Balanced Brain Chemistry: Neurotransmitters Made Easy
On this week’s episode we take a close look at neurotransmitters, some common and some you may not have heard of before, and how they affect your everyday wellbeing. From depression, insomnia, and a multitude of other symptoms, having balanced brain chemistry is an important part of keeping us functioning our best.
Meet Dr. Pavey:
Our guest, Dr. Vanessa Pavey, is a naturopathic doctor and Education Scientist at Life Extension. She enjoys discussing the mechanism of how nutrition influences the body and is committed to improving health through education. Trained as a primary care physician and skilled in medical biochemistry, she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of Saint Francis before training in Naturopathic Medicine at Bastyr University. Dr. Pavey has been helping to educate Life Extension customers on the science of a healthier life since 2014.
Some Points We Discuss:
What are neurotransmitters and how do we balance them? (5:19)
What is involved in a test for neurotransmitters? (9:53)
What are the different kinds of neurotransmitters? (12:32)
What impact does MSG have on our brain? (2:27)
What is the importance of glutamine in our diet and can we make too much glutamate as a result? (25:59)
Some Key Takeaways From This Episode:
Stress can have a huge impact on our neurotransmitters. (6:22)
Neurotransmitters are found throughout the whole body, not just in the brain. (8:21)
The two major neurotransmitters are glutamate and GABA. (22:59)
Products + Resources:
Thank you to this episode’s sponsor: Nutrigold
Get Social with Dr. Pavey:
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:37 Hey everyone and welcome back to The Holistic Navigator Podcast where we believe in the body's capacity for self healing, if it's given the proper nutrients and care it deserves. My name is Brian Strickland. I'm the producer of the show. And as always, I'm joined in the studio today by our host, Ed Jones. On this week's episode, we're talking with Dr. Vanessa Pavey. Dr. Pavey is a naturopathic doctor and education scientist at Life Extension. She enjoys discussing the mechanism of how nutrition influences the body and is committed to improving health through education. And today, we're talking about the world of neurotransmitters. Unbalanced brain chemistry contributes to depression, insomnia, lack of energy, and so much more. So to say it's an important part of our well being is a bit of an understatement. Today, we're looking at how to find out if your neurotransmitters are functioning properly, and what to do if they're not in we have a packed show today. It's chock full of great information. So I'm going to hop off and introduce you to your host, Mr. Ed Jones.
Ed Jones 01:42 Thank you very much, Brian. And again, this is Ed Jones with The Holistic Navigator. And I have a topic today that I have been searching for an organized format for quite some time, actually, for at least a couple years. And it deals with brain function and neuro transmitters. And I want to help empower people who are so sometimes very frustrated about the the options that we seem to not realize that we have in order to balance brain chemistry. And if we know anything about health, you know, the physical body sometimes can be fairly functional. But when those brain neurotransmitters are out of balance, life becomes a great challenge. There's no doubt from from hyperactivity to fatigue, brain fog, depression, anxiety. All of this is rooted in brain chemistry. Of course, we know and if anyone's listened to me for the past two and a half years, we know that the brain is not a separate entity, it is very fully connected to the human body, the physiology gut function, which all contributes to the balance within the brain. So it's not just a separate piece we fix. And that's what we of course, thrive on here at the holistic navigator is the the synergy between every piece of the puzzle of the human body well today. And I wanted to have a true expert on this so that I could inform everyone and also learn more for myself. But today we have Dr. Vanessa Pavey. She's a naturopathic doctor and education scientist at Life Extension. And she was trained as a primary care physician and skilled in medical biochemistry. And she earned her by a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of St. Francis. Before training in naturopathic medicine at Bastyr. And I love Bastyr University. And I actually so respect a naturopath because they understand about the importance of looking for the why of disorders in the body instead of just labeling and looking at the what and treating a symptom. So, welcome to The Holistic Navigator, Dr. Pavey.
Dr. Pavey 04:05 Thank you so much for having me.
