Kick It Naturally – Understanding Depression
You can listen to this episode HERE.
Disclaimer
T.C. Hale is not a doctor and does not claim to be a doctor, licensed in any type of medical field. Don’t be an idiot and use anything heard on this show as medical advice. This information should be used for educational purposes only and you should contact your doctor for any medical advice. Now get off me.
Kinna: Hey everybody welcome to Kick It naturally. I’m Kinna McInroe and I’m here with T.C. Hale, natural health expert, author, film producer, and BEEP*. I’m kidding. Uh, hey T.C.
Tony: Uh huh, how’s it going?
Kinna: Hi.
Tony: Calling me names before we start. You didn’t even wait.
Kinna: I know, I know.
Tony: Usually, usually wait till I get beat up on.
Kinna: I know. Uh and we’re also here with Cutie Patootie Will. Or it’s, it’s Will today, right?
Will: Yeah, yeah.
Kinna: Will or Justin.
Will: Awe come on. We’re over it, we’re over it. It’s Will, always.
Kinna: We’re with Will. And Will is celebrity trainer extraordinaire and all kinds of fun stuff.
Tony: He’s super fancy and he’s also known as Cutie Patootie just like I’m known as BEEP*.
Kinna: Yes. Uh but I say that with uh as a term of endearment.
Tony: It is. It’s very endearing.
Kinna: Tony. Uh today our topic is depression which I’m so happy about because every time I see Tony I get depressed…
Tony: It’s…
Kinna: …automatically.
Tony: It’s a problem. And I was thinking of a solution for that cause a lot of times depression can come from not having an opportunity to punch somebody in the face. So I was thinking if you just started punching me in the face that it would not depress you looked at me.
Kinna: Okay.
Tony: We’ll try it out.
Kinna: Well I’ll take that. Yeah. I’ll take that advice. Um so we want all you listeners out there to go ahead and follow us on Facebook at Kick it in the Nuts. And we’ll post topics there. And then you can uh ask us you know questions about you know any future shows we’ll be doing. And then we’ll, we’ll answer your questions cause we’re awesome like that really.
Tony: We’re nice.
Kinna: Yeah. We’re nice people. So um let’s start talking about the topic. I kinda want to know some things.
Tony: Okay.
Kinna: Uh besides external situations what causes a person to become depressed?
Tony: Yeah and that, you know cause, before we get in to, we’re gonna talk a lot about physiology today and, and, and…
Kinna: More science
Tony: I know. And we’re gonna talk about science. But we’re gonna talk about uh you know things in your body that could create depression but that doesn’t mean that there’s not things in life that can make you depressed. I mean you can have a really sad situation in your life and, and that can make you depressed and, and that’s okay. You know but usually time, you just have to have some time to get past that. But what we’re gonna talk about today is more things where someone’s depressed and they, and they don’t really know why, or they don’t have a real reason. And they’re just, uh it’s more of a they, they would call it a clinical depression. Um so know that it’s okay to be sad about something and that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about people that are stuck in that depressed state and just…
Kinna: For no reason at all.
Tony: Yeah.
Kinna: They just feel bad.
Tony: They just want to be held.
Kinna: Uh huh.
Tony: That’s probably what it is.
Kinna: I want to be held too. Awe.
Tony: Yeah.
Kinna: Okay.
Tony: So why don’t we explain a little bit of what we see most and I’ll, I’ll have me and Will talk a little bit about what we see with clients a lot too. And I, I, the best ex, explanation I like for um physiological depression is uh what we used in the Kick It, Kick Your Fat in the Nuts book. When we talk about um using uh, a woman that’s pregnant as an example. And depression can occur for people uh as one option of an emotional or even a mental issue that can happen. And it’s usually caused by low resources in the body. And uh, you know we have minerals in our body and, and with these minerals signals travel to the brain through these minerals. That’s how they travel. Just like uh if you put an electrical current in a bath tub you get shocked and that’s not a good bath. You had a not relaxing bath when you did that. But those, those currents travel because there’s minerals in the water. But if you just had distilled water you could put a current in there and the, and it would not travel. So that’s how people work. We, we’re very electrical. Kinda, even uh Kinna’s doing the robot right now and I don’t know why.
Kinna: Mmhm, breakin it down.
Tony: Uh huh. Um but so if there’s a lack of minerals or there’s not enough a lot of times the signals don’t get to the brain. Or the signals from the brain back to the body don’t make that. And that can create a lot of uh heightened emotional issues. It can create depression. It can create other mental issues like bi-polar. Maybe you think you’re a fire truck. You know.
Kinna: Usually do.
Tony: And, and in the extreme like things could happen where just, and people say oh well you’re a mental case.
Kinna: Since there’s always like an opposite effect, so is there, are there people walking around that are just too happy?
Tony: Yeah. And those are the people you just want to smack ‘em.
Kinna: Yeah. Okay.
Tony: And sometimes you do and it makes you feel better. Um but the, the main thing to understand is that the result from the body not having the resources that it needs, and it could be for lots of different reasons that we’ll get into some of them. But it’s that lack of resources or the lack of ability to use them that can create either depression or other mental and emotional issues. So I like to look at a pregnant girl um just because…
Kinna: You’re sick.
Tony: Yeah because they get so round.
Kinna: Perv.
Tony: Yeah, that’s my, that’s my, my uh one of my fetishes, pregnant chicks.
Kinna: That’s his fetish, pregnant women.
Tony: Because you can’t get ‘em pregnant.
Kinna: Ahhhhh
Tony: Oh that was not, that’s not good. Um but the situation is, is look at a pregnant. When you make a baby you gotta, you have to have all these resources to make another whole human. They don’t just show up. It’s not like sea monkeys where you just put them in the water and, and uh you…
Kinna: And then you’ve got ‘em for 18 years at least. So that would make me depressed.
Tony: Sea monkeys or a kid?
Kinna: No, the kid. Yeah well…
Tony: Oh okay. My sea monkeys did not last that long. I was like man I got ripped off.
Will: Mine are huge.
Tony: Yeah.
Kinna: Mine are whales now.
Tony: Mine are at NYU.
Kinna: Uh huh.
Tony: Um so, but a woman when she’s pregnant, she’s making this kid, it takes a lot of resources. So everybody knows that at some point a pregnant girl is going to snap and freak out and, and we just accept it. And we say that’s okay she’s pregnant we know it’s gonna happen.
