also typically will use the health as a basis for treatment,
and then work with your psychiatrists to make sure they
pay or work together.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Got it. So you've already mentioned that we can find
you in the Therapy for Black Girls therapists director real.
Where else can we stay in touch with you, doctor
Andy and see what work you're up to. What's your
website as well as any social media channels you'd like
to share? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Absolutely. You can find me on Facebook. You can reach
out to me on www dot freedommindweldcare dot org all
one word there, you can make an appointment with me.
You can see FAQs around the treatment options that I provide,
and it will find some detailed information about what it's
like to have your first initial visit with me. You
(41:54):
can also find you on LinkedIn. I'm also on Instagram
and TikTok so there. I like to send some education
to the general population, So if you can us a
lot more how they can start good health approach on.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Their own perfect We'll be sure to include all of
that in our show notes. Thank you for spending some
time with us, doctor Andy.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
I appreciate it absolutely, thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
I'm so happy doctor Andy was able to join us
for today's conversation. To learn more about her and her work,
be sure to visit the show notes at Therapy for
Blackgirls dot com slash Session four one three, and don't
forget to text this episode to two of your girls
right now and tell them to check it out. Did
you know that you could leave us a voicemail with
your questions or suggestions for the podcast. Do you have
(42:38):
movies or books you like us to review, or have
thoughts about people you'd like to hear us in conversation with.
Drop us a voice message at Memo dot fm, slash
Therapy for Black Girls and let us know what's on
your mind. We just might feature it on the podcast.
If you're looking for a therapist in your area, visit
our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory.
(42:59):
This episode was pu use by Elise Ellis, Indechubu and
Tyree Rush. Editing was done by Dennis and Bradford. Thank
y'all so much for joining me again this week. I'll
look forward to continuing this conversation with you all real soon.
Take good care.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
What's
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
(00:32):
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
(00:57):
for joining me for session four thirteen of the Arapy
for Black Girls Podcast. We'll get right into our conversation
afterword from our sponsors. Gut health is one of those
wellness terms we hear all the time, and honestly, it's
(01:18):
popular for a reason. Our gut isn't just about digestion
like the rest of our organs. It's connected to the brain,
which means it can both reflect and impact our mental
well being. The gut brain connection shows up in everyday life.
Feeling queasy before a meeting or so stressed you don't
have an appetite. The two are always in constant conversation,
(01:39):
whether we realize it or not. So today I'm excited
to welcome nutritional psychiatrist doctor Andy Watkins to help us
demystify all things gut health. We're chatting about what it
actually means to take care of your gut and how
doing so can help support your mood in your mind.
If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please
share with us on social media in the hashtag tvg
(02:01):
in session, or join us over in our Patreon channel
to talk more about the episode. You can join us
at community dot therapy for Blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation. Well,
doctor Andy, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
You're welcome. Thank you for having me today do our joy.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, so, I would love for you to get us
started by telling us a little bit about your background
and what brought you to the intersection between psychiatry and
good health.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah sure. I am a North Carolina native born and
raised in an environment where focused on community was the
forefront of how we lived our lives. My father is
an licensed professional clinical counselor and it really kind of
helped me to understand the importance of mental health, and
so when I went into medicine, I wasn't sure that
I would be a psychiatrist, but over and over again,
(02:49):
being able to understand everyone's full lives was kind of
what really motivate made me to go into this space.
I really was driven to go into gut health due
to kind of a frustration around not being able to
true treat the root cause of a lot of symptoms
for mental health. I felt like, you know, my patients
were missing true treatment options that really leaded them to
whole healing. And so through research and continue to understand
(03:12):
a little bit more knowledge around the impact of nutrition,
I was able to stumble upon the knowledge base of
the gut micro biome access and learning a little bit
more about how gut health really truly is the root
cause for a lot of noncommunical diseases, including psychiatry disorders.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Can you say more about some of the frustrations that
you were seeing with some of your patients?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Absolutely so in my space, right, So, if someone comes
to you for depression or anxiety, they oftentimes have other
comorbi medical conditions, and so where you're doing in a
full evaluation, you learn a little bit more around their diet,
you learn around their life stressors, and you also understand
a little bit more about what risk factors they have,
and I would give an antipsychotic or you know, an
(03:55):
antidepressant to treat some of their symptoms. And oftentimes, even
if people had some improvement in their symptoms, I was
not getting seeing full recovery. And oftentimes when people were
on antidepressants for an extended period of time, they would
lose their effect, and so then we kind of go
back to the drawing board, and I got really frustrated
because I thought there should be more to this, and
(04:17):
also kind of when I was doing my one on
one visits, I would always do I would educate around
nutrition because many people know that there are side effects
of antidepressants and antipsychotics, and a lot of them could
be metabolic side effects. People would experience weight gain or
it changes in their appetite, and so part of our
routine management was kind of giving some guidance around what
foods to eat. And I noticed for the patients that
(04:40):
were eating healthier and kind of following a dietary of changes,
they also improved in regards to their overall psychiatric symptoms.
