Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:16 Varicose Veins and thoracic aortic aneurysm
06:22 Ways to strengthen and develop blood vessels
06:32 Collagen
07:02 Vitamin C
10:46 Copper
12:45 Blood Clots
13:19 Nattokinase
13:40 Serrapeptase
14:22 Lumbrokinase
16:02 Xue Fu Zhu Yu San Formula
16:46 Weakened heart
17:50 Hard time making decisions and may be depressed
19:33 Wen Dan Tang Formula
20:21 Brain fog
21:25 Yi Gan San Formula
22:46 Single herbs for gallbladder issues and for phlegm issues
23:58 Borderline cataracts
26:14 Green tea
27:55 Not being able to retrieve a word or having partial recall? What about retention issues? What is the secret sauce for helping with memory?
42:36 have a wonderful day, but at night be super depressed and helpless. In the daytime, I’m okay again
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Today, I’m going to answer questions. We have enough questions that I find very interesting and kind of fun.
00:16
Here is the first question: “My mother has a varicose vein at the back of her knee on the right side that has been treated with compression socks.” (Now, this should be interesting to you all because you either have varicose veins or you’re probably going to struggle with them at some point.) “This seems to have worked out as the vein has receded.” Doctors recommend compression socks all the time and patients rarely use them. They are actually a really simple treatment. Now, the problem has been compression socks are very hard to get on, particularly as we get older and less flexible. If you happen to have a little tummy or like some of us, a pretty big tummy, then that lack of flexibility and the belly getting in the way makes it really hard to put on compression socks. However, it’s worth it. Now, there are a couple companies that make really high-quality compression socks with the toes cut out, and that’s usually the hardest part to get on. Often if you can get past the midfoot, then the rest of it works pretty well. There are also companies that have zippers, so you get the compression sock on, but it’s not too hard because it’s not compressing at that point, and then you can zip it up. Those are pretty cool, too. If you’ve been told that you need compression socks or if you’re getting varicose veins in particularly your lower legs, or if you’re getting weird leg sores, I urge you to consider getting the compression socks. They are really pretty amazing, actually, particularly if you fly or if you drive a long distance or if your feet swell, etc., you should really strongly consider those.
02:15
Back to the question. “My mom has also been diagnosed with a thoracic aortic aneurysm.” An aneurysm is an outpouching in a blood vessel. Those of you that are my age, you’ll remember when bicycle tires had inner tubes in them, and sometimes you’d get a little blowout where the sidewall would get weak and you get this outpouching of a thin wall. It’s basically the same thing that happens when people get diverticulosis in their intestines. They get little outpouchings in that tissue and the cell walls get very thin. That’s what an aneurysm is. Many people die of aneurysms in the brain. I’ve had just a couple of patients recently, pretty young, but got very fortunate because they happen to be in the right place at the right time. They got surgical interventions for the aneurysms in their brain. Medical doctors say that if you do enough brain scans, you’ll find an aneurysm and about one out of ten people. They don’t do scans on themselves because they don’t want to know. In their minds, there’s not much you can do about it and probably nothing. I don’t feel the same way. There are things that we can do about it in Chinese medicine, however, that’s an aneurysm. Thoracic means it’s in the chest, the thorax. Aortic means it’s from the aorta. The aorta is the large blood vessel that blood gets pumped into from the heart, right at the top of the heart. Then it makes a curve, and then part of it goes up and part of it goes down, the ascending and descending. This is part of the descending thoracic artery. That comes down and then it splits into two pieces right below your navel and one goes down into each leg. This is the predominant blood supply vessel in the lower part of the body.
04:25
“This was monitored for a year and it hasn’t grown, and it is not a size they would operate on it.” Fortunately, those operations have gotten much, much better. Often they don’t really have to open people up. They can just get a piece of metal in there to use as a bridge, and it’s very, very effective.
