Beat Brain Fog

8/8/2019 Beat Brain Fog

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Underground Wellness Radio

#325: How To Beat Brain Fog with Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo

Sean: It’s episode 325 of Underground Wellness Radio. Here’s what’s coming up.

Ritamarie: People need to know that they don’t have to go to the doctor who doesn’t know what’s

wrong with them and give them a drug. They need to work with their nutrition. They need to work

with their rest. They need to get fresh air and exercise. Healing happens when you’re in that

parasympathetic state. It’s the difference between normal and common. Is it normal to have

bloating and gas and indigestion after a meal? No, but if you watch TV you figure out it’s common.

To shift yourself from sympathetic nervous to parasympathetic nervous system, you can train

yourself to be able to do it in one breath.

Sean: Yo! What’s up y’all? Welcome back to another episode of Underground Wellness Radio,

brought to you by UndergroundWellness.com. I know it’s been like two weeks since we posted a

new episode, but I was on the road doing our west coast trip for the Depression Sessions which is

coming up June 14th through June 28th.

We were here in San Diego, then we went to the Bay Area, then we went up to Seattle, then

Bellingham, then Boulder then Denver. Interviewed Dr. Kharrazian, Dr. Kalish, Dr. Izabella Wentz, Dr

Ben Lynch, Tom Malterre, Dr. Jill Carnahan, Suzy Cohen, on and on. We still have 2 more trips left,

but I’m glad I got 13 interviews out of the way. Thirteen interviews in 9 days in 9 cities. It was a heck

of a trip so I had to take a couple of days off to relax and recharge and recover. I’m fully back and

ready to crush it. We’ve got a fantastic show for you today with Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo.

Before that, I’ve got a couple of announcements. Number 1. One thing you’ve been asking about,

literally for years … What is it, almost 7 years now I’ve been doing the podcast? … Is transcripts.

Now we have transcripts. We started up something called the Transcribe Tribe, where you’ll get

downloadable transcripts as well as show notes. You also have access to download the podcast

there. If you go to UndergroundWellnessRadio.com and plug in your email address, we’ll send you

your password and your username so you can log in. We’ll be updating that thing every single

week. Every new episode that we do will be transcribed and you’ll be able to find it there. Again,

that’s UndergroundWellnessRadio.com.

What else? I’m sure you’re wondering also if we’re going to do the Insiders Program for the

Depression Sessions. Remember we did the Digestion Sessions Insiders where you got early

versions of the videos? Yes, we are doing that again with the Depression Sessions. We’re going to

have an Insiders Program that’s going to start up next Tuesday. What is that, April 7 th? We’re going

to close it down on April 13th, so you’ll get all the early versions of the videos, the audio files as well

as the transcripts. Plus you’ll get the entire digital access pass that’s going to be available in June.

You’re going to get it early so you’re going to be inside, behind the scenes.

http://undergroundwellnessradio.com/


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The cool thing is this time…with Digestion, I was the one doing the editing for the Insiders cuts.

This time, my director and my editor are really on the ball and they’re sending me like a new 3 or 4

rough cuts every week. But the rough cuts are pretty much the final cuts, they just don’t have the

opening bumper and anything on the end but all of the content, the cool camera angles, all that

stuff is there. There’s about 3 done now.

By next Tuesday when we launch there should be about 7 in there. Seven polished videos and

audio files as well as the transcripts will be in there so you can get an early start. The website for

that is going to be DepressionSessionsInsiders.com. DepressionSessionsInsiders.com. Again, that’s

April 7th through April 13th. Then we shut it down and you have to wait until June.

Okay, this show is really good. Especially if you’re dealing with a very common, but not normal

problem called brain fog. The fuzzy brain. Not remembering where your car keys are. Not

remembering people’s names. Having a hard time finding your words. Dr. Ritamarie and I talk allabout it. We talk about the causes. Also, she gives you about 15 tips or so about what to do to

eliminate brain fog. She also tells you where to start, how to get started. Her website is

DrRitamarie.com. That’s DrRitamarie.com, and here’s the doctor. Dr. Ritamarie, welcome to

Underground Wellness Radio.

Ritamarie:Thank you Sean, I’m so happy to be here.

Sean: Really happy to have you here. Today we’re going to talk about how to feed your brain.

You’re going to give us a lot of your top tips for people who are dealing with brain fog right now.

