Transcript:

Episode 33: Mental Health and Psychotropic Drugs

Warren:

Welcome, everybody, to another week with Health Hunters. We’ve got kind of an emotional topic today because this one we might not have mentioned on shows before. We’re going to delve into a topic that piggybacks onto the recent school shootings, which links us to psychotherapy, psychotropic drugs, depression, anxiety, and many of the topics that have affected us and many of our listeners. Let’s dig and hunt for the truth and find out where the truth lies when it comes to these health challenges and how that translates into some of the recent school shootings and things that we’re experiencing.

Dr. Pompa, I know that this is something that’s affected you personally, including the guns and suicide and shootings in our family. This is something that really needs to be taken head on, and the news is really missing it, as always. What can we do as health hunters to really tackle this subject and help our listeners so they can help others?

Dr. Pompa:

I’m going to be controversial right up front. I think everybody is looking at the guns. Could we make things better on that side of things? Yeah, possibly. I think that most people are missing the real link.

I was in Israel recently, and there was what I would call children walking around with machine guns and automatic weapons on their side. No one said a word. I bumped in on the street to a woman with high heels with a semi-automatic on her side. When you look at the number of shootings there, I think it’s zero as far as these types of shootings.

One of the factors is the fact that they all have to serve in the military, boys for three years, girls for two, so they learn a respect for their country and weapons, perhaps. When we look at other countries and we factor in things, we know that there is a strong correlation that cannot be ignored with the number of psychotropic drugs. What are those? Those are the antidepressants, the drugs given for things like anxiety, depression, oftentimes sleep.

These drugs, often called serotonin uptake inhibitors, meaning that they keep serotonin from being up taken some places, and it’s used more in the brain, some of the most popular ones being Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor. I can go down the list of some of these. What we know is that a common dominator with these shootings are these antidepressants. Whether they’re on them or they’re coming off of them is something that is really staggering when you look at these numbers.

If I just pull something up, all the big shootings, Eric Harris, which was one of the Columbine shooting, there’s two of them involved. They were both on psychotropic drugs, Luvox and another one. The Virginia Tech shooting, the guy was on antidepressants.

Warren:

A couple of them too.

Dr. Pompa:

I think he was withdrawing from Prozac. The recent shooting in Vegas, the only thing they could figure out – as a matter of fact it was just said. It wasn’t even linked, but he was on antidepressants. Of course, their connection was he may have had some psychological problems. When you look at some of these numbers, you’re going to say hold on a second. Could that be the recipe?

One could say they’re on psychotropic drugs because they have issues. One could make that argument. However, you have other countries that people have issues, same issues. They’re not shooting people up, etc. When you really look and examine some of these facts, you begin to question, and that’s what this show is about.

I’m questioning when they look in a study, when they look at 31 drugs that are disproportionately linked to the reports of violence towards others; if you look at the top 10, 5 are just solid antidepressants. This goes beyond shooting. It’s Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor, and one that I don’t know called Pristiq. Maybe it’s a new one. There were two others out of the top ten that are treatments for ADHD.

When you look at the pack, when you pull these things out, it says these things can cause suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. That’s one of the warnings on these medications. We have to begin to wonder. You had said at the top of the show I’m passionate about this because I have two children today who are 21 years old, a boy and a girl. At age seven they lost their mom and dad to a murder/suicide. The father shot the mom, and then shot himself.

If you knew him, which I did very well, every one of you listening would have met him and thought this is the most normal guy in the world. He was just a guy. He ran his own business, just a good guy. I can tell you that there was not a stretch of this in him.

However, he was on a couple psychotropic drugs, I’m sure weaning off of one, moving onto another. We know that this led to this behavior amongst other stressors at the time, which put him on those medications. Again, it led to exactly what is on the package itself. It led to suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. This has affected my life.

Warren:

It’s so sad. When you look at it – I watched a video the other day that really put this into perspective. The common world doesn’t understand what serotonin and dopamine does and how complicated those hormones are and how much they do change your personality. The video I was watching, it was just talking about all the different parts of your brain and even kids, the first example that they gave in this video is when you first meet somebody in a relationship and your hands get sweaty or you get that weird thing in your gut and you act really weird around them, why are you acting so weird? Why are you saying stupid things?

I say stupid stuff that makes me know now because I have low serotonin probably, which I do. I’m not a dopamine spiked exuberant person. That’s part of my personality. Everyone has lower and higher levels.

You just say stupid things. You act awkward. You don’t feel comfortable with that person, but over time you allow that natural hormone process to happen, and it comes back up naturally and you do these things, to do and act really weird when you’re in that social situation. Now you’re putting a psychotropic drug that’s messing with that whole system when you’re not feeling well, and they really don’t know how well or how it interacts with that individual, how much it spikes it, whether it’s really working for that person. There’s so many variables in it.

