Fast-Acting, Long-Term Natural Relief for Anxiety [Podcast]
The connection between PCOS and mood is absolute. In fact, medical literature suggests that the prevalence of depression in women with PCOS varies between 28 to 64 percent, and anxiety rates range from 34 to 57 percent. Trudy Scott is on a mission to educate and empower women about the healing powers of whole foods and amino acids for eliminating anxiety and emotional eating. If you’ve ever thought, “My depression is so serious, there’s no way that food and nutrients could have an impact. I’m the kind of person who definitely needs medication.” Or if you’ve been told that, “You’re going to have anxiety forever. Here’s some medication. Go to therapy. You just need to manage it.” That’s definitely not the case; it can be completely resolved.
Listen in as Trudy explains:
- What your gut, adrenals, inflammation, intolerances, and diet have to do with anxiety
- What to eat, what to avoid, and whether vegetarianism is the answer
- The fast, natural way to manage sugar cravings
- Dosage and timing of amino acids for managing mood, energy and more
- What are you missing that causes winter blues? Seasonal Affective Disorder? Perfectionism?
- Effectively kicking caffeine and sugar addiction
For more information about Trudy’s upcoming anxiety summit or information from past summits, visit: The Anxiety Summit.
All PCOS Diva podcasts are now 
A full transcript follows.
Food Mood Expert Trudy Scott is a certified nutritionist on a mission to educate and empower anxious women about the healing powers of real whole food and amino acids for eliminating anxiety and emotional eating. She is known for her expertise in the use of targeted individual amino acids, the social anxiety condition pyroluria and the harmful effects of benzodiazepines. Trudy is the author of The Anti-Anxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood and End Cravings (New Harbinger 2011) and host of The Anxiety Summit, now in its 4th season and called a “bouquet of hope.”
Trudy is passionate about sharing these powerful nutritional tools because she experienced the results first-hand, finding complete resolution of her anxiety and panic attacks.
Full Transcript:
| Amy Medling: | Hello, and welcome to another edition of the PCOS Diva Podcast. This is your host, Amy Medling. I’m a certified health coach and I’m the founder of PCOS Diva. I don’t know if you realize the connection between PCOS and mood. In fact, the prevalence of depression in women with PCOS is high and varies from anywhere between 28 to 64 percent. I think something that women with PCOS that I hear a lot from women is anxiety. The prevalence of anxiety in women with PCOS ranges in the medical literature from 34 to 57 percent.
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| It was interesting, I was looking at before, even preparing for this podcast, I was looking at this one study of 300 women that had PCOS and nearly a third had anxiety. I think anxiety is something that we really can work on improving with diet, and I’m just so thrilled to have the Food Mood expert with us today. Welcome, Trudy Scott. Welcome to our podcast.
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| Trudy Scott: | Thanks, Amy. Thanks so much for having me. I’m so pleased to be here to share this information because anxiety is such a terrible thing when you’re in the middle of it and you’re in the midst of it and you’re experiencing it. If we can find some relief for your community, I would be so happy to be able to share some resources.
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| Amy Medling: | Well, I know that you will be able to help us find relief. Let me just give our listeners a little bit of information about your background. You are a certified nutritionist. You’re on a mission to educate and empower anxious women about the healing powers of real whole foods and amino acids for eliminating anxiety and emotional eating. You’re the author of the “Anti-Anxiety Food Solution: How Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood, and End Cravings.” You are the host of the Anxiety Summit, now in it’s 4th season. I think that I listened in on the 3rd season and that’s how I was introduced to you. It’s really a fantastic summit. At the end of the podcast, I want you to give some more information about your summits.
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| I just finished reading your book. I think I flashed your book at one of my Facebook Lives when I was at the beach and showing what I was reading on the beach that day, and your book was one of them. I think it’s kind of like what I’m doing with PCOS Diva. PCOS was a big struggle for me and coming out the other end on my journey and being able to feel better and to thrive with PCOS, I think your story is parallel of that. You also dealt with an issue and thus being anxiety and came out the other side and now are helping women with anxiety. I was hoping that you could share a little bit of your story with us to set the stage for the work that you do.