Ed Jones 04:07 And, you know, I tend to initially ramble a good bit because that's just my nature. And if you get me drinking tequila, I really ramble. So we're not on tequila this morning. So I'll do my best to not go too far. But I after 42 years of helping hopefully 10s of 1000s of people by listening to their health challenges and many of those can be emotional, not just physical. And I've always tried to, to search. I think if there's any word for me over my four plus decades, I am a seeker of better answers, not just the standard protocol of Oh, it's in PubMed. So this is what we do. So much of health relates to wisdom, as much as knowledge and wisdom comes from experience and it comes from also being connected to that word wisdom. And I know, I learned so much from the people that I interact with. And one of those is my daughter, about three years ago, or maybe a tiny bit last, she experienced some pretty significant emotional fluctuations, I guess we would use that word. And you know, I love experimenting with different remedies to help balance brain chemistry working on gut function. But I wanted to get more specific help in far as instead of just guessing. And so I ordered a neurotransmitter testing from Life Extension. And I have it in front of me, actually, my daughter's neurotransmitter test. And I want to talk some about that, Dr. Pavey, because we're kind of stumbling in the dark. And it doesn't mean you can't find answers. But doing something like this test allows us to have some real concrete options, as far as what are the next steps to take with lifestyle, nutrient intervention, perhaps drug intervention, changes of something you're now doing in order to find and balance the neurotransmitters? And does that sound reasonable to you?
Dr. Pavey 06:16 Oh, we can certainly talk about what these neurotransmitters represent. Absolutely. And, I mean, this is such a timely topic anyway, because stress as well can have a huge impact on our neurotransmitters. And recently, a lot of people are under even more stress than I would say, than typical. In fact, I pulled up some statistics, like, for example, some data from the CDC. Now, their data, the most recent is between 2015 to 2018. But about 13% of Americans over the age of 18 reported taking an antidepressant. And what's even more, kind of shocking to me is that between 2015 and 2018, about a quarter of the women above the age of 60, also reported taking antidepressants. So testing neurotransmitters is a really important piece of the puzzle. And it's not typically part of routine testing. But to find out what's going on looking at not just one or two neurotransmitters like not just looking at, like, for example, serotonin, because most people would say, Okay, let's jump to serotonin, if there's low mood, but we need to actually balance all of the neurotransmitters. So that's why these panels, like for example, the one that you have in front of you can give us such great information about what's going on with our biochemistry.
Ed Jones 07:49 That is exciting news. And is actually, I've never really super delved into advising other people of this, even though I did get my daughter to do it. And I want to change that. Because it's like the pulling in a gas station, you don't have a fuel gauge to know how much how low am I on something? So you're really, you really have no clue. So you just take a chance? And what before we go any further, basically what is a neurotransmitter and list a few of those so people kind of have a real connection to what we're speaking about.
Dr. Pavey 08:21 Oh, absolutely. So neurotransmitters are those little tiny chemical messengers that are not just in our brain, because oftentimes we think of neurotransmitters in our brain, but actually neurotransmitters work all throughout our body. And really, their primary role that a lot of people are familiar with is that they regulate like for example, emotions, but also cognition, and even our physical responses, like for example, muscle contraction. So for example, I mean, it they help to support our memory or attention, movement, appetite, energy levels with a lot of people. That's the number one complaint for primary care doctors are people coming in saying they have not enough energy feeling fatigued. So again, neurotransmitters should be looked at.
Ed Jones 09:16 Absolutely, and I do a podcast many of those I've got 96 or something like that now and one of them is on anxiety and depression and I list on that one or the other one where I think the other one was why am I so tired all the time and I list on there, the number one side effect of depression is fatigue. So many people physically may have their bodies are doing okay. But when you have a true level of even melancholy before full depression, fatigue is one of the first symptoms that generally can arise. So you know, taking nutrients for energy will help probably so what we do is with this test is neurotransmitter test, which is administered at home is an explain how this test is so easy to do.