At the same time, the scientific literature was coming out
around inflammation being and root costs for a lot of
noncommunical diseases, and also looking at gut health as a
basis for the root costs for psychiatric disorders. So continue to,
(05:00):
you know, do additional research. I thought, well, this is
probably the route I need to go in regards to
my treatment approach.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
And so you described the work you do as nutritional psychiatry.
So what might a typical session look like for you?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, so a nutritional psychiatrist would do a full evaluation.
You know, we want to know everything about the patient.
We do what we call a diagnostic evaluation. So we
would look at family history, social history, understand a lot
about your lifestyle, what your current stressors are, and we
also would do routine laboratory evaluation, just looking at the
(05:33):
basis of your health. And then, of course what's essential
for a nutritional psychiatrist, so we would recommend looking at
a food law. You know, we want to know what
are you eating every day, what are your dietary patterns,
and what are the things that happen in your daily
life that lead you to eat what you eat? And
from there, you know, we can kind of have a
full assessment of what are the respectors for what you're
(05:53):
experiencing and what are some of the treatment approaches that
we need to make to get you to whole healing.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And Doctor Andy, is there a lot of operation maybe
with like somebody's primary care doctor, Like let's say they
are already working on like managing blood pressure or clypsol
or things like that. Are you working a lot with
the primary care physicians? Also?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Absolutely, it's an integrative approach because many people, as you know,
we have this compartmentalized way of treating patients in the
healthcare system. But you know, patients come for one thing,
but they also typically have other homer medical conditions. So
I would want to be able to speak with their
primary care physician. I even do consultations with their therapist
(06:32):
to understand what's going on with their life stressors and
kind of what maybe potential trauma they might have experience,
and so making sure that you know, we're all working
together to ensure that the patient is getting a comprehensive
management of their treatment plan.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Got it? And what do you think makes really focusing
on the guts so important, especially for the black community.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I think what makes it so important for the Black community.
It's just our respectors. So with gut health and it
being the base is for inflammation, we have to think
about it in regards to how stress leads to gut
dysfunction in our community. I think there's lots of stressors
coming at us, whether or not it's just from your
(07:14):
experience as a person of color, whether it's not generational
trauma that may be passed down, or just day to
day stress at work and other things like that. And
I think it's important to understand that all of these
things are competing against overall health because it does impact
our gut. And so part of what I do, in
addition to changing what we eat, is understanding what your
(07:36):
stress life is, where the stressors are in your life,
and how to mitigate those stressors. Having a full understanding of,
you know, what kind of things can we do to
manage our coping skills and get ourselves to a place
where stress does not end up being a day to
day experience for people and that typically is unfortunately an
experience for people of color often more than not.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
You know, So we've talked a lot about the good,
but we haven't even done like a proper, like setting
the foundation for like what do we mean when we
were talking about the gut, because I think a lot
of us think, like, oh, digestion, like that is the
real function of the gut. But can you say what
you're referring to and like what is the function beyond
just digestion.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Absolutely, so most people think about the gut as far
as digestion. The gut is essential for absorbing nutrients. Whatever
we eat, the gut kind of takes us their gens
out and make sure that it's delivered to other parts
for our body, and we have access that for energy
and fuel. The other thing about the gut is that
it's sometimes called the primitive brain. It is comprised of
what we call the intert nervous system, and it's made
(08:38):
of the same part of the central nervous system actually,
and so it connects our entert nervous system, and the
gut is connected to the central nervous system. So it's
constant communicating to our brain what's going on with our bodies.
And it also is the first on a defense. The
majority of our immune system is actually in our gut.
So if you think about it, it makes sense, right,
you know, you eat something that's unhealthy, our gut is
(08:58):
telling that's like, no, we got kick this out. So
gut's responsible for doing that. The gut also keeps good
things in right, and so the gut does more than
just absorb nutrients. It also is our helps moderate our
immune system, and it also helps manages our mood, and
since neurological signals all throughout our body to help us
understand what's going on in our body.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And you mentioned after any of that, in your early
days of practice, like you were learning more about like
the connection between the gun and mental health. And I
also feel like I've only started to hear more about this,
Like I feel like maybe in the last five to
seven years, can you talk about how this has developed
in the field of mental health and maybe why it
was so overlooked in previous years.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Absolutely, I think one of the reasons why I will
start first with why I think it might have been overlooked,
I think it's because it really is one of those
things where it's individualized, meaning if you're looking at how
you would develop a treatment plan in regards to gut health,
every person is different, and so the medical field is
really we're really reliant on treatment algorithms. Most of our
(10:01):
studies are based upon things that can be something works
for one, it must work for all, right. We know
that that's kind of the way that our scientific studies
are created. We also know that there's gaps in that,
and so I think that probably has been a big
barrier in the way that many medical professionals have not
taken on nutrition as a method for treatment in their
patient population. Also, I think just being able to get
(10:24):
enough data. A lot of the studies traditionally were done
outside of the United States, so European studies have the
most data in regard to looking at nutrition as a whole.