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| Trudy Scott: | Yes, absolutely, and there’s so many people who are working in the health area who have their own stories and have lived it. It’s so wonderful I think, that us women, when we go through something and we come out the other side, we want to share it. We want the world to know that this exists and that there’s a solution. I found that with a lot of my clients, they’ll discover this connection between food and nutrients and their anxiety, and their anxiety will go away and then they want to become nutritionists or they want to become advocates, or they want to do this. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve taken your story and your journey and you’ve created into this amazing community to help women with PCOS and my story, as you said, is very similar.
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| I was working in corporate America. I was working really long hours. I was totally stressed out, but not anxious at all. I was a rock climber, I was a world traveler. I climbed big walls in Zion, I did ice climbing, so I wouldn’t have considered myself an anxious, timid kind of person at all, but in my late 30s, all of the stress started catching up with me and I would start to get this waking in the early hours with this feeling of doom. I was fearful of small little things. I didn’t like to socialize anymore. I felt very uncomfortable having people come to the house, even people that I knew having dinner parties was a very stressful situation.
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| Then I started to have panic attacks. The first panic attack I had, I remember thinking, “oh my gosh, what’s happening? I’m dying. This is just so terrifying.” I couldn’t breathe. I was hyperventilating. “I’ve got to get outside. I’ve got to get outside. What’s happening?” Then absolutely exhausted afterwards. I remember my husband spending all night on the computer trying to figure out what had happened to me and trying to find these solutions.
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| It took me a number of years to put all the puzzle pieces together, but basically, it was total adrenal fatigue. I was going into peri-menopause so all of my hormones were all over the show. That was having a big impact. I discovered that I had gluten issues. I was eating a vegetarian diet, which did not suit me and I was eating a lot of processed soy which was problematic, and heavy metals. I had this perfect storm of things that all came together. It took a number of years to find the answers, but I will say the immediate solution for me was GABA. It’s an amino acid that gave me immediate relief, which was wonderful because all of these other things that I was talking about take longer to deal with.
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| You’ve got to heal the gut if you’ve got gluten issues. You’ve got to heal the adrenals. You’ve got to try and balance the hormones and change the diet and everything else. Something that I use with my clients a lot are these individual amino acids. They’re amazing because you get relief right away, and you feel hopeful while you’re dealing with all these other issues. GABA was amazing. We’re going to talk about some of the other amino acids today to boost serotonin and to help balance blood sugar. Using those amino acids, making the dietary changes, balancing out the hormones, removing the foods that were problematic, completely eliminated the anxiety.
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| I really just want to emphasize that a lot of people will say, “My anxiety is so bad, and I have such terrible panic attacks,” or, “My depression is so serious, there’s no way that food an nutrients could have an impact. I’m the kind of person who definitely needs medication.” I really want to let you know that that’s not the case. No matter how serious the anxiety or the panic attacks or the depression is, if it is an underlying nutritional deficiency or one of these issues that I’ve just talked about, it can be completely eliminated. You don’t have to manage it, because a lot of people are told, “You’re going to have anxiety forever. Here’s some medication, go to therapy. You just need to manage it.” That’s definitely not the case, it can be completely resolved.
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| Amy Medling: | Yeah, and I see that happening with women that I work with. So many of the PCOS issues can be resolved with lifestyle change and supplements and diet. I often think of women with PCOS who are really struggling, are kind of overfed and under nourished, so they’re eating a lot of the standard American diet which sounds like what you were doing and I was doing certainly when I was suffering with PCOS. You’re missing some of the key nutrients or you’re eating foods that are causing inflammation and intolerances that I think add to the mood disorders.
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| My husband, he makes me laugh, because sometimes if I’ve sort of slipped on my diet and I immediately can notice it, or he notices it in my mood. Whether I’m irritable or down, for me, it’s more of like a depressive state and moodiness, irritability than anxiety. He’ll ask me, “Alright, what did you eat?” We can really tie it that closely to food. I’m just wondering if you could give us some general guidelines, and I’m sure so much of what you’re going to be sharing is in detail in your book because there’s some really excellent information about diet in your book, but kind of give us just an overview.
