Overcoming PTSD with Dr. Robert Hedaya

02/03/20 • 42 min

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Functional Medicine Research with Dr. Nikolas Hedberg, DC

In this episode of Functional Medicine Research, I interview Dr. Robert Hedaya about overcoming PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder is an extremely difficult condition to manage but Dr. Hedaya and I discuss multiple approaches that can help patients with PTSD get well. We discussed how PTSD is defined, how it changes the brain, QEEG guided laser, neurofeedback, loneliness, social isolation, social media and much more. I always love having these kinds of conversations with psychiatrists and other mental health professionals because I believe it is the most overlooked aspect of functional medicine today. Below is a transcript of the interview on overcoming PTSD: Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome, everyone to "Functional Medicine Research." I'm Dr. Hedberg and really looking forward to today's conversation with Dr. Robert Hedaya. I first heard him speak at the Institute for Functional Medicine last year on PTSD and so I wanted to have him on the show to talk about that. He is a medical doctor. He's been on the cutting edge of medical practice, psychiatry, and psychopharmacology since 1979. With the publication of his first book, understanding biological psychiatry, in 1996, he pioneered the use of functional medicine in the psychiatric field and he is now pioneering the use of G-guided laser treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. Dr. Hedaya is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center where he's been awarded the teacher of the year on three occasions while teaching courses on affective disorders, cognitive therapy, and one of my favorite topics, psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrinology. Since 1983, he's on faculty at the Institute for Functional Medicine, the author of two additional books, "The Antidepressant Survival Guide," and "Depression: Advancing the Treatment Paradigm," and he's the founder of the Center for Whole Psychiatry and Brain Recovery. Dr. Hedaya is an editorial volunteer for Advances in Mind-Body Medicine and Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. He's been featured in local and national media on things like "20/20", "60 minutes," "Vogue," "The New York Times," and "The Washington Post" on many occasions. And he's a frequent nationally and internationally recognized speaker. His website is wholepsychiatry.com. Dr. Hedaya, welcome to the show. Dr. Hedaya: Thank you very much for having me. Dr. Hedberg: Excellent. So, like I said, I heard you speak at IFM last year and was really interested in your research and studies on PTSD. Why don't we start by you just talking about how your career evolved from traditional psychiatry into functional medicine and now using some cutting-edge treatments for treatment-resistant depression, dementia, PTSD, chronic fatigue, and technologies like laser? Dr. Hedaya: Okay. Well, it's been a long arc and I would say that the main thing is that I always try to follow where the science guides me, what's the truth that as far as I can best make it out to be. So, rather than being afraid of stepping outside of the box, you know, I just feel it's my responsibility, as a clinician, helping people to always try to do the right thing, and the right thing for me means doing what the science dictates, and sometimes it's benched to bedside science. Sometimes, you know, like translational medicine, sometimes you have the studies, but following the principles of biology and physiology and sometimes you have to take a leap because you can't wait until the studies are there. So, the way it started for me was, 1983 about, I was treating a woman with panic disorder and she was not really recovering. And panic disorder is pretty easy to treat. Whether you use cognitive behavioral therapy, which I was using, or medications or combination of the two. So, it was about a year and she wasn't getting better and she paged me, I had a beeper back in those days, on a Saturday night, I was at a wedding and dancing and my beeper went off and looked and...

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Overcoming PANDAS with Dr. Scott Antoine

In this episode of the Functional Medicine Research podcast, I interview Dr. Scott Antoine in a discussion about overcoming PANDAS. Dr. Antoine shares a personal story about PANDAS and his daughter which sparked a deep interest in this disorder that is misunderstood by conventional medicine. We discuss PANDAS, PANS, IVIG, OCD, and Dr. Antoine's Fully Functional practice model. You'll also learn how to find a practitioner who is well-versed in PANDAS and the associated disorders discussed in this interview. Below is a full transcript on Overcoming PANDAS with Dr. Scott Antoine Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome everyone to "Functional Medicine Research". I'm Dr. Hedberg and I'm really looking forward to my conversation today with Dr. Scott Antoine. We're gonna be talking about PANDAS today. And Dr. Antoine is an osteopathic physician and after medical school, he completed an emergency medicine residency and emergency medical services fellowship at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. He also has completed a fellowship in metabolic, nutritional and functional medicine through the Metabolic Medical Institute. And he was 1 of only 121 physicians nationwide to achieve board certification in integrative medicine through the newly formed American Board of Integrative Medicine. And he also holds a certification in functional medicine through the Institute for Functional Medicine. He and his wife currently run a busy functional and integrative medicine practice in Carmel, Indiana where they focus on helping patients who are hopeless and overwhelmed, find the root causes of illness and recover their lives and vitality. Dr. Antoine, welcome to the show. Dr. Antoine: Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. Dr. Hedberg: Great. So this is a topic I haven't covered previously and you have a particular interest in also not just PANDAS but also mycotoxin illnesses and mold exposure and you have a personal story about that with your daughter who had developed PANDAS in 2013. And it sounds like that's what kind of propelled you into functional medicine. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about that background? Dr. Antoine: Sure. That's certainly true. So I have a daughter. Her name is Emma. She's 18 now. But five or six years ago, she came to my wife and I one day and said, "I don't think God is happy with me. I think I'm a bad person." And she was having some intrusive thoughts. Shortly thereafter she developed some compulsive handwashing. She had issues with terrible insomnia and bladder control. And we weren't really sure what was going on. At the time, we were both physicians. My wife and I had been physicians for years and so we hit the books to try and figure this out. And one night at about 10 p.m. my wife Ellen came to me and she said, "I think I know what's wrong with Emma. I think she has PANDAS." I wasn't really sure what that was but I hit the books and said, "Sure enough. That sounds exactly like what she's got going on." PANDAS is pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with strep infection. So these kids get a run of the mill infection, maybe a sore throat or a cold, something that involves the strep bacteria, and the antibodies they make to fight it which is what your body's supposed to do, cross the blood-brain barrier and then cause inflammation in the brain and produce all of these characteristic symptoms. These kids become very defiant. They can develop facial tics which my daughter had as well. So once we figured that out, I figured now we have a direction to go in. So I called the infectious disease...head of infectious disease at our local children's hospital and he got on the phone with me and said, "Well, PANDAS doesn't exist. There's nothing to do here." And it was very frustrating. And I ended up...we went back, tried to figure this out. And my wife and I had remembered hearing a lecture by a guy from New York named Dr.

