Nourishing The Mind: How Nutrition Transforms Mental Health With Professor Julia Rucklidge
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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Fighting Genius Podcast. I have with me Professor Julia Rucklage. She's a clinical psychologist. She's the director of the Taipuna Toyora, which I probably mispronounced horribly, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab at the University of Canterbury. We're going to talk about what's called the Better Brain Nutritional Interventions for Mental Illnesses to, you know, I guess alleviate symptoms and get someone as close as possible to normal functioning or maybe even better than normal, maybe.

maybe high-level functioning. So welcome, Julia. Thanks for coming. Oh, well, thanks for having me on your podcast. Yeah, if you would, tell me a bit about your background. What got you into mental health, researching it, teaching about it, writing about it, etc.?

Sure. Well, I think as probably most people who go into this field, there's usually personal stories of people in your family who are struggling with mental health problems and who aren't finding resolution to those issues from conventional treatments. I think certainly that was a prompt for me to want to go into clinical psychology was to just better understand these problems, these challenges that people had.

in order to see whether or not maybe there could be new treatments developed. I didn't know what I would end up doing, but that was my sort of initial idea of why I wanted to go into clinical psychology. So I trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Calgary from Canada, where

originally, but now have been living in New Zealand for the last 25 years. When I was doing my PhD with Bonnie Kaplan, who I co-wrote The Better Brain with, she was approached by some families from Southern Alberta, Canada, who were using nutrients, vitamins, and minerals for the most part to treat some very serious psychiatric conditions. At that point, I had almost finished my training. I had been taught very clearly that

only medications and or psychotherapy could treat really serious mental health challenges. And that nutrition was basically irrelevant when it came to the treatment of mental health challenges. So, but one thing that Bonnie taught me very well as a supervisor, as well as I have a, I come from an academic background. My father was a professor of geology. So I think that

Having that constant exposure to that academic world, the curiosity, you know, challenging the current paradigm, you know, just exploring things that may not necessarily fit with the way we think about things currently was, you know, sort of fairly normal experience for me as I was growing up. So to hear about these families, I was skeptical, but I thought, wow.

well, you know, be open to the opportunity and possibility that this might be a true story. So Bonnie ended up studying it for a little while. She ended up getting some challenges from Health Canada. I ended up moving on, went to a postdoc at the Hospital for Sick Children and then came to New Zealand to start an

an academic career here in child clinical psychology. But of course, I maintained my connection with Bonnie. I have in-laws in Calgary. We kept going back. She came to visit here. And it wasn't long into my career as a clinical psychologist that I said, we're just not adequately helping enough people. Too many people are on these amazing, what they are identified as, you know, these incredible treatments, these medications, but so many people were still unwell.

And that's sort of a secret that a lot of people don't seem to know about is that how many people seem to maintain symptoms despite receiving the best clinical care. I'm not saying that they don't help some people. Of course they do. In some cases, they save lives. But there are just too many examples of people staying unwell despite receiving treatment. What percentage of people on psychiatric medications still are in a...

you know, somewhat impaired, a seriously impaired state, not well. Yeah, it's actually, to be honest, it's hard to give you a precise number because the data aren't there. And that's because the studies are usually eight weeks, you know, eight to 10 weeks when they go for a drug trial. They'll tell you, you'll get a sense of that percentage in that short period of time. And it's

no better than 50%. But then long-term, there are very few long-term trials. I mean, our own data shows, a study that I was involved in, we were looking at the genetics of side effects of antidepressants. And we had about 80% of them were still identified as being very unwell. And these people had been on them for a long time. Now, it could be that that sample just happened to be

group of people who weren't doing very well on antidepressants, but that's certainly the story I hear over and over again is that people just don't stay well long-term. What does the public think? What does the public think? You know, misconception that they think, I guess, what, most people get helped or what do they think? I think they do. I really do think that the public, for the most part, believe that the treatment works. And when they don't work, they blame themselves. The number of times I've heard people say, oh, I'm

I must be really bad because the antidepressant isn't working, as opposed to thinking maybe the antidepressant doesn't work. So often I've heard that story many times is that people still feel that it must be, they must be so broken that they are unfixable, whereas maybe it's the treatments that aren't adequate enough. So that's certainly my experience. Have you got a different experience on that? No. I mean, within my own family, I've got people who are on medications and they're, you know,

frankly they're garbage they don't work they give side effects and you know it's just the state of psychiatry is just yeah i mean i usually be really brutally honest that i see psychiatrists not psychologists psychiatrists to me are just drug vending machines like there's literally no purpose like here's how it goes oh take this drug oh it's not oh take more of it take more oh you're at the limit of it now take this drug uh take this you know yeah it's crazy and