Dr. Pavey 10:06 Oh, absolutely. So it's just a very simple urine collection. So we can do urine, like the first void of the morning or the second void. It's your option. But what they're measuring because of the fact that it's urine, some people ask, Well, how does a urine test tell us what's going on in the brain? Well, here's the thing about urine neurotransmitter testing. It's actually giving us information about full body, whole body neurotransmitters levels, which correlate really nicely, especially in some studies, like, for example, correlating what's going on in the brain with serotonin versus whole body like urine. So there's very good correlation between the two. However, I mean, we can't just talk about the brain. For example, in naturopathic medicine, we talk about, you know, looking at the whole body, treating the whole person. Like, for example, GABA, and serotonin, and we'll talk about some of these neurotransmitters in a moment in, you know, in kind of who they are and what they do. But I wanted to let you know that like GABA and serotonin are created in the digestive tract, not just the brain. There are neurotransmitter receptors for glutamate that are found throughout the body, like for example, in the kidneys and the heart. Our adrenal glands make neurotransmitters, people are familiar with the term adrenaline, that's actually a neurotransmitter. The more medical term for adrenaline is epinephrine. And the adrenal glands also create another neurotransmitter called norepinephrine. So really, we want to know what's going on with the whole body, not just what's going on in the brain. Now in terms of accuracy, because that's usually what most people act ask, is this test accurate? Well, this particular test for urine that neurotransmitter testing that Life Extension provides, is using a type of technology called high performance liquid chromatography, tandem mass spectrometry, which is actually the gold standard of testing. It's a really highly accurate methodology to measure the amount of neurotransmitters in the urine. So let's kind of discuss what these serotonins and GABAs and a little bit of detail on those. So typically how I think about neurotransmitters is I lump the neurotransmitters into two major groups. We have our excitatory neurotransmitters that kind of get the body revved up. And then we have our inhibitory neurotransmitters, which kind of calm the body down. Well, in for whole body health, we actually want a balance between the two. We don't want to have an over excitatory activity in the body, and then low inhibitory but then again, we don't want too much inhibitory either because that can make us feel sluggish with low excitatory. So we really need to achieve a balance between these two major groups. Now, our major excitatory neurotransmitters include dopamine, adrenaline, glutamate, histamine, and a neurotransmitter called PEA which some people aren't familiar with. PEA stands for phenol ethyl amine. It's one of my favorite neurotransmitters and I'll explain why, what it does to support our system. But the major inhibitory neurotransmitters the second group include serotonin, GABA and glycine.
Ed Jones 14:10 Well, that's actually so interesting to me on the PEA because we I've done one podcast on PEA with another person that I respected in regard to neuropathy pain, and also the study that I know was presented through one of the Life Extension magazines on glaucoma. And it was very impressive. In fact, I sent that study to a couple of the eye Doc's here in this town. I'm excited to learn about the PEA because I'm actually taking it myself for some nerve issues. And I literally did not know it was a neurotransmitter. So thank you, Dr. Pavey for educating me on that. And I think it's going to be a rising star as far as the options for people. And again, I want to encourage people just because you get this test and you're showing some imbalances, there are plenty of information And now to help you help yourself through the the means of lifestyle, nutrition, and perhaps, perhaps a drug down the road. But we always try to encourage people to do everything possible before we reached the level of the prescription, because those have significant side effects, they also can save lives at certain points. But that's really at the the last stage either. So 90% of people could be balanced with out having to resort to those most of the time. Now I know the test that I did for Cady, it was about looks like it was maybe three years ago, it looks like you have really, actually five years ago, Wow, you really updated this test. Because when I'm looking at this list of the basic and the comprehensive, you have a lot of stuff that you are checking, including PEA, I'm going to order this test soon after we finished with you today. Because I am so interested in this. So a person will by the purchase a test online at which website tell that now?