The side effects are the things that really affect our lives. My mom has been on psychotropic drugs as well her whole live, and it really hasn’t helped her. Look at some of the horrible outcomes that we’re seeing in our lives personally, Dr. Pompa; such a sad story. Let’s pick back up on that after these announcements. Thanks so much, health hunters. We’ll talk after this.

Welcome back, health hunters. This is just such a needed topic. I don’t know what the percentages are, but isn’t it like 50% of people are on a psychotropic drug? We’re looking at the side effects of these things. The screening and the ability to have access to these “happy pills” is definitely not working well, and they are linked to these school shootings.

It’s linked to what happened in your family, our family. That’s just horrible. The effects of that are still far reaching into the future and how it affects lives and their lives and your life and your family and the family’s families of these school shootings. It’s just really horrendous.

Yet, the screening process, there’s a time and a place for medication. It may work in certain emergencies, but was that person interviewed for the fact that they had [10:52] challenges and some of these other things that could lead to really psychotic behavior on top of the drugs that would allow them to do something so horrific like shoot somebody? Can you hand this stuff out like candy? Is it safe when it’s causing some of these horrible and horrific side effects? A lot of times they don’t even work, which is the saddest part about it, but we give it out and make them the test case.

Dr. Pompa:

It’s said that 75% of the effects actually could be attributed to placebo. There’s so much unknown. Here’s the other thing too. Low serotonin levels really have not even been shown to really truly be linked to depression, but we know that when we push the serotonin up with these medications, it creates a feeling; so does cocaine. I can go down the list, of course, but that doesn’t mean that you have the lack of happiness because you lack cocaine.

Let’s be clear. You don’t have to have depression because you lack serotonin. When we look at a new problem and a growing problem, we know that we have a chemical called glyphosate we’ve talked about on other shows that’s being sprayed on our entire food supply practically. It wipes out certain bacteria in our gut that we actually need in a pathway called a shikimate pathway where we take and we make amino acids that you need to make dopamine and serotonin.

Dopamine is the feel good neurotransmitter, if you would. It’s affecting brain balance. Again, that doesn’t mean that we take a medication and just push the levels up while we’re starving out other tissues and cells because that’s what these medications do and deplete it in the gut where it’s actually made and needed for other functions. That’s part of the problem here.

Once again, instead of getting upstream to the causative factors, which we can talk more about, when you look at the links of mercury that accumulate in the brain in depression, it’s staggering. Nobody is looking at glyphosate or mercury or lead. I can go down the list. These are the upstream problems. Glyphosate destroys these bacteria that we need to make these amino acids that we need to make these brain chemicals, yet this is proven.

Stephanie Seneff, her studies out of MIT and so many out there now really show this problem. We have a growing group of children who are being affected generationally by elevated lead and mercury, and then glyphosate that’s wiping out their bacteria to make normal brain chemicals, and then we’re trying to make it up just by giving the chemical. Is it working? It’s not. This is devastating to our children.

When we look at what’s going on, there can arguably a time to take one of these medications. I’m not telling you to come off of them. I’m not telling you to not take them. I’m telling you to educate yourself more. There are many other alternatives that we’ll talk about in the next segment that we do.

Let’s be clear; there’s even a time and a place I would argue. If someone is a threat to themselves or somebody else, these medications could put someone in a different place for a temporary time. The problem isn’t that. The problem is the people that are on these things literally forever, and that’s when we end up getting more problems.

Warren:

If you try to come off of them, it creates these massive hormone deregulation and problems, and their system is all messed up. I was on Effexor for a month and a half. I think I might have told this before. The doctor said, “How long do you need to be on this? How much better are you?” “Oh, maybe 5%.” Placebo at best, right?

It has to be 75% better, but I had 5% is literally what I told him, 5 or 10%. I said, “How long do I need to be on it?” “The rest of your life.” I’m like what? That, for me, means there’s no hope. I’m broken. I’m never going to be happy.

You stay on this, and I’m 5% better, and this is the best you can do for me? The anxiety levels were excruciating. You remember those times. The cause was mercury poisoning. It’s ridiculous that people aren’t getting this information and getting hope.

I don’t care how many psychotropic drugs you would have given me. It wouldn’t have helped anyway. I was suicidal at the time because I was so sick. What happened if I would have killed myself because the psychotropic drug did work and put me in a state where I would have killed myself? I wouldn’t have these two beautiful children grow up and change the world.