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| Trudy Scott: | From a dietary point of view?
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| Amy Medling: | Yes.
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| Trudy Scott: | The foundation is real whole foods, and obviously not the standard American diet as you said. Real foods, so stuff that’s not in a box, and if we’re talking gluten-free, it shouldn’t be something that says gluten-free on the label, it should be just naturally gluten-free like meat or chicken or eggs. When we’re talking about these quality proteins, the important thing is the word quality. Grass-fed red meat, wild fish, pasture chickens or eggs, organic fruits and vegetables. There’s a lot of research showing how pesticides can actually increase anxiety and ADHD-type symptoms, so keeping those out of the diet. If we are sensitive, if we’ve got PCOS or if we’re more prone to anxiety or whatever the issue is, we’re going to be more sensitive to these things that other people may say are not a big issue, and definitely organic is important.
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| Then eating healthy fats like butter and coconut oil and olive oil to help keep the blood sugar stable. Blood sugar swings are really problematic. They stress the adrenals, they make us irritable, they can actually make us feel more anxious, and they can actually cause full-blown panic attacks in some people. Making sure to have protein at breakfast time to set you up for the rest of the day so you’re not going to have these blood sugar ups and downs. Avoiding things like foods that may be problematic like gluten and dairy for some people may be problematic. Often if you have a gluten sensitivity, you may possibly have a dairy issue as well. Finding out if there are other foods that are, you have an intolerance to because as you mentioned, there’s going to be this inflammation going on which is going to wreak havoc on the body. Those are some of the basics.
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| Obviously, we want to add in wonderful fermented foods like sauerkraut, if it can be tolerated. It’s all very individualized. We have histamine imbalances with people with anxiety, and if you have an issue with histamine, then sauerkraut may not work for you. It’s really finding what’s going to work for each individual person.
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| Amy Medling: | One thing that you mentioned that you were a vegetarian and you realized that that just wasn’t working for you with anxiety, and I honestly have not been able to find, in particularly a vegan woman with PCOS who’s really thriving. Back in that free era, I considered myself a vegetarian, and I think I consisted on that fat free cream cheese and bagels and frozen yogurt. I really was not getting enough protein. I think protein is so important. Maybe if you could just speak a little for the vegetarians out there that are suffering with anxiety. Where do you begin? Do you think that that’s a real game changer for women out there that are vegetarians?
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| Trudy Scott: | I do.
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| Amy Medling: | Yeah, go ahead.
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| Trudy Scott: | I really do. I see what you’re saying about PCOS and thriving if you’re a vegan. I know it’s a touchy subject. I know when I was a vegetarian, there’s no way anyone could have convinced me to change my diet. I was doing it for humane reasons and there was no way I was going to go back to animal protein, but I felt so terrible eating that way. I see it so much with women with anxiety and panic attacks. A lot of people will have realized that and come and work with me and say, “Yes, I’ve just changed back to eating animal protein and I feel so much better.” It’s definitely an issue that seems to make a big difference and it’s a big thing for many different reasons. The blood sugar stability is one area, but just providing all those amino acids which are the building blocks to make our neurotransmitters to help us with hormone production, with iron which is such an important nutrient for making neurotransmitters and for feeling good, and zinc which is so important when it comes to anxiety. There’s many different reasons.
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| We’ve also go level of omega-3s for example, in grass-fed red meat. It is again, a game changer for so many of my clients and it’s a tough topic to talk about, but a lot of people will fight it and once they recognize that it’s something they need to change, they do notice a big difference.
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| Amy Medling: | I want to get into the amino acids here in a minute, but first, I just want to finish what I want to bring up about the diet and ask you about diet. Reading your book, you talk a lot about keeping insulin balanced and blood sugar balanced. That’s a real issue with women with PCOS. One of the things that I think we really deal with are sugar cravings. You had a really interesting tip on how we can kind of in the moment when you’re trying to wean yourself off of sugar and you have an intense craving, you have a tip, and I’d love for you to share that with the Divas.