I know. And I try to be kind to that perspective and the way they operate, that I think people do go into medicine originally because they want to help save people. And then they end up on the treadmill and that this is what's taught to them in medical school. It's very much pushed by the, you know, very much influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. And so they're not introduced to other ways of thinking about problems. They're taught very clearly that

psychiatric disorders are caused by chemical imbalance, even though the data don't exist for that. And yet they've bought into that idea. And so therefore, if there's a chemical imbalance, then the way to fix that is through these different medications like the SSRIs or stimulants or anxiolytics or whatever, because they influence the availability of neurotransmitters.

So I'm sympathetic to that lens, but I just wish that there was greater critical thought. And when you do have repeatedly seen people who are unwell, one should at some point question the paradigm and whether or not it's a good, it's a useful paradigm. It was certainly...

When the ideas were first emerging about the chemical imbalance theory in the 60s, 70s, 80s, there was great excitement. I was doing my undergraduate degree in neurobiology. I started in 19...

88. Prozac came out in 1987. So my entire degree was about that. It was an exciting time. And there was this hope that we were going to solve the mental health problem. And so but unfortunately, we're here we are.

30, 40 years later, still that paradigm predominate, but we have more and more people struggling with a mental health issue. So it just doesn't add up in that if it works, eventually you should be seeing a decrease in the mental health problems rather than an increase. Instead, we have people like your family members, and certainly I'm familiar with people like this too, who take the drug, they're told to stay on it. It's very hard to come off it.

So they're in a really challenged situation. And I hear those stories all the time because I get approached by people who are on medications. They tell me it doesn't work. They want to try the micronutrients that I've been studying. And I have to tell them the honest truth, which is that it's going to be a rocky road in

in order to transition to micronutrients. It's not to say it's impossible, but it's going to be a rocky road because of the withdrawal associated with that medication. And the medications need to be tapered down over time for the micronutrients to have their optimal opportunity to work. So it's a tricky situation.

And I feel for these people who are struggling with mental health issues. They're on these drugs and they're still not well. It shouldn't be that way. You know, if this was a broken leg and we kept having a broken leg, our medical system would go, well, those treatments aren't working. And yet with psychiatry, somehow we've lost that perspective.

I have a clue. So I saw a seminar about six months ago called Drug-Induced Nutrient Depletion, and I had some personal experience of it. Like, for instance, my wife took metformin for a while. She was really tired. So I looked it up after I learned about the phenomena, and I saw it depletes B12. So I tell our doctor, oh, yeah, it does deplete B12. Yeah, thanks, buddy.

So what do we do? So I found B12 gummies, told her, gave it to her and she felt a lot better. And she was able to get a lot better performance out of, you know, metformin. So I would undoubtedly think that these SSRIs and other drugs and all that are causing in a drug induced nutrient depletion. So it ties into nutrition there. You know, what have you found? How do you help these people?

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Well, that's absolutely well researched and documented. You can look up any drug and find out what nutrient deficiency it causes. And that's been documented across the full array of drugs that were given like contraceptives or aspirin or the SSRIs or statins. All of the psychiatric or the medications in general have been identified as causing some kind of a nutritional deficiency, whether or not it's one single nutrient or more.

That's not well known in the medical fraternity. So that's not something like in your wife's case, you know, it wasn't mentioned. Statins are very well known to cause depletion of CoQ10 and yet CoQ10 is

enzyme, which is relevant to heart function. And yet people are not told about that when they're on a statin, that that's going to happen. So it's unfortunate that there's this division. Dietary supplements are often seen as being useless, not helpful. So there's just an overall dismissal of their utility. We

We know that the American population, as well as other populations around the world, are depleted in nutrients. That's very well documented that there's at least seven, I think it's seven nutrients on average Americans are deficient in. And is that medication induced? In some cases, possibly, but it's also, of course, induced by the

toxic food environment that surrounds all of us in the Western world and particularly the standard American diet, which is ultra-processed foods. So ultra-processed foods are contributing to the problem as well. And half of our calories come from ultra-processed food at a population level.

