The connection between obesity, depression, and metabolic health is explored in depth, focusing on how both conditions share common metabolic functions. Treating them requires addressing hormonal imbalances, particularly testosterone and gut health. The crucial role of exercise in managing depression is highlighted, with practical advice on starting a fitness routine to improve mental well-being. Psychological techniques like NLP are also introduced as methods to help individuals reframe negative thought patterns that contribute to depression.
The role of psychedelics in treating trauma, particularly PTSD, is explored for their potential to unlock emotional barriers and improve mental health. Obesity and depression are linked to metabolic processes, increasing the risk of developing conditions like diabetes and dementia. Emphasis is placed on the importance of lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, to improve overall metabolic function and health, offering a holistic approach to tackling both obesity and depression.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:04 - Depression and Obesity Connection
01:10 - Testosterone and Gut Health
02:23 - Exercise for Depression
04:22 - Psychological Reframing
05:29 - Role of Psychedelics in Treating Trauma
07:41 - Metabolic Processes Linking Obesity, Depression, and Diabetes
14:18 - Lifestyle Changes and Metabolic Function
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] So I did a radio interview today and we're talking about GOP ones and the addiction function and depression. And it kind of made me realize that I have not walked through what we do for depression, especially in relation to obesity, because the two are so linked. So what we do with depression, when somebody comes in, they have, you know, I have low energy. I don't feel good. I just have kind of lost my verve for life, which is depression. It's like I don't like to go by basketball. Not really. Like, I see this movie. Not really. Like, you just. You just don't have the arms to go do things. So that's where we're clinically defining depression. So what we do for that is we always check hormone function first. So where's your testosterone levels? Because we've been treating depression with testosterone since 1935, and it's one of the very best things you can do for it. So it's also very, very quick. So check testosterone levels. That also helps with obesity because testosterone is the healing hormone. And so as far as metabolic function, a lot of your metabolism is driven by regeneration, healing and growth. And so that's testosterone.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:10] So check testosterone for both obesity and for depression. Second of all, we're going to look at your gut. How clean is your gut? All of your serotonin is made in your gut. Serotonin is the chief one of the chief neurotransmitters for depression. And so if your gut is messed up, you're not going to be making enough serotonin. Just flat out. That's just a fact. And so we clean up the got to get that going. Now, here's the other side of that Part of cleaning up the gut is monitoring and regulating glycine in function, hormonal function from nutrition from your food. So we changed the dietary things like we do for obesity and we do the same type of thing, almost exactly the same choices for obesity. And the reason is because you got to pull out the seed oils, you get a pull out, you know the dyes, you're going to pull out the high glycemic stuff, the highly processed stuff, because that chemistry messes up the liver in the gut, which, you know, is going to increase inflammation, is going to increase absorption of higher insulin functions. You're going to store more fat. So when RFK talks about the reason we're obese is because of the trashes in our food. Same reason we're depressed. So we got to clean those things out.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:23] So again, that's awesome. We go into dietary functional change and cleaning the got up. And the third one is that we start using very specific exercises to actually push back against depression. And there is zero research that we have found that shows when a slightly healthy person exercises it does anything but reduce depression. So if you if we're not exercising, we're missing legitimately the key thing, the number one thing from research we know to push back against depression. And so we really need to start working on getting those specific type of exercises in. And so sometimes you've got to build those up, right? Like you're you're not going to take anybody who doesn't work out and be like, okay, now workout like me. Like, work out an hour and a half, six days a week. Not going to happen. But you've got to walk them into what is acceptable for them right now. What can they do now and then build upon that as you go through as you, you know, meet with them throughout their their process.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:22] So the exercises are obviously the next one to go. Now where we start to differentiate. And so those all of those things work really well with obesity. And they work really, really well with depression. And so we always do those three now. After that, you should be kind of really kind of owning the obesity thing. So as far as the amount of fat that's in your body, we should we should really kind of own a lot of that. Now, if we need to do metabolic function like GLP one and stuff like that to reset metabolic function, which we have to do a lot because of the chemicals you've been eating have broken you hormonally, then yeah, we can use the other ones to reset that. But because we've made the lifestyle choices, not only are you not going to be fat in the future, you're also not going to suppress the future. So you have that pace. Now, when we start walking down the road of, okay, well, let's let's continue down the Depression road because your mental state is everything and we talk about this all the time. So what do we have to do next for that one? Well, so now we have to start reshaping or reframing the way we look at the world. And this is really, really critical. And it's a whole lot easier than people think it is.