Dr. Pavey 16:06 Oh, well, you can call into Life Extension. But you can also order online at lifeextension.com.
Ed Jones 16:14 Okay. And so they would do that they're going to get a kit, right? Or you tell me I don't remember, it's been too many years when I had my daughter do it what happens? So get a box in the mail or what?
Dr. Pavey 16:26 Yes. So it will be something that you can collect at home at your convenience, it does come in a box that has the little vials for the first or second urine collection of the day. It also does have a ice pack. So I want to remind everyone, if you do order this test, make sure that you put the ice pack in the freezer the night before, so it's nice and frozen when you collect your urine. Also, it does come with a two day shipping. So after you collect the urine, it is very important to make sure that you get it in the mail right away, so we can get it onto the laboratory to get your results. Also, prior to doing the collection, it does come with some instructions. So there are certain foods that may impact your neurotransmitters. So for 48 hours prior to the collection, you may want to avoid the foods on that list. And it does require fasting. So please don't eat anything before you collect your first morning or second morning void of the day. Because we do want to make sure that you know if you have some coffees that can certainly impact our neurotransmitters, right? You know, coffee is stimulating. So we want to make sure that we're getting accurate representation of what's going on with the neurotransmitter levels without food influence.
Ed Jones 17:55 Now what about a person who already like myself, I take an impact on my The Holistic Navigator on the sleep issue. I feel like Gaba has saved my life overall, because I'm a chronic Insomniac. I do it in the middle of the night so that I can calm that cognitive popcorn is going off in my head, and I get back to sleep without my GABA I would be in that lightened stage. And it would be disastrous to my next day in the next life, actually. So I use GABA a lot. So if I'm using that for sleep, what I need to come off of anything nutritionally for a few days?
Dr. Pavey 18:34 Now, here's here, that's a good question, because I actually get these kind of detailed questions of, well, if I'm taking this, should I stop it? Or should I continue it prior to my test results? Well, here's what I might encourage, it really depends on what you want to see. If you want to see your test results with what you're taking. Because if you're if you're happy with your regimen that's helping, and you want to make sure that everything is staying in balance with your GABA support. Absolutely go ahead and continue taking it. But we hopefully what we're going to see are some nice balanced levels of GABA. But if you want to see what your baseline levels are, say, for example, you hadn't tested before starting your GABA support and you want to see well what are my baseline levels what what's going on, it really just depends on kind of getting off of it and making sure that this is what your your body is creating. And remember, it's not just the brain, the body can create GABA as well like for example in the digestive tract because some people want to see what is you know, my digestive tract attributing to it, you know, especially if there's like digestive issues or concerns with like dysbiosis which can have a huge impact on GABA as well. But as a general rule usually discontinuing something that you're you've been consistently taking is usually between six and eight weeks. However, GABA doesn't have a very long half life. So it may be better to maybe just stop for a week. Although that may be a rough week if you're feeling good on the GABA.