That's now being identified as two-thirds for teenagers, children. So that's, again, these are American data. So that is contributing greatly to our nutritional deficiency because those foods, they've been really identified as being...

You know, they're being vilified for the sugar content. And that just, in my opinion, overshadows some of the other problems associated with those foods. And those are two other things. One of them is that there's a lot of added things in there that are now being identified as affecting our microbiome, our bacterial state. That's the, you know, things like the emulsifiers, the preservatives, the colors, the thickeners, all of those added things to try to make that food taste good, be addictive, etc.,

But the other thing that's overlooked is that they're very low in vitamins and minerals. Yes, they will say they've been fortified. And so you'll see fortified with B vitamins, but they're fortified with a really small dose. So know the amount that your brain needs. Yeah, that's like with yogurts, you know, it contains, it's like a movie. It's inspired by real events. You know, you have a yogurt where it contains like one lactobacillus

bacteria when if you had it yourself it would have like trillions so they put just enough in to say oh it's fortified you know if you're a mouse or something with a little bit of whatever

Exactly. And so, but how are the public supposed to know that this is what's going on with the food industry, that they've pulled the wool over our eyes and that we are being duped into eating these foods? We think they're healthy, but they're not. And there's no good regulation of these foods anywhere in the world. And it's a very powerful industry. So I can only see that the change can happen from a grassroots movement of education, of

or demanding better regulations from governments. I don't know exactly, to be honest, what the solution is. But we need to wake up that this is such a leading cause of chronic health problems is our food environment. I think, I remember, I don't know because I haven't been to the page myself, but

How often are blood draws either required or recommended along with a change or a new prescription medication? And I would guess if they just piggyback and draw and look at a few more biomarkers in addition to whatever they look at, that would tell them, okay, then let's supplement with this. If you're going to take Prozac, maybe you should take Prozac.

Make sure you supplement with A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and you're down on X and Y, so add those too. I mean, is something that will help? No, unfortunately not. For some nutrients, blood draws are going to be useful. So for example, vitamin D, you'd identify that you were vitamin D deficient by a blood draw. Some other nutrients, you'd see them changing if you were to give them an additional nutrient. So like B12 would go up if you were to take B12, but in many cases, the nutrient is

kept in a very tight homeostasis system within the blood. And so it wants to keep that level very tightly controlled. So that might involve taking out of bone that particular nutrient in order for it to be normal within the blood. So it's not necessarily the best indicator of what the brain needs is by doing a blood draw.

There's other ways that people will try to do this and do things like hair analysis or urine or other forms of biomarkers. I've done a lot of exploration in this space of seeing whether or not nutrient levels are predictive of who's going to benefit from the supplements that we've been studying. And we have not found a good predictor, which means that you could be normal.

i.e. normal, you know, in your blood level and still benefit from additional nutrients. And the reason why I think that might be the case is that we're all individually unique and our nutritional needs are different. So if, for example, I'm really stressed, I'm going to need more B vitamins, for example, because I'm going to chew through that a lot faster than someone who is totally relaxed.

So my nutritional needs are going to be higher under those circumstances. If I am really sick, then my immune system needs more nutrients. I might look normal, but my nutritional needs are higher. If I've got cancer or if I'm going through a growth spurt, if I'm pregnant, there's all of these different factors that are

going to influence my nutritional needs. So you might look average and look normal, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're you're that's going to meet your nutritional needs. So I'm not a huge fan of using nutritional biomarkers to tell you whether or not you should try. You should be supplementing. I take the approach of give the body all the nutrients it needs and

There's no single nutrient that's magic, even though that's often how it's touted in the media. Oh, you should just take some zinc. You should take some vitamin C. If you start looking at the biochemistry of it, you look at the manufacture of a neurotransmitter and you see how many different steps are required in order to make serotonin, you'll see that there's cofactors all the way along the way that they

You need an enzyme, but you need cofactors. And those cofactors are vitamins and minerals. And there's no special one. Depending on the pathway you're looking at, you might need some B6. You might need some melidumum. You might need some zinc, et cetera. So it depends on the pathway. So we've really been...

sort of enchanted by the single nutrient approach, probably because there's these single molecules like Prozac that have had such an impact on how people feel or can, not necessarily in a positive way, but they can influence how you feel, that we've been lured into this single bullet magic fallacy. And when it comes to nutrients, you need them all. So that's kind of my approach. It's a kind of a shotgun approach.

