The link between physical health and mental well-being, focusing on testosterone levels, gut health, and exercise. Discusses how low testosterone and gut disturbances can contribute to depression, emphasizing the importance of addressing these issues. The positive impact of exercise on mood regulation and offers practical advice for improving mental health.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:19 – The body talks to the brain

01:32 – The women’s levels are wrong

02:53 – The adrenals rely on a lot of information

06:35 – The cerebellum

08:57 – The problem with doing at the end of the day

09:35 – Get your testosterone levels up

10:27 – Depression stuff

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] Getting more and more questions about, stress, depression, mental health. We do a lot of work on that. The, the brain is not isolated from the rest of the body. So we’re going to have lots and lots of gut musculature, brain function. The body talks to the brain as much as the brain talks to the body. And so when we look at depression, when we look at, anxiety, when we look at mental issues, there’s a lot of things that are easily knocked out. So whenever we get kid anybody, I don’t care if they’re 15 years old or 25 or 70, like whenever somebody comes in and they’ve got depression issues, there’s a couple of things we check first. The first thing I always check is their testosterone levels. And we’ll give we’ll raise testosterone levels of teenagers, 17, 18 year olds. And it’s amazing to me how quickly this is specifically in men and boys, 17, 18, 19 year old boys, who have depression, who are clinically depressed, who are, you know, gaining weight and just they just life is just miserable for these guys. And we check them and their testosterone is 220 or 230. We raise it back up to 1000.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:11] And within like two, three months, 90% of their depression issues are gone. We’ll also go back through and we’ll start working on gut issues. So first things we always checked out our testosterone. So I don’t care how old you are man. Woman doesn’t matter if you have depression anxiety issues. Get your testosterone levels checked from somebody who knows what they’re doing. All the women’s levels are wrong. You guys need more than 40 or 50 testosterone levels. But testosterone is the first one to check. Second thing to check is what is the status of the gut? The reason for this is that the vast majority of the serotonin that is made for your brain to use is made in your gut. That’s why they call the gut the second brain. You know, neurons are there, and everything else is so wildly important. So the problem we get into with the serotonin, serotonin creation in the gut is that we do lots and lots of things on a daily basis to destroy that ability. So antibiotics are one of the number one things we see.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:08] There’s there’s research out stating, you know, antibiotic treatment correlating with depression anxiety issues and even, you know, past, you know, higher, longer dosages of antibiotics leading to months later, prescriptions for antidepressants. So when you kill the good bacteria in the gut with antibiotic stress, parasitic infections, whatever, there’s a host of reasons that will die. Your body doesn’t process nutrients as well. You start producing methylation function, so the liver starts having issues. And as you start having less probiotics, you start having more yeast overgrowth. So we have yeast issues. Well, all of that is really bad for the gut. It’s bad for nutrient absorption. It’s back to nutrient function. It’s terrible for the adrenals because the adrenals rely on a lot of information. I’m sorry. Oh, it was chemicals to to, produce the chemicals your body needs to keep at bay and things like that. Blood pressure issues, oxygen issues. So when the gut gets messed up, everything kind of goes sideways. So we’ve got to check on that first. We got to go through kill the parasites, kill the yeast, restore the probiotic balance, and then give the body lots and lots of collagen. Because your body takes collagen, specifically tryptophan takes tryptophan breaks it into five HTP, five HTP in the serotonin. But your gut has to do that. So that’s the big issue.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:27] You got to restore the got function restore that healthy balance. inflammation of all kinds is going to create problems. This is why I, you know, we talk about the standard American diet with all the high fructose, you know, the high glycemic foods, that turn into sugar instantly, which is not the way your body’s used to saying it. That damages everything in the body. There’s lots and lots of, xeno and phyto, estrogens. So soy, is a big one. There’s a bunch of other ones that create all sorts of issues. Lots of people have inflammatory reactions to, a lot of the fake foods that are out that inflammation damages the gut, keeps it from functioning the way it’s supposed to, and further propagates this issue. So when we have somebody who comes in with anxiety and depression, stuff like that, we really, really focus on getting the testosterone up, clean the gut up, restoring probiotic function so you can restore that, the creation of serotonin. And then we do lots of these Kenny Castor packs you take, Allison is a great one for the kidneys. Kidney complex. We use those. You can find all those on a partial almost website. We use those a lot to help clean the kidneys that loosen that up. And it gives a kidney. In eastern medicine is the wellspring of life. So anxiety and depression lives a lot in the kidneys. In fact, when people come in with anxiety attacks, panic attacks, that’s the thing we’ll do. Kidney cast retraction or palms, red heat. And 30, 40 minutes later, they’re totally gone. So keep that in mind. As well as kidney packs for a big player.