Big pharma is big in the United States, and so
finding more natural ways of treating chronic conditions is taking
a while for us to get back to that. It's
kind of kind of intuitive you think about it, right,
(10:45):
because medication is actually newer food as medicine is nothing new.
So I think because people were so excited around being
able to have a pill or being able to have
like something really specific for a diagnosis and to treat symptoms,
that has kind of in the cultural norm. So going
backwards to say, actually we have access to things that
can help mitigate our health is kind of needing to
(11:08):
be back reinstated into all culture.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Thank you for that. So another term that you use
was the gut brain axis. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, the gut brain acxis is essentially what it so
means that the gut connects with the brain. There's also
a third component to it which is becoming newer in
the science, which is the gut microbiome axis. And when
I talk about the microbiome, what I mean there is
these tiny bacteria that live in the gut. We know
that there's a nervous system that previously referenced with entire
nervous system, which is where our veg is nervous, think
(11:38):
about it, but the sympathetic nervous system. When we get
stressed or anxious, you know, your stomach might feel, you know,
a little bit bubbly or a little bit off right,
because our gut is the first line of defense against
stressed so it talks to us and also will tell
your brain, oh, I'm anxious, you know something's going on
or I'm stressed. But also what we now know too
is there are these tiny bacteria that are just as
important and commune ducating with our nervous system. So we
(12:02):
have these within our microbiome. We have a diverse group
of bacteria that not only communicate but the nerve cells
and are but also secrete Neuer transmitters. So these bacteria
develop and modulate things such as gabba, ludamate, even serotonin. Right,
So it's the gut, the microbiome that's proprised of the
(12:23):
gut and also the brain. All these things are communicating
constantly to help manage our overall health.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
And so I wonder is this why?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
You know?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
I think a lot of times people will go to
their primary care doctor when they have like upset stomach
or maybe headaches, and then they're actually able to diagnose
maybe a mental health concern even though it presents us
more of a physical concern.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
That is absolutely right. There's a lot of overlap between
mental health symptoms and GIS symptoms. And I think we
don't actually talk a lot as much as we should
about the physical manifestations of psychiatric disorders. So it's common
to see constipation and depression, It's common to see constant
or even diarrhea, and you know, vowels that are not
(13:04):
consistent in anxiety, and so that that's honestly a common symptom,
and a lot of times people don't think about the
cognitive manifestations as much. So maybe they don't think much
about what their thoughts maybe, but they have more physical
symptoms and when you do a deeper die what being
is as an underlying psychiatric diagnosis. There also is a
significant overlay between other gut disorders and autoimmune disorders and
(13:26):
psychiatric disorders. So, for instance, autoimmune related gut disorders such
as chrone disease, oftentimes we see anxiety and nutritional changes,
and gut restoration can have a positive influence on both,
similar with autism. Right, we know that, you know, diet
and food sensitivities also overlay between psychiatric manifestations and some
(13:47):
of these other autoimmune disorders. So really there's continued talk
around the gut being, you know, the basis for a
lot of different non communical diseases.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
And I guess when I hear you talk about that,
it sounds very cyclical, right, Like, Okay, I have like
a disruption in my gut, then maybe I have symptoms
of anxiety. Then that leads to something else, and so
I think it feels hard to know, like where do
you start the intervention, like do you think you always
start with the gut or can like my anxiety then
result in gut issues.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I understand what you're saying. I think it's important to
break it down by symptom and root cause versus diagnosis.
And my former thought the root cause is always the gut. Right,
So when you engage in stressful activities or their environmental stressors,
that can cause people to have symptoms of anxiety, right,
And so over time, stress can be so consistent that
(14:44):
it causes a breakdown and the integrity of your gut.
That will cause long term sentence of anxiety. It will
be normal to have intermittent periods of anxiety, you know,
maybe you are up for it to do a large speech,
or maybe you feel like you're about to be attacked
by dogs. Normal, Right, those are normal stressors and a
healthy environment. And if your gut is healthy, then there
(15:05):
would be restoration of that and you would not help
ongoing symptoms. But when you have someone coming in with
consistent symptoms of a mental health disorder such as anxiety
and depression, that right now will tell you that there
has been some impact on the gut. So what I
want to do is explore what's going on with this
person's gut. I would want to get more specific around
what they're eating because it's essential in order to get
(15:28):
restoration of the mental health symptoms, to restore the gut,
and to get rid of any gut this biosis that
may be going on.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
More from our conversation after the break And how are
you assessing this doctor, Andy, is there like a labs
that you're asking the person to give? How do you
even assess some of this part of it.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Is do diagnostic evaluate right, so you know you can
ask them. Sometimes the story is and what people are eating, right,
tell me a little bit about your diet. Other parts
of the story are in what other chronic medical conditions
that they may have in analogies, right, what food allergies are,
sensitivities you have, what family sensitivities. And then of course
you know lab values, so you may ask someone to
(16:20):
do routine blood screening to look at if there's any
nutritional deficiencies. That right there will tell you perhaps there
are improper absulption of nutrients. It could be either due
to what they're eating, or it could be maybe due
to genetic risk factors where they maybe cannot betabolize nutrients properly.