04:47
“She says she can feel a heartbeat in her chest, and then it stops. Not the heart, lol. The feeling.” I’ll talk about that now, and then I’ll go to the last couple of things; it’s a very compound question. One of the things we’re seeing here in her mom’s case are two different appearing types of blood vessel disease. One is in the veins, which return the blood to the heart, and one is in the artery, which carries the blood to the heart. However, shockingly, those can be related. In both cases, we have a weakness in the wall of the blood vessel. In the case of the aneurysm, you’re getting an outpouching, a weakness, in the aorta. In the vein with the varicose veins, you’re getting an outpouching, or pressure, in that vein. There can be a relationship between those. Now, there may not be a relationship. They may be totally separate, but the thing that I would consider is to do supplements that would help strengthen the connective tissue because the blood vessels are very, very dense (basically they are connective tissue.) If the connective tissue gets weak, it’s going to not hold together as well, and you’re going to get these problems.
06:22
Everything plays a role practically and blood vessels, strength and development, but there are three major ones I want to talk about.
06:32
The first one is collagen. Collagen is what really holds tissues together. There are really good collagens that you can buy and really crappy collagens that you can buy. Bone broth was kind of the the go- to before we had collagen supplements readily available. Bone broth is still an excellent, excellent food. It is a good source of many, many nutrients and is beneficial for blood vessel development.
07:02
The second one is vitamin C. We tend to forget about that. I forget about it. I’ve been talking about the benefits of vitamin C for 50 years, and I will forget it. I don’t remind people to breathe; it’s kind of like that. You take your vitamin C, but most people take far too little vitamin C to really do much of a job with their connective tissue. My recommendation is 2 to 3 grams per day spread out throughout the day, about a third every 8 hours. That keeps your bloodstream and your tissues fairly well bathed in vitamin C. Vitamin C is water soluble, so you will pee it out. Now, if you want to really have fun, there are two people that I would recommend that you check out. One is Dr. Klenner. He goes back probably to the 1940s. He’s written since then. Klenner was one of the big, big believers in the value of vitamin C. Dr. Klenner cured several hundred cases of polio with no paralysis, no long term effects by doing high-dose intravenous vitamin C. It was his feeling that if you give high-dose vitamin C, it would defeat almost any viral infection and also almost any infection in general.
08:35
Now, Dr. Klenner did tons of studies and all of his work was basically forgotten. There’s a guy named Dr. Thomas Levy. He has really written a lot about vitamin C and goes back and quotes a lot of Dr. Klenner’s work. If you’re shy about doing a lot of vitamin C, don’t be. Go check Dr. Levy and Dr. Klenner’s writings. They’re quite informative.
09:07
There are very famous people that have done 60,000 to 80,000 grams of vitamin C a day. Now, I’m not recommending you do that because it can be hard on the stomach. You’d want to do an IV, if you’re going to do a really high amount, but don’t be afraid of vitamin C. It is a primary connective tissue element. When people die of scurvy, which is when you read about vitamin C, they’ll say, “Oh, take it to prevent scurvy.”
Well, one of the things western medicine does a lot is there will be a severe disease that kills people. Pellagra, Rickets, which usually does not kill people, but very, very severe, and Beriberi. Those are all nutritional deficiencies, but what Western medicine will do, it’ll be, “If you don’t have scurvy, if you’re not dying, then don’t worry about the vitamin C. So the recommended daily allowances for most vitamins and minerals is set at absurdly, absurdly low levels. One of the things that you see with free clinical scurvy are tooth and gum problems. The tooth becomes loosen, you see connective tissue problems. You see skin that you can pinch and hold, it doesn’t really have the elasticity that it had when you were younger. All of those things have part of the role involved in keeping them healthy is vitamin C.