Kinna: I’ve been pregnant for a number of years.
Tony: Yeah. You might, you might still be pregnant right now. And that’s what’s going on. There’s nothing wrong with you. Um but the reason that happens is because all of their resources is being geared towards making this other human being so they don’t have enough for them to function uh properly and have their emotions in check and all that kind of stuff.
Kinna: Kids are just sucking the life right out of you right from the beginning.
Tony: From the very beginning. And uh…
Will: I think they’re technically parasites.
Tony: They really are.
Will: A friend in medical school said like definitively they are.
Tony: They are.
Kinna: Real. Oh wow.
Tony: Until you’re uh like 70 and then you live in their garage. And then you’re eating their food and stuff. Um but so if we look at that it’s a good example to understand that how it makes sense that these emotional issues can magnify when resources are low. So that’s kinda what we’re gonna look at and, and what other things do you see going on when you have clients with depression Will?
Will: Yeah I, I think u, the, the body’s a unit and all the different markers that we’re gonna talk about today are all connected. So like you talked about low resources or an inability to use them. And a way a person can kinda identify that in themselves is by looking at a few simple measurements like if their blood pressure is low is a really obvious way.
Tony: That’s a great sign that minerals are low.
Will: Right. So also this is less commonly talked about one if their breath rate is unusual. Or not unusual, if it’s off from the ideal. There’s really, my favorite book on this whole topic is uh George Watson’s, Nutrition and Your Mind.
Tony: Yeah it’s a great book.
Will: Yeah. And in that he talks about basically the speed at which your body is uh converting carbohydrates and energy into ATP. Or like converting fuel sources into ATP. So that’s oxidation. And through that you can see if a person’s oxidizing glucose too fast or too slow pretty accurately by looking at their breathe rate. So if a person is wondering “Oh does my metabolism and my oxidation speed, or my metabolic type,” as the term kinda came from his work. Is that a factor? Well you can look at your breath rate just by counting how many breaths you take in a minute. And if it’s faster or slower than 15 or 16 breaths a minute that could be one of the markers you’ll be like “Oh I need to do something about my metabolism to help fix this depression.”
Tony: Right. So that can be uh, why somebody might not have resources. It’s not that they’re not eating them, or even that they can’t process them. And we’ll get into that. But they may be just frying through ‘em. And ripping and you know burning it up too quickly. So they eat, but then 30 minutes later their body’s already burned all that fuel off and they got nothing.
Will: Yeah. Or on the flip side they’re not oxidizing fast enough. And either way like, I guess the main thing to relate to people that are kinda new to the subject is the brain runs on glucose, like only on, on glucose, or glycogen. Like well you can get from proteins and fats but it needs a steady stream…
Tony: Yeah.
Will: … of, of glucose…
Kinna: Yeah.
Will: …for it to run right.
Tony: Not that kind. You’re not eating a Kit-Kat. Kit-Kat it’s not gonna…
Kinna: Aw a Snicker bar.
Will: Not an excuse to eat a Snickers.
Kinna: Oh.
Will: But if your body’s burning through it too fast, which would be reflected in a fast breath rate, or not fast enough then your brain is like “hey, I don’t have the energy that I need.” And your muscles are like that too. And I got particularly interested in this whole oxidation speed because it not only relates to your mental performance, but also your emotional health, and your ability to produce energy and burn fat. They’re all directly connected. So some people are depressed because they’re overweight. Well this is directly connected to that too.
Tony: Right.
Will: Like you can loose weight by looking at this factor.
Tony: Right. A lot of, a lot of people that uh, you see a lot of link between obesity and depression. And a lot of times it’s not that the obesity is creating the depression. It’s that both issues have the same underlying cause.
Kinna: Yes because I can say from like, you know I thought “Okay I won’t get depressed anymore once I lose weight.” And I’ve lost nearly 100 pounds and I still get depressed.
Tony: Sure.
Kinna: So you know it’s not just the weight you know. You know it’s something else you know.
Tony: Right. And what happens I think is that we as humans when uh, when a person goes toward depression and, or they don’t have the resources you know it, it, it could also be like say somebody’s an BEEP*. Oh wait that’s me.
Kinna: Tony!
Tony: No, but you know you, you see somebody that snaps and they, and they just, they, they’re off the handle right away and they have a short temper. And, and uh…
Kinna: That’s me.
Tony: You know that can just be another result of those low resources. And I think that as humans that when the brain doesn’t have the fuel that it needs to function uh a lot of times we go to this doom, dark place and we tend to focus on everything that is horrible. So when someone uh says that you know “I’m depressed,” they’re like “why am I depressed?” They ask themselves that. And if you sit there and think about it you’re gonna find some reasons. Who can’t find a reason why to be depressed. Everybody’s got something.
Kinna: I don’t know. Will? Will might be really positive…
Will: My life’s pretty great.
Kinna: Ahhhhhhh.
Tony: He’s real pretty.
Kinna: He’s pretty, y’all.
Tony: Um, but what about this green jacket? You know maybe you could be depressed, maybe that doesn’t look as good as you think it does.
Will: Yeah. I could be totally bummed about that. Yeah it could be.
Kinna: It does look good.
Will: It is wrinkled.
Tony: Yeah, it’s good though. Um but, but we tend to find things uh when our physiology is putting us in this negative state. So we think that’s the thing and then we go to a psychologist and we talk about that one thing for 17 years.
Kinna: Yeah and make a focus of it. I mean it’s all connected; your body and your mind. I mean it’s, your, your head is on your body.
Tony: It’s right on there.
Kinna: So, so you, I mean it’s connected.
Will: Right.
Kinna: You know so what we’re putting in our head and our body is connected. Did I make my point? It’s connected.
Tony: You, you did. It was a good point. And it brought up uh, a thought that I have is that we look at this correctly in everything in the world. If the, if a car breaks down and it’s over on the side of the road we look, does it have any gas left? If your toaster uh isn’t working you look to see if it’s plugged in. You look to see if it’s getting the juice it needs to function. You don’t soak it in medication or send it to therapy. It’s, you just plug it in. And with…
Kinna: Ah. I did. I sent mine.
Tony: You sent your toaster? They have a special toaster therapy?
Kinna: Yeah.
