370: Treat Depression By Healing Your Gut: A Deep Dive
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Welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast, where East meets West in the world of medicine. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and here we explore how modern Western science and traditional Eastern wisdom come together to unlock the body's full healing potential. Each week, we'll dive into powerful tools, techniques, and approaches from both sides of the world to help you optimize your health and live with vitality. Let's bridge the gap between ancient practices and cutting-edge medicine. Let's get started.

Hello friends, welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Motley. We're going to talk about how East meets West in relationship to depression. Depression as it relates to gut health and the gut biome, the living matrix within your digestive system, and can it have an effect on how you think? In my opinion, it definitely can, and there's many professionals and experts out there that say it does.

So in this podcast, I wanted to talk about depression and we're talking about how it has been incorporated through learned behavior. Now, what I'm talking about is depression can actually be associated with our standard American diet. So we have learned through habits to eat certain ways in our culture with, you know, eating

pesticides, glyphosates, genetically modified foods, dyes in our foods, especially now that they're talking about where children are eating high amounts of food dyes in their cereal and they're finding it causes hyperactivity. With all of this, it imbalances the gut flora, the fungus and the bacteria that are natural in our bodies. Then they are the microbes that naturally help us produce over 80% of our serotonin.

the chemical in our body that helps us to feel happy, and they also help us to absorb certain vitamins and certain minerals. They help us to produce certain types of enzymes to break down certain foods. So you naturally start to see individuals that have depression, depressed states, and an inability to absorb certain types of foods and nutrients all because the gut flora is damaged.

And there is a genetic connection, but we want to talk about this phenomenon and we want to talk about how can we break the cycle by cleansing the gut. So we want to get started and I want to talk about the gut relationship. Now, I do want to start off by saying like I myself have worked on a lots of gut dysfunction and I've worked on my own leaky gut.

I had a ruptured ulcer in 2017. I almost passed away. I literally did. I was doing things to help take care of my stomach, but they had to remove a small portion of my stomach because it had an infection in the wall of the stomach. They didn't do a biopsy. They only checked for cancer. But what they did find was that there was infection that basically did create a hole in the lining of the stomach. Now,

When we're talking about the gut lining, I am one of the biggest proponents of like healing leaky gut. So I love collagen, bone broth, chicken or beef. Using those types of components to help heal the gut lining is standard and it's priority. When I've looked at websites like Silver Fern, Silver Fern is a good company and they had some really good formulators in their company.

But they focused in on certain herbs like slippery elm and licorice, ginger. They use different herbals and they use different vitamins and minerals to help specifically go for the gut. Now, I'm not saying they're the only supplement line out there. I'm not getting any kickback from them. But what I have noticed is that

Having my digestive issues since I was young because I had problems with yeast and fungus because I naturally drank a lot of colas, a lot of sodas. I ate so many toaster strudels. You wouldn't believe it. I tell people that all the time, but it's the truth. I ate a lot of Pop-Tarts. The fungus and the yeast overgrew in my system and created such an acidic environment, coupled that with stress and emotional baggage, and it ate away at the lining of my stomach. Now, my gut is probably the biggest thing that I have to keep an eye on.

So when we talk about depression, it's very important to me because whenever I have increased the care for my gut, using more slippery alms, some licorice, using the ginger, using different probiotics, I found that my mental state has gotten quite a bit better. It has improved. So

One thing I want to share with my patients and with you is that we often think, well, I'll just drink some bone broth. I'll do this, this, and this, and maybe it'll help my gut. No, stay consistent, please. I can't stress it enough. The more I have really taken care of my gut, like taking my rituals at night, putting my powders together, mixing them up, drinking them, taking my probiotics, I notice my sleep has gotten deeper. My sleep has gotten more fruitful. I'm fighting off and warding off any types of seasonal infections. I don't have those problems like I did before.

