Patient Journey: Anxiety and Depression

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As promised, I am sharing patient journeys without any edits or influence! I ask the question, and they give you unadulterated answers to your burning questions. What is it really like to be on a healing journey through my patients’ eyes. Anxiety and Depression is a common patient complaint that land on my doorstep and the current treatment methods need a lot of work. There should be an approach that addresses the problem at the root. That could mean doing something much more drastic than taking medications; it could mean changing how you do life, how you eat, how you think, how you ARE.

1. What health issues were you struggling with when you began to work with Dr. Angela?
Anxiety and depression. Constant (almost daily) headaches. Also some issues that I did not know “could be” helped, like eyes watering, or eczema, lack of energy.

2. What treatment methods had you tried prior to Dr. Angela’s program?
Anti-anxiety and –depression meds prescribed by my MD.

3. What health benefits did you gain from working with Dr. Angela?
I feel like a “better me”, I have more energy, my mind is sharper, my memory is better, my mood is better. I can clearly identify certain triggers that happen when I eat “bad” foods and I do not want to feel that way.

4. What was your biggest struggle during the transition to a healthier lifestyle?
The ups and downs. Feeling good for days then having a setback. Forgetting that I have been one way for 39 years and only “my brand new healthy self” for few months. Giving up sugar (candy) was difficult but finding sweet treats to make from healthier alternatives was wonderful.

5. What did you find most beneficial to you in the program?
Understanding how the human body works and how everything affects everything. Also, learning to set up boundaries for myself as far as how much coffee I can enjoy per week etc. I am still learning the little triggers that set off certain reactions in my body.

6. Did your food options taste good?
Yes everything tasted so good. In fact both my son and husband told me that I make the best foods in the world. I am sure not all of it is my cooking ability, it has to be the good foods we are eating too.

7. Did you have an ah-ha moment that helped you commit to the change? If so, what was it?
When my MD told me that I would have to take meds for the rest of my life for anxiety. The side effects were horrible. I did not want to feel addicted to a pill that I have to take for the rest of my life. To me that was not normal.

8. If you were going to give a piece of advice to someone on the fence of following a program like Dr. Angela’s, what would you say to them in order to help them decide?
“You will not know how amazing you can feel, until you try it”. In the long run with all the medications and doctor visits you will throw out more money and still not get better than what the program with Dr. Angela costs; the difference is Dr. Angela’s program will heal you inside out. And you will feel better than you ever can think of. It is amazing how many people are on the fence about it, even though they could only start trying it for 30 days. What’s 30 days, it is a short amount of time!

 

Dr. Angela’s perspective:

This patient case had some food sensitivities involved, so reactions to food stimulants, and some actual allergies, too.  It’s always a puzzle with many pieces to find a home for.  That takes time, which is why it’s impossible to successfully treat or correct complex health issues in a visit every few months.  It’s a process and if I didn’t take adequate time, I would have missed valuable pieces of the puzzle.  For example, once everything was corrected for this patient, she wanted to continue care to address some other things such as eczema.  Some simple investigation and it was completely cleared with a supplement because of determining her particular cause: an environmental allergy.  In some ways, I wish treating patients was simple, but then I wouldn’t enjoy the “investigative hunt,” and that is half the fun for me.  Like many patients before this person, she did not commit to care until traditional treatments failed her.  I’m always waiting when a person may want to try a different route.

You are Not Eating for 1;You are Eating for 1.5 trillion!

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As most of you are aware, I was in Austin this past weekend to listen to doctors, researchers, and holistic practitioners shed light on their areas of expertise.  This year’s conference focused on the microbiome.  What is the microbiome?  Well, in short, it is all the organisms that live within us and result in our health, or lack there of.  I often say that we are nothing more than walking houses for the bacteria that have taken up residence.  I’ve been saying this since I learned that we have 10 times the amount of bacteria in our body then we do cells!  That means that we are not eating for 1 (or 2 for you preggers out there), we are eating for about 1.5 trillion!  That’s right.  Every time you put something in your mouth or environment, you are either helping beneficial bacteria to survive and thrive or you are opening the door for opportunistic bacteria to wreak havoc.   Based on the abundance of their existence, 99% of the DNA material being expressed is not even yours.  Take a moment and let that sink in.  You are nothing more than a hotel.  How clean your hallways are, how good your vibes are, how efficiently your operation runs is all dependent on your staff: the bacteria.

In cell physiology, I teach students about organelles.  Organelles are all the things living within the cell membrane that help accomplish cellular tasks.  Organelles are things like lysosomes, rough and smooth endoplasmic reticulum, vesicles, and mitochondria.  If I just lost you, hang on for a sec.  Mitochondria are considered the powerhouse of the cell because of their ability to produce ATP, aka the cell’s energy.  What a great member of a cell’s staff, right?!  Well, you may be shocked to know that thanks to a woman scientist by the name of Lynn Margulis, we now know that mitochondria actually used to exist as its own free-floating bacteria.  Yup.  They existed on their own and decided to take up shop inside of us instead! ( Side note: the longer I study science, the more women pop up as huge contributors to our understanding of things.  I hope my teachings inspire more young women to ask questions, seek answers, and make more major contributions to the world.  It will be my most important legacy.)

If we know that bacteria existed on Earth prior to humans, and we serve as their home, and our health is a reflection of their health, what we can do to make sure they are healthy?  Asking this question will only allow us to open doors that will create a better quality of life and a better health status for us as humans.  Metaphorically speaking, making sure our bacteria are happy will majorly improve our hotel vibes.  Just sayin’.  There is NOT a single disease or disorder that doesn’t have some impact from bacterial function.  We all think of digestive disorders when we think about gut bacteria, but we should also start recognizing things like autism, diabetes, anxiety, MS, diabetes, obesity, and depression are also directly related.  Stool tests can be a great tool to see what bacteria you’ve got going on and how they are doing.  1g of poop contains 100 million terabytes of information, and if you know computers, you know that’s a crazy amount of information for such a small quantity of poop.  You clean up baby diapers with more than 10x’s that amount of poop; let’s be honest!

The take home message here is that you are only as healthy as the bacteria living within you.  You create an environment for that bacteria based on your diet, exposure to toxins, medications taken, and lifestyle choices.  This environment that YOU created is either helping you or hindering you.  Working with a doctor that recognizes this significance may be the key to unlocking underlying issues that may be keeping you unhealthy.  If you have frequent infections, take antibiotics or heartburn medications, or suffer from an autoimmune disease, diabetes, or psychological issues, I encourage you to read, become informed, and makes changes to create a healthy internal environment.