maybe down the road, you could personalize it the way you're describing and just say, okay, you just need these specific nutrients. But I just don't think it's that simple. Like if you think about they work together. So if you just, let's say you're identified with a zinc deficiency and you just took zinc, over time, you'd end up with a copper deficiency because they work collaboratively and they impact similar receptors. So

I just think that that may be the wrong approach, although I know it's a very popular one. So I am suggesting something that's not entirely what lots of other people think. Well, what about a microbiome? You know, I mean, I mean, ultimately would be, you know, look at tons of biomarkers, get, you know, microbiome samples and then tailor from there. I get as there have been a lot of literature saying,

on how the long-term consumption of these drugs affects the microbiome too. Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's in its infancy. And it's not something that I'm up to date on is the effects of drugs on the microbiome. But I do know the effects of food on the microbiome and that if you eat a very restricted diet, that is going to reduce the diversity of the bacteria in your microbiome. Our research has shown that we increase diversity of the bacteria in your microbiome, which isn't overall identified as a good thing.

And so that, again, tells me that that's that variety. Needing the variety of the different nutrients is really key to improving the health of your microbiome. So, I mean, I've had this conversation with John Kryan.

around this approach, this sort of, it's exactly the same approach when it comes to probiotics, which is, you know, just these targeted probiotics and just, you just need this one bacteria and your problems are going to be solved. We've, you know, I was like, but does that make sense? And you're like, we're like, no, it doesn't. It doesn't make sense to do it that way. You need the full array. So how do you get the full array of those bacteria is going to be through the consumption and

a variety of different foods, prebiotics, fiber, your macronutrients, your micronutrients. You need the full array and you're just not going to get those from an ultra processed food diet. You just don't get them. So no wonder we are so sick.

And I'm just, you know, hoping one of these days we're going to have like that wake up call where we kind of go, oh, wow, that didn't work. Let's, you know, maybe go back to the drawing board and try again. But the fact is, there's lots of people out there who have already been, you know, at the drawing board and suggesting different avenues. It's just a matter of listening to them. One thing I ran into recently was lithium orotate instead of lithium carbonate. So carbonate is the big, bad lithium that sounds scary.

Or a tape, you know, it's like over-the-counter supplement. No crazy effects. Oh, I'll agree with that. Okay. Yeah, no, there's no problem with that.

Are there analogs like that, you know, substitutes for the mainstream drugs that could be used so people don't even have to use them? Well, I mean, again, so the supplements that I've studied do have lithium orotate in them, but we've got, there's a different version as well that doesn't have the lithium in it, and we see great benefits from it. So that suggests to me that, again, that approach of let's just give people lithium, and what you're just saying is give a different form of lithium, then it's

And then that might be a kinder and not have the same effects on your kidney as the lithium carbonate at the doses that they give. Again, I just say, well, is that really the best approach? I mean, we've seen wonderful changes in people's emotional regulation, which is at the end of the day, you know, when it comes to bipolar, it's that you get these extremes of emotion. So we've seen great changes in those, your capability of regulating your emotions by giving a broad spectrum of micronutrients, no single nutrient. And again,

I guess, again, I'd push back on that idea that let's just change the lithium form and go for that version. Yeah, there's some data. And I'd say maybe you could get an even better outcome if you give the broad spectrum. But that needs to be shown. And I go, well, actually, to do that, it would be really difficult if you start thinking about it.

because you'd have to do a lithium, you'd have to have people randomized and there's, you know, one group would just get the lithium, another group do give them lithium and everything else. Do you give lithium and a few other things? You know, so you start to see that it gets complicated very quickly. Of course, you need a placebo, et cetera, et cetera. And then you end up with these having to have big, big studies to get the numbers. And then you've got the placebo effect, which is very high in psychiatry. So I

I doubt you'd ever really be able to answer that question particularly well unless you had like thousands. So the strategy is for them to eat well, have a really well-balanced diet, maybe some generic supplementation, and that's the effect?

So the research I've been doing is on a higher dose than your generic supplementation. So it's not your over-the-counter pill that's got the broad spectrum of nutrients because the doses of those are so low. They're just not going to really have an effect, not the effect that we're looking for, which is to treat psychiatric disorders. So we're giving people the doses above weight.

oftentimes way above recommended dietary allowance. It's not something to be scared of because the RDA is sort of this very low standard that's identified, that's out of date, needs to be updated. I don't know why nobody bothers to do that. And it's certainly helpful to make sure you don't get scurvy with a deficiency of vitamin C or get rickets, which is a deficiency of vitamin D, but it's not identifying with the brain needs.