We wouldn’t have been in this health ministry, if you will, and serving people. We’d never be doing this podcast. These are far-reaching effects. Being on something the rest of your life and being fed that you’re broken and something is wrong with you is not necessarily the case.

There’s a time and a place for a Band-Aid, but the body does heal itself. Pull that Band-Aid off a week later and wait a minute. It’s healed because our bodies are designed to do that, not to stay in a state of disease. When you remove the interference, the body does the healing every time.

Dr. Pompa:

There’s a 2002 study. It’s [16:46] 2002. More than 50% of clinical trials for the 6 leading antidepressants, the drug did not outperform the placebo. That’s pretty pathetic. It seems like a crap shoot.

Then we have to put labels on these things that these can cause violent behavior, suicidal thoughts, manic behavior I read on one just right now. Not to mention the fact that they lead to other – so we’re putting children on these things. Then the brain becomes dependent on some type of stimulants, and it leads to other drugs.

I remember a Montel Williams show, and I don’t want to get off track because we’re talking more about antidepressants, but Ritalin and Adderall, two of those drugs in that study that I read earlier, were for ADD. Montel Williams did a show, and he asked the audience and moms – I’m going to finish this story because this is going to shock you. I hear the lovely music. Listen to this when you come back because I’m going to ask you the same question Montel asked his audience.

Warren:

Thank you, sponsors. We’re back. Let’s hear it, Montel Williams.

Dr. Pompa:

Here’s the question, and I can ask this really to moms or dads. He asked it to the moms. The question is would you give your child cocaine? We could preface it this way.

Would you give your child cocaine if you thought it was a chance for him to focus a little more in school and be a little more happy? The answer across the board in this audience was of course not. I mean, almost offended by the question. He said, “What if I bring out an expert that tells you that cocaine is safer than what people are giving their children today or doctors or experts are giving your children today?”

The expert comes out and talks about how Ritalin really is a Schedule II medication, same as cocaine, except the effect isn’t as high as cocaine, yet it lasts much longer. He talked about why it is actually more addictive than cocaine and far more damaging for the brain. Of course, the moms in the audience were stunned to hear this. The statistics, 300-some percent chance of these kids going on to discover other medications, street drugs, etc. Basically, you’re creating addicts.

I can tell you that these pills are being bought, Adderall, Ritalin for $20 a pill, and it’s every school across the country. Adderall is the new thing. Why do kids take it? They’re taking it because they can laser focus, and it works. Then what do they do? They want to come down with marijuana, which is another big lie.

The point is that we have a society of massive anxiety, depression, mood disorders, which I believe are being driven by hormone problems, neurotransmitter problems as I described, most of these things being driven by toxic chemicals that we’re unknowingly being exposed to. Our air arguably is cleaner today than ever, but what we’re being exposed to is shocking through the over vaccination. We’re being exposed in our food supply, as I mentioned. We can talk about chemicals that we’re using in our homes every day.

Silver filling is still being put in in this country that contains 50% mercury. Even if you avoid all of these things, the fact is when we talk about mercury and lead and other chemicals that are trans generational, meaning they’re being handed down for four generations and our parents grew up in the mercury and lead generation. We got it via them in utero. Then we’re adding a new chemical, glyphosate, to it. This is a problem.

Then we’re medicating children just as we’re talking about on the show, which is more poison, more disruption. When this generation hits their 30s, I fear for this generation. I really don’t know. God will bring up the cream of the crop. I know it. He will answer the prayers of those crying out for answers.

I believe it. I know it, Warren. That’s why we do what we do. It drives us day in, day out. I know this show is going to stir some people. I know that we’ll probably get some emails and bad press because people want to –

Warren:

People say psychotropic drugs transformed my life. It saved my child’s life. You should see how they’re behaving. It may be true, but is it fixing the core of the problem? That’s what we’re getting at.

For the people it didn’t work for, for the kids that did commit suicide, to the child or the individual that’s not being helped, there’s a bigger portion that aren’t being helped than are being helped, in our opinion. Are they going upstream? Are they just learning how to use drugs to medicate their moods? This is new.

Like you said, they do Adderall to focus. When they need to sleep and relax they smoke marijuana. They do mushrooms to laugh and have fun because they don’t know how to do that anymore. They do X, Y, Z activity that’s not safe for them. There’s these new groups of young single people who share relationships, and that’s another way they get excitement and dopamine spikes. That helps them feel better.

There’s risks there. What is the answer to this? It’s surely not the medications. It’s surely not some of the decisions that can put you at risk and certain lifestyles. What is the answer?