My stomach doesn't get acidic. In fact, I don't eat a ton of sugars anymore. I don't eat a lot of different grains. But when I do eat them, it doesn't really bother me as much anymore. I don't even get a stomach ache because I gave my intestines the opportunity to allow the natural fungus and bacteria to grow. And I want us to look at how this can correlate to a bad thought process. So

When I wasn't eating properly, when I was eating lots of sugar, I don't remember most of my childhood. And fast forward, I was very, very low energy when I went through undergrad and graduate school. In fact, I was very low in my mentality. I was usually a pretty happy kid, but I remember that I was getting depressed even more, even into my career of where I'm at in my clinic today. And for me personally, I just thought it was like my goals, my vision, my drive, my

But the more, again, as I use certain products, antimicrobials to clean my gut out, I didn't realize how depressed I was. I truly did not. And if you guys are out there listening to this, sometimes we adapt so much to our lives and we go through all the motions and we have to eat quickly. We have to drink more coffee. We have to travel more and eat the foods that are in airports.

And we are just creating enough adrenaline to get us through the day. And then we adapt and we do it all again the next day. But when you are living in more in a toxic basis in your gut, you don't realize how depressed you are. When I had my surgery and it changed where I had to really pay attention to my gut, when I started to make more and more changes, I look back and I go, man, I was depressed. And now I'm more adamant about fixing the gut because when I find myself in a low state,

I know that my psychology and my diet is feeding whatever I'm thinking. So I'm not saying it caused it, but I want you and I out here to discuss that if you're in depression, at least we can try to modulate and fix and moderate what we eat. Because a lot of us eat by stress. We eat sugars because it helps us feel that dopamine rush, right?

But when you can start adding some things in to help clean out while you're eating some of the sugars and you get some of those microbes cleaned out, you'll notice that your brain gets a little bit better. And you'll start to lighten up and you'll start to want to eat more healthier foods for your gut. I know I went on a personal story, but I had to tell you that because when I didn't realize how depressed I was, there came points where I was –

down like in the past and I made so many decisions based in that area and what I found was that I was always aiming low when I was in my depression state when I feel better my gut feels good my brain feels highly active I feel very aware I'm very open my brain can actively shoot for the stars and I'm really really thankful that I can shoot you know so many podcasts in a day I can do like see the patients in the office I'm not bragging I'm saying I'm

When I not only changed my diet just because of the depression, but when I started to clean out the diet because I know that it can help me aim higher, I chose to do it. So I will say this. As much as I've learned how to eat poorly when I was a kid, I am learning now how to eat a lot better and healthier and cleaner. So I want you and I, as we discuss this, I want you out there and me, myself, to make it a goal to eat healthy.

And to strive to eat because we care about our brains. We want to have a brain that has low, less depression. We want to have a brain that doesn't go into dementia or Alzheimer's. We want to have a brain that's clear and sharp. You want your motility, your mobility, and your brain to work as you get older. You can learn how to eat a different way. So according to the gut, serotonin –

is created in the gut and you hear a lot of gut activist and people I agree with them I love it that they do talk about how serotonin is created in the digestive tract and it is completely true and there is many bacterial species and fungal species in your digestive tract that help you take in B vitamins take in minerals take in certain proteins and turn them into specific things such as a good biofilm good biofilms enzymes to digest food

To create serotonin, certain forms of dopamine. Your bacteria has everything to do to help you produce the serotonin you need to function. Now, if we eat higher amounts of refined sugars, fake fats or trans fats, or we find any preservative rich foods, lots of coloring and color dyes. If we do a lot of genetically modified foods, our digestive bacteria look at it and literally say, I don't know what this is.

I don't know what this is. What do I do with it? So the bacteria have to morph. They have to genetically change. They have to create ways to try to digest the food, how to metabolize it, and what happens when they can't. They have to call in other helpers. Your body will allow yeast and fungus and sometimes parasites to come in there and to clean up the extra stuff and toxins, the garbage, etc.

anything that is not true food and we have to assimilate it so then you get this combination of yeast and fungus and parasites and bacteria and certain viruses and you have this combination to be crazy huge storm in your gut you start to get heartburn and GERD and acid reflux you start to get the bloating and the swelling just because your stomach cannot recognize any of these fake foods and

You add on top of that, you have extra sugars alone in that. And you have all this fungus and all these parasites and all this yeast and bacteria that look at it and go, heavens. I have a whole army here that's trying to help me clean up this stuff. But hey, this is some free food. So I guess we'll eat that. And they get filled up on the sugars and they multiply and they grow. And then you start to have an over excessive amounts of these microbes. So you start to have this catch 22.