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:22] And so what we're going to do next is we're going to use something like NLP. You can use your waking hypnosis. There's there's several different techniques where you can start. I prefer NLP where we start looking at how how do you view the world and can we change the way that you view the world so that you view it in a much more beneficial way? And this is using reframe. This is using, you know, the way we filter society, filter information that comes in, and you really can change this subconscious function and you really can change it. And it's like I said, it's not super difficult, but you can get a lot of progress done in a short amount of time. So that's why I love the, you know, pace. And so you start doing that so that the way you look at the world, you're, you know, you fill your life with positivity instead of dwelling on the negative. And so that helps kind of really, really change all of the function. Now, one of the reasons that we can't do that is because we have a lot of past traumas. Those past traumas are what we refer to as PTSD. And so one of the things we can do is you can do psychotherapy, You can if you talk to people. I really like psychedelics for that.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:29] The research on psychedelics is like, Hey, we had a major, major issue that would have taken us years of therapy. Maybe we'd never would have gotten through it. And we get through it and we. Because you lift all the new transponders at once. You allow the brain to kind of shuffle. Shake it off, deal with it, and then get past it. Because what you have to understand trauma from the PTSD, the trauma piece is that you had an emotional event hit you that either it was too intense, it was too big, or which is most common. You just didn't have the coping mechanisms to deal with it at the time. And so it overwhelmed you. And so what you can do with psychedelics is you can kind of go put yourself back through that and let yourself let it go. Like we're going to find closure in this. We're going to find, you know, peace in this and we to let this thing go. And as you let it go, your body then kind of relaxes into it and allows all those little blocks that you put in place to kind of go away.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:24] And so, you know, it also helps ratchet down the sympathetic nervous system to that anxiety, that buzz, that things are always going to go on, that fight flight freeze piece like that part, It helps reduce that and helps increase this parasympathetic, which is resting, digesting, which is also a key component to getting your gut to actually get better. So we start looking at the psychedelic function and both, you know, so this is the trauma piece. It's both in obesity and in depression. You're going to have to deal with that piece regardless, because if you allow the body to stay in a stressed out space, you're never going to get to get to fully healed. If you don't get to get to fully healed, you're not going to produce the serotonin you require to function. But that piece is so much bigger because not only are you not going to produce the serotonin you need, you're also not going to meth as well. So you're going to have lower function. You're going to have not not as much in aid. You're going to lose a lot more free radicals. Eat up your Koku ten. And so the amount of energy you can actually produce, your ATP has been wildly reduced because you're in a stressed out state, not in a digesting space. You're not going to absorb the nutrients you need nearly as well. And so now we have higher we have higher need for nutrients and lower absorption of nutrients when our food is trashed anyway.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:41] So the amount of nutrients in the food is too low to begin with. And so now, because of your stressed out state, you have now put yourself in a position where you you take in a small fraction of the nutrients that you're that you're eating in your food that is, again, too low to begin with. So this is this is a perpetual cycle that pushes yourself further and further, further down the hole, which is why a lot of times you will get fatter and fatter and more and more depressed. And people always say, well, they're depressed because they're fat. If they just weren't fat, they wouldn't be depressed anymore. That is not the case. The metabolic function that creates the obesity is also the metabolic process that creates the depression. Keep. You have to. You have to keep those two things in line. They're not two separate things. Remember, they are metabolic functions. They're there. We got here. We got to this obesity piece. We got to this depression piece because of the chemistry and the function of our body. So if we don't change the chemistry in the function of the body, you're never to get rid of either one of those things. This is why a lot of times people who get new gastric bypass and things like that, it doesn't work for them long term because they didn't change the key metabolic function.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:52] The lifestyle changes that are required. So when we start working with JLP, once they're finished, they're phenomenal. They're great at what they do. They actually, you know, there's a lot of natural that's in all JLP runs because they activate a system, a glucagon based system that your body is supposed to be using all the time. It's just not using it oftentimes because of either genetic function so that you tailor your somatic typing to that however you want to, or toxicity, chemical toxicity. So all the trash that's in our food has broken your system and kept it from functioning. So for instance, an easy example is these super, super sugary things. We have these super high glycemic foods that we all eat that break down really, really quickly and give us lots and lots of sugar that radically increases insulin resistance. So the higher insulin we produce on a regular basis, the less glucagon function we can have because the two inhibit each other. So it ends up happening is that you're constantly producing a lot of insulin. You're not going to be burning your fat very well. You're not going to shift over very long into gluconeogenesis.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:53] And so what's going to end up happening is that you're going to store a whole bunch of fat. You're not going to burn it very, very frequently. You're going to be a low level of tired all the time. And, you know, your body's just not going to be as efficient in keeping everything where it needs to be. And that process is the same functional process that we see a lot in both, you know, obviously obesity, but in depression. So and this is also what leads to diabetes. And having high insulin resistance leading to diabetes is going to increase pressure on the brain that you do not want because it will end up happening, is that, you know, the normal sugar that's in the blood. 