Tony: Um so I, I think that that’s important that, that we see that when we’re depressed it’s easy to go to a negative place and find reasons to be depressed. But if we can give our brain the fuel it needs to function, all the sudden those things that were a 10 to us and horrible become easier for us to manage. So they may just be a 2 or 3. They’re still in your life, they still suck. You know but you, they’re easier for you to deal with.
Will: Yeah. And there, there’s a lot of factors that can contribute to it. Like a lot of legitimate external things like you know someone just died or whatever is going on. But I like, I, I like just want to reiterate what you just said about if you fix the physiology it’s gonna help you deal with those other things. So like if you’re sitting there listening, wondering “ah is it just my, my own head case, or this stuff, or this breakup I went through, or whatever. Or is it my meta, I don’t know it’s so many things.” Well it’s probably all of them.
Tony: Yeah.
Will: You know. And you can make progress in all of them with different tools. Like caring for your body is one really great way to help your mental state shift also.
Tony: Right. So the, what you, what we’re talking about here is giving you the tools to deal with those issues with more ease. And, and if, if your new uh to listening to us and you haven’t turned it off for one reason or another yet um when we talk about…
Kinna: Sucker.
Tony: Yeah. If we talk about testing physiology um we teach you how to do that in, in any of my books. And we have a free uh digestion course on kickitinthenuts.com that shows you how to actually run those simple tests at home on yourself so you can get an understanding of how your body’s operating.
Kinna: Cool. Well should we dive into some questions…
Tony: I’ll take up to 3 questions.
Kinna: …from our lawyer, loyal listeners. Um Jamie from Berkley, California. “Why is my sister’s depression so much worse around her period?” I think this might be Jamie she’s actually talking about herself.
Tony: Right.
Kinna: But she says it’s her sister.
Tony: Right. That happens. What do you think Will?
Will: Well I think it’s very much related to the, the same explanation you gave about the pregnant woman.
Tony: Sure.
Will: Resources are going into making an egg and making it ready. And all the blood and plasma that’s like excited to like start a new life. And then oh show’s over and they dump it out.
Tony: Right.
Will: All those resources still went to that. They’re not gonna like pull it back and make a bicep out of it. Like that’s…
Tony: Right. That cycle to do that monthly cycle is a lot, it’s expensive in far as resources go.
Kinna: You know and I… who wouldn’t be depressed if you were bleeding out your hole for that. Sorry, that was a little crude. Ah uh for yeah, for seven days…
Will: This is not a show for kids.
Kinna: …or however long it takes. Plus the cramps. I mean, come on. I would love for a man to experience it once and just see if they don’t cry.
Tony: I, I, I can promise to you that I would cry.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: There’s a 100% guarantee of me crying.
Will: Well I think you go through this exact issue in great depth in your first book. The Done with Menstrual Cramps or Kick Menstrual Cramps in the Nuts where we talk a lot about how depression, anxiety fluctuates with this. A lot to do with not only all the hormones and stuff but the, the mineral resources and things. And in that book alone you can learn how to, if that’s your particular issue, that’s a fantastic highlighted…
Tony: Right.
Will: …you know read for you to like get your finger on exactly what’s off when you go through a cycle. Cause not saying you’re gonna fix all the emotional swings that happen with menstrual cycle but you can definitely minimize the depression, and anxiety, and pain that can happen.
Kinna: That happens to everybody else around you. I just have one request that you change the title of that book to Kick Your Menstrual Cramps in the Vagina.
Tony: Ah. Okay. That’s a, it’s a good note.
Kinna: But it’s already been printed.
Tony: But it’s also a great view on PMS and uh girls getting bitchy and it’s this you know life long joke that has been going on forever but it’s, if you understand what’s going on, it’s legitimate to understand that uh just like we talked about for some people the emotional issue’s gonna be depression, for others it’s gonna be I’m gonna snap and rip your face off. You know it can, it can, it can manifest differently for different people, but it’s all a uh, a result of resources being low, resources being used for something else right now. And uh that person being left with nothing to run their body.
Kinna: I have a couple more questions too which I forgot to ask. Um I’m very interested in how come when I get depressed I want to eat, eat everything, but when my friend gets depressed she doesn’t want to eat at all. What’s up with that?
Tony: Um…
Kinna: That makes me depressed.
Tony: That makes you even, that makes you even sadder.
Kinna: Yeah.
Tony: Well we know that a lot of people will want to eat because they learn that if their resources are low if they put something in they, they at least have some resources and they can feel better. So it almost turns into like a craving even. Um your body’s craving nutrition.
Kinna: But if her resources were low too wouldn’t she want something or maybe it’s environmental that she’s sad about. I mean I guess it depends on what you’re both depressed about.
Tony: She’s sad about the ozone layer.
Kinna: Yeah, yeah. Maybe she’s sad about that.
Will: The oceans.
Tony: No. But I, I, I have seen this. I don’t know if you’ve seen this Will too. But I think it kinda goes back to that place of some people when they start to feel depressed, they just go to the darkest place. And they’ve kinda learned over years that they, they want to feel even worse. Because they’re, they’re moving into that darker place. It’s not in their personality, it’s just their physiology is pushing them into that place that wants everything to be turmoil. And they found that by not eating they can even go darker and darker, and deeper and deeper into that hole.
Kinna: Or vice versa. If eating they can go deeper and deeper into the hole. Because when I’m like neck deep into a gallon of ice cream I feel even worse, you know.
Tony: And you know, you know it’s not great but you kinda keep, I mean the ice cream’s not done so I’m gonna know this BEEP* out, right. I’m gonna knock it out so…
Kinna: Right. I’m not a quitter!
Tony: Right.
Will: Yeah. I, I think that’s a really good point to look at. Like is the person eating to feel better or to feel worse. You know. Or are they not eating to feel better or feel worse. Cause it could propel you into like…
Kinna: Yeah that’s true.
Will: You know same reason like some people would do drugs to help them be extra present or to totally tune out. You know.
Kinna: Why some people cut on themselves or things like that. Yeah.
Tony: Yeah. Sure.
Kinna: And then they feel even worse.
Will: Right. And that’s when we start to get into like, I mean the, the base chemistry is still really important to look at but then you also have to look at some other mental patterns and emotional patterns. Maybe they learned from their family of their or you know, whatever that they come to.