The brain wasn't even taken into consideration when those metrics were developed. And yet the brain is one of the most metabolically hungry organs. So it's a bit of a puzzle why it is that the brain wasn't taken into consideration.

How do you know what levels to supplement to add a supplement if you're not doing blood work to respond? Exactly. So that's not my area of expertise. So I study the supplements rather than develop the supplements. So but the logic behind it makes sense to me. So this idea that you need to go above RDA, there are you can draw on antibiotics.

animal literature. So in terms of what we know about what animals benefit from in terms of supplementation, that's well done, well known in that field. They don't give them Prozac when they're grumpy and irritable. They give them a broad spectrum of micronutrients. So that's fairly well established in animals. It's just in humans, we've decided to go down the medical route. It's more lucrative. I can only think that's the reason why you can have patents, can't have patents with dietary supplements.

You know, it's financial incentives that I think have influenced human health. So that's the background to the families, those original families I talked about who were using nutrients to treat serious psychiatric disorders. They used the knowledge of what we know about animals. They used the knowledge of things that had already been published. And then they came up with a broad spectrum

So, yeah, that's sort of the short answer to why so high and how they did that.

And at the bottom line, though, is that it's been studied now for 25 or more years. And everybody who's been doing this work, and it's not just me, it's been people in Canada and the U.S., have all documented benefits for people. Not everybody, but substantial benefits in randomized controlled trials, placebo-controlled. So the gold standard that the drug company uses in order to get licensing from the FDA. So

You know, we're using that similar approach to prove that it's efficacious. But the good news is that the safety profile is so much better. And in fact, when we look at safety and we look at side effects, we find a few, you know, in the first few weeks, you know, gastrointestinal issues may be

bit of dry mouth or a headache, that's resolved with making sure you take the nutrients with food and water. And in terms of, we did a study with pregnant women who had prenatal depression. So that's depression during pregnancy. And so we're very concerned

concerned about any safety issues of giving nutrients at these doses during pregnancy. So we monitored obviously them very closely, but we're also interested in the birth outcome because there's a lot of controversy over, not controversy is probably the right word, but just there's

Antidepressants have never been studied in a controlled way in pregnancy, and yet about 7% of women during pregnancy take them. So the only thing they can rely on are observational data. And there's always these little suggestions that maybe they don't correct some of the negative birth outcomes associated with being depressed. Well, what we found with micronutrients is that we eradicated those risks. So these kids were born

To term, most of them, we had a very low rate of preterm birth, lower than the national rate in New Zealand. It was at 5.5% and the national rate's around 8%. And that's for mums who are at risk of having preterm birth because of their depression. There was less likelihood of postpartum hemorrhaging, which is bleeding,

post the birth, that was less likely to happen in these kids who were exposed to micronutrients. They were less likely to need resuscitation compared to standard care. They were all healthy weight. We had no low birth weight babies, which is identified as something that can have a

long-term consequences for health. So everything we looked at, it was in the opposite direction. It was that we were showing benefit rather than harm so that you wouldn't see that with a drug. You would not see that kind of amazing profile of benefit. And yet, it's interesting, we've just published those data like a month ago

And, you know, I certainly hope it changes the way we treat prenatal depression. But I suspect it's going to take a long time for this to have any impact in obstetric and gynecology. Well, so you focus on micronutrients or macros as well? In my work, it's micronutrients. So going back to a statement you said earlier, just, oh, just, you know, eat well and supplement. I absolutely think eating well is good. You know, the low hanging fruit and it's

Our work is proof of principle that people are not getting adequate supply of the nutrients, the vitamins and minerals, micronutrients from their diet. And so that tells me we should be changing people's diet and we need to encourage people to eat more of a whole food diet. So absolutely. But there are, we know that even in some cases of people eating really well, they still seem to need more nutrients.

than what they're going to get out of their food. Ultra processed foods are fine when it comes to the macronutrients, your fat, carbs, and your proteins. I mean, those are supplied in that kind of system. So that's not the concern. It's the micronutrients that have been decreased and depleted in those foods. What are the micronutrients like?

Lilibdenum, copper, cobalt. Exactly. Exactly. That's what it is. So it would be all of your essential vitamins and minerals. So those have been well identified. So it would be your vitamin A, your Bs, all of the Bs, your vitamin C, your D, your E, your K, your...