10:46
The other one is copper. Now, we don’t need a lot of copper, but many people don’t get enough. There is a very, very semi-famous story from maybe 20 years ago about copper. It was just before Thanksgiving, and there was this massive turkey farm with thousands and thousands of turkeys. Suddenly, almost all of them drop dead. They brought in a vet to do necroscopies. They opened them up and found they’d all died from aortal aneurysms. He asked what they had done differently this year? The farmer said, “Well, we changed their feed. What they found is that the new feed was extremely deficient in copper, and that copper deficiency caused the connective tissues to get weaker, and the turkeys died from bleeding out from aortal aneurysms. You don’t need much, but if there is a problem with the blood vessels, either in the veins or in the arteries, either one, it’s relatively inexpensive to get your zinc and copper levels tested, particularly if you’re going to combine that with some other tests. If you or someone in your family, you or your mom or dad, had significant blood vessel problems, and again, that could show up as varicose veins. It could show up as hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids are essentially just varicose veins in the anus (it’s just the location). Or if there’s an arterial problem of any kind, you might get your zinc and copper tested just to see
12:45
Going back to the venous return. If the blood is thick, it’s going to be harder for it to traverse the veins, if there are many blood clots, I’ve had patients that have blood clots from their ankle bone up above their knee, and we treated those with supplements and herbs, got rid of it very quickly, but the patient didn’t know they had it. However, on ultrasound it showed it.
13:19
I’m looking at things like nattokinase, which is an extract of natto miso, and that helps. It’s almost like putting a Teflon coating on the red blood cells so that it flows better through the veins or through the blood vessels in general.
13:40
The second one is serrapeptase. Serrapeptase is an enzyme that silkworms use to burn themselves out of the cocoon. The cocoon is made of incredibly strong protein, but it’s a dead protein, so serrapeptase was created, however you look at this, but silkworms have huge amounts of serrapeptase which will eat through the dead protein, but it doesn’t eat through them and their living protein. It does the same thing in the body. It will scavenge for and look for minor blood clots and start to break them down.
14:22
Another supplement that can do similar things is lumbrokinase. Lumbrokinase is from earthworms actually. The Chinese called it Earth Dragon formula, but it is essentially lumbrokinase. It will also will break down the blood clotting and makes the blood move more smoothly, and it also breaks down biofilm. Biofilm is the big deal with a lot of infections. Lyme disease, for example, the spirochetes hide in a particular film, a biofilm, and then whatever, you’re trying to kill them with an antibiotic, etc., cannot get to them. There are many things that it helps; parasites in the gut. I’ve had patients when we’re doing cleanses, pass huge amounts of biofilm with parasites in it. It’s very, very powerful. Also, you can use a variety of herbal formulas. The list is just almost endless.
15:29
I recommend against a lot of self-treatment; doing some I think is fine. There’s a book called, “Notes from South Mountain.” It was written by Andy Ellis. It’s written in such a way that I think it’s the easiest to-use book for people that are not professionals. I also recommend it for professionals. I use it quite often because of the clarity and how succinct it is.
16:02
You could look up a formula called Xue Fu Zhu Yu San. Those are some of the things now to help keep the blood from being too thick, because of it’s too thick, it takes a lot more blood pressure to get the blood to move properly through the vessels. Also, the blood won’t go into the smaller capillaries and get to a cellular level as easily as it will if it’s thinned out a little bit.
16:46
The next place you’d look would be for a weakened heart, that’s not strong enough. Now, I don’t suspect this in your mom’s case because the compression stockings were enough to treat it. However, for congestive heart failure, you’d look at swollen ankles, etc.
17:05
The thoracic aortic aneurysm, the same things would really apply. You want to keep the blood fairly thin, so you don’t need more blood pressure because more pressure is going to put more pressure, obviously, on that outpouching and give it a higher likelihood of blowing out. The supplements that I talked about to strengthen the blood vessels would be the same as they would for the veins, which is kind of cool because it’s one set of stuff.