Kinna: Yeah that makes sense. I remember when I was upset as a kid my mom would always say “let’s go get some ice cream,” or something like that. And so that always kinda cheered me. Boy did she know, she didn’t know what can of worms she was opening.
Will: Right.
Tony: Right. And what’s interesting about this is that all these things it, it just seems from our experience that we see that uh these issues don’t go away but they seem to de-magnify. To where maybe if somebody is, has an issue that is so severe that they’re a cutter, if you can lift their physiology to help their brain function more, signals to travel better, maybe they just start to whittle wood or something. Or maybe it just changes to something different but it’s till there.
Will: Yeah.
Kinna: You’re like hey I got a desk I need you to whittle down for me.
Tony: Yeah.
Will: Yeah, I, that, that reminds me again of the book Nutrition and Your Mind when we talk about the power of this. Like to think “oh well if you’re psychotic like clinically, it’s not a nutritional thing. There’s something wrong with your brain.”
Tony: Right.
Will: Well actually like this research that George Watson did was able to pull people that were like, they were all in the psych ward. You know and he was…
Tony: Yeah. A lot of schizophrenics.
Will: Yes. Schizophrenics and yeah people that were like committed villain, or criminals for, and he was able to shift them out of like in the middle of a psychotic episode. He was able to shift them and pull them back to being totally normal with vitamins and amino acids. And the research that he did was all clinically documented but his peers all thought he was full of it because they didn’t think you could actually create such a profound change in someone whose so off with vitamins.
Tony: Right.
Kinna: Wow that’s crazy. So give a serial killer like some protein or whatever they’re lacking and then they just drop the knife or the gun. I’m good!
Will: Yeah. But…
Tony: That’s what happened with Martha Stewart. They just changed her physiology a little.
Will: But that goes back again to your question about eating, why do I eat a ton and this person doesn’t eat at all. Uh, uh cool little nuance you’ll learn if you read the Nutrition and Your Mind book is that he discovered this on accident by finding that a certain set of nutrients were really balancing to half the population and very imbalancing to the other half of the test group. And then a different set of vitamins and nutrients were very balancing to the opposite set. And vice versa. So he found like what, and he was trying to figure out what was the difference. It’s not just vitamins in general or amino acids in general. It was particular ones that he eventually figured out were affecting their metabolic rate. Their oxidation rate.
Kinna: Wow. I wish I read. I’d read that book.
Will: Yeah. So in that you can see like oh well for some people maybe binge eating that would be something that would help improve, temporarily improve the stream of glucose to the brain. Whereas for another person you know fasting might help shift them in some way or they feel like it does. So…
Kinna: It’s really interesting. So far this has been my favorite topic…
Tony: How about that.
Kinna: …that we’ve discussed. Yeah. Uh do any particular, this is also a question of mine uh do any particular foods make you more depressed or help with depression.
Tony: Ham makes me depressed.
Will: Spam.
Kinna: Spam. Yeah that’s really depressing.
Will: Yeah, it’s depressing.
Tony: Well I’d like Will to talk a little bit about uh sugar because that’s something that a lot of people dealing with depression find that they’re also have cravings for. And uh I just want you to talk a little bit about that spike and drop and, and what that can create.
Will: Yeah, sure. So again talking about the stream of glucose to the brain for people that, say you’re um a slow oxidizer. It’s an imbalance you can learn about when you go through any of our courses or read any of the books. And you don’t have enough sugar running to your brain at the moment and you eat like a healthy meal like tur, I know healthy is you know so hard to say like what’s healthy for, but…
Kinna: It’s different.
Will: …but you, you eat what you conceive as a healthy meal like turkey breast and a salad and you know even some like I don’t know like sprouted grain in bread or something like that. And you’re still hungry and you want a sweet whatever and you, you’re just bummed about it, your body is having a hard time breaking down those complex foods. Those foods that have like slow burning carbs and proteins and fats that you really need to have good digestion to use. So it just wants energy, it wants sugar, it wants to be able to be on and for all the synapses to work right and for there to be fuel for the cells. So simple sugar is the fastest, easiest way to do that especially if your digestion’s not working well cause those other foods just aren’t available for you for fuel period, even if they’re organic, wild caught, whatever.
Tony: Yeah. One of the, one of the biggest processes that we do as human beings is just digest the food. That takes more resources than almost anything else that we do. Even sex, unless you’re really good at sex.
Will: Right.
Kinna: Ah well, nevermind.
Will: So with that they yeah, so even like when you eat you could even experience a temporary drop in available energy cause you’re just trying to digest the food.
Tony: Yeah.
Will: So people just want, I need sugar so they’ll eat…
Kinna: You get tired right after eat sometimes, yeah. Especially if it’s like a big meal.
Will: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cause all that blood and energy went to the gut. So the simple sugar just goes right to the blood stream and restores that. And that just shows like how powerful this whole oxidation speed thing is. Like that, that people would go for sugar at that time. You know.
Tony: So let’s say that someone uh that deals with depression they find that if they eat four Mars Bars in a sitting that they feel a whole bunch better for just a little bit until their depression kicks back in. Talk about why that happens.
Will: Yeah. Well again cause they’re not getting stable, like consistent energy release from…
Tony: Like a spike.
Will: Yeah. It’s a big spike. It’s a big insulin, glucose spike. So for a moment they have plenty of sugar to go around and they can run their brain and they can run their body cells. And they can feel good because of that. They can breathe better, they can um, they have blood pressure.
Tony: Right.
Will: You know so that’s nice. But when they try to eat a healthy meal which requires good digestion they don’t get anything out of it other than like a bunch of fermenting, toxic, could be helpful food.
Tony: Cause they can’t break that down.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: Where the sugars are easier to break down.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: The other problem is when those sugars spike like that and insulin spikes with it the insulin can go a little too high and then it sweeps too much sugar out too quickly and now that person’s right back down to having zero. And they’re depressed and they’re like “man I need Mars Bars all day long.”
Will: Right. They’re just riding the roller coaster
Tony: Right.
Kinna: Wow. Fascinating fellas, it’s fascinating. Vicki from Seattle, Washington. “What is the difference between having the blues, depression, and just being sad?”