You can do specific microbiome testing and so you can
do stool testing. But for some people that's necessary, right
(16:43):
perhaps even what changes in their diet, then you're not
seeing the overall results that you should be seeing, and
so that would make you think maybe there has been
a really large insult on the integrity of the gut
and they maybe they would need more specific treatment. And
that really kind of works when someone needs maybe restoration
at the microbiome there, you would need specific probotics. You know,
(17:06):
not every probodic is the same, and for some people
they may have an imbalance and the types of bacteria
that are in their gut. So maybe there's an overgrowth
of one type of bacteria and an undergrowth of the other.
And so microbiome testing will help us to understand what
bacteria are there, which ones are not, and which ones
we need to restore.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
And is microbiome testing? Is that a blood test? No?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
It actually is a stool test.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Oh yes, okay, got it? Got it? And so are
you doing that as a nutritional psychiatrist or would they
go to their primary care physician to do that.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
You can actually do those testing at home yourself, and
you can send those laboratories in, but you also can
work with the functional medicine doctor to do that. Many
functional medicine doctors do do microbiome stool testing as a
general part of the work up. So I either refer out,
I can order the test as well, but they are
done in an independent laboratory.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Got it. So earlier when you were talking, you were
talking about like the vagus nerve as a part of
like the central nervous system. And I'm not sure have
you heard the term around like nervous system regulation and
like people talking about your nervous system needing to be reset.
Have you heard that terminology?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
I have heard people talking about that.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yes, And so I feel like, based on what you're
talking about, really we can't talk about like a nervous
system reset unless we are actually talking about looking at
our nutrition.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Absolutely. I think you know, you can do many things
to try to balance your nervous system. You can exercise,
you can do yoga, you can do meditation, but if
you're not eating healthy, it's going to be very hard
to do that nervous system reset. The idea of nutrition
and diet I think has been the culture around it,
I think is a little bit offset because what what
(18:49):
we I think oftentimes don't understand is what you eat
actually drives the health of your nervous system. So you know,
how you eat fuels these bacteria in your gut that
helps moderate these newer transmitters that keep your nervous system
healthy or unhealthy. And so that's an essential tool to
what we will call nervous system reset or I like
(19:11):
to thinking more about it as nervous system homeostasis. We
shouldn't expect always to feel calm or always at peace.
I think sometimes that's in this number, but it's really
around the resiliency of our nervous system and being able
to be able to manage these signals and stay in balance.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
So this may be a difficult question because it does
sound individual lives, but maybe you can help us think about,
like how would somebody get started? How should we be
thinking about food? Like are there certain groups of certain
foods that we should be eating when we're thinking about
how to kind of maybe reset our good Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I think it's actually not so difficult a question to
answer because I think you can think of it in
two different ways. So there are some people that have
gout dysfunction that would require a more specific treatment plan.
But then there's also very general things that you can
do to take care of your overall wealth illness and
make sure that you are taking care of your gut
and taking care of your mental health. So I would
(20:04):
recommend you know, Mediterranean traditional diets we know are newer
protectif against depression and anxiety. Eating a diet that's what
we would call anti inflammatory. Anti inflammatory diets are things
that are low in processed foods and high omega three
fatty acids and low end transvets. So we know that
if you eat a diet comprised of omega three to
(20:27):
a mega six ratio, meaning you don't have to, you know,
eliminate all of your omegasysets and omega sixes are examples
of canola oil or vegetables, but you do want to
have less of those and more of your more healthy
omega three fatty acids, and those things are found in
walnut seeds, olive oil, faty fishes. Eating diets fie that
are going to be newer protective. It's be healthy for
your gut and you're going to be less likely to
(20:48):
experience you know, symptoms of depression anxiety based upon your respectors.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The other thing is making sure that you eat fermented foods.
