BRAIN POWER: Feeding Neurotransmitters Improves Mental Health – A Top 10 Episode with William Walsh, Ph.D.

Learn how certain nutrients can help you harness your full brain capacity and functioning.

Welcome to Your Upgraded Summer!

This new series revisits the Top 10 Bulletproof Radio episodes of all time. The topics cover essentials like nutrition, energy, hormones, sleep and autophagy, as well as gut, brain, autoimmune and women’s health.

You’ll get the main points in a shortened version so you can get the good stuff and get on with your summer plans. And if you want to listen to more, tune in to the original episode.

William Walsh, Ph.D., takes the No. 10 spot: Tailor Your Brain’s Neurotransmission with Nutrients — William J. Walsh, Ph.D. #567

In this revamped episode of Bulletproof Radio, I talk with research scientist Dr. Bill Walsh about how brain cells function, how they’re nourished, and what we need to clear out our brain’s trash and keep the good stuff around. He’s spent over three decades studying how you can use nutrients and foods to improve your brain health. His expertise shows how mental health can be improved with nutritional psychiatry.

More than 100 neurotransmitters in the brain act as chemical messengers. Research shows us that with certain nutrients you can directly affect how those neurotransmitters work. For people who struggle with addiction, for people who have a mental illness, for those who want to live longer, improve their memory and so much more, Dr. Walsh walks you through the nutrients that can make a difference.

New research over the past decade shows us what protects our mind and body, and how much our environment influences that. Here’s more of what Bill discovered:

  • “Neuroscience advances and my interest has always been on the brain and on people with brain disorders, depression, anxiety, autism, schizophrenia–the whole litany of brain science. And my focus has to be on the neurotransmitters themselves. There are about five or six that seem to be especially important in mental disorders. For the first time in the last 10 years, we now are able with nutrients to directly affect neurotransmission of many of the most important neurotransmitters.”
  • “It seems like all the research is still aimed at finding the next billion-dollar drug that can help people. And we now have enough knowledge that from the new research, when you put it all together, we’re learning that with nutrients and with diet even, we can make radical improvements in people with depression and anxiety and problems like that. And that we don’t necessarily need a drug.”
  • “If you’re going to do one test, do a zinc test. Because if you’re low in zinc, that means your chance of getting cancer, chance of developing dementia, chance of developing heart disease is much greater. I would guess that probably half of Americans would benefit from more zinc.”

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BRAIN POWER- Feeding Neurotransmitters Improves Mental Health – A Top 10 Episode with William Walsh, Ph.D.

Links/Resources

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Key Notes

  • I would love to know, what have you discovered since we last talked?  – 1:41
  • It works on the glial cells that surround neurons. It acts as what’s known as an anti-porter. It shoves cysteine into the glial cells and shoves glutamate into the synapse.  – 4:58
  • There’s something called memory extinction that resides in the NMDA. And that’s what the problem that addicts and OCD people have.  – 5:46
  • We’re learning that with nutrients and with diet even, we can make radical improvements in people with depression and anxiety and problems like that. And that we don’t necessarily need a drug.  – 10:11
  • What is some things that people listening today might do in order to strengthen their defenses given what we know?  – 13:06
  • There’s all these mysteries of bipolar that have plagued people for more than 100 years. For example, people don’t understand why it’s a late onset disorder.  – 14;50
  • The weak link in your DNA for some people who are predisposed to this problem is the guanine. Well, we have 30 trillion of these DNAs containing, that’s one of the four nucleotides that make up DNA. And when that starts to deteriorate, it shows up in the blood stream.  – 18:04
  • Some people simply don’t make enough natural antioxidants and they’re the ones who die young and develop all kinds of diseases. And I think that the good news is nutrient supplements can do that job for us.  – 19:50
  • 8% of Americans are born genetically with too much methylation. So they could be harmed by things like methionine or SAMe. Whereas people who have too little methylation capability, that would be like mother’s milk for them.  – 21:31
  • Listen to podcasts like yours and others. And try to identify maybe the five or six or the 10 most promising nutrients that might help them. And then to try them one by one and see if it really makes a difference in their life. – 23:12
  • How long do you think you’re going to live with a highly functioning brain?  – 26:12

If you like today’s episode, check us out on Apple Podcasts at daveasprey.com/apple and leave us a (hopefully) 5-star rating and a creative review.

Go check out my new book Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan to Age Backward and Maybe Even Live Forever and also “Game Changers“, “Headstrong” and “The Bulletproof Diet” on Amazon and consider leaving a review!

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