Ed Jones 20:20 This is such good common sense. And then, you know, I tend to get outspoken sometimes it seemed like there's a lacking of common sense and conversations of health in many professionals. And that's why I strive to find people like yourself, which I already knew, clearly that you, you think outside the box. And you also have common sense to help people with this information. Now, we you know, two of my podcast I have done with Brenda Watson, which was on she was on PBS for probably 14 years on the gut, and the gut flora, and what do we need to do about it? And everybody knows about probiotics, the picture's much bigger than just grab a bottle and expect to get four results. So I encourage people to listen to my podcast with Brenda Watson, one of them long term solutions for bacterial overgrowth in the gut called CBOE that was one of my recent ones, and she was very informative. And anytime I don't know if everybody listening has the same experience as I do, I think they do. If I get food poisoning, or I had a stomach bug, I get terribly anxious. And it's not totally because I'm not feeling well. It's because it's disturbed. The the factory that makes a lot as you say, a huge percentage of these brain neurotransmitters produced in the gut, well, the guts, really upset, of course, it's going to upset the cart all the way down the pathways to the brain, and then the brains making me feel anxious. It's making me feel depressed. And until I get well from my gut, so do I treat the brain? Well, not really, I treat the gut. That's the way to get better quickly. Again, education is the key. And I say this, MIT said it many times, on my Holistic Navigator, I set the world separate the world into two classes of people, those that are learners and those that are non learners. The non learners are pretty much doomed because if you go to doc in the box, and you just get regular treatments, you will only be treated with pharmaceuticals that are generally treating symptoms only. I want to fix the body. I know you want to fix it up the body, because that's the only solution for the long haul. I don't want to make one quick statement about because I'm on this rant right now, my anti MSG rant monosodium glutamate in foods and it seems that more and more restaurants are adding it to their sauces and they're gravies and her this part of its lack of information. The other part, it's an addictive kind of chemical because it's an exciting story chemical as you explain glutamate is a neurotransmitter. Well, MSG, what does MSG do to the glutamate levels because it makes my pulse go up significantly very, very fast. And I feel awful for hours. So how is that working in my brain?
Dr. Pavey 22:59 Oh, absolutely great point because MSG stands for monosodium glutamate. It does have this incredibly excitatory activity in the body. In fact, I'd like to just think about our two major neurotransmitters. Most people would say if I asked that question, they would say oh, well, probably dopamine and serotonin because those are the usually the ones that are talked about the most, however no. The two major neurotransmitters are glutamate and GABA. Glutamate is our major excitatory neurotransmitter. GABA is our major calming neurotransmitter, which is oftentimes the go to one to help to support sleep. Although there are other pathways as well. Like for example, glycine, even though it's an amino acid it does have a neurotransmitter effect by helping to calm the system down. So that can be another great one to add to help to support your a more calm, restful sleep. But also, serotonin. Serotonin in of itself is a little bit more calming, even though it does contribute to our happiness and well being. But serotonin is the precursor to making melatonin, our sleep hormone. So it's supporting those kind of inhibitory calming neurotransmitters all together are very helpful, which is why the testing is great to do so we can see which levels are high, which ones are low. But on the MSG side of things. Glutamate is incredibly stimulating, and most of us are not low on glutamate. Now, those who are low on glutamate for some reason, like for example, if we're they're not bringing in or making enough glutamine, the amino acid precursor to making glutamate for example, if you're very protein deficient, there is a potential glutamate might be a little low. And that can actually create kind of like foggy thinking because we do need glutamate for memory and thinking and kind of that excitatory function. But most people don't have that problem. Most of us are getting plenty of protein, plenty of glutamine and making lots of wonderful glutamate. So adding extra glutamate from the diet can actually create an overstimulation and lead to excitotoxicity, which can actually be damaging to our brain cells.
Ed Jones 25:29 Yeah, that's this great explanation and that can damage to a point of actually disease. And that my number one question is, and I'd actually don't have the knowledge to know this, and I don't absolutely expect you to you may. Are these athletes and myself who are taking glutamine in our protein drinks, are we subjecting ourselves to a little risk of too much glutamate? Or is there a feedback loop that's actually going to manage that so that we don't have to worry about it. Glutamine being a natural amino acid, and is found in all proteins, and we need it I know is a total thing. And also secondarily, the people who have leaky gut. And I'll many of the intestinal healing products utilize glutamine because five grams of it can be extremely healing to the inner lining of the gut in very quick order, actually, the gut needs glutamine. Where Where should I advise people that are concerned about the glutamate level? Where am I with that?