The bacteria, the parasites that engulf some of the bacteria, the bad bacteria that starts to migrate, such as – I don't like to use the word bad bacteria, but it's like staph and strep, rubella.

E. coli, Campylobacter, you start to see these types of bacteria migrate into the small intestine, into the upper digestion. They start to lean into and start to crowd out the good bacteria that help you like Lactobacillus, Obifidobacterium or Saccharomyces biartii, all those kind of good things. And you have a decrease in serotonin. So you start feeling depressed. You start to need more things to raise your dopamine.

So you want to have pleasure. Your serotonin, your happiness goes lower and you don't feel happy. So you'll do more things to try to keep the happiness going. Some people will actually try to do more things like I'll buy a new car, I'll buy a new house, I'll do something like this. I'm going to get a new relationship. They'll change over and over again, try to get more happiness. But the only thing you really need to change is your digestive system and the foods that you eat. So if you find yourself always having to switch up, always having to change to get happiness,

Please, if you find yourself depressed, first change your digestive tract. It is better to start from the basis of a clean gut and make decisions and aim high when your digestive tract is working properly and serotonin is starting to be made properly. So we want to work on checking in on bacteria and fungal imbalances. Now that could cause us to look into biome testing, V-I-O-M-E.

There is Viome out of Austin, Texas. There's many. I love Silver Fern. I love Viome. I love all these companies. They check for bacterial imbalances. You want to find out which bacteria you're deficient in. And if that bacteria helps you create serotonin, you have to reduce the foods that are killing them off. You have to increase the probiotics and put them in there. I'm not saying you have to do it, but it's not a bad idea to go get the testing done. There's also the Mycobiome. And there's different tests now that test for myco, good funguses.

You start getting good bacteria and good fungus in there. You start pulling out the sugars, reducing the high fructose corn syrup, any artificial foods, any genetically modified foods. And now you start to get more of a clear open space. Now, after all the abuse I put my gut through, of course, I built up so much bacteria and bad fungus and parasites that I had to use certain herbals.

So when this occurred, I had to start looking into using certain herbs. And those herbs, my favorite, I'm going to put it in the show notes. There's three of them that I really love. Scutellaria, which is Chinese skullcap. It's a natural, really good antimicrobial, but it kills off specifically fungus and yeast and bad, bad fungus. I love Miranda, which is noni. Miranda is a huge digestive cleanser. One of my favorites is noni fruit.

cleans out the body of fungus and yeast. And I love Malia, which is neem. That itself is a huge antimicrobial. It's one of the miracle tonics they call in Ayurvedic medicine. These three, scutellaria, morinda, and Malia. You don't use all of them. You can use one of them.

But when I started to change the diet and use one of these, I noticed that my gut would start to purge. I would have different types of bowel movements. I noticed that there was more phlegm in my body that was coming out. I noticed that my body had different smells coming off of it because I was releasing yeast and fungus. But it was a good cleanse. I then started adding mushroom blends like cordyceps and reishi together, cordicae from host defense. But reishi mushrooms and cordyceps, I even put in turkey tail. Those are options as well.

So I started to use that. I started to check into my probiotics and I found out that I was pretty deficient in certain lactobacillus. So I had to start to use lactobacillus. So lactobacillus, a good probiotic, added in, reducing the sugars, using the three top three herbs that I love and started to clean out the digestive tract. That allowed my genetics to be able to be examined. Now, genetically, your body is supposed to take tryptophan.