And then when it comes to the minerals, that would be, I don't know if I can name them all, but let's go for zinc, iodine, selenium, magnesium, copper, molybdenum. I'm doing this off the top of my head. I'm going to run out soon. Iron, there must be an acronym for this. So you get the picture, potassium, calcium. Those are all.

They're all contained within the supplement that we've been studying. How do you administer it? Is it like a medical shake, like a medical grade type shake or how do people get it? No, it's just a supplement. So it's just a pill. So we give up to 12 pills a day, so four or three times a day in order to get the quantities of those, particularly minerals. Minerals at an adequate dose are quite bulky. Vitamins aren't so bulky so you can get most of your vitamin content from probably one pill. It's just the minerals are what are bulky.

Just think about a calcium pill. So if you're taking just one calcium pill, it's a pretty large bulky pill. Then think that we're giving a broad array of minerals that are going to be bulky in that same sort of way. So we call them macronutrients. So they are a little bit bulkier. So that makes it, that explains why there's so many pills.

What are the next steps now that you've had successful protocol of this? What, getting more people or what's next? Yeah, I mean, I've been doing this work for a long time. I mean, I was introduced to it as a PhD student and I'm now a professor. So it's been most of my career.

And I'm very interested in translation of research to practice, very keen on that. So I do a lot of podcasts. I do a lot of writing for the public. I do a lot of media interviews. I do everything I can to try to get this information out there, presenting at conferences, writing and commentaries and journals, just keep pushing it.

until you hope that one day we're going to get to a tipping point and then suddenly everyone's going to go, of course, nutrition is relevant to the brain, but we're not there yet. So it takes a lot of convincing of a lot of people before you get there. I hope, I think we've got maybe the early adopters, but we need a much greater mass of people to kind of recognize this. I think the appetite is there. I think there's a recognition that our health isn't great and we can continue to

think that we're going to find a pharmaceutical magic bullet solution. I mean, even that, you know, I just, I roll my eyes when I heard about the, you know, Ozempic and you go, oh my God, seriously? We think that we're going to treat the obesity epidemic by giving everybody

a Zumpac? What kind of... How did we become like this as a human race that we think that's the solution? It's so clear that food is such a huge contributor to the obesity epidemic. Why not address the source rather than wait for people to get obese and then give them a drug? How about we change things from the beginning? So for me...

I've done a lot of clinical trials. So we've got a lot of data and a lot of convincing data and we have replication. So we've done what we need to do in the science space. People will always say we need more, but it's pretty robust what we've published to date in really decent journals.

But if I were to keep going in terms of more trials, it would be during pregnancy. Because if we can get that, you know, change the start of life and, you know, the infant to a better start of life by making sure that that infant is well nourished during pregnancy, then we're going to have a huge impact on the next generation. You know, we can try to resolve the mental health

problems that we have right now by trying to supplement. And of course, that's helpful. But I really think I'm very much in the prevention space now and that that's where it needs to happen is that we prevent people from getting unwell in the first place. People need to understand that lifestyle is such a key factor. Is this given instead of medication or along with it?

Oh, I would absolutely do this first. So if you're, you know, if you were having your first episode of psychosis, even honestly, like bipolar, this could be considered as a first line, front line form of treatment. We don't have the data. I mean, having said that, I kind of go, oh, you know, we don't have great data on psychosis, but there's enough data on mood dysregulation that we could start there. I've seen lots of case studies of people

getting well and reduction of hallucinations and delusions. Their alternative is that they go on antipsychotics and they're so hard to come off of and you end up with metabolic syndrome. So you end up with a whole host of health issues that come alongside those medications. Your hallucinations might be gone, but your weight has doubled during the time when you've been on that meds. So I think do no harm.

is a good strategy is that you start with something that's less harmful. And if that doesn't work, then the medications are there and they have a place. I'm not saying don't use them. I'm just saying why not try something that perhaps a bit kinder and also has some other benefits. Like we did a study with ADHD that was then replicated in the States where the kids grew more

in a very short period of time relative to the placebo. Whereas we know that if you're put on Ritalin, the opposite is going to happen. There's going to be growth stunting. So wouldn't, if you're a parent, wouldn't you want to first see whether or not the nutritional approach could be effective for your kid before you put them on Ritalin? I know, but I would think a lot of people come to you after they've exhausted being on drugs first.

