Episode 044: Emily Deans MD, The Future of Psychiatry and How Your Genes (And Their Regulation and Expression) Influence Your Mental Health
Release Date: 04/26/2018
Episode 060: Yvette Brisco, A Champion for Multiple Sclerosis and Autoimmune Disease
A Medicinal Mind
In Episode 60 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing, I share an intimate conversation with my friend and colleague: Yvette Brisco. I was first introduced to Yvette as part of her enduring work interviewing experts across the field of autoimmune disease and specifically MS in order to bring greater awareness and education to the hundreds of thousands of individuals affected by autoimmune disease. As you will hear in the podcast, Yvette is as authentic and unique as they come. She begins by sharing her own story and struggles with her health and how that led her into her...
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Episode 059: Joe Mather MD, From Family Medicine to Functional Medicine, A Paradigm Shift in Chronic Disease Care
A Medicinal Mind
In episode 59 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing, I have an explorative conversation with my functional medicine colleague and dear friend Dr. Joe Mather. Having connected with Joe, as a result of our mutual friend and colleague, Michael Ruscio, our friendship has quickly blossomed, bringing together two functional medicine practitioners seeking value based care and a critical eye to this new root cause resolution approach. After sharing his story of supporting his mother with a functional medicine approach, Joe outlines the clinical importance of addressing...
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Episode 058: Jennifer Iserloh, Blending Alchemy, Nutrition and Functional Medicine to Optimize Health and Healing
A Medicinal Mind
In Episode 058 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing, I have a wonderful conversation with my new friend, classically trained chef and certified yoga teacher Jennifer Iserloh. Jennifer is a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and is the best-selling author of and as well as her most recent book: The Superfood Alchemy Cookbook. In this conversation, we begin with an exploration of Jennifer’s childhood, the role of chronic disease and family food addiction to influence her career into the culinary arts. From here Jennifer shares how some of her own health...
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Episode 057: Laura Schoenfeld, MPH, RD, Finding Your Way, One Woman’s Deep Desire to Pursue Wellness, Helping Women Find Freedom, Faith, Health and Joy
A Medicinal Mind
In Episode 057 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing, I have a deeply nourishing conversation with one of the most authentic healers I know, nutritionist and women’s health expert Laura Schoenfeld. Laura has fascinating background, bringing a rigorous formal education in public health and dietetics into the world of integrative and ancestral wellness. Working alongside Chris Kresser to help mobilize the ancestral health movement through dogma and initial growing pains, Laura has been finding her own way beyond Paleo, incorporating her Christian faith and desire to help women find...
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Episode 056: Darryl Edwards, How One Man is Changing Your Relationship with Play and Cultivating Wellness through Radical Authenticity
A Medicinal Mind
In episode 057 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing I have a deeply authentic and powerful conversation with one of the leaders of the ancestral health movement, the creative mind behind Primal Play: Darryl Edwards. Darryl has been featured on numerous podcasts, sharing his beautiful spirit and desire to change your relationship with exercise, interjecting movement and play into every aspect of our lives. Today, however, seeking to delve more into Darryl’s life story, we explore aspects of Darryl’s journey, starting in early childhood through his initial career pursuits...
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Episode 055: Scott Dolly, The Undefinable Healer: Utilizing Intuition, Movement Analysis, Soft Tissue Mobilization and Deep Curiosity to Redefine Performance and Rehabilitation
A Medicinal Mind
In Episode 055 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing, I have one of my most beautifully intense and inspiring conversations with one of the top sports performance and rehabilitation specialists in the field, my close friend Scott Dolly. Starting with an exploration of Scott’s early life, we get a clear picture of the deep spirituality and intuition that was being cultivated long before his pursuit of sports performance and rehabilitation. We then move to a discussion of Scott’s methodical approach, illustrating, rather poetically, the inclusivity of his therapeutic...