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:57] Probably the number one thing that I recommend. Next would be exercise. There is copious amounts, just ridiculous amounts of research on mental health and exercise. The reason that this works is that your body creates all this information of where you are. You’re moving your pitch, you’re leaning, you’re rotated. You have this much pressure on this joint, this much pressure on that joint. This muscles over here, that muscles over here. All that information from your tiptoes, all the way up to your nose is being directly fed into the brain constantly. Well, that that relies on this very specific pathway. It’s a proprioception and, motor pathway. Those pathways are graded in the brain much, much higher than anything else. So what I mean by that is that when we shove all this information to the brain, the brain has to figure out, okay, I can only deal with so much of this at one time. What am I going to deal with right now? And so having it shoved down on the side, that proposition, that movement, that where we are in space, how are we moving. That’s paramount. And the reason for that is because if you move wrong, you’re going to hurt yourself. If you don’t know where you are in space, you’re going to bump into stuff. You’re going to bang into stuff, you’re going to be uncoordinated, and that’s going to cause further injury and damage.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:14] So your body loses that first. This is why if you bang your shin and you walk it off, the pain goes way faster than if you just stood there. Because you have all of this other information. Your brain goes, I’m gonna listen to movement and not to pay. And so it literally makes that decision. Now, the cool thing is that as you start spooling that up, all this information comes from your body, up your spinal cord to your cerebellum. The cerebellum then forces it to the frontal lobe so you can make sense out of it as you fire up that frontal lobe is suppresses the temporal function. That’s where the amygdala is. We’ve talked about this before. So fear, hate, anger, terror, anxiety, all that stuff. Living in the amygdala. In the temporal lobe. Your frontal lobe can help suppress that. So as you exercise, what’s ended up happening is that that that’s happening in your brain. And it’s kind of calming down and telling you amygdala dude, quit. Listen to this. It’s not that big of a deal. Calm down. Everything will be fine. Move on. That’s why whenever we tell people who have anxiety issues or depression issues have stress issues, that working out the number one thing that they can do on a daily basis to kind of keep things running near the bear.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:17] So if you have anxiety, if you have depression, getting into the gym, going outside for a walk, doing some physical exercise is the number one thing to do. So we talk about when’s the best time to do it. The best time is just getting into that. So I like to work out between, 1230 and two. The reason I do that is because that’s in the middle of my day. So I wake up and I’ve got to deal with all the emails that came in overnight, with people in other countries. I’m trying to work with all that stuff. And so my stress kind of starts coming up, and then it stays up pretty high. And then I go home at lunch and I work out and it crashes that stress, like, all right, back down to the bottom. And then the rest of the day is kind of kind of picks back up. So I never get really high on my stress levels. But it gets about here and I crash it back down to baseline and I start building it back up. And I will tell you, the second half of my day is always more call, more relaxed, and more is just easier in the first half. If you guys are not working out and kind of paying attention to that start, pay attention to that.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:21] How calm were you? How relaxed were you, the issues that you were? They were bugging you beforehand. How are they afterwards? So unless people also work out. No, they no, you have to work out like just that’s the primary function. So if you can only get it in at 5 a.m., get in at 5 a.m., but you need to get that work at it. And if you start drifting in towards the middle of the day, you may maybe doing that as your lunch hour. That’ll really help the entire function and everything that you got going on. Whenever I have patients who have control of their schedule. This is one of the first things we always try to do is move the work out to the middle of the day. You can do it at the end of the day. The problem with doing at the end of the day is that most of the time you’re exhausted. You’ve spent all the energy throughout the day. And so your workout is not gonna be as great. But in today’s in a crash that stress like, well, go home, eat, relax, don’t do any more work. You’re going to get a great night’s sleep. So end of the day has its upsides as well. the upsides the number one upside to doing it in the morning is that you’ve done your workout. It’s over with and you get to move on with the rest of your day.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:22] So if you only time you can do it, it’s in the morning. Do it in the morning. But if you have control of your schedule middle or later, today can be a lot better from a stress standpoint. So if you guys can focus on those things mental health wise, get your testosterone levels up. We’re supposed to be get your gut reset. Exercise. You’re going to see a substantial change in the mental health issues. Anxiety, stress, depression, all those things. There’s no research out that says that exercise is going to, you know, increase your depression. So now, having said that, when we work out, we’re requiring a lot of nutrients from the body. So make sure your macros are really supposed to be make sure you’re supplementation is where it’s supposed. See your vitamins, your CoQ10, like all that stuff. Make sure that’s where it’s supposed to be. And you guys are gonna see a lot of change in your mental health.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:10] But that’s one of the things you got to stick with is for the first ten days, 2 or 3 weeks, your body is getting used to it. You’re going to be sore. You’re going to have all these, you know, I don’t wanna do this. All this, you know, negative thought on it. So give it 2 or 3 weeks and then kind of see how you feel on a more regular basis for that depression stuff. So if you guys have any other issues with that, questions on that. You know, obviously ketamine psychedelics is a phenomenal thing to add into that for mental health. Big fan to that. I can walk you guys to that if you need it to. We get so email questions at Chalmers on com we’ve got a bunch of questions right now. So we’ll hit that up tomorrow and we’ll answer your questions. So thanks for your time. I’ll see you guys, later that.

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Dr. Matt Chalmers

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