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The Bi-Phasic SIBO Diet with Dr. Nirala Jacobi

In this episode of the Functional Medicine Research podcast, I interview Dr. Nirala Jacobi in a discussion about the Bi-Phasic SIBO Diet. I have successfully used the Bi-Phasic SIBO Diet with many of my patients so I was excited to cover this topic with Dr. Jacobi. We discussed the specifics of the diet including the various phases, oxalates, salicylates, FODMAPs, vegetarian options, candida, histamine, fermented foods, MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome), SIFO (Small Intestinal Fungal Overgrowth), DAO, hydrogen sulfide, hypnotherapy, DNRS and much more. If you have SIBO or are a practitioner working with SIBO patients, this is one interview you don't want to miss. Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome everyone to Functional Medicine Research. I'm Dr. Hedberg. And I'm really excited today to have Dr. Nirala Jacobi on the show. Dr. Jacobi is a board-certified naturopathic physician. She graduated from Bastyr in 1998 and practiced primary care in Montana for seven years before arriving in Australia. She's one of Australia's leading experts in the treatment of SIBO, which we're gonna be talking about today. And she's also the medical director for SIBOtest. And that's an online testing service for practitioners. She's very passionate about educating practitioners so much so that she founded The SIBO Doctor. This is an online professional education platform for functional digestive disorders. She lectures nationally and internationally about the assessment and treatment of SIBO. And she's the host of the popular podcast which I listened to, it's called The SIBO Doctor podcast. And she's the medical director and senior naturopathic physician at The Biome Clinic. It's center for functional digestive disorders in New South Wales. She's one of the co-founders of the Australian Naturopathic Summit. This is a biennial event that aims to promote and showcase the art and science of naturopathic medicine in Australia. She's also a member of the Gastroenterology Association of Naturopathic Physicians and the Natural Path and Herbalist Association of Australia. So, Dr. Jacobi, thanks for coming on. Dr. Jacobi: Thanks for having me. Dr. Hedberg: Great. So, we're gonna be focusing a lot today on treatment and approaches to SIBO and let's go ahead and begin with your bi-phasic SIBO diet. This is something that I've used in practice for years now and it's very, very effective. So why don't you walk us through the bi-phasic diet and why you created this for people at SIBO? Dr. Jacobi: Well, first of all, thanks for that introduction and to let me know that it's working so well for you because it's always wonderful for me to hear from successful practitioners like yourself that it is indeed a really useful tool that I've created. So, that's really good for me to hear. So, the bi-phasic diet came about, because ultimately, I needed a little bit more... As a practitioner, I wanted to give more structure to a dietary approach rather than just this sort of spectrum of foods, some of which you should avoid and some of which you shouldn't avoid, which is of course, the FODMAP diet. And also what I found is that many people that were on FODMAPs, the Monash FODMAP diet, still had symptoms of SIBO. So, what I wanted to do was structure it and I used the SIBO-specific food guide, which is from Dr. Allison C. Becker, which is based on the FODMAP diet as well as the SIBO-specific... Sorry, the SCD, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. And so what I wanted to do is take all of that information and put it in a format that allows practitioners to structure their treatment approach. And so basically, phase one is about six weeks long. It depends on the practitioner, how long they want to extend that diet, but typically four to six weeks. And really, it's about reducing pretty much any fermentable food which includes grains and potatoes and all of the vegetables that we know that are fermentable. And the idea was,