Dr. Pavey 26:34 Oh, that's a fantastic question. Because now glutamine, its itself, the amino acid is actually it's not essential. It's so important, our body can actually make it from other amino acids. However, it is the most abundant amino acid in circulation. So we need it not just for our muscles, because that was a great point. I mean, our muscles contain a lot of glutamine. So we do actually need to make sure we have plenty of glutamine for our muscles, our digestive tract, like you mentioned, but also people don't know or typically don't know that glutamine is the major fuel source for our immune cells. So we actually need glutamine to help to support our immune cell function. So a very, very important amino acid now, because of the fact that is the amino acid precursor to making glutamate some people get concerned about Oh, am I overdoing glutamate contributing to excitotoxicity however, glutamate, actually is the precursor to making GABA. So how it works is when you when you bring in glutamine, it will convert into glutamate, and it does so by an enzyme that we have in our body called glutamine synthetase. However, glutamate doesn't just always stay as glutamate, it can turn into GABA, but here's the thing. It needs help from vitamin B six, in the active form called pyridoxal, five phosphate. If we're lacking pyridoxal five phosphate in our system, we could potentially have a backup of a little bit too much excess glutamate.
Ed Jones 28:25 So the deficiency of B six in that co enzymated form would tend to prevent that right?
Dr. Pavey 28:32 Maybe not necessarily prevent but it sure does help support that pathway. So it's typically bringing in glutamine is very unlikely going to attribute to excessive glutamate in a healthy individual. But we want to make sure that we are providing the body those important to be vitamin precursors and packed the neurotransmitters rely on many of these important B vitamins. Like for example, not just the active form of vitamin B six but also vitamin B two which is riboflavin, niacin, the B three like niacinamide and niacin itself. Also the active form of B nine the the fully active form which is methyl tetrahydrofolate. Another very important v vitamin for creating neurotransmitters.
Ed Jones 29:34 Well, I'm glad you brought that up because we're getting near the end here and I want people again to understand that that you know the devil is in the details and I've learned that so well over 40 years. You just don't go out and buy your normal drugstore brand B complex and expect to get the word like use the word the active form, the most efficient form, the co-enzymated form. Many, many formulas I see are the same that I found in 1970 when I was shopping in stores. No the science is very clear on the fact that this co-enzymated is the choice to make. So anyone listening, you know, understand, you need to find the right people, the right businesses to support that going on no invent the products. I mean, The Holistic Navigator is moderately sponsored by nutritionw.com. And at nutritionw.com. All of that work has been done, nothing is available that hasn't met the standards of science and wisdom. So please, I encourage you, if you can't find a reliable local source of experts, go to nutritionw.com to purchase these products. I just love this information. Dr. Pavey. It is so valuable, it's going to be so helpful to many people that myself and many of ours are our practitioners and our staff, speak to people about. And tell us approximately, I know time will change things approximately the cost and the fact that you have two tests, you have one that is the basic and one that is a comprehensive. Do you recall about how much those are?
Dr. Pavey 31:11 I do so our comprehensive neurotransmitter urine test typically runs $295. But every year Life Extension puts on a big sale. And now these prices can change from year to year, but our current sale prices $221.25 for the comprehensive. And I'll give a quick explanation of the difference between the comprehensive and basic but our basic typically runs $199. And it's currently on sale for $149.25. Now, what is the difference between the two is that the basic test is running those important neurotransmitters. We've got serotonin and dopamine, GABA and glutamate, epinephrine and norepinephrine and glycine, histamine and PEA. So a great variety of neurotransmitters to see what's going on which ones are high, which ones are low, which ones are in balance. But our comprehensive goes a little bit further, because it's actually looking at some of the breakdown products of these neurotransmitters. Because sometimes this one is high, or one is low, we don't necessarily know Is it because we're not making enough? Or is it because our body's breaking them down too quickly? So the comprehensive one, yeah, that one's going to give us some indication of whether it's a production issue, or we're breaking the end, or the excuse me, the neurotransmitters don't too quickly. So these would include metabolites like for example, high remain, and tryptamine, which are trace a means that our breakdown products of some of the amino acids that are used to creating these neurotransmitters, we can get some information on some other like, for example, dopamine breakdown products, like dough pack, and three empty, and some breakdown products of like our epinephrine and norepinephrine, and serotonin. So it gives us a lot more detail.