17:50
“My mom has a hard time making decisions and may be depressed. She can’t seem to move forward and is a bit stuck in the past, and it is fear based.” Well, anybody who did our liver flush at any time will know that this is primarily a gallbladder pattern. Inability to make decisions and move forward are primarily gallbladder. There are other organs, the heart and kidney that can play a role, but it’s primarily the gallbladder. The liver is the general. The liver, when it’s healthy, gives the orders. It tells the orderly what to do, tells the the lower ranking officers what to do. The gallbladder is the official that carries out the orders. He listens to the general and then carries out whatever the orders are. So people that have difficulty making decisions often have liver weakness and gallbladder stagnation. If they can make decisions, but they just can’t move forward with it, then that’s generally gallbladder. Now, in this case, what I’m seeing just from this paragraph is some gallbladder patterns meeting heart patterns.
19:09
So she has the inability to make a decision, but then also feels a heartbeat in her chest and can’t move forward, gets stuck. That sounds like mostly liver, gallbladder and a little bit of heart. A couple formulas to look up in “Notes from South Mountain” or go online and look them up.
19:33
One of our most popular formulas for the gallbladder is a formula called when Wen Dan Tang. We’ve saved a physically a lot of gallbladders with this, but it will also help with the emotional peace, also.
19:52
This is really for a gallbladder/stomach disharmony. In this Chinese medicine model, we say it causes phlegm. Now, phlegm is a very, very largely comprehensive term in Chinese medicine. It can be the phlegm that you see; you blow your nose, you cough up some phlegm, or it can be phlegm that you don’t see.
20:21
Brain fog is often what the Chinese call phlegm misting the orifices, and it can make it feel very, very heavy in your head. Also, cholesterol is considered in Chinese medicine, a form of phlegm stagnation. In fact, if you look at the herbs that treat cholesterol, they are the same herbs that can treat brain fog. You start to see how this Chinese picture is really pretty amazing. Some symptoms for Wen Dan Tang usage, depression, insomnia, inability to move forward, fright (like fright about life), or thoracic oppression. That may be what your mom is feeling with that heartbeat, nd sometimes palpitations, etc.. You can find the formula on Google with Andrew Ellis. Like I said, I really love his explanations.
21:25
If that doesn’t seem to fit, then check out Yi Gan San. One of my favorite teachers, a Chinese fellow, named Richard Tan, who has now passed away. He was doing a course once a year. Yi Gan San is not a formula that’s generally taught in school. It’s kind of an extra formula.
21:48
Someone once asked, “So when do we use Yi Gan San?” He said, “oh, you ask teh patient, ‘how did you sleep last night?’ 45 minutes later, they’re still telling you. See, there is this indecisiveness. They can’t give you a short answer. They’ve got to give you a 45-minute discussion about everything in their life and everything that’s contributing to their lack of sleep or how they slept. They’re going to give you their whole life history. That is really a lack of focus right there. They can’t simply sit with you and add to the question. They’ve got to go on. That’s Yi Gan San, and this is for liver stasis. Here you would have some easy anger, some frustration, some palpitations, etc..
Now, I would go to Wen Dang Tan first and check that out, but then Yi Gan San. Unfortunately, beyond that, there are at least a thousand formulas that could could be helpful.
22:46
Now, single herbs. My two favorite single herbs for gallbladder issues and for phlegm issues are Zhu Ru and Shi Chang Pu. Shi Chang Pu is one of my four or five favorite herbs. When I was doing my master’s degree program, I was working two full time jobs. I had several kids. I mean, I was exhausted, so school was a bit of a slog for me. Before every test, I would take Shi Chang Pu, pour boiling water over it, let it cool a bit, and then I would sip it for about half an hour before my test and into the test. It was like the shutters on my brain just went away, because it is a phlegm resolver. So the phlegm in my brain started to resolve, and I could think more easily. The Zhu Ru piece of it works more on the physical gallbladder issues, helping things move through there, so it is a great combination.