You get it from turkey, from beef, from almonds, from salmon, tryptophan-rich foods. And your body has a gene called a TPH, tryptophan hydroxylase, I believe. And it takes your tryptophan and breaks it down, and it normally makes 5-HTP to serotonin, right, then to melatonin to help you sleep. And it's a huge antioxidant. Helps increase your immune system. But remember –

If you have a defective or I hate to say a variant in your TPH gene, if you naturally had that and you've had digestive issues in your family line, your body may not metabolize tryptophan and turn it into serotonin. If you find that and you find that tryptophan rich foods, if you get an allergy test and tryptophan rich foods cause you to have allergies, it's because you probably have a TPH gene issue.

I would check it out. Anything about tryptophan or tyrosine rich foods, a TH enzyme. Find out if there's any food genes in your body that doesn't allow you to make the proper prerequisites to serotonin or dopamine. Check it out. TPH or tyrosine, TH. Now these are amino acids that are used to make your dopamine, your serotonin. If you have defects in these genes, they only work about 30% of the time. So you're going to have to have a cleaner diet.

You may not be able to eat a lot of tryptophan-rich foods. So what you'll have to do is put good probiotics in there, and you're going to have to increase the B vitamins, B1, B2, B3, B6, B12. You're going to find the B vitamins that your body can metabolize plus minerals. You're going to have to do that. Magnesium, manganese, boron, and even zinc. You're going to have to use the B vitamins and minerals to help your body regulate that TPH gene.

So you have a few things ahead of you. I want you to look at the show notes because if you put in the good herbs and you start reducing the bad stuff out of your diet, you're going to add in some good probiotics, but you're also going to give food into your body to help feed the genes that help you make serotonin. B vitamins, minerals, probiotics. And I want you to remember you can also throw in prebiotics such as inulin or Jerusalem artichoke. This is a lot, but I'm going to write it in the show notes.

So you have prebiotics, probiotics, good herbs, and you're going to have B vitamins and minerals to help with your genes, the TPH and the TH. I'm going to write that down right now.

So we have the Jerusalem artichoke, the inulin. And if you start to put these together, you're going to start noticing that you're going to flush a lot out of your gut. Now, Silver Fern and a few of the other companies have pretty good mixtures. Like if you research and some of these are in combinations, you can do that. But you're not going to find a lot of companies that do the TPH, the tryptophan hydroxylase or the tyrosine testing. I like to use MaxGen genetic testing or MyHappyGenes genetic testing, but it's about $400 or $500. Okay.

If you can find anything that checks for how your body metabolizes certain foods, like a food allergy test, but those again, you can start to get into higher amounts of cost. But personally, I did the My Happy Genes test, My Happy Genes by Dr. Jay Dunn, and it tells you if you have issues with tryptophan or tyrosine. And I tell some of my patients, like, there's no way you can eat a lot of tryptophan because you can't break it down.

So I had to give them more B vitamins or certain minerals, and then they could increase it. That makes sense. That's how it operates. So now you're starting to see that you have depression that can be helped if you do some of these steps. One of the things, though, I want you to make sure is that if you notice that these ring true to you and they resonate with you, another thing I want you to really look into with your gene testing is I want you to look into MTHFR.

And I'm going to put MTHFR testing. And that's going to be through, I would say, look into My Happy Genes. Now, the reason being is because they have a pretty extensive gene test. But if you have an MTHFR gene variant or defect, your body does not use certain B vitamins like folate and help create B12 that's usable in your body.

That B12 that's usable in your liver, one of the steps is to help turn on certain genes that help you with making serotonin and dopamine. So if you have a defective MTHFR gene, it is very hard for you to be happy. So not only do you want to change your gut and what you're taking and cleaning out,

But you need to look into MTHFR and the TPH and just realize, don't let it get too complicated. You just have to make sure you're cleaning out your system, but also taking the B vitamins and the minerals. That's my first step. So when you look into this, just look into it. My happy genes look into taking some of these extra steps to clean out the digestive tract. I get excited about it when I talk about it. And if I'm moving too fast, please let me know.