Tony: We talked about that a little bit and, and I think that it’s a very big misconception. And I’ll, I’ll say this and you know when we look at underlying causes for low resources it all, it’s almost always goes back to an inability to digest food correctly and pull the minerals out of your food. So when I first lost my voice uh and I was seeing medical doctors. They were all putting me on the, the reflux drugs. And those turn off your stomach acid, which turns off your digestion, and turns off your ability to break down food and pull down the minerals out. So my blood pressure was in the dirt. Like people I see now I was like under 100. I mean it was really, really low. And I was always a person in my life that was, that had never been depressed. When I looked at people that were depressed I just, I wanted to just shake them and just be like “why don’t you just not be depressed?” You know I was that idiot that thought it was just like a choice that they were making. But when I was on all these meds and had no digestion my blood plessure was under 100 and I had serious depression. Like I was…
Kinna: Awwww
Tony: …balled up in the fetal position crying at episodes of the Brady Bunch.
Kinna: Aww Tony.
Tony: I know it was really sad. And but, as soon as I fixed digestion and blood pressure came back up then I, that was when I realized oh this is a real thing. It wasn’t that I just decided to be sad or I just, I wanted attention, I wanted to get a hug. It was that physiology was pushing me into that place. And I think that’s the big misconception. People just think that it’s all the same thing. Blues and being sad and depression are all the same thing. And, and why don’t you just be happy instead. But when you don’t have the fuel to function, I mean it’s like telling your car when you’re out of gas “why don’t we just drive to a gas station instead of being stuck here on the highway?” You’re not going to talk your car into doing that.
Kinna: Yeah and what this person’s asking I’m no doctor but um I think depression’s more lasting than like just being sad or having the blues one day. Because I mean when I go to the Netherlands to visit and stuff it’s cold so I get, I get depressed just because it’s like it’s night time early, it’s you know kinda cold, it’s dreary looking. So just environmentally I can get depressed. You know.
Tony: And but…
Kinna: Whereas in L.A. it’s sunshine all the time and woooo you’re happy you know.
Tony: And, and maybe you’re not as depress, depressed as you would be in a deep depression but you’re just…
Kinna: Yeah. A little blues that’s yeah not depressed but yeah I have the blues a little bit. Yeah that’s more of a good word. So I think depression’s like more severe than just being sad or be having the blues. I think that’s kinda temporary. But if you can’t seem to get out of the funk I think that’s what a depression is when it just stays there.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: You know what’s interesting about that too and nobody asked about vitamin D. But we should talk about that because uh when you look at seasonal situations or like um even in like places like Seattle where it rains a lot and depression seems to be higher. Um you know out in the sun you make vitamin D and vitamin D holds calcium in the bloodstream and thickens that blood. It makes the blood pressure higher. So a person could feel better by getting more sun. That’s why a lot of girls feel great after they go and tan. And that’s why they tan, they get addicted to that cause they, they feel great.
Kinna: They need to go sell some vitamin D over there.
Tony: Vitamin D is not great the way that people use it now. Let’s have Will tell us about why that’s so not so great.
Will: Yeah. Well one it’s way when you’re, correct me if I’m wrong on this but when you go out in the sun your body can to a degree regulate the amount of vitamin D it wants to make.
Tony: Right.
Will: You know it can, you can still be out in the sun it could just be okay I’ve had enough. And then, and the skin will still be getting exposure but it won’t necessarily be making vitamin D out of it which is a really cool thing it can make…
Tony: It’s kinda like Nightrider.
Will: Yeah. It’s wild.
Tony: Like does stuff without you telling it to do it.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: That’s awesome.
Will: Yeah. And, and there’s the fact he can make a vitamin out of light. It’s amazing. But um when you’re supplementing it like you can’t even buy like milks, or not milks or whatever that don’t have tons of vitamin D added to it. Your body doesn’t have a choice if you’re ingesting that or not if you’re gonna pour it into your stomach.
Tony: Right. In supplementation form kinda thing.
Will: Yeah. Especially the mega doses that are often recommended when a doctor will say “hey take this,” it’s like way more than your body actually needs or wants usually. So that, think of vitamin D like just a magnet for calcium. It pulls calcium which is why we need it to get calcium from our food but it also, it’s still a magnet whether you need it to pull it from your food or not. It’s just tons of it in your bloodstream now that you just took the prescription dose. And it’s just pulling calcium just anywhere; from your muscles, from your bones, from your nervous system, everywhere. So that makes one, the blood too blood pressure potentially too high which made people feel great when they take it still. But they’re depleting things like their skeletal system density and their muscle function. But that calcium also then kinda morphs it’s structure once it’s in the blood and it doesn’t just go back into the skeleton.
Tony: Right, where it belongs, where it came from.
Will: Yeah. Now you’re gonna get like weird things like I don’t know if gout’s directly related to it but conditions like that, like arthritis and such.
Tony: Right. It deposits in joints and stuff.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: So when you know we do want vitamin D and, and we talked about this some in the uh, in the show we did about the common cold when we talk about how when you pull all the calcium out of the tissues you’re gonna turn off your immune system. So listen to that uh if you want to get into that. We won’t go too far into that now but just want to cover that vitamin D can help people lift their blood pressure a little bit but when you use too much you’re gonna cause other problems as well.
Kinna: John from Destin, Florida and I’ll tell ya right now if you’re from Florida you might be depressed. “Uh lift more weights.”
Tony: I’m from Florida.
Kinna: I know that’s why I said it. “Lift more weights, best antidepressant around.” Hmm. Okay.
Tony: I want to talk about both sides to this. Will, do you want to talk a little bit about benefits that can come from doing this kinda stuff.
Will: Yeah. With the provides of knowing that I will also want to say for some people they feel worse.
Tony: Absolutely. I want to be the negative part. I want to be the negative Nelly.
Will: I’ll say that, I’ll say that only because cause I, cause I’m…
Kinna: Good cop, bad cop.
Will: …because I’m actually and I’m happy with his diction, I would say I’m clinically exercise addicted. And there, that’s a real thing I, I learned about. And I totally am that where I get very uncomfortable if I don’t work out everyday. There’s like this pent up energy and angst and I start to eat weird. You know and I start to eat a lot more junk food and that sort of stuff. And for a while I didn’t understand why. But um when I first took the course out in Chicago that taught us all this magic cool stuff I realized like I why, why I was eating a bunch of deep dish pizza and root beers every night was like oh I needed to like acidify my bloodstream and it was affecting my physiology in a way that helped me deal with the extra energy.
Tony: It helped kept, keep you balanced.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: For your specific situation. Yeah.