That’s all we’re asking here, Dr. Pompa, is what is the upstream cause so we can address it upstream? If your shoe’s untied, you tie it. You don’t walk around and cut your shoestrings off so you lose your shoe. Let’s dig into this.

Dr. Pompa:

Before the 1980s, that was our heyday. There was no child on psychotropic drugs that I can recall, maybe one a classroom. I would probably ascertain one at school. I’m so sorry. The printer is going off here.

Warren:

I can barely hear it.

Dr. Pompa:

Things have changed. If you look at that because we didn’t have these shootings, we have to ask ourselves what’s changed? The same stressors are there. Some different stressors that were more or less, so we know it’s not just stress.

Is it the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Absolutely. It’s a perfect storm. Stress is part of the answer. We had stress then, so there’s something else.

Prozac and these drugs started coming out in the 80s, early 90s, Eli Lilly and the other companies. I say Eli Lilly because Prozac was the first of these things. It was the first antidepressant, and then the other companies came along. I’m telling you, this thing was viewed as the panacea for depression. It really was.

The only one that profited was Eli Lilly. This became their cash cow and the cash cow for so many other drug companies. We have to ask ourselves what changed? The over prescription of these medications has changed. Do I believe antidepressants are a prescription for mass shootings? I really do.

We put that on top of not getting to the cause. We put that on top of this new chemical, glyphosate, that’s being sprayed that we know interferes with how brain chemicals are produced in our body. We do have a perfect storm. We have to start looking at this generation, and we better start asking ourselves what are the causative factors? Then I believe we can change these numbers and statistics.

You don’t have to believe me. Just do some searching yourself and ask yourself these questions. I believe it’s very obvious what’s going on. You compare our country to other countries. You go to these other countries where there’s war every day.

We don’t even know stress like this. We don’t, yet they don’t have mass shootings. They don’t even have the suicide rates that we have in this country. What is happening?

Warren:

That makes so much sense too. The last show I did, we talked about mood is 10% environmental. We adapt to whatever we’re around. We’re very adaptable. Living in a war-torn country, we adapt to that stress pretty regularly.

We talked about happiness and setting goals and some of the things that are in the science, being thankful, and things like that. What we’re dealing with here isn’t those types of stresses. It isn’t the outside stressors. We can adapt to those things. We can adapt to poverty.

We can’t adapt to not eating, but you can adapt to those things and still be really happy. What is it that is keeping people locked into a state of hopelessness? It’s not their fault. Let’s dig into that and get solutions right after this.

Dr. Pompa:

When we get back.

Warren:

Sounds good. Welcome back, health hunters. I was just thinking while we were on break there, there is a group rising up, especially the moms and the dads, but the moms kind of lead the way statistically when it comes to the healthcare decisions for their family. They’re waking up. They’re like something is wrong.

There’s got to be another way. There’s got to be solutions. That’s what we want to dig into now. What are the solutions? What are some things they may not be trying with their kids, with their families, even with themselves to become better parents, that elevates not only their mood in the moment, but long term, which leads into weight loss? Instead of the spiraling down, we’re spiraling upwards towards health instead of away from it.

Dr. Pompa:

There’s seven categories right now with our doctors. We’ve implemented this program where we’re looking at seven categories to answer this problem, this epidemic from a real perspective. I’m going to give you these categories. There’s answers in each one of them. Let’s start from the beginning.

Number one, there’s certain nutrients in minerals in particular that we can take to really help this brain balance. When we look at things like lithium orotate, you all have heard of giving lithium for bipolar depression, etc. That is a chemical that you have to give in extreme amounts that can be very toxic. When there is a natural mineral called lithium orotate that you can give in very small amounts because that’s all that’s needed, but it is very deficient in our soils today, it can make a massive difference. There’s simply one of these things.

Vitamin D I would argue is also important more as a hormone. We know that without getting sun, it leads to depression. We call it seasonal effective disorder. There are some key nutrients that play into this.

We always want to assess those areas as we look at this. Even magnesium can play a significant role. We like a certain magnesium. It’s called magnesium threonate, which has the ability to cross the brain and into the brain. It can make a significant difference for people.

The second category is fats. Fats play a very important role, even the balance of fats. You’ve heard of omega-3. You’ve heard of omega-6. There’s a certain balance of that, and we try to target a 4:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 to actually target the brain.

There’s a couple products that we love here that we use. You’ve probably heard the rave and the craze about fish oil. What we’re learning now and one of the top, Eric Topol, he heads the institute called Scripps. It’s the head institute for cardiology. He was a big fish oil proponent.

Because of recent studies, he’s now put out warnings against fish oil. It’s rancid. It even goes rancid in the body. Many people are entering into omega-3 dominance, etc. There’s some warnings.