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| Trudy Scott: | Yes. The amino acids are wonderful to stop cravings, all of them actually. I mentioned GABA, there’s also tryptophan, there’s also tyrosine, there’s also DPA. Those are 4 of the amino acids that I work with, but the one that you are referring to is glutamine, and glutamine is an amino acid that helps to stabilize blood sugar. When you open up a capsule directly onto the tongue, it can completely eliminate that desire for something sweet. It’s only going to work if that desire for something sweet is related to low blood sugar, because it may be at the moment you are going for sugar because you’re feeling stressed and you need some GABA relief, then GABA would work more effectively.
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| So many people with hormonal imbalances as you mentioned, and certainly if you’ve got PCOS, low blood sugar is a common symptom. It’s likely that it’s going to work. I will say that every single one of my clients that I work with have benefited from glutamine, so it’s probably going to work. I just wanted to make that disclaimer that we are all individual and not everything is going to work for everyone but when it works, it is amazing.
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| I’ll share a little story of a client I worked with. The term that she used is this demonic urge to eat everything sweet. She was pretty healthy otherwise. She was a yoga instructor and her diet had improved, but she would make these little concoctions with natural sweeteners and nut butters and things. She just had to have something sweet. When I introduced her to glutamine in one of our sessions and she added this, it completely took away that urge to eat something sweet. She would be preparing this little concoction with sweets, whatever natural sweeteners she was making, and I would say to her, “Look, just remember Trudy says to try the glutamine, even if you feel like this urge to have something. Put the glutamine on your tongue with the expectation that maybe it’s not going to work and then I can have the sweet concoction.” Most of the time, nine times out of ten, that desire will completely go away. She would put it on her tongue and then she would not even think about the sweet thing she was making, so it really is pretty amazing.
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| What it does is it helps to stabilize the blood sugar, and it is calming as well. Then it takes away that desire for something sweet. The amino acids are often called miracles by my clients because they work so quickly. When you do something like glutamine on the tongue, it gets into the brain really quickly so you get an immediate effect.
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| Amy Medling: | I think that time of day where you’re really struggling with something sweet, especially for me, it’s like that three o’clock hour where I’ve had lunch, I probably really need to have a snack like a protein carb fat-type snack, but you almost go the shortcut and just get your sugar fix to get you through the afternoon. I think that’d be a perfect time to try, for me, to try the glutamine.
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| Trudy Scott: | Yes, it definitely would. I’m glad you said to try it because we’ll only know if we try it, so I’ll have my clients do the amino acid questionnaire, and if they score high in the low blood sugar section which is this cranky and irritability and you’ve got this intense desire for something sweet, and then also the anxiety and the panic attacks, that’s a clue that it could be low blood sugar. Try the glutamine and then see how it works. If it works, great, then you know you’re onto something good.
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| You mentioned the afternoon and feeling like this. I will just share that with low serotonin, you’ll also have a sugar craving and the serotonin starts to take a dip mid-afternoon and evening, so that afternoon craving may be because of low serotonin. If you’ve got a lot of low serotonin symptoms, and I know you said you wanted to talk a little bit about that, so this might be a good lead into that, but if the glutamine is not working, you try it, if it’s not giving you the relief that you need, then you would go back to the, “Oh, could it be low serotonin,” and it may be both. A lot of people need support in both areas.
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| Amy Medling: | Before we go and talk about serotonin, just tell us, if we go to the vitamin store, we’re looking for glutamine in a capsule on the shelf, what amount per capsule are we looking for?
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| Trudy Scott: | The starting amount for glutamine is 500 milligrams. Typically, I’ll have people do, if they score high in the low blood sugar section, I’ll have them rate their symptoms on a scale of 1 to 10, so if they’re cranky, irritable, low blood sugar, anxiety, panic attacks, cravings for something sweet at any time of the day. Say you score 9 out of 10 on all of those, then I’ll have them do glutamine first thing in the morning when they wake up, mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and then even in the evening if they feel like they get the low blood sugar, or you could just do it as needed.