I know. Exactly. And so in our trials, they have to be medication naive. And that's because of the challenge of the cross tapering that I alluded to earlier, which is that if you're on medication in order for the micronutrients to have their full opportunity of having a good effect,

the medication does need to be lowered. And that's been well published and documented by psychiatrists who use the micronutrients alongside medication. It seems to potentiate the effect of the medication. And it's not surprising because if the micronutrients are giving the body those cofactors that are needed to make neurotransmitters, so you're supporting the body's natural activities, and then you stick an SSRI in,

which also is going to, in an unnatural way, influence your neurotransmitter activity and availability, then you can see that you're going to end up in a bit of a jam. Make sense? So...

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. So that's why you need to be thinking about that interaction. That's why it's so important. So it's definitely possible the companies that make these products work with physicians to do that cross tapering because physicians are unfamiliar with that. Naturally, it's not taught in medical school. So they're with that sort of level of support that they need.

But my ideal situation is medication naive. We see so much, you know, that one, you know, that you won't get side effects. You won't have problems. You won't have these cross tapering issues. You won't have the withdrawal effects of the medication. So it's just a simpler, much simpler. That's why I say try, let's go for nutrition first down the road when you have that opportunity. But, you know, this can certainly be applied and used and be successful for people who have been on long-term medications. In fact, one of the predict

in one of our studies showing that the micronutrients were better than placebo. Like the people who benefited the most from the micronutrients and didn't benefit from placebo were people who had a past history of having taken psychiatric medication. So while they were in our study, they weren't medicated. They had taken medications in their past. So that's good news because it means that if you've got someone in your practice who hasn't responded to medications and really are keen to try something different, then you're

this could be something that's going to be of value and could be really beneficial. And I've seen so many people who have had just been on drug after drug after drug and it's the micronutrients that make feel well. So those are always wonderful stories to hear. I also always want to say that doesn't always happen, but it's more likely. Yeah, but are people forced into taking these drugs once they get to a certain point? And if so, then what?

You know, and care may require it. I mean, once you're in the system, like in the U.S., once you're in the system, you kind of like locked in in certain ways. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, well, it's because the funding model probably supports it. And so you need insurance companies to recognize the financial benefit from this approach. So they realize that they're there.

that people get better, you know, they stay well. Doesn't that cost the insurance companies less? So that's sort of hopefully an incentive is that the cost, the healthcare costs should go down if your population is well. Maybe there's some perverse motivations in the opposite direction.

I mean, there's the benefits of hospitals keeping people sick because they make more money, I guess, because more people come in. I don't know. I mean, it's just it's so bizarre way of thinking. So I certainly hope people don't ever feel that they are forced into medication. There's informed consent that should happen is that you're told about the risk and the benefits and that you make a decision as a patient. Of course, if you're put under a mental health act, then yes, a medication could be forced on you. But that would be that shouldn't be the norm. That would be with

people who have extreme psychotic features or bipolar or something along those lines. But otherwise, you shouldn't be forced into any medication. Do you know people who are feeling that they're forced into it? I mean, we should all have a choice. Well, forced by the requirement to taper, forced by, you know, they can't get certain help unless they're on medication, forced that once they're on a medication, they have to stay on it. Yeah, there's a lot that's fixing. Really good. Where can people find out more and dip their toe into the

all the information you'd have and you know. How did they get started? Oh, my goodness. I mean, I've done a lot of educational courses. There's a free one on edX platform, mental health and nutrition. If you Google me, I have a unique name, Julia Rucklage. There's no other Julia Rucklage out there. So you easily find me anywhere on the internet.

The Better Brain, which is the book that I co-wrote with Bonnie Kaplan. That's available on Amazon or from, I mean, it was published by HarperCollins. So it's easily available out there. It should be at any bookstore. So I think those would be really great place to start. The book would be the good place to start because we just, you know, we explained why you should care about your nutritional environment and how to change it. And we gave lots of recipes that would help you sort of change from reducing your consumption of ultra processed foods towards a more Mediterranean whole food diet.

So that would be a great, I think the best place to start would be getting the book either, you know, it's like your public library. I don't care how you get the book. Borrow it from someone else or buy it on Amazon. Okay. Well, very good. I appreciate you coming on the podcast and being open and honest about all these things. That's a, you know, it's a, it's a crisis that's not really being helped by just drug after drug after drug. So thankful for you and other people do. Exactly. Well, thank you for having me on your show. Excellent.

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