We know those are also very healthy because it keeps
a very healthy gut microbiome is essential for me. Make
sure that you have very diverse gut floor and eliminating
sugar as much as you can. Sugar in itself can
be very neurotoxic, and the more that you have sugar
can cost these end products that can across the gut
(21:14):
barrier and lead up to the developd brain barrier and
can cause all types of psychiatric symptoms. So I think
those are some really objective tools that people can take
away and that if they subscribe to that that can
at least be a good start to managing gut health.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
And when you say fermative foods, what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Souur, kraut, yogurt, pickle, vegetables, All those things are good
options for fermented foods.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Pickles, got it. And so in addition to talking a
lot about nutrition, you also talk a lot about like
yoga and movement as a part of a kind of
complete treatment plan. And can you say more about the
importance of.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Those Absolutely, So when we move it helps with gut motility, right,
and so when you have good gut motility, it helps
with the absorption of they trends. Also, it kind of
helps signal to your gut and send signals to your
brain that things are more balanced, and it helps secrete
things such as b D and F. It helps with
neural health and also neurogenesis. These are what we call
(22:10):
happy neurons. Right. The other thing about movement, every things
such as yoga helps restore overall vagal tone. And we
talked a little bit about restoring your nervous system balance.
If you're feeling like your age is all the time
or that it's hard to kind of calm down, bringing
your parents tofit nervous system is essential, and so practices
such as yoga, bringing in breath work and you'll be
(22:31):
surprised how just bringing in movement that brings in breathing
can calm the nervous system down and overall help with
your overall gut health.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
And you've talked several times about like the component that
the impact that stress has on our gut and our
overall mental health. What kinds of things are you typically
talking with your patients about in terms of managing stress.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, I think it's important first that having an awareness.
I think in society today, people are just always on
the go, So we may be encountering stressors throughout the
day and don't even know that we're stressed, and then
by the end of the day it's time to quote
unquote wind down, and it's hard to sleep, and it's
hard to even feel arrested even if you do go
to sleep. For the first thing I like to do
with my patients, it's just an assessment. You know, what
(23:15):
is your day to day, take an full evaluation of
how you feel throughout the day, and have an awareness
of what types of things are causing you to feel
stressed out. Oftentimes it may be interpersonal relationships, right they
call stress. It could be work. Other times it could
be family dynamics. So I just like for people to
understand what are the stressors and when you're trying to
(23:35):
manage that, what are some things that you can do
throughout today so that the stress doesn't continue to build up.
So oftentimes that may be looked like breaks throughout the day, stretching, journaling, meditating, walks,
And it really is dependent on the person because not
everything works for everybody, and so just being open to
exploring a couple of different things and not overwhelming the
(23:58):
person so that they feel like they have to do
a full overhaul of their day to day life, but
just finding some very small key techniques that really help.
I find and most people that movement helps. And when
I say movement, it doesn't have to be something prescriptive.
You don't have to say, oh, I'm going to start
going to the gym every day, or I'm going to
start doing this workout class. But what if you just
(24:20):
decide that you're going to take ten minutes to go
outside and take a walk, right, and I'm going to
do fifteen minutes in between meetings at work, or I'm
just going to take ten minutes to do some breath
work and I'm going to do it alongside a video.
I like to start small right that way, people are
not feeling more stressed about needing to have implement these
changes because if we don't want that, but also making
(24:40):
it something that can be easily implemented in their day
to day routine.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Doctoranny, you mentioned the term inflammation a couple of times.
What does that mean? Because I think we do hear
that a lot like, oh, this can lead to inflammation,
But what exactly is inflamed?
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Absolutely so. Inflamed means that cortisol and adrenaline have been
released in your body for or an extended period of time.
And what happens is it starts to wreak havoc over
your immune system and it can be triggered by a
variety of different things. For some people, that could be
a foreign pathogen, it could be bacteria, it could be
(25:13):
some type of toxic substance, or it could be ongoing stress.
Our body doesn't really differentiate between it, and depending on
your genetic makeup and your risk factors, some people are
more likely to have inflammatory response than others. Right, it
could be an allergy. Either way, your body is saying
that something is going on and we need to fight,
and that continued fight or fight response is what leads
(25:36):
to overall inflammation and it leads to several different I
don't want to get too scientific, but inter lincolns and
several different things that leak into your body that looks
like toxins, and over time, your body starts to attack
its body. It thinks that we're under attacked. We're going
to attack everything and they lose the specificity around what's
normal and what's not, and that's really the basis of inflammation.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Another term that I feel like we've heard before is
a leaky gut. What does that refer to and how
is it connected to the other things you've discussed.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Sure, So, a leaky gut is we have these tiny
things called tight junctions in our intestinal system, right, and
so they keep good things in and bad things out.
Over time, things such as stress, toxins or any type
of pathogen or bacteria can cause us to lose the
integrity of that gut lining. And so when that happens,
(26:30):
that means that bad things can get in and bad
things can get out. It may not necessarily be bad
inside the gut, but it's bad when it leaves the gut.