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| All of the amino acids are taken in between meals, so away from proteins so it’s not competing for absorption with the other amino acids in the protein that you’re eating. Some people can get away with just doing something mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Some people need it throughout the day. I mentioned 500 milligrams of starting dose. Say for example, your scores were 9 out of 10 in terms of how bad they were, you take glutamine, the 500 milligrams, and you get a 2-notch improvement, maybe it goes to 7 out of 10, that tells you you need more, so you do that for a few days, then you go to 2 times 500 milligrams. Okay, how much did that improve? “Yes, I’ve improved 2 more notches, but it’s not quite there,” then maybe you need 3 of the 500 milligrams. I’ll have people do an incremental trial, logging how they feel and seeing what is going to actually work.
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| Amy Medling: | I just want to mention too that these quizzes are in your book, The Anti-Anxiety Food Solutions.
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| Trudy Scott: | Yeah, and I’ve got an online one in my blog and maybe we can share that as well. People can go look at that as well if that’s easier for them.
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| Amy Medling: | Okay. Great. We will put that there. Serotonin, and I think this is a neurotransmitter, and maybe you can just go over again about the amino acids and how they affect our neurotransmitters, but that is something, it’s kind of like a feel good neurotransmitter. It’s been shown that women with PCOS tend to be low in serotonin. I know that’s one of the reasons why, and I’ve posted about this several times on my blog, about Seasonal Affective Disorder. I think it affects us, women with PCOS more than women without it. I think because of that serotonin issue. We would love to hear maybe some sort of signs that we could be low serotonin, and then if that resonates with people, maybe just give us some idea of what we can do to sort of boost our serotonin.
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| Trudy Scott: | Okay. Some of the signs of low serotonin are the winter blues, obviously. Depression, interestingly enough, there’s also a higher incidence of anxiety in the winter time and if the anxiety is because of low serotonin, then it’s related to the fact that it’s in the winter time. There is quite a few studies that say more anxious in the winter, and a lot of people will say, “Oh, it’s the holidays, there’s a lot going on. That’s why I’m all anxious,” but I have really seen a strong correlation between increase in anxiety and my clients that have the low serotonin symptoms as well. Don’t just put it down to stressful holidays. Think about whether it could be low serotonin.
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| We’ll often think about this low serotonin being practically correlated with depression and the winter blues but there’s a very big anxiety component. With the anxiety that we see with low serotonin, it’s the worry in the head, the ruminating thoughts, the obsessive thinking. Who am I to be doing this? The perfectionist type of person. You’ll say, “I’m a perfectionist, this is my personality,” and people who address their low serotonin found out they’re not such perfectionists anymore and it makes their life a lot easier. You’ll often have-
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| Amy Medling: | Oh, that is so fascinating because that describes so many of us I think and so many that are listening can completely resonate with what you’re saying.
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| Trudy Scott: | Yeah, and it’s hard work being a perfectionist, you know?
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| Amy Medling: | Oh.
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| Trudy Scott: | I can totally relate because that was me and it was one of my issues that I definitely had. Then of course, all the hormonal issues, the PMS, the peri-menopausal symptoms. We also see irritability, anger issues, rage issues can be totally related to low serotonin. Digestive issues are a big tie-in with IBS. Insomnia is a big factor. Problems falling asleep or staying asleep. Now insomnia can have many different root causes, but one of them could be low serotonin.
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| Then I mentioned all of these neurotransmitters, deficiencies, having cravings component, and with low serotonin, again, it’s the afternoon and the evening cravings for carbohydrates. Those are all clues that low serotonin could be a factor.
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| Amy Medling: | All right, so if you have some of these symptoms, and you think that serotonin could be coming into play, what’s the next step?
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| Trudy Scott: | All the information that I mentioned about diet is really important. We’ve got to start making those changes because we need those raw materials, the iron, the zinc, the amino acids, the healthy fats, to make all of our neurotransmitters, but again, what I will start my clients on day one, is the amino acids that help to raise serotonin and tryptophan is that amino acid. There’s another amino acid called 5-HTP, which some people do better on but I will have my clients start on tryptophan just because I find so many people do so well on it, and again, it’s an amino acid that taken will give you immediate relief, and when I’m doing the trial, I’ll have someone open up the capsule after having rated this in terms of, “I’ve got 9 out of 10 with this worry in the head, and the perfectionist, and I feel depressed, and I’ve got insomnia.” They’ll take the tryptophan and they’ll see results right away.