Will: Yeah. Cause for me, through years of weight training like conditioned my body to have extra blood pressure so when it goes into the gym it has like a good workout and a good pump. And I don’t get light headed or you know. So I can, you know I can lift more weights. And there’s a lot of endorphins that come with that. Like everybody knows like when you jog, or lift weights, or whatever there’s, there’s some hormonal shifts that happen and you create.
Kinna: And I’m sure you get real happy when you take off your shirt and you see yourself.
Will: Well it’s more like the insanely hot girls in L.A. at the gym that are just fun to be around. So that helps. And that also is a good antidepressant. So, but…
Kinna: It doesn’t work the same if you live in the southwest.
Will: No. But well, depends what you’re into I guess. But even if you’re out running in a forest it’s oxygenating. There’s a lot of things your body loves. Just like when you take a dog for a walk, like it loves it. Cause it knows it’s like, it’s kinda that like rewards system that our genetics have built in to it. It’s, we know it’s good for our body knows it’s good for us if we have the resources to do it well and our joins move right.
Tony: I thought dogs got excited cause they, they just want to pee on stuff.
Will: Man I, man I…
Tony: I was thinking man if I got to just pee on everything everywhere I went I would go running everyday.
Will: Right, yeah.
Kinna: But you know that if I had to have an addiction which I, I have several I’m sure um that would be one of them to have. I mean that would be the best one to have I would think. Unless it’s just breaking you down and you, you know so much.
Tony: Sure. And then that, and that can be a problem.
Will: Yeah. And for a long time I, I did totally over train cause I just thought it was gonna work you know. But you know a more balanced approach has made it really enjoyable to go to the gym. And I think there’s a lot of like just base physiology that, that our bodies and all mammals just really love about getting out and moving, and breathing, and…
Tony: Yeah.
Will: …flexing our muscles.
Tony: And, and so John’s so it, it can be very beneficial for, for depression for some people. But in the same regard if somebody has really low resources and that’s why they’re turbo depressed once they work out that’s gonna use more. And they may even feel a little better during that actual workout, but afterwards, after they’ve used the very small amount they had they’re gonna crash hard and their depression can get much worse. I’ve had quite a few clients that they were such on that borderline of low resources that um when they started working out with me too much I could tell right in the session. Like I had a client she would just start crying in the middle of every session for no reason. I was like…
Kinna: Tony, don’t be telling my stories.
Tony: Alright, yeah. I was like, you know what let, we’re gonna take a couple of days off this week and we’re just gonna focus on you getting your resources back up. And then they would be fine. So don’t look at it like it is the answer cause for some people it’s, it can make them worse.
Kinna: Yeah. But even, even a lazy ass like myself I you know, I still I, once I get in the groove of it I really like to exercise too. And I can feel a difference you know with anxiety levels. Like did I exercise and did I do this. And I’m a very low mineral person. So I think it just depends on like every person, like you said individually like what a person can handle and stuff.
Tony: And I, I, a lot of people asked about anxiety this week too and, and remember let’s bring that up cause I think we’re gonna do that next couple weeks. Um we wanted to do it’s own show cause it can have a lot of different stuff. Uh but, remember to, to bring that up cause so, for you guys that asked about anxiety know that we’ll do that in it’s whole show pretty soon. So you just gotta be anxious until then.
Kinna: Exactly. Um okay. So stay anxious for the anxiety show. Uh Tim from Lexington, Kentucky, “How do daily habits and routines influence the depth of the depression?”
Tony: I don’t know.
Will: Well…
Kinna: I guess it depends on what your habits and routines are.
Will: Well I think it’s, I think this is a really great topic that we, touches on some aspects of chemistry we haven’t really looked at yet. And that’s like looking at the, the timing of your emotions.
Tony: Yeah.
Will: You know and the whole, the way you’re running your day. Cause for example I, I know some people, some people I’m very close to that are always in a good mood in the middle of the day. But like some of the time they’ll wake up really depressed. And once they have breakfast, they’re better. And then at night they’re anxious. You know but it’s never, they’re never depressed at night, they’re always anxious at night and depressed in the morning, and fine in the middle of the day. So when you’re looking at like “am I,” this earlier question of mine “am I sad or depressed?”
Tony: Do you have to change the ipod for this person during the as according…
Kinna: Yeah.
Will: Yeah. And the volume levels. It’s all, it’s all over the place. But like when that’s happening we, we like, we like to encourage our clients to like look at your chemistry, like when those things are going on. Cause you can see like oh if your blood pressure’s like extra low in the morning cause it’s been eight hours since you ate anything that’s really great like imbalance to start working on, trying to fix that.
Kinna: So wake up in the middle of the night, eat something, go back to bed.
Will: Yeah. Go pee in a cup.
Kinna: Yeah, exactly.
Tony: No. But when you wake up just get to breakfast before you start talking to people. And start you know wiping your uh sadness all over them.
Kinna: Eat something immediately. Yeah, yeah. Eat your egg while you’re on the toilet.
Tony: Right.
Will: But you can look at those things and be like how do these, how do our daily routines effect depression. You can start to monitor like oh do you get anxious or depressed like on your drive home from work. Maybe cause it’s been like five, six hours since you’ve eaten. And then you can start to look at like well why would that be. Oh maybe my blood sugar’s low, maybe I should put a snack in my car. But all these little things about monitoring your little chemistry throughout the day and throughout the night, you’re gonna be able to like troubleshoot.
Tony: Cause as people we tend to look at it like traffic must make me depressed. When the realization is it’s, it’s been five or six hours since you’ve eaten.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: Why don’t you have something to eat.
Will: Yeah. Which reminds, one of my favorite um philosophers is Friedrich Nietzsche and he had this, this is a modern interpretation of his metaphor but he basically thought the primal body was way more in charge of the body than, than the mind and the prefrontal cortex. To the point I make the analogy, it’s like Nietzsche basically thought of like this speaking voice as like uh a baby that thought it was driving but it was actually like in it’s car seat in the little fake plastic wheel…
Tony: Beep, beep.
Will: …facing backwards and it’s like na, na, na, na.
Tony: And it still thinks it’s driving.
Will: You’re not running the show. The body’s like the dad in the front seat or the mom in the front seat.
Tony: But I turned this and then things happened out there. It must have been me.
