Neurochemical Imbalances

Do you feel truly happy, calm, composed and able to handle life’s challenges? Many people feel difficulty and experience some of the following symptoms when faced with the demands of life:

  • depression
  • anxiousness
  • apathetic
  • reluctant to engage in life fully
  • lost their zest for life
  • experiences a gray mood in the winter
  • just can’t bring their self to engage in the same activities they used to love so much
  • feel fatigued
  • have trouble keeping  blood sugars stable
  • suffer aches and pains
  • experiences headaches
  • suffers from insomnia
  • loss of sex drive
  • hormone imbalances
  • allergies

Brain Chemistry

The common link to all these seemingly unrelated observations can be Brain Chemistry, more specifically, neurotransmitters. Your feel-good neurotransmitters are either out of balance, depleted, or even fully collapsed.

There are two main categories of neurotransmitters, those that stimulate and those that inhibit.  It is this delicate balance between the two that largely determines your conscious experience of the world around you, the sensations coming from your body, or the extent to which you emotionally engage, react, or interpret the various events in your day-to-day life.

Neurotransmitters are the body’s chemical messengers that transmit messages between neurons which then ultimately affect every cell, tissue, organ, and muscle in your body.  They have a big role! Of these neurotransmitters, there are about 100 important ones, and of these 100, there are 12 we would consider cardinally important. Of those 12, only 4 make up 99% of what we know about brain function and with respect to all the various drugs used in psychiatry. There are two categories of neurotransmitters- inhibitory and excitatory. The balance/levels of neurotransmitters in these two categories are largely responsible for mood, emotions, and brain responses including focus and attention. It is estimated that over 86% of Americans have suboptimal neurotransmitter levels. This is due largely due to lifestyle factors such as: sleep habits, food choices, high stress levels, stressful relationships, and even excessive exercise. Genetic predisposition or vulnerabilities also contribute to the development of neurotransmitter deficiencies.

  • Inhibitory (Serotonin and Gaba)
  • Excitatory (Dopamine and the Catecholamines-Epinephrine and Norepinephrine)

Unfortunately, when patients present with symptoms of neurochemical imbalance, deficiency, or collapse in the conventional setting, they are often made to feel that it’s all in their head when in fact there is a VERY REAL biochemical imbalance for the way a person feels the way they do. While medications can be very helpful on a short-term basis to break the cycle and give mood and emotional reprieve where indicated, these medications have never been studied over the course of multiple years and often times have uncomfortable side effects.

We use advanced functional testing to get to the root cause of your symptoms and help you restore your body’s “natural balance” through a highly personalized treatment plan. For example, while your poor sleep may be due to low serotonin, someone else’s may be related to low GABA. Neurotransmitter testing can help identify your specific biochemical imbalances and allow for a tailor-made approach to optimally treat you for the best lasting results.

Neurotransmitters (NT) are released from the presynaptic nerve in the brain. They are messengers that come from the brain and nervous system. They bind to specific receptors which send electrical signals to a target cell. They work locally and are fast in action unlike hormones which generally take longer to act. NTs are things like serotonin, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and many more. NTs are responsible for the way our brain makes sense of most of our feelings which is why they are the key components of mood disorders and mental health. However, many people do not realize the effect NTs can have on sleep and sexual drive/desire.

While many mental health medications claim to balance or “fix” your brain chemistry in situations of ADD/ADHD, depression, anxiety, OCD and more, most of these medications work to increase or prevent the neurotransmitters connection to the synapse of the neuron in the brain. This means it interferes with the electrical signaling or the receptor site. This interference can have dire long-term consequences since the body is amazingly adaptive and will do many things to work around an interference in its normally designed system. This also means other NT levels are affected, hormone levels are affected, and the entire NT system is overworked. A very real and common side effect/risk of mental health medications is receptor site burn out. When overworked, the receptor sites give up and the NT no longer do the signaling they were designed to do. When caught early enough, the receptor site function can be regained or saved. (Note: Do not ever stop taking, skip doses, or change dosing of mental health prescription medications you may be currently taking. You must work with a functional medicine doctor and your prescribing doctor to decrease medications in a safe and responsible way)

Many people do not realize that symptoms commonly associated with hormone imbalances are also symptoms of Neurotransmitter (NT) imbalances. Some NTs that are released in the brain travel through the blood like a hormone to a target location instead of connecting at the neuron level through the synapse. This is called a neurohormone and part of the reason hormones and neurotransmitters are so tightly linked in your body’s biochemistry. What is most important for you to understand is how each of the common symptoms associated with hormone imbalances can also be a neurotransmitter issue as well. This is why we always recommend testing hormones and neurotransmitters together.

Symptoms such as low libido, poor sleep, hot flashes during menopause, and fatigue are commonly attributed to hormones such as thyroid, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, but in fact, neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and GABA are often out of optimal ranges when these symptoms occur. The ways in which hormones and neurotransmitters work together requires a trained eye with fundamental understanding of how they are linked. For example, estrogen (hormone) can affect dopamine and serotonin (NT) levels. Progesterone (hormone) levels can disrupt GABA receptors (NT). Cortisol (hormone) levels can be shifted by serotonin (NT) levels. And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hormone and NT interplay.

Many practitioners only test hormones, and many fail to do that comprehensively enough to truly understand what is happening in your body as related to your symptoms. Do not settle for being in the dark when it comes to your hormones and brain health. By testing both hormones and neurotransmitters together, you can shine light on the whole picture and have the accurate data for a treatment plan that gets to the root cause of your issues.

To truly understand the root cause of your symptoms of hormone imbalance, or mental health/mood struggles, it is imperative that hormones and neurotransmitters be looked at together through a urine test. Then interpreted considering your health history, current symptoms, medications, and lifestyle. This is where the Holistic Health Practitioners are exceptionally skilled. Not only do they have the clinical experience of several decades of working with hormone and neurotransmitter imbalances, but also the expert training that assures you they truly understand your test results and how to develop the right treatment plan for you.

How do we test neurotransmitters?

  • HPA profile with Neurotransmitters– this test looks at both adrenal function as well as neurotransmitter levels through saliva and urine testing. Adrenal function and neurotransmitters are both intimately connected in their physiology, so it is important to test both to understand your complete picture.
  • Nutritional Urine testing– this is a urine sample that looks at metabolites of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and neurotransmitters. Nutritional deficiencies can often mimic mood symptoms so correcting these imbalances first can set you up for success when initiating neurotransmitter rehabilitation
  • Blood testing– In this test, we look at basic lab work including CBC, CMP, cholesterol studies, iron studies, Vitamin B12, Folate, comprehensive Thyroid studies, and a sex hormone panel. This gives us a clue whether there are underlying medical concerns to your mood symptoms.