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| The dosing for the tryptophan is again, 500 milligrams as a starting dose, mid-afternoon and evening because as I said earlier, this is when our serotonin starts to take a dip. You may find that you’re doing the glutamine as well, early in the day maybe for the intense cravings for something sweet, but taking the tryptophan afternoon/evening, will help with these mood symptoms that I’ve just mentioned, and they’ll help with those afternoon and evening cravings for carbohydrates.
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| I’ve mentioned the starting dose for glutamine and tryptophan being 500 milligrams, and I just want to mention one thing here quickly. Because we’re all unique and we have our own bio-individuality, there are some clients that I have that are called pixie dust clients, and the starting dose is too much for them. If someone is really sensitive, they’ll say, “I’ll take a small amount of medication and then I’ll have a bigger fit,” or if they’ve taken supplements in the past and they’ve noticed that they’ve had a strong reaction, then I’ll actually have them open up a capsule and maybe use quarter of a capsule just to start and build up until they find the ideal amount for them.
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| It is very individualized. I’ll have some people say, “I took 500 milligrams of GABA,” for example, which is the other amino acid that we haven’t got to talk about, so I’ll have to come back and talk about that one but, and that’s too much for them. Going down to a smaller amount can help. Finding what is going to work for you, I think is really important to emphasize.
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| Then one other quick thing I wanted to mention about the tryptophan and the 5-HTP is if you are taking an SSRI, if you’re on a prescription anti-depressant, there is a precaution. You do need to let your doctor know because there’s a possibility of serotonin syndrome which is too much serotonin, and I’ll have my clients tell their doctor that they would like to use tryptophan and then take their tryptophan 6 hours away from the SSRI. If they take the SSRI in the morning, then from 2 to 3 in the afternoon would be safe to then take the tryptophan.
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| Amy Medling: | Yeah, that’s really important because I know a lot of women are on anti-depressants as well as part of their PCOS treatment, so very important information. With the tryptophan, are you still putting it on your tongue like you do with the glutamine?
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| Trudy Scott: | When we’re doing the trial initially to figure out what the effects are, always are opened onto the tongue because I’ll be doing it with someone one-on-one or if we’re in a group program, I’ll be having people do it there and then so they can gauge what it is because it’s really powerful when you feel it yourself. If I can tell you it’s amazing, that’s one thing, but if you actually experience it, it’s incredible. A lot of my clients say to me, “Could this really be happening? Could it really be working so quickly? It just doesn’t seem possible. Is this a placebo effect? Am I imagining it because I’m sitting here working with you?” It really does work that quickly, so experiencing it by putting it onto the tongue will give you that immediate effect.
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| Then most people can just swallow it after that. Some people, if you’ve got some kind of digestive issue or if you don’t do well with swallowing supplements like this, they will find that keeping it, doing it sub-lingually on a continual basis is what’s giving them the best effect. It’s really a matter of figuring out what’s going to work for you.
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| Amy Medling: | Okay. I’m going to take you up on the offer and have you come back and talk to us about GABA on another podcast. I do want to just go back, because I forgot to ask you this question, before we wrap up. A lot of women with PCOS have adrenal issues and they’re using caffeine to get through the day. I know the Jumpstart program that I run, that’s the one thing, I ask them to give up caffeine for the week, it’s like a whole food-based cleanse, kind of a very, very gentle detox. We get rid of caffeine for the week.
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| I’m asking women to do a whole lot of other things too, but getting rid of that caffeine is the most difficult thing, time and time again. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about what caffeine and even alcohol, I think that’s another one too, is doing to anxiety.
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| Trudy Scott: | It’s interesting that you say it’s a hard one for your community to give up. I will tell you this is exactly the same in my community. One thing that people will hold onto the longest, certainly the caffeine because it gives us energy and it makes us feel good, but it is causing a problem. Obviously, caffeine is a big one when it comes to anxiety. We know that it increases our heart rate. It raises our body temperature. It affects our blood sugar big time. I remember interviewing Dr. Alan Christianson on one of my summits and he said, “Coffee has the same effect on your blood sugar levels as a can of Coke does.” It has a huge impact on our adrenal function and our hormonal function overall.