We’ve done a couple shows on that. The point here is the omega-6 are the more dominate needed fat in the cell membranes and even the brain. It’s hard to find omega-6 that’s not rancid and adulterated. Think of vegetable oil, corn oil, and all these oils, canola oil that we’re seeing in the products today. It’s all adulterated, rancid, which disrupts our cell membranes and the way our brain works. It’s really a tragedy.

We have a product called Vista that we love. It targets the brain and the cells. There’s another one called PC. It stands for phosphatidylcholine, which is a fat that the brain absolutely loves and needs. It’s in a 4:1 oil, so it’s PC 4:1 oil, and another one called Pure Form. Those are just some products that all of our doctors use.

The other fats that you’re probably missing in your diet, cholesterol and saturated fat. Your brain is made up mostly – you wouldn’t believe how much cholesterol is needed in the brain. Things like ghee, I love the sources of grass-fed butter. Ghee is basically a clarified butter. You add that to your diet, it’s incredible.

Kids that have ADD/ADHD, we up these saturated fats and it’s remarkable. Coconut oil has some saturated fats different than the cholesterol that’s in butter and the saturated fats that are in butter. Some of those fats, you may not be considering as really healthy, but they sure are. Adding these is really important.

Let’s look at the third category, and I’ll just go through these and we can kind of open up some discussion around them. The precursors for these neurotransmitters are really important. We look at 5-HTP, and most of you might know that. It’s a precursor for something called tryptophan. I mentioned glyphosate.

Tryptophan we have to make with this bacteria in the gut that that chemical is wiping out. Therefore, by taking some extra of the 5-HTP or tryptophan, it can be really amazing. Tyrosine is another one being destroyed by that chemical. It helps the thyroid, but also the brain.

Some of those precursors, GABA is one that we need to bring the brain even in a calm situation. A lot of those amino acids, what we call precursors, can be very useful as well. Then there’s certain antioxidants that we know help the brain. Warren, you remember the product [Epic] we developed through the years? It addresses a cycle called a [34:14] cycle, which is a perpetuating inflammation cycle. These antioxidants can be really amazing for the brain.

Warren:

Certain people like you and I were locked into that inflammation cycle. Epic was designed and certain antioxidants are designed to break that oxidative stress cycle, that self-cycling and chronic inflammation, which leads to cellular inflammation and hormone sensitivity or lack of being sensitive to hormones in your body. Antioxidants are definitely a big one.

Dr. Pompa:

Blueberries and berries offer a lot of different things like proanthocyanidin and different antioxidants the brain needs. When we reduce this brain inflammation, oxidative stress, it works better. People that are in an oxidative state, no doubt it affects the way they think and feel.

The gut is category five that we have to address. A product that we love is called Restore, and another one called [LGut]. What these do is they close down the gut because what happens is these chemicals, mercury, lead, and this glyphosate in the environment open up the gut. Then that can cause food intolerances, which make depression worse, linked to depression. It can lead to autoimmune.

It obviously causes a disruption in what we call the microbiome. Those are just two great products. I know most people think I take my probiotic every day. I’m telling you, that can actually be detrimental because you can get a monoculture. You have to rotate different bacteria. You can’t stay on them.

I like those two products better, Restore and LGut. There’s another unique bacteria product. It’s called MBC that my docs use a lot with these types of conditions as well. We have to consider the gut because this is where a lot of the neurotransmitters that the brain needs are made. Obviously, it leads to leaky gut, which leads to more depression, so we have to consider the gut.

We have what we call our ancient healing strategies, which we talk about fasting. This is category six. Fasting and depression is just remarkable. We had a gentleman at one of our seminars, he literally was on day 120 of a water fast. We talked about water fasting on past shows. Go watch them.

How is that possible? Listen to that show. He was on many of these medications. He talked about how his depression was lifted.

We just fasted almost 3,000 people. One of the testimonies we heard again and again was just how their mood changed, anxiety, depression lifts. Fasting is just amazing when it comes to that. That’s one of our ancient healing strategies.

Another ancient healing strategy we utilize is called ketosis. Ketones are known to change brain function. That’s why it was used in the early 1900s. It’s just remarkable. It even turns off bad genes linked to depression.

Last but not least, detox. If we don’t get to the cause, and we talked about lead and mercury and other chemicals, then we’re not going to do it. We’ve done a lot of shows on true cellular detox. Those seven categories, if you think in those categories, I believe this is a better answer than what we’re giving kids today.

Warren:

It definitely is. Thank you so much for that information, Dr. Pompa. Health hunters, let’s go change the world. We’ll see you next week.