23:58
This lady also has borderline cataracts. The one thing I’ve seen work the most frequently is L Carnosine as drops. Life Extension used to have them as a formula called Can C, but but it’s L Carnosine drops. I’ve seen several patients with mild beginning-to-become moderate cataracts have them completely disappear. You just squeeze drops into the eye. I’m actually not completely certain of the the action of how it does that. I’m sure I read at some point many years ago, but I don’t remember now. I’ve never had anybody or seen anybody have a problem with it. We actually don’t carry this because it has a short expiration cycle, so we just have people look for it. I don’t know exactly how it works, but I’ve seen it work many times. Then you also want to keep the eyes hydrated for the cataract. It’s in this vitreous humor, a gel-like substance within the eye, and it’s the oxidation of the lens that causes it to get the cataracts.
25:26
If you’ve looked at a one of your cars that you had for a few years, you’ll notice that the headlight covers have gotten really fuzzy. They have been damaged. You look to compare them to a brand new headlight cover, and it’s not the same at all. It’s no longer clear that’s from the oxidation. It’s from being out in the sun. Same thing happens to the eyes and what causes cataracts. It’s the lens in the eye that changes focus, and when that becomes oxidized, you get that oxidative coating on it and you can’t see as well because it’s no longer pristine, let’s say.
26:14
Green tea may be the best thing to use for that. Green tea causes more fluid to be retained in the eyeball for about 12 hours. If you take green tea twice a day, it would make a huge difference on the amount of fluid being retained. When you talk about things like floaters, that’s actually from having dry vitreous humor, the gel like substance. Many retina problems are caused because that gel fluid shrinks. It gets dried out like any gel fluid might, and it starts to pull on the back of the eye, and it pulls the retina loose. A lot of the problems on the retina can be protected by this. So green tea, Lutein, Astaxanthin, Zeaxanthin, vitamin A. Krill Oil has a very powerful combination of vitamin A, a little vitamin D, and a lot of very high quality fats in it; EPA, DHEA and a lot of Astaxanthin. It’s very powerful for keeping the vitreous humor of the eye nice and free of oxidation.
27:55
Here is another question: “Hello, Dr. Nieters. I’m amazed at your retention of material and then you impart it without fail, it seems. For example, you don’t seem to have brain fog.” Well, after I got that, I checked in with my staff to see if they thought I had brain fog, and they said no. Some people are just incredibly bright until they are 95 years old, don’t get any brain fog, and don’t have any word recall. I am not that person. What does happen with me is I will get word recall deficiency after a certain time, like around now. It’s like, “What is that word? The heck with it. I’ll just come up with another one.” It’s a little too much work. Fatigue really kicks that in a lot for me and for my patients, also.
28:51
The question continues, “What’s going on with not being able to retrieve a word or having partial recall? What about retention issues? What is the secret sauce for helping with memory?” Boy, would I be wealthy, huh? If I had the secret sauce. There are a ton of things that can be done. Again, word recall. Fatigue is a big, big issue. If you’re having generalized fatigue, you have thyroid disorders, you have adrenal insufficiency, you have any form of anemia or blood deficiency. All of those will affect the ability to have good word recall, because the brain just doesn’t want to work that hard. It’s a search pattern, and it’s like you get X amount into it and just say “to heck with it; let’s just pick out another word.”
29:41
Now, one of the things that helps me with the word recall thing, is ‘ve always been very verbal. I talk a lot, and I know a lot of words. What helps to hide my poor word recall is that if I can’t find the one I’m thinking of, I pick a different one. Now, that is a problem. I mean, it is a sign of some brain deterioration, but don’t get too freaked out about it. It is not a major, major symptom of something like Alzheimer’s. There are other things that will tend to show up.
30:16
Another thing is one of my staff, Kathryn, mentioned this. Her difficulty when she’s having problem seems to be that she’s not visualizing, and I hadn’t really thought of that, but it’s so obvious. It was brilliant, actually. For example. People that are good spellers are visual learners. You cannot learn how to spell in English as an auditory or a kinesthetic. You can’t do it. It makes no sense. Spell orchestra just sounding it out. There’s no way. You actually have to see the word. I took my middle son one day after his mom was just beside herself, upset, and he was upset because she was upset. He’d done a spelling test, and he got 2 out of 20. I taught him how to to search visually, how to memorize visually, and then how to be able to recall it. His next test, he got 18 out of 20. Some people would think he’s not smart enough. No, he just didn’t have a good process. He didn’t have a good strategy for learning how to spell. He’s now a great speller.
31:29
For me, I find that while that’s accurate, that I don’t visualize the word so much. I find that for me, when I’m trying to recall a word, it’s more auditory. The old saying, it’s on the tip of my tongue, I swear it feels like the word is on the tip of my tongue. I’ve never remembered names well. I will get the first letter, and after I hear it in my head a couple of times, I’ll know how many letters it is or the sound of it, basically. I will then usually be able to get to it. Maybe in a minute, maybe in an hour, or maybe in a day, but there’s this feeling that it’s like right there for me. Again, there are lots of things that you can do to help that. Retention is a very different thing. We tend to retain that which is important to us and that which we learn under the environment of learning. There are times of day that it’s much easier to learn and retain things. When you’re fatigued, it’s almost impossible to retain things. I don’t know if any of you have had this experience, but I remember when I was studying for finals, many times I would read a paragraph, get to the end of it and have no idea what it said. I go back and reread it. I have no idea what it said. I was at least committed enough that I would then quit. At that point, I was not going to learn anything anyway.
33:09
Focus. We are in a world that demands massive, massive cuts. Like you watch a movie now and you watch a movie from 40 years ago and you can’t even watch most of them for 40 years of good because your brain needs more and more and more excitement from those rapid cuts. It’s really the same. Sitting down and even a conversation is difficult for many people to focus on. I’m sure you’ve walked by a restaurant or sat in a restaurant and you see four teenagers who are not talking to each other. They’re playing on their phones, or talking to someone else on their phones because they’re getting more engagement from that. They’re getting a more of a dopamine, a feel good hit, than they are from trying to come up with conversation, which actually takes some work. So that’s one thing is focus.
34:02
The other one is importance to us. We tend to remember what’s important to us, right? I remember for 65 years of my life, I would hear people talking about food or recipes. I didn’t retain a single word. They could have spent an hour telling me a recipe; it meant nothing. Then I started doing the cooking, and if you said a recipe, mostly I would retain it. I might have to go back and clarify a few things, but it became important to me. If I see a patient out and about in the world, I’ll remember their pulses. I will remember if they have headaches or not. I’ll remember their entire condition, but I won’t remember their name because although I want to say their name properly, because it’s important to them, and it’s polite. It doesn’t really mean anything to me. What it means to me is that this being, this human in front of me, has these things going on.
35:00
In terms of supplements, I take very few supplements. Every day, probably five days a week, I take a supplement that contains D-Ribose 5 grams, L-carnitine 1 gram, and malic acid at 240 mg (that dose is not so important). That keeps my brain functioning. I took it originally for my heart because I had some heart arrhythmias, but that’s what I take. I think it makes a huge difference in my thinking. I generally think a lot more accurately and more quickly if I have had coffee. I don’t drink coffee everyday, but when I do, it speeds up my thinking process.
35:55
Herbs that I like. There’s a formula called Ding Zhi San. It’s very hard to find actually, but it’s the formula that I give people before they take the state board exam, to be an attorney or they’re taking one of their tests to get into a college of some kind of, MCAT, or the acupuncture board exam, etc. I will give them Ding Zhi San, and it’s just amazing how it opens up their brain without making them jittery. Now, the two primary herbs in that are an herb called Yuan Zhi, and another one called Shi Chang Pu. Now I mentioned the Shi Chang Pu earlier because I love how it gets ride of phlegm. Here we’re using its ability to reduce phlegm to help our thinking. I’ve had people call me from out of state after I did seminars on this and talks and say, ‘Oh my God! This stuff changed my life. It pulled the veil from in front of my eyes.” That’s literally what they said. I used to take that in school, and it’s great. Those are the things that I do now. If there are blood flow issues, (and there are quite a few Western tests, but I can’t go into all of them right now), but if the veins under the tongue are distended and swollen, or if someone’s had an MRI or CAT scan and it says they have ischemia in the brain, which means a lack of blood flow, then I would use ginkgo. Good old ginkgo. It goes in and out of fashion, but the research has never changed, and I would use Dan Shen Salvia miltiorrhiza. Dan Shen breaks up blood clots and gets the blood to flow better. Those are two that I would certainly use.
38:00
You could use Hawthorne. Hawthorne has been used by cultures all over the world, In Chinese, it is Shan Zha. It’s used even to reduce digestive problems from fatty meat, but it works on any kind of phlegm. It’s probably the most utilized heart tonic from the natural world used internationally. It’s just amazing stuff. All of those are good.
38:30
Now, the classics. We have several brain health formulas that we use for different things. For brain fog, which was one of the questions here, we use magnesium threonate. Magnesium threonate crosses the blood brain barrier. A lot of people have low magnesium levels in their brain, and the magnesium threonate is fabulous for that.
39:02
Nicotine patches. Now, don’t don’t scream at me, but they have come into vogue. A lot of the people really work on nootropics and really maximizing brainpower, and are looking at nicotine patches. Some of the doctors that I follow are recommending nicotine patches. When you look at the damage done by cigarettes, there are hundreds of other chemicals in there contributing. It’s not so much even the nicotine, but that’s a possibility that you might consider if your brain fog is severe. Seven milligrams would be where to start.
39:40
Intermittent fasting is very, very powerful for getting rid of brain fog. It allows your blood sugars to normalize. It allows the old cells to get dismantled with autophagy. It’s just fabulous. There are tons of books on intermittent fasting, and you don’t need to do anything really radical. If you get your eating period down to about 8 hours, which is pretty easy. Mine’s down a little farther than that, typically 4 to 6 hours. It’s very helpful.
40:12
Melatonin. Melatonin is the primary antioxidant for the brain. If you have any brain problem, retention, focus, brain fog use melatonin. Now, you can use the doses that are used for sleep. The original research was about 1 to 3 milligrams. Now often people do 5 to 10. However, if you really want to get a lot of bang for your buck, you need to do about 200 milligrams to really make a big difference. We deliver that to our patients both as a 200 mg suppository, and a cream that you can massage in. Each works very well.
40:58
CoQ10 which is ubiquinol, or ubiquinone, depending on the form. It is named that because it’s ubiquitous, it’s in every cell of the body, and it really helps drive the Krebs cycle in the mitochondria, which is what produces energy. You need energy to fuel that brain. If you think there’s been heavy metal exposure, you might talk to your practitioner about EDTA, which is used to remove heavy metals from the system.
41:32
We use something called Relora with our borderline kind of dementia patients, which is just a combination of two Chinese herbs, magnolia bark and Phellodendron. There is great research about that.
41:46
The other thing are the adaptogens; most of them are very powerful for the brain. Bacopa monniera – the Ricci’s who had memorized word for word 5000 pages of the Bhagavad Gita, said that what allowed them to do that was eating Bacopa monniera.
42:11
Along with Bacopa, Rhodiola is very good. Eleuthero or Siberian ginseng, American ginseng, Huperzine-A, Those are a few of them.
42:53
First, that’s very common. If you go online, you’ll find tons of sites that will talk about nighttime depression. Mostly from a psychological standpoint, what they’re blaming that on is that the underlying issues that caused the depression may be there all the time, but they’re saying that people are just too busy. You know, if you have kids or a job or you’re busy doing stuff, often you don’t have time to get depressed.
