If you are someone battling depression, anxiety, panic disorders, obsessive behavior, addiction or even memory loss, you can bet your brain chemistry is out of balance. Depression and anxiety can often be caused by a wide variety of disease conditions and imbalances, including anemia, blood sugar imbalance, adrenal fatigue, sex hormone imbalances and hypothyroidism.

The underlying cause for these types of issues is nearly always a deficiency in certain nutrients that are key in nourishing and supporting the brain’s chemistry and its functions.

You’re not Alone

Roughly 20.9 million Americans (9.5 percent of the population) have mood disorders but what many don’t know is that making some significant changes in your diet and exercise routine can often help to rebalance your brain, either eliminating or reducing the need for pharmaceuticals.

Neurotransmitters and YOU

Neurotransmitters are chemicals that transmit nerve impulses that affect the way your brain and body function . If imbalanced, you may find yourself feeling depressed, anxious or stressed. You may also see issues in your sleep patterns and behavior. Some of the most important chemical neurotransmitters are:

• Serotonin: Affects mood, memory, sexual functioning, learning and social behavior.
• Dopamine and noradrenaline: These chemicals facilitate overall brain function, helping you to “feel-good,” energized, focused and motivated.
• Epinephrine (adrenaline) and Norepinephrine: Responsible for the “fight or flight” response to stress.
• Endorphins: Promote a sense of euphoria like those experienced by runners, or can take the edge off of pain or stress in emergencies injury.
• Acetylcholine: Increases memory, cognition and concentration.
• Insulin: Regulates carbohydrate and fat metabolism, this hormone encourages cells to take up glucose from the blood and store it as glycogen in the liver and muscle.

How Can Your Naturopath Help?

By helping you balance brain chemistry with Naturopathic and Chinese medicine modalities. We treat underlying causes by first, taking a complete history then, running labs as necessary and finally considering neurotransmitter/hormone/adrenal testing through Neuroscience, Inc.

After receiving all results back, we then begin treatment through acupuncture, amino acid therapy like L-theanine and 5-HTP, herbal (Western and Chinese), hormone balancing, tonification and balancing of adrenals, focusing on sleep issues as well as diet changes and of course, exercise.

If there are any greater underlying health issues we will help to treat these accordingly and are open to prescribing pharmaceuticals as necessary.

Here at Bloom, we work in partnership with The Seed Center, which offers Gyrotonics. We find this form of exercise very calming and balancing and it has the resistance component we feel is necessary for optimum health.

Our goal is to help people improve the effectiveness of any medications they may already be taking, by optimizing your health. Many times this approach to overall health, leads to the elimination or reduction of anti-depressants and other medications, if appropriate.

Many of these therapies are safe and effective during pregnancy and nursing too. This is a wonderful option for women who want to be drug-free during this time but still may be in need of mood balancing.

If you’d like to work towards a greater emotional and chemical balance, please give us a call today to schedule your evaluation.