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Episode 054: Oren Sofer: Mindful and Non-violent Communication: A Path to More Nourishing Relationships
A Medicinal Mind
In Episode 054 of A Medicinal Mind, Wisdom and Wellbeing, I welcome a visionary in the field of mindfulness and deliberate, non-violent communication Oren Sofer. Oren’s background is beyond fascinating. As you will hear in the podcast, he brings years of training in meditation from the Buddhist spiritual tradition as well training seeking to transform the way we communicate and interact with others. Formally speaking, he has a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University, and spent two and a half years of living as an (renunciate) at various branch monasteries....
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Episode 053: Neil Nathan MD, Navigating the Therapeutic Healing Relationship: How A Curious Physician is Helping Patients Recover from Chronic Illness
A Medicinal Mind
In Episode 053 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Wellbeing, I welcome the incredibly talented and voraciously curious physician and expert in the field of environmental toxicity and chronic infections Dr. Neil Nathan MD. Dr. Nathan is a board certified family physician and as you will hear in the podcast has an extensive background additionally in the world of pain management. He has spent over 40 years helping individuals recover from complex chronic illnesses. The depth of his expertise incorporating multiple healing modalities is beyond extraordinary and his determination to...
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Episode 052: Kelly Halderman MD, How One Woman Came by Beautiful Serendipity to Integrative Medicine, Healing Chronic Disease Through Mind-Body Medicine, Nutrigenomics and Augmented Detoxification
A Medicinal Mind
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Episode 051: Benjamin Richardson, The Citizen Scientist Returns: A Deep Dive Into Quantified Self, Exercise Snacking, and Functional Blood Chemistry
A Medicinal Mind
In Episode 51 of A Medicinal Mind: Wisdom and Well Being, I jump back into the world of quantified self and self improvement with our good friend, Benjamin Richardson. Ben has been featured on the show, not only once, but twice before in Episodes 31 and 35 and has brought a wealth of knowledge as a self proclaimed, practical citizen scientist, seeking to use emerging technologies and our understanding of the human body to improve his health, and through that exploration, make it easier for others to do the same. In this episode we get our feet wet with a methodical discussion of...
info_outlineIn Episode 044 of A Medicinal Mind, Wisdom and Wellbeing, I welcome evolutionary psychiatrist and a pioneer studying the genetic underpinnings of mental health, Dr. Emily Deans MD.
Since first discovering the ancestral and functional medicine movements, I have been an avid follower of Emily Deans and her curious, yet practical explorations into our evolving understanding of psychiatric illness.
Dr. Deans is a practicing psychiatrist who utilizes an ancestrally informed nutritional approach as well as targeted pharmaceutical interventions to improve those with previously treatment refractory depression.
She is a regular contributor at Psychology Today with her blog: Evolutionary Psychiatry where she explores the role of nutrition and genetic variability, amongst many other topics, and their impact on mental well being.
In this episode Dr. Deans starts us off with a little background into his first experiences in medicine and her choice to pursue psychiatry, detailing her own life journey that lead her to explore more integrative approaches to well being.
She then leads us into the meat of today’s discussion, a beautifully articulated story detailing the function, regulation and variability of some of the most well studied genes in psychiatric health including the recently popularized MTHFR and COMT.
Taking us on a journey of the neurotransmitter from its production, release, reuptake or breakdown to its eventual signalling and the downstream cascade of events stemming from its simple signal, Dr. Dean’s offers insights as to why many of the medicines we use to treat psychiatric illness are not effective or simply not enough to help someone through a period of significant depression.
She provides us with an integrated theory of mental illness, combining our emerging understanding of inflammation and immune activation in the brain with the role of neurotransmission and neuronal connectivity circuits influencing our behaviors.
This podcast is one of my absolute favorites and it was such an honor to have Dr. Deans on the show. It is quite incredible to think back to my own journey struggling with depression in medical school and the influence of Dr. Deans work some 5 years prior to lead me to a new understanding of whole person wellness.
And with that let’s dig into the show!
Read up on Dr. Dean’s blog here:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry