One of the hardest things for health care professionals to do is determine how to get their patients/clients well. This may seem like a redundant statement, but think about it. A person comes in with a multitude of symptoms and/or diagnoses and they are asking you to help them feel better. Where do you start?
For example, let’s say a person comes in suffering from depression, trichotillomania, fibromyalgia, severe panic attacks and Crohn’s Disease. If this person goes to a medical doctor, they may be prescribed:
- A selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, such as Lexapro, to combat the depression
- Behavioral therapy for the trichotillomania
- An alpha2-delta agonist, like Lyrica, for the fibromyalgia
- A minor tranquilizer, like Xanax, for the panic attacks
- And azulfadine for the Crohn’s Disease.
These medications may help alleviate some of the person’s symptoms, but they haven’t done anything to correct the underlying imbalances that caused the symptoms in the first place (i.e., it is very unlikely any of this person’s symptoms are due to a deficiency of any or all of these medications) and are palliative at best. Once more, all these drugs are associated with unintended consequences (i.e., side effects) that can create other problems and make the health picture even more complicated.
Common sense tells us that a better approach may be to look for the underlying cause(s) of these symptoms to try and find a solution. In this case, doing so would indicate that all of these conditions could be due to an imbalance in neurotransmitter levels. Therefore, properly addressing all of these conditions involves establishing proper neurotransmitter function.
The Right Button
The approach in this case would be to begin a course of balanced amino acids with subsequent testing to achieve optimal neurotransmitter function. When proper neurotransmitter function is achieved, we have pushed the right button and addressed the underlying problem at the heart of all of these conditions – unbalanced or inadequate levels of key neurotransmitters. In addition, be taking this approach we have also removed any ‘unintended consequences’ due to the medications listed above and insured long-term success by getting to the root problem.