43:25
In my early twenties, I was depressed. I didn’t know it. I didn’t know what depression was, and then I started working 100 hours a week for 40 years. I never had a depressed day because I didn’t have time to be depressed. I never had a depressing thought because I was either working on something or I was asleep. Now, this isn’t quite that extreme, but often it’s because the mind stops being occupied with doing things, and you can start to spin a bit.
43:58
There’s an acupuncture point that is very effective for that. It’s called Small Intestine 5. I’m not suggesting this is the case here, but I use it with but with Alzheimer’s patients who will do sun downing and in late, late afternoon and early in the evening, they get agitated, and they just keep walking. They won’t stop. Well, just using that point will lower the number of steps by about two thirds; it’s quite shocking. We’ll send you a little something. It’s a little hard to do with acupressure, but still, it’s worth giving it a shot.
44:40
This pattern from a biochemical standpoint, there are certain things that we run out of later in the day. We run out of, or get low on, adrenal hormones. The adrenal hormones make us feel good, mostly. We know the cortisol activates the blood sugar, aldosterone balances the sodium in the blood, so they make us feel good. Well, often late in the day, particularly in women, these stores get really diminished. Really diminished. Also, if there’s been excitement during the day, and even if we consider a good excitement, we will release epinephrine and nor epinephrine. Epinephrine gets our heart beating faster. Again, it may be low enough that we don’t even really notice it. We wouldn’t call it stress, but there’s stuff going on. Epinephrine pulls the blood out of the organs, puts it in your hands and feet and your head so that you can run away from the tiger. Well, both epinephrine and norepinephrine have their precursor dopamine. Dopamine is the reward chemical. When you run out of dopamine, life ain’t fun. It’s like you may have negative thoughts, but mostly you‘re done. I don’t care. I don’t want to do anything. So that will go along with the serotonin deficiency, which then is the negative self-talk.
46:20
The other thing that happens is by late in the day, the thyroid may be wearing down a little bit. The primary cause of depression is low thyroid. I mean, it’s the first thing I would check. I mean, doctors throw antidepressants that people that would be so far down my list, even if I could prescribe them. There are a dozen things to do first, and one of those is to get a very, very thorough thyroid panel, where they’re looking at all the aspects, not just what your thyroid stimulating hormone is, but whether you actually are producing thyroid hormone and whether it’s actually converting.
46:58
In Chinese medicine, this is usually a gallbladder/heart issue. You can tell in that case, if it’s more liver or gallbladder. There will be alternating rashness, doing things on the spur of the moment and not being able to function. They’ll go back and forth from being in charge, doing stuff, making plans, scheduling things, buying things, and then a couple hours later you might just be, “Yeah, I don’t want to do anything.” That’s the liver/gallbladder. When that’s weak, it causes more phlegm, which then attacks the heart issues a little bit. If you have weak adrenals, then anxiety and/or depression can occur.
47:59
I want to thank you. Send us those questions. I love them. I love them. I love them. I’ll be back next Thursday at 3:00.
Until then, be happy. Be healthy.
Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM, is an acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, functional medicine, writer, teacher, and leader in the community. In this episode, John talks about his experience with the importance of finding your vision and purpose in life, in order to create the right goals for you.
Disclaimer: Dr. John Nieters received his Doctor of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture degree from Five Branches. His use of “doctor” or “Dr.” in relation to himself solely refers to that degree. Dr. Nieters is a licensed acupuncturist in California. This video is for general informational purposes only. It should not be used to self-diagnose and it is not a substitute for a medical exam, cure, treatment, diagnosis, and prescription or recommendation. It does not create a doctor-patient relationship between Dr. Nieters and you. You should not make any change in your health regimen or diet before first consulting a physician and obtaining a medical exam, diagnosis, and recommendation. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. TheBalancingPoint.net, Alameda Acupuncture, and Dr. John Nieters L.Ac, DAOM are not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis or any other information, services or product you obtain through this video or site.