Ed Jones 33:20 Wow, that's, that is such a worthy investment, because at least every other person that I speak to, and you may find it true also, if they could flip a switch of any switch within their own human body, the one that makes a sense of well being would be the switch that I would want more than almost anything else probably energy would be second. But that sense of well being I don't care how energetic I am, if I'm if I'm flipping between a little anxiety and melancholy and, and hyperactivity and hypo activity in the brain, it's it's a pretty challenging way to live a life I'm almost 64 and I've had many, many years of trying to manage that's what I actually know that has to be done within myself. It's managing, you can't, you're not gonna go in and super fix. But we all need a toolbox we need we need access to options that are one not toxic to effective. And getting this information is so valuable. In fact, I'm just about to complete a class with Dr. Aman. Dr. Amon has written 18 books. I think he had nine of them on the New York Times bestseller on brain health. And he does a SPECT analysis, which is more of a scan of the brain and actually is very interesting. And once I get this certification, I will be a certified Dr. Aman brain coach. And he's very much into the same exact recommendations as you and I are speaking about the nutrient supports and the gut supports that balances these brain chemistries. So the world is changing for the positive and I'm very excited. I remember really not that long ago, maybe 10 years ago, vitamin D test could easily have been $150. Well, now you're getting a test at telling all of your brain chemistry for almost the same amount. So we are evolving into a much more efficient and empowering system, which does require the person to take steps. And we have to get out of this mindset that insurance, the government, other people should be paying. Now they're going to pay for emergencies, they're going to pay for the things you run to the hospital for, they're not going to take care of you preventatively. It is on us to do that for the ones we love and the one and our own physical mental body. So you know, and I'll and I know, I'm going to say exactly the same thing that you believe in, you know, many of the things that balanced brain chemistry really involves sleep, adequate protein, gut health, finding pleasure in life, just having pleasure helps to balance it by lowering and upping the kind of different imbalances. Meditating every single day. Meditating doesn't mean you're trying to escape from your world, you're finding peace within the battle of your world, sunlight. And then of course, my king is exercise. I exercise every single morning, I get up at about 4:15 at the latest. I'm at the gym, every Monday through Friday. I don't ever waver. And I'm overly disciplined and I don't expect other people to do that. But exercise is such an important way to balance these brain chemicals. And I know you would agree to all that, wouldn't it, Dr. Pavey?
Dr. Pavey 36:26 I agree. The balancing of the brain chemicals is a really important piece of our overall health. Absolutely.
Ed Jones 36:35 Well, I have found this and I know our listeners will find it extremely, not only informative, but some will find it actually life saving. And I appreciate all of that information. And I know I've always had this feel that you and I will be having another podcast in the upcoming months because I've got already several topics I would like to delve into with you. And if that's good with you, we will stay in contact.
Dr. Pavey 37:00 Oh, fantastic. I look forward to it.
Ed Jones 37:02 All right, Dr. Pavey, and thank everyone listening again, for empowering yourself. And I'm here as as long as there's breath coming out of my lungs, I will be doing this podcast. And you know, the more I learned, the more I want to learn. And we are as a society, I think COVID has been a blessing because it has opened the eyes and the doors of so many individuals and health professionals to know that we have more options than what that little toolbox of traditional teachings has as kind of supported. And you know, the pill for an ill system which is the traditional system is coming to the forefront that it's not really the most efficient and somewhat of a broken system in many cases. And that's what we are encompassing here at the Holistic Navigator all of you have a safe and fearless day. Until next time, this is Ed Jones with The Holistic Navigator.
Brian Strickland 38:03 The information on this podcast and the topics discussed have not been evaluated by the FDA or anyone of the medical profession and is not aimed to replace any advice you may receive from your medical practitioner. The holistic navigator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of any purchaser or listener if these materials the listing navigator is not a doctor or does he claim to be please consult your physician before beginning any health regimen.