Will: Yeah. Right. Well this time it didn’t turn when I turned but it, it will. You know it’s like…
Kinna: Well yeah it’s just like, it’s a machine just like you were saying if your car is out of gas it’s not gonna go. And it’s like people, if we’re not getting what we need physically for our machine to run mok kinds of malfacfactions are gonna be happening.
Tony: Like that one.
Kinna: Yes. And then you can’t, I need an apple or something.
Tony: Malfactions like that one.
Will: Right.
Kinna: Cool. Um okay let’s see here. Wow, we’ve got somebody from across the pond; Mark from Australia. We’re branching out boys.
Tony: We are. Stand clear.
Kinna: “Um I’m very interested in finding out more about our second brain in the gut and how an imbalance of bad bacteria, parasites in the gut can cause an imbalance of serotonin. As the majority of serotonin comes from the gut or so I believe.” Wow. He sounds a little too smart for me. Whoa.
Tony: He’s, he’s probably fancy too. He could probably talk science with us.
Kinna: Yeah.
Will: Yeah.
Tony: And I, I think that I agree. That’s my understanding that I think about 90% of it comes from the gut.
Will: Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s true. I was just talking about that with…
Kinna: Second brain? Is that what you were just talking about?
Will: No, not the second brain but like huge amounts of serotonin…
Tony: What are you pointing at Will and why, why don’t you point up when you’re talking about second brain? Just because we’re guys you think our second brain is somewhere else?
Kinna: Exactly.
Will: I’m pointing at my intestinal track.
Tony: Oh, okay.
Kinna: Ah yeah. I know what your second brain is.
Tony: Yeah. But um let, let’s talk about that a little bit. And I also want you to talk a little bit about hormones Will because I think that a lot of people um kinda blame hormones like they’re the bad guy and they’re doing everything wrong so why don’t we cram other hormones in there. But a lot of times the body when resources are low we’ll jack up a hormone to try and get things to function correctly. And when one hormone’s high it’s gotta push other ones low cause they kinda have that…
Will: Totally.
Tony: …ebb and flow.
Will: Totally. Like when we look at the imbalances in the system there’s a real hierarchy to them. And this whole oxidation thing we’ve been talking about; the slow or fast oxidizer, or the carb or fat burner is above the priorities of the autonomic nervous system. The, being in a sympathetic or being in a flight or fight imbalance, or parasympathetic like rest and digest imbalance. And we’ll often times see like an oxidation imbalance and a corresponding autonomic nervous system imbalance because the nervous system is doing things like secreting different amounts of different hormones to try to regulate that oxidation speed.
Tony: Right.
Will: So it’ll do things like excite, like say you’re a slow oxidizer like most diabetics or maybe all diabetics, they’ll usually be in a flight or fight or sympathetic nervous system imbalance because those hormones associated with the flight or fight state speed glycolosis or the conversion of sugar into energy.
Tony: So it’s just trying to help out any way it can.
Will: It’s trying, yeah it’s trying to push the gas pedal down cause the speed of the, the stream of glucose is running too slowly. So people are like “aw man I’m always, yeah I’m always on. My brain is always on. I’m always kinda stressed, I’m always kinda on edge.”
Tony: Yeah.
Will: Oh, you’re a really slow oxidizer. And your nervous system’s trying to help you out. There’s a ways you can tell if that’s actually happening through a little equation you can do. If you take your blood pressure and your breath rate, if you take the top number in the blood pressure, the systolic and subtract it by the diastolic you’ll get a number called the pulse differential. If you divide your pulse differential by your breath rate it gives you a number a, a resultant. If that number’s over three, you’re in a flight or flight imbalance. If it’s under two, you’re in a parasympathetic imbalance. So that’s another way to look at like are my emotions being affected by my, my metabolism and my electrolyte levels?
Tony: Everybody’s calculators just broke.
Kinna: Yeah, I know. I’m like whoa, he just talked about math. Alright so John from Green, Ohio. “Cooking, good in general is like a fast acting antidepressant for me. But I have to watch so that positive doesn’t turn into a negative. Thankfully I have my music and I know I can’t gain calories from that.” Good for you John.
Tony: Are we about to play a John song? Is he in a song cause he sounded like he was pitching us his new album that, that uh he’s selling on the docks when he plays down there.
Kinna: And although cooking for him takes away depression, I know people that hate to cook and the thought of it you know sends them into like a psychosis kinda thing.
Tony: So, so look at this John I think it could be a situation where it, it’s kinda like if you’re on that edge of maybe you have some physiology that could push you towards depression or maybe it’s not so bad, it’s easy to find things in your life that you enjoy that just lift you up enough to where you don’t feel depressed. But you’re, were had horrible physiology things going on and you were seriously depressed something like cooking probably would not make you better. Um you also wonder is, is, is it the eating part that’s helping him, giving him more resources that, yeah…
Kinna: Trying everything.
Tony: … that, that could be benefiting you as well too.
Kinna: Yeah. Um Stephanie doesn’t really have a question, she just says “depression and/or anxiety.” And that’s, we’re also doing that show like you said later on about anxiety.
Tony: Right, right. So we’ll cover that as well. So Will what would you say is the moral of, of the show?
Will: The moral of the show, I’d like maybe summarize to help people like gather all the different like things we mention to that, that could be factors. So just summarize those real quick. So when we look at someone who has low or high blood pressure, usually low blood pressure would go with depression.
Tony: Right.
Will: Usually high blood pressure would be more like stress cases, you know.
Tony: Right.
Will: Uh if their metabolism is off, like the oxidation speed which they can largely tell by their breath rate. Like if they have a nice balanced breath rate then that, that’s probably gonna be a good thing for them as opposed to one that’s too fast or too slow could cause depression or anxiety.
Tony: Right.
Will: Um and also their nervous system responding to that issue could make them stuck in like a too restful of a state, like a parasympathetic state, or too anxious of a state, the sympathetic state because of how their body’s handling sugar and digestion in general. So I would say overall look at those things; your blood pressure, and your breath rate, and your digestion and seeing is there any room for improvement to get my body into the ideal ranges that they should be. And the, the progress charts and the teaching points on The Coalition are a really helpful way that they could get guidance in that realm.