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| We build up a tolerance to it so we need more and more. It’s self-medicating. We’re using it to create energy and what we really want to do is figure out why do we need it in the first place. Are we not getting enough sleep? Is it because I’ve got low blood sugar? Is it because we’re not getting enough quality animal protein and we may be anemic? What is the reason that we self-medicate with it? If anxiety is an issue, it really does have to go. So many get off it and they just feel so much better. They can’t believe they didn’t want to quit.
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| There is an amino acid that actually helps quit. Often we’ll have low catecholamines, which will cause us to be fatigued or cause us to have poor focus or cause us to have a kind of depression that’s different than the low serotonin depression. With low serotonin depression, it’s more this sort of worry, anxiety kind of depression. With the low catecholamines, you’ve got this sort of blah, negative, “I don’t want to get out of bed” kind of depression. We’ll use coffee to give us that focus, to give us that energy and often give us a little bit of a mood boost as well.
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| There’s an amino acid called tyrosine which is amazing to help get you off the coffee if it is related to the low catecholamine. I’ll just use these amino acids to help people break these addictions. Whether it’s sugar, or whether it’s alcohol, or whether it’s caffeine, and it’s pretty amazing how effective they are.
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| Amy Medling: | I just find it so fascinating. I’m going to be trying the tryptophan for sure. Especially as we are now heading into that time of year here in New Hampshire where it’s going to be dark at 5 o’clock soon, and I’m definitely affected by seasonal affective disorder. Just another tool in your tool kit, and I think that’s what it’s about. Having a PCOS diagnosis, it’s something that once you have it, you’re always going to have it, but you can certainly manage. Like you mentioned in the beginning of the podcast, having anxiety, it’s not something you have to live with for the rest of your life. You have these tools in your tool box, your diet, your lifestyle, and now the amino acids to help you thrive and have that quality of life that you deserve.
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| Trudy Scott: | Absolutely.
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| Amy Medling: | Trudy, I know that we’ve just scratched the surface of your knowledge on this topic, and I know that there’s going to be women that want to dive deeper so tell us how we can learn more about the work you do and more about the summit. I know I’ve shared it with my community, but you do have the summits available on your site if you want to go back and catch up, especially on this year’s.
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| Trudy Scott: | Yes, all 4 summits are available, so I’ve done 4 of them. One of my favorite pieces of feedback from someone was they’ve been called a “bouquet of hope.” A lot of people will just say, “Why did no one tell me that my anxiety could be related to diet and nutrition and then these bi-chemical underlying causes?” I’m trying to spread the hope and just give people solutions that they can use so they don’t have to feel anxious. You can go to theanxietysummit.com and right now, we’re planning season 5 which will be in 2017, but you can sign up now and get access to 5 audios from previous summits so you can get a feel for what we talked about in previous summits.
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| Then all 4 are available if anyone wants to dig deeper and go back and purchase them and listen to some of the prior experts that I’ve interviewed on the summit. Then of course my book is a great resource, “The Anti-Anxiety Food Solution,” as you said, just goes through step by step. A lot of people pick that up and start to make the changes and for some people, it’s simple dietary changes, which is in the first section of the book. Then for others, they need to use the amino acids.
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| I would say if you could resonate with any of the symptoms that we’ve talked about in today’s session, you’re probably going to find that the amino acids are just miraculous for you. So many of my clients just found them to be so amazing, and I just feel so thankful that I had the opportunity to work with Julia Ross. She’s the author of “The Mood Cure.” I spent two years working in her clinic and she’s the pioneer in the use of these amino acids and the person that I learned about them from, and it’s just made such a difference in my practice and for all my clients. I just love having the opportunity to share.
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| Amy Medling: | Well, thank you for sharing with us today. I’m very grateful that you took time to talk with us, and I look forward to inviting you back on the podcast to continue our conversation.
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| Trudy Scott: | Thank you, Amy. Thank you for what you’re doing and thanks very much for having me.
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| Amy Medling: | Well, thank you everyone for listening, and I look forward to being with you again soon. Take care.
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