Toxins, pathogens & inflammation how our immune system & brain interact to affect our mental health
Channel: Jill Carnahan, MD
Date: 2022-12-07

Board Certified in Family Medicine and in Integrative Holistic Medicine, Dr. Jill Carnahan is a Functional Medicine expert known for her experience with #guthealth, immunity, and #detoxification. In 2010 she founded the Flatiron Functional Medicine Practice, and in February 2023 will release her book Unexpected: Finding Resilience through Functional Medicine, Science, and Faith. An inspirational survivor of breast cancer and Crohn's Disease, she has lived experience of how Functional Medicine can help you recover and thrive when faced with complex and chronic illness.

In this fascinating interview she discusses some lesser known factors of poor mental health, explaining how a #leakygut, #toxins, pathogens and environmental stressors can underlie depression, insomnia, cognitive decline, anxiety, ADHD, and even trauma response. Committed to treating the root causes of illness rather than just its symptoms, Dr. Carnahan explains the mechanism of immune system activation and dysfunction, and its interaction with nervous system dysfunction and mental health issues. She sheds light on the emerging field of #psychoneuroimmunology, which examines the impact of inflammatory toxins, pathogens and psychological factors on the immune system, nervous system and in turn our mental health; and gives us top tips on how we can detoxify and heal.

Learn about:
- Dr. Jill Carnahan’s incredible story of overcoming aggressive breast cancer at the age of 25, and then Crohn's Disease only 6 months later, and her discovery of how Functional Medicine can help the body detoxify and heal during (and after) vital conventional treatment of complex and chronic illness
- What lipopolysaccharide (LPS) endotoxemia is and why leaky gut poses such a big (if not the biggest) risk to our mental health 
- The biochemical knock-on effect of gut cell permeability; how it triggers an immune response and the overproduction of the cytokine IL-6, and how this can impact our mental health 
- Why chemical insults (mould, environmental toxins, etc) can trigger the amygdala into a flight and fight response in the same way that a psychological stressor would
- How toxins and past trauma become linked in our nervous systems, so that environmental stressors can trigger mental health symptoms and a trauma response  
- Why infectious burdens (from viruses such as chicken pox, epstein-barr, or tick-borne infections) resurface during times of stress and weaken the immune system, leaving us more vulnerable to environmental toxins 
- How in turn, environmental toxins such as mould can overrun our immune systems, leaving us vulnerable to reactivation of dormant pathogens as well as heavy metals  
- Top tips and supplements for detoxification of environmental toxins (mould, air pollution) and pathogens (viral and bacterial infections), and reprogramming of our trauma response
- Why “evidence” is not always the right metric to back up the complexity and uniqueness of each patient case
- Why pushing beyond mainstream treatments for mental health issues (such as CBT, SSRIs) is key to healing, and why we can treat the causes not just the symptoms of mental health

Find out more at MindHealth360, your free guide to head to toe mental health: https://www.mindhealth360.com/

DR. JILL'S NEW BOOK "UNEXPECTED" PRE-ORDER NOW!  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B7T7QCMR/
In Unexpected, Dr. Jill Carnahan shares her story of facing life-altering illness, fighting for her health, and overcoming sickness using both science and faith so that others can learn to live their own transformative stories. Order now!  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B7T7QCMR/