And so leaky gut means that we are no longer
absorbing nutrients are perfectly which means even if you are
eating healthy, your body is not absorbing yet because those
nutrients are crossing that gut intestinal lining. Also, bacteria that
(26:50):
are supposed to stay in the guts start to go
over the gut and enter into bloodstream and in some
ways have access to the blood brain barrier. And these
is where we start to see neurological manifestations that we
talk about in regards to depression, anxiety, dementia, Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
You know, as you've been talking un to Andy, I
can't help but think about like the last five years
in the world and thinking about like how much stress
everybody has been under, right, like the pandemic and just
all the chaos. Are you aware of any work that's
been done or any studies that you're aware of that
are talking about like what people's guts kind of look
like these days and how that's been impacted by the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
I think it would probably take time past the pandemic
to be able to do that work, if that makes sense, right.
I think right now we're doing a lot of catchups.
So even the current studies are looking at gut work,
are you know, currently not as up to date as
I think they should be, right, And so I think
it probably will take quite some time for the really true,
the full see the full manifestation of what some of
the stressors that COVID and a lot of things have
(27:52):
been going on in our environment today and how that
has impacted the gut. What I can say is they
are numerous studies that show the up ticket up rise
in the prevalence of mental health disorders. We know that
expands across not just adult population, but even children, and
we have seen an incredible increase in the amount of
(28:12):
depression and the amount of anxiety. I can't help but
assume that we also would see a similar impact. And
the gut reason being people were moving less, people were
eating it from the television, the rate of substitute disorders
rose significantly. That all works together. So I'll be interested
to see what specific gut cities that are related to that,
(28:33):
but I think it's easy to make the assumption that
it will very much parallel similar studies that we see
in regards to the prevalence of mental health disorders and
the increase of that related to COVID.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
More from our conversation after the break, So, as a
nutritional psychiatrist, actor Andy, when you are doing your assessment,
are you starting with like nutrition in the diet and
(29:05):
then saying like, Okay, let's do this for three months
and then we can kind of reassess and then discuss
whether we're going to try antidepressants anti anxiety. Are you
doing those together, like how do you decide what the
like the steps are and how long can you expect
to maybe be trying a new diet before you see
some impact or results.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
That's a great question. The answer is, for as far
as treatment approaches is all of the above, because it
really is. It depends on the person. So some people
may come to me and they've been on an antidepressant
for a long time, and with that awareness, my first
approach would not be to just stop the antidepressant and
go straight to changing their diet. We would do both
(29:45):
at the same time, right, and so the goal would
be to reduce the amount of medications that they take
and hopefully to be able to be medication free. Depending
on the diagnosis, some people may still need to be
on some form of a medication, but maybe the diet
is going to get them to the place where they
help full recovery your symptoms. So we do both, but
at the beginning of each session, the goal is always
(30:06):
to look at your diet, look at your nutrition, and
make recommendations in making doing that from a step wise approach.
So for some people it may look like, first to
start with, you're drinking a lot of sugar sodas, and
maybe just first stop stopping that, because that in itself
can be overwhelming and your body has to get used
to that. But I always also like to do it
from approach of not just reductionism, meaning we're not just
(30:29):
taking things away, but what can we implement or add,
And so it will look like, how do we add
some of these more science and evidence based forms of
nutrition that we know will help support your nervous system health,
and how do we do that on scale and scale
that to the point where we see symptom remission and
you feel better. The overall goal varies, and it also
(30:50):
depends on what people's comorb medical conditions might be. In
a perfect world, someone will be eating healthy and off
into their pressens and thriving and doing well.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, and I appreciate you saying that because I think
for people who may be enjoying our conversation, the idea
of like, oh my gosh, I gotta like change all
this stuff can feel very overwhelming. You talked about like, okay,
like maybe let's look aod like how much soda you're drinking?
Can we like cut that back? Can you give other
maybe like manageable, actionable steps for maybe people who are
listening and they're thinking, like, I don't know how to
(31:23):
decrease all of this, Like where can people start?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah, And one really simple thing is drinking. Increasing your
water intake, making sure that you drink at least ten
cups of water a day, bring your water jump with you.
I think it's one very simple actionable thing that people
can do. The other thing is just increasing the diversity
of the ann or fruits and vegetables that you eat
throughout the day. I tell people you can choose from
a food map, try to choose five fruits and vegetables
(31:48):
that you eat every day. And if it's the same
things every day, that's fine. At least it's a step
towards the right direction. Maybe adding more spinach, more kale, asparagus, whatever,
the grain of your choice, adding some fruits and vegetables,
some additional vegetables and fruit mangoes, grip options. I always
love berries because they're full of antioxidants, they taste great
(32:09):
when they're in season, and those are things that you
can just throw on your salad and you don't feel
like you overwhelm, like you have to cook something right.
You can just add berries into your diet. And also
if you don't have ano allergy. I think that's an
easy step too. Of course that maybe choosing walnuts, almonds,
and seeds pumpkin seeds or something that I like is
a really easy addition to your day to day routine.