But if you ask me, what is a step that I would take? Like, what would I do? I would definitely just say I would reduce all my sugars, my refined sugars. I would take out all artificial fake foods. I would start utilizing the scutellaria or merenda. I would start putting some probiotics in there. I would eat a low inflammatory diet. And then I would start to see the changes in my digestive tract.

After I started doing that for a while, I would start to focus in on cleansing out the liver and the gallbladder, whether it's through coffee enemas or colonics, even doing a light gallbladder cleanse to flush that. If you start flushing out the liver and the gallbladder, you're going to start seeing that your natural MTHFR genes could start working. So you start doing that, flushing out, maybe doing some coffee enemas, some colonics.

Taking a few of the supplements and then I would look into good organ meats such as liver, like grass-fed beef or sheep liver. And looking into that, if you do that plus maybe thymus or spleen. So we're going to say grass-fed liver, which will give you methylation or help you with MTHFR, spleen or thymus, which is going to help with your lymph nodes.

You start doing those in high amounts, you'll get natural B vitamins and iron and minerals and proteins in the beef organs or the grass-fed sheep or beef. And they'll do a lot of what the supplements I've talked to you does. So you can try it that way. It's probably the simplest way. So you can do like beef organs or sheep organs. You start cleaning that up and putting good – taking out the infections out of your gut. You'll start seeing your depression start to rise out, clean out. So –

I want you to research grass-fed organs, specifically liver, spleen, and thymus. Check out these show notes, and I want you to not get overwhelmed with gene testing. But if you have a family history of depression, I'm not saying you had to do all this genetic stuff. I'm saying take these simple steps I talked about and implement them. But if you ever find yourself where you really cannot get over the hump, you're like, I'm doing some of the steps. I just cannot get over this depression hump.

That's when I would say go to MyHappyGenes or go do genetic testing and find out if those serotonin pathways and dopamine pathways are very, very recessive. I've done it with my patients many, many times. You can get out of your depression. I did. I've done MTHFR. I've done that work. I've done so many good supplements to help raise me out of that. It came down to cleaning out my liver and gallbladder.

Sometimes I wonder if the beef organs and the sheep organs and the liver can just clean it out for you if you just do it in high amounts. But I did really good methylation, MTHFR work. I cleaned out my liver and gallbladder, and my depression lifted. But it started with me cleaning out my gut, my liver, my diet, and cleaning it out with like scutellaria and merenda and just flushing it. So it's flushing. It's reinforcing. But if you have to, get into some genetic testing.

We're going to talk about this in my membership. So we're going to have this and every week, almost every single week in my membership, we do a live discussion. So I say this every time because I just want you guys to give you the opportunity. But we talk about this in my membership. So we look at it and we discuss it. So if you guys are interested in getting deeper into this information, just jump into the membership. We'll have a link in the show notes. But I want you guys to take this info and I want you to research it.

And I want you to show that there is help with depression. I'm going to have a part two probably. But if you guys like this info, just give me a thumbs up, like and subscribe and give me some comments. And I'll start to speak on other information about depression. This is just the tip of the iceberg. But if you want me to go a little bit deeper, please let me know. So remember, it all starts in the gut. It's a learned behavior in our culture today. So let's see what we can do to help clean it up.

Check out the membership if you're interested. If not, just meet me back here next week in the next podcast. Hit the small bell so you're reminded anytime a new podcast comes up. And I really appreciate you guys so much. All right. Hope you guys have a good one. Until next time, be well. God bless.

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Always consult with your health care provider before making any changes to your health regimen and do not disregard or delay seeking medical advice for any condition you may have. Thank you for joining us today on the Ancient Health Podcast. We hope you've gained valuable insights into the harmony between Eastern and Western medicine. If you've enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, share, and leave us a review.

Remember, true health is about balance, mind, body, and spirit. So stay tuned for more episodes where we continue to explore how ancient wisdom and modern science can work together to help you thrive. Here's to your health, balance, and well-being. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and I look forward to our next episode together.