80 to 100 is that be fine. The sugar that's supposed to be around the brain is 55 to 60. So you have high insulin. The insulin is going to move the blood from the sugar into the blood around the brain. I was in the sugar and the brain. Incidents of happening happenings that 55 to 60 goes to 65 to 70, 75. This is why we keep talking about Alzheimer's and dementia or Type three diabetes. So again, the metabolic process that pushes towards obesity, towards depression and towards Alzheimer's and mental damage is the same chemical process.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:04] So that's why I would say I love to treat diabetes and depression and dementia. We were like, I don't understand. Like those are so different. There now is just phase two. Type two diabetes is insulin. Insulin resistance for the blood and for the body. Type three is insulin resistance for the brain. It's the same metabolic process. And so that's where we see it from, you know, all the way through. Which is why, you know, people come coming and like, I'm surprised that you like GOP ones. I'm like, you have no idea how unbelievably beneficial these things are from a natural standpoint. Maybe you asked me like, what do you let a child do this? I would want children to do this. I wouldn't let them do it. If you take a 12, 13, 14 year old who's obese specifically because of the dietary choices that they didn't know they shouldn't be making, that they were making. Right. Their ignorance about the bad things happening, putting the body. And so this child got obese. Remember, obesity is in the same path as depression, diabetes and dementia. So if we stop the problem when they're 13, 14, 15, we can stop the problems of diabetes, dementia and depression later on. So you just you pull the block out at the very early.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:12] And so, yeah, like we should be getting a lot of teenagers, early teenagers, and then we should be walking them through this process, be like, look, we're going to fix these issues. We're going to go back and we're going to make sure that you don't get all these things, but we're going to go through the lifestyle choices as well. So you don't have these problems in the future. Now, the medical piece of this is, hey, you have a problem, you're fat. All right, here's your gulp. You're not fat anymore. We've solved the problem. No, you haven't solved the problem. Have you even started working on the problem? The problem was the lifestyle function. You know, resetting the metabolic function is great. It's a part of the process you should be going through, but it's not the entirety of the process. And so that would be that would be where where we're starting to use these things in the improper manner. But no, it's a they're they're phenomenal. They like I said, they activate the glucagon pathway, which is a fully natural pathway. You should be using it, which is also irritating cause you're like it causes muscle wasting, right? No, it's not a side effect. That's an effect. That's how good. That's how gluconeogenesis works.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:13:16] If you don't understand the metabolic function, you're going to screw everybody up. That's why that causes liver issues. Because guess what? Guess what? Organ like liver gallbladder issues. Guess what? Organs processed fat, liver, gallbladder. And so if you don't make the liver gallbladder ready to process the fat, it's going to have problems. So again, if you understand the metabolic function, you're fine. These are just tools. If you know how to use the tools, people aren't going to get hurt because you're like, Hey, when I do this, this is going to happen. And so the way I prevent the bad side of this is I do X, Y, Z, I think increase, not three, B six, increase bile functionality with ox bile and things like that. You know, increase testosterone levels, increase protein intake, increase, you know, methylated, folic acid like method, basically whatever we're going to do, you have to understand, here's the problem, here's what's going to happen. We just don't have that problem by doing this. So like, that's the thing. So these things are very, very helpful, wildly beneficial to long term health, especially from children's standpoint, as long as you use them in conjunction with lifestyle changes.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:14:18] The problem is, is that when you say lifestyle changes and you ask the doctors, all right, what are those? And they go, well, you know, stuff. Now it's very specific metabolic function of diet and exercise. It's, you know, how are we going to move specifically, how are we going to walk you up in a position where you need to be exercising? How are we going to change the function of the gut? How are we going to actually what is the actual change in nutrition? And the problem with a lot of these people is that these providers are medical doctors, and medical doctors get absolutely zero training in metabolic chemistry or nutrition. So we're asking them to do something they have no idea. Even the conceptual function of not in something like, well, they understand it really well. They're just not doing it. They don't even understand even how important it is. So that's the reason we're getting it. That's the point we're getting into. So if you're going to do these things, you've got to work with someone who understands metabolic function. And the easiest way to say, does this person understand metabolic function is we start talking to them about the diet.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:15:15] If they start talking about it with calories, they have no idea what they're talking about. There's a zero caloric function in metabolic chemistry, not not a single one. So they're like, well, you've got to make sure your calories are in a deficit and don't work with that person. They're going to hurt you because they don't understand that each macro is tied to a hormone and that hormone dictates what your body's going to do. So that would be the thing. It's kind of how we ran through it. If you guys are having issues with obesity, if you guys are having issues with depression, if you guys are having issues with diabetes or dementia, that pathway is really easy. Get a hold of us one second. We'll be able to help walk you through it, make sure that you know, we can actually change the lifestyle pieces you need changed as we're going to get everything else put together. So, All right. Thanks for your time. We're along today, so I'll talk to you guys later. And it's physiology over pharmacology.
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