Category Archives: Mental health

Reducing anxiety is no easy feat, there are many contributing factors to it.

Common root causes of anxiety are inflammatory foods (gut inflammation = brain inflammation), Negative neural programming (habits, patterns, behaviour), Adrenal dysfunction, thyroid dysfunction, nutritional deficicies,  heavy metals, blood sugar imbalances, hormone imbalances, genetic mutations (COMT), and microbiome imbalances.

These are things to look into if you’re wanting to reduce anxiety

25% of Canadians will experience it and high school kids have the same anxiety levels as psychiatric patients from the 50s
I didn’t know I had high-functioning anxiety. I had a tough time falling asleep (my mind kept thinking), i had constant negative talk, a slight perfectionist, hard time relaxing, and I frankly just avoided things
It wasn’t until I started making a change that I started to feel a lot better. I felt normal/fine but that’s not optimal. I changed cause of my terrible acne and I didn’t think anything else was a problem.

I found that removing the foods that my body was sensitive to the biggest help. I’ve also increased my nutrients, balanced my blood sugars, worked on gut health/bacteria, and have made lifestyle changes to help out (journal/beliefs/emotional intelligence)

By removing dairy and gluten products, as well as highly processed foods/sugars from my diet, I started to notice a huge improvement in my skin but also mental clarity, retention & memory, and energy. I also noticed that the high-functioning anxiety I experienced, was pretty much gone. ??‍♂️
By removing the triggers and focusing on wholesome, nutrient-dense food, I ultimately reduced the inflammation going on in my gut that manifested as brain inflammation, anxiety, acne, brain fog, and fatigue. But why food?

Let’s just look at gluten as an example

Hadjivassiliou and colleagues discuss a link between those with gluten sensitivities and antibodies against glutamate decarboxylase (anti-GAD), a crucial enzyme which converts glutamate (main excitatory neurotransmitter) into GABA (main inhibitory neurotransmitter) with the aid of vitamin B6 (Hadjivassiliou et al., 2011).

Impaired efficiency of GAD can lead to a build-up of glutamate/too little GABA, resulting in excessive excitation = seizure disorder, anxiety, irritability, insomnia.