(32:29):
So just making small things. There are things people love. Chocolate,
I would just say go with dark chocolate, try a
small sample serving of that every day, and try to
choose an option that has a low sugar content. Try
cooking with olive oil instead of other traditional oils. It
can be very simple things, and over time I think
it becomes reinforcing and you can go to next step.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Now. Before we started recording after Andy, you were talking
about this smoothie that you had, and so is juicing
in smoothies a good option to get in some of
these fruits and vegetables or is it preferred to do
the you know, like whole vegetable or whole fruit.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
I like the whole vegetable the whole fruit because of
the fiber. It doesn't mean that you can't have access
to some fiber if you juice it, but depending on
where you're juicing, you will have less fiber. And also
being aware that if you juice fruits, then there's more sugar.
So you know, fruits are meant to be combined with
the skin because it helps with absorption and it reduces
(33:26):
the sugar spikes because you are eating a whole fruit, right,
So if you just drink apple juice, really you're just
drinking the carbohydrate content first. If you're eating the whole apple,
then you're getting the pectin, you're getting the skin, You're
getting all those things in. Your digestion is being improved.
You're getting all of that fiber and your guts are
able to eat that. So it's a little bit different.
Now if you're juicing something that's vegetables, right, so maybe
(33:47):
your juice is celery, cucumber, then I feel like that's
a little bit better just because you are not getting
a lot of that sugar, and then you still get
a little bit of fiber content from that. But I
prefer to go the SMOOTHI route because you don't eliminate
the fiber, so you're just blending it together. It still
tastes great. I usually put some green in there, so
I'll do spinach or kale. I'll add in some type
(34:09):
of nut or seed option, and then I also will
do a couple of fruits in there for my antioxidants
in my berry. So I still getting their fruit. I'm
getting several different servings all at one time. It's digestible
and it tastes good and it's easy.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Right, right, So, like, do you feel like newer like
or psychiatrists now being trained to look more at like
the more holistic approach where they're looking at like the
good and thinking about movement, or do you feel like
the field still kind of has a way to go
in terms of training people to look at all of
these things.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
The field has some way to go with the training,
but I think that we are committed. Interestingly enough, the
APAs theme is us lifestyle medicine this year, so this
is the time right for us to start really be
focusing out integrating movement and dieting nutrition in the treatment
plan for our patient. And actually a study and recommendation
(35:03):
came out in Psychiatic Time is about nutrition management as
a modality for treatment. So it's real. It's part of
the landscape now for psychiatrists. I do think it will
take time for it to evolve because people will have
to change their approach and they will also have to
change the way that they have to implement that time
with patients. It looks very different to meet with a
(35:25):
patient and talk about diet and lifestyle modification versus, you know,
some of the more shorter interventions where were you are
really just talking doing medication management, what are your side effects?
And then seeing you for fifteen minutes. So that's a
little bit different. So, you know, being able to incorporate
that is going to take some time, and I think
maybe some people will use that approach, maybe others will not,
(35:47):
but I definitely think it's something that we are committed to.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
So much of this does feel like a public health effort, right,
like really focusing on prevention and like what kinds of
things can we be doing to have better health? What
kinds of conversations would you'd like to see more of,
especially as it relates to the Black community in terms
of gut health.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
I would like to see multi disciplinary discussions. I was
recently at a talk where there is a nutritional oncologist, right,
So when I talk about gut health, I'm coming from
a psychiatric perspective, but it goes across all fields. And
I've even mentioned before in this talk around how autoimmune
disorders typically are related to can be related to gut
health as well. So what I like for our community
(36:27):
is just to really look at gut health as a
basis for looking at their root costs for a lot
of different medical conditions that ail our community. And I
want us to really start to talk more around preventative
measures and also looking at mental wellness. We want to
be protective around our bodies and be proactive instead of
being reactive. And so I would love for us to
(36:47):
have a multidisciplinary approach where you know, we have different teams,
all different types of clinicians talking around the importance of this,
and that's all kind of working together and using this
as a treatment modality as a way of education with
the community from all different aspects. I also would really
like for us to understand how access should be addressed.
So I think it can be served as a barrier
(37:08):
in regards to good health in our community. And so
how do grocery stores talk about making sure that we
have access to healthy fruits and vegetables regardless of where
you live in their community. How do we make sure
that community partnerships where they are working around feud and security,
make sure that when we are feeling those gaps that
we are soo making sure that in our community we're
(37:30):
offering foods and vegetables that are going to be nurishy
to the gut and protect up against the entire body, right,
And so those are the conversations I would love to have.
I think the conversations could. There's so many different areas
in pockets and niches where I feel like this can go.
But I think that will be a great start.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
So, doctor Andy, I just want to do a little
bit of a roundup of all the foods I feel
like I've heard you talk about that we may need
to try to add into our nutrition into our plate.