Tony: Right. The Coalition is a site, a non-profit site that we teach about in the courses you can use to monitor your own physiology and it kinda shows you how to do some of the tests as well. And a lot of times if you, if you you do see that your blood pressure is low then it’s time to understand okay why is it low? And you’re gonna want to look to digestion and, and we can teach you to do things like uh using uh sea salt or some, some concentrace mineral drops type things. And things that you can do to uh lift up your minerals a little bit.
Kinna: And people can learn for free on kickitinthenuts.com and they can sign up for the four week free Digestion Course. And we also have another course, a 12 week course, for Kick Your Fat in the Nuts. But they can learn how to do all the self-testing there.
Tony: Right.
Kinna: And read about digestion and stuff.
Tony: So the moral is, is don’t be sad.
Kinna: Yeah.
Will: Oh, you know another thing we didn’t yet that’s really important is medications.
Tony: Yeah! I knew it.
Will: So um one of the things I learned from you like a year ago I think was a lot of the times antidepressants work by causing the body to retain more electrolytes, like they don’t pee them out.
Tony: Right. It blocks their ability to pee out a lot of their salts.
Will: Yeah, so their blood pressure comes up. I mean that’s a problematic way of dealing with it I’m sure cause like the kidney should be filtering stuff and now it just can’t.
Tony: Right, right.
Will: So it’s, it creates other symptoms which require more medications and which require higher doctor bills and things like that. So it’s not the great way to do it. But when you look at like “oh my antidepressants they were, they’re helping me, I felt a lot better and I can’t get off them.” Well I’ve had tons of clients, even like a lot of young wafy girls get off of their meds right away as soon as they learn this. As soon as they’re able to like take salt and hydrochloric acid to digest their food better and all the sudden they’re off their meds. These are people that like had multiple strokes at age 24 whatever like they’re good. And they haven’t been depressed…
Tony: And I love that you talked about one lady that uh she was on blood pressure lowering medication and of course then they put her on uh depression medication later. So talk about why that happens.
Will: Yeah. So they’re just lowering this one parameter of like the high blood pressure and she was kinda doing it you know she was testing her blood pressure but not very religiously. She was taking it by doctors orders and then she started getting depressed. And the doctor gave her the antidepressant to push her blood pressure back up. So she’s in this balancing act, so long, like decades, like for decades. And when I tested her she had gotten off her blood pressure meds for like three days so she could get a more honest look of like where she’s really at. And her blood pressure was still low. It was like lower than it should be. And she’s still on antidepressants. So she really like kinda jacked up her blood pressure and her digestion with all these drugs.
Tony: Why don’t we just say that it’s not that the doctor’s evil they, they just, it’s not in their training that they, they don’t even know that uh antidepressants raise blood pressure. It’s just a, that’s just what we see that they do with in just about every situation. Um so it’s, they’re just doing what they’re taught. But they’re, you know if a blood pressure lowering med is synthetically causing that blood pressure number to be lower. Um it can go so low that the person ends up being depressed. So they, now they got to be on two drugs instead of none.
Kinna: And they’re basically taught what like prescription and pharmaceutical companies right wanna teach them definitely for like if they’re funding the whole program or whatever then.
Tony: Right. That’s who farms all those educational…
Will: Yeah.
Kinna: Then you’re, that’s what they’re gonna be learning.
Will: You know…
Kinna: I bet people are gonna be really depressed now when they’re like “oh I could just buy a sea salt shaker and I’ve been paying for years of therapy.”
Will: Yeah. And it’s not just cheaper. It’s actually potentially fixing the real physiological problem.
Kinna: Yeah, and like hurting your organs.
Will: Cause these, yeah cause yeah. We didn’t talk about that. But these drugs are highly toxic. They’re, they’re not just fixing it in a cheap, easy way. They’re like screwing you physiologically. And they’re just pushing one parameter. So don’t think it, it’s not a band-aid. It’s like a band-aid with mercury in it. It’s like, it’s not you know. But I’m, again like it’s not our place to say whether you should or shouldn’t get off of your medication. That would be totally illegal and we would get sued and stuff.
Tony: Right.
Will: But what, what we do want to say is like look at what is actually going on in your body. What is the medication do, and what can nutrition do? That’s all we’re saying.
Tony: And, and make sure that you know that if you’re on antidepressants now don’t just go off of them. That’s not the way to do it. The, the way to do it is to do the work to fix your physiology, get your blood pressure up, and then talk to your doctor about what to do to come off of that. Cause just stopping some of those can cause horrific side effects and all kinds of trouble if you just stop them cold turkey.
Will: Yeah. And we, we usually want clients to make themselves like no longer qualify to take that medication.
Tony: Right.
Will: Right. By like, we use nutrition and diet to fix their physiology to push them so far. Like say they’re on a blood pressure lowering med, we changed their diet to help them get their blood pressure so low, now it’s normal that if they continue taking the medication it actually pushes it too low. And that’s, that’s rather than just jumping off of it and hoping they fix it with nutrition. It’s like do the work first so you no longer even qualify as an applicant for that drug. Like you don’t get to use it
Tony: Right.
Kinna: That’s really good. I had one last question. I don’t know if either one of you can answer it but how come some people are homicidal and some people are suicidal?
Tony: That’s interesting.
Kinna: Another show or…
Tony: Yeah I think that’s a whole other show.
Will: Wow.
Tony: But I, I hope that you’re not asking for a specific reason.
Kinna: Uhhhh no. I have a cousin that I’m asking for.
Tony: Yeah, he wanted to know why do I want to punch you? Um okay we’re out of time but I want to wrap up by saying this, that uh I think the main thing to understand is that if you are dealing with depression, know that uh it’s, you’re not wrong. It’s, it’s really going on. There’s things that are really causing that. I know people have probably told you that it’s in your head or why don’t you just not be depressed. But they don’t understand what’s going on. So know that it’s real, but also know that you can do things about it. And that you can take steps to improve it. And that even your, you know situation can get much better. So hop it up.
Kinna: Oh yeah. Alright so if you want to learn more about how to look at chemistry you can read any of Tony’s books, or take the free four week Digestion Course at kickitinthenuts.com. Catch us on the next episode where we’ll be talking about something.
Tony: Probably anxiety.
Kinna: Yeah, maybe anxiety. But don’t be too anxious waiting. Uh alright, thanks for tuning in to Kick it Naturally where it’s okay to talk about your poop.
Tony: Oh yeah, and poop! Oh bye, bye.
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