So you talked about fermented foods, you talked about omega threes.
Is that what you said?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yes, three fatty.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Accents, okay, you talked about the green of our choice
that we talked about more fruits, especially berries. We talked
about dark chocolate. Is there anything I'm missing or anything
else that you want to add to our plate to
kind of have people pay attention to.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
I will be remissed if I didn't bring up in
the importance of Kirkerman. So turmeric is a great anti
inflammatory option, and so whether or not. I like to
drink what we call golden milk. That's a combination of
turmeric powder with dates and also osha waganda, which is
a strong anti inflammatory nutrient. You could put something like
(38:39):
that in milk. I think that's a great option. What
else am I missing? I think those are the major things.
And also probotics. And when I say probotics, they're not
all made the same. So we want to find a
product with live probodics. We see a lot of providics
being sold where it's on the shelf. Essentially, you want
to get one that's refrigerated because we know these are
live bacteria, right. You want to look at the content
(39:03):
on the back of the label to look at the diversity.
The most common probiotics that you will see will have
lack to pascillas, But there are so many more bacteria
and you're good other than lack tovascillas. So you want
to make sure there's a diversity of strain. So you
want to look for something from bacterioids or bacterium, other
types of strains other than Lacti bacillus. So it's diverse,
so you make sure you're getting the full spectrum of
(39:24):
what your gut needs.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Is there any danger of going too far with too
many like probiotics, Like can you overdo it in terms
of like too much of something?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
You know? I think it's really around diversity. I think
it'll be hard to go too forward probotics unless your
body already has an overgrowth of a certain bacterial strain
and you're getting it more of that, right, So it's
really around diversity. If you find a probotic product that
is diverse and most of them, if you find a
good one that's in it refrigerated, it should be I
(39:56):
think that's great. But I think the risk would be
not that you're going to fall that. The rest would
be that you're not going diverse enough. So for instance,
like I said, a lot of them just have light
to the cells. That's not enough, and that's just one strain.
So you just want to make sure that you're reading
the back of the label and that you're seeing there's
a diversity and the amount of in the microbiome the bacterior
that they're put in.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
So got it? So, doctor Andy, you're the first nutritional
psychiatrist I have met, and I would imagine probably many
other people have not even met a nutritional psychiatrist or
even know that this field exists. So if somebody wants
to work with a nutritional psychiatrist, like, where do we
find you? Is there a directory? Is there? Like? Can
we use our insurance? Is this a specialty that people advertise? Like?
(40:37):
How many people find maybe somebody in their area?
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Unfortunately, I would say that I'm kind of few and
for art in between, there are not many nutritional psychiatrists.
Me personally, I'm actually in the Black Girl Therapy the
directory director, yes, uh, so you can find me there.
But also I think you can probably look specifically for
a nitiational psychiatrists. You would just probably need to just
outreach in the community who uses this approach, even if
(41:02):
someone is not coined, and as your psychiatrists, they may
be able to use dietary approaches as a treatment option.
I think that's important. And then also what you can
do too is work with a functional medicine doctor who
also typically will use the health as a basis for treatment,
and then work with your psychiatrists to make sure they
pay or work together.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Got it. So you've already mentioned that we can find
you in the Therapy for Black Girls therapists director real.
Where else can we stay in touch with you, doctor
Andy and see what work you're up to. What's your
website as well as any social media channels you'd like
to share? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Absolutely. You can find me on Facebook. You can reach
out to me on www dot freedommindweldcare dot org all
one word there, you can make an appointment with me.
You can see FAQs around the treatment options that I provide,
and it will find some detailed information about what it's
like to have your first initial visit with me. You
(41:54):
can also find you on LinkedIn. I'm also on Instagram
and TikTok so there. I like to send some education
to the general population, So if you can us a
lot more how they can start good health approach on.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Their own perfect We'll be sure to include all of
that in our show notes. Thank you for spending some
time with us, doctor Andy.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
I appreciate it absolutely, thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
I'm so happy doctor Andy was able to join us
for today's conversation. To learn more about her and her work,
be sure to visit the show notes at Therapy for
Blackgirls dot com slash Session four one three, and don't
forget to text this episode to two of your girls
right now and tell them to check it out. Did
you know that you could leave us a voicemail with
your questions or suggestions for the podcast. Do you have
(42:38):
movies or books you like us to review, or have
thoughts about people you'd like to hear us in conversation with.
Drop us a voice message at Memo dot fm, slash
Therapy for Black Girls and let us know what's on
your mind. We just might feature it on the podcast.
If you're looking for a therapist in your area, visit
our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory.
(42:59):
This episode was pu use by Elise Ellis, Indechubu and
Tyree Rush. Editing was done by Dennis and Bradford. Thank
y'all so much for joining me again this week. I'll
look forward to continuing this conversation with you all real soon.
Take good care.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
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