Before we get to that, I was on your website DrRitamarie.com and I was reading your bio and it saysthat “Her passion for health and healing began as a result of her own bout with illness.” I find that to

be pretty common with our guests. They go through some type of illness themselves. They start to

explore and read about their condition and about health and how to build their health. Then they

start to share that information with others. Tell us more about what you went through.

Ritamarie: Yeah. Okay, I’d be happy to. When I was back in my 20’s, and I always say I’m really

grateful that it happened to me when I was in my 20’s and not in my 40’s because it had a lot less

negative impact on my body up until then. When I was in my 20’s I found myself experiencing

debilitating brain fog. I would be talking to somebody and it literally felt like there was a cloudbetween me and them. I was just…all my might to try to focus on what they were saying.

I had things like headaches and sinus problems. Then the ultimate was I went in for an ulcer, what I

thought was an ulcer. It was really horrible, doubled over, burning pain. All I kept getting from the

doctors was, “Oh, here’s this medication. Oh, we can do some sinus surgery to get rid of that. Oh

we can this, that and the other thing.” Finally with the ulcers, it really threw me over the edge

because they went and did all these tests. They put me on ulcer medication first of all. I was 24


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maybe. They put me on ulcer medication and they then said, “We’re going to do this G.I. test and

all.” They did this G.I. series, it came back and they said, “The good news is you don’t have an

ulcer.” I said, “Awesome. What do I have and what do I do?” They said, “Well we don’t know, just

keep taking the ulcer medication and that will clear it up.” I went, “Blah. I’m 24 years old. If this is

what’s happening now, what’s it going to be like when I’m 50? Am I going to be on dialysis?” I don’tknow.

Sean: Did you really have that thought when you were 24? “What’s it going to be like when I’m 50?”

Ritamarie:That’s exactly the thought I had because I’d been living life in the fast lane. I didn’t know

anything that I know now about health and nutrition. This is back in the 80’s so it was a long time

ago, before there was a lot of popularity and health food stores and all that. I was like, “Wait a

minute. Medication for something I don’t have? This doesn’t even make sense.” I asked this weird

question, and I don’t even know how it came off my lips, “Could it be my diet?” The typical doctor,looked at me and went, “Oh, of course not. Diet has nothing to do with your health.”

Sean: Yeah. You said you were living in the fast lane. What does that mean in terms of your diet and

your stress at that time?

Ritamarie: Okay, so I was 24. I had just graduated from college 2 years ago. I was, you know, Miss

straight A student, go getter. I got this job out of college, stood up to the boss and left and went to

get another better job. I was in this job that was really high stress because I’d been promoted to

regional specialist. I was helping people with their computers breaking down in the middle of the

night, and I was the one that people turned to. I wasn’t just the first level of support. Here I was justtwo years out of college feeling, “Holy crap, how can I do this?”

I was doing that, I was going out to a lot of dinners with customers. Of course at the dinners you

eat restaurant food which is pretty rich, and drink wine. I was doing a lot of that. My typical diet was

just a lot of that plus ice cream, M&M’s, Cheetos. You know, the typical diet of people in that era

and that age. It was awful.

I remember the first time that the stomach thing came, I was doubled over in pain after a hangover

from going out and having too much wine, and then taking aspirin for several days. I didn’t makethat connection then. The thing that bothered me later when I learned so much was none of the

doctors did either. They never asked me what led up to this. They never asked me about 3 days of

aspirin all day long to get rid of the headache that came from more overindulgence in alcohol.

Nobody was putting that all together.

Sean: Got you. If this would have went on, because you were 24, if you would have kept taking the

medications, if you would have kept eating that way, where do you think you would be right now?


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Ritamarie: I would be in the place where a lot of my patients are. I would be just barely scraping

the surface. I certainly wouldn’t be in the job I’m in right now, that’s for sure. I may have kept going

in the computer thing. I think I probably would have burned out. I look at my family members who

haven’t seen the light so to speak. A lot of them are on blood pressure medication, all sorts of

medication. They’re all overweight and they complain about their aches and their pains and aboutbeing old, and they’re all younger than me. I think that’s where I would be. I think my life would not

be this amazing playground that it is right now.

Sean: Got you. You refused to take a medication that you didn’t really have a condition for. Now did

you actually go to the library and start reading health books? You might not have been able to go

online back then, right?

Ritamarie: No. Before that.

Sean: What did you do? Did you hit the bookstores? Did you sign up for newsletters? What are you

doing?

Ritamarie: All that. I basically went to the library. I’m like, “I’ve got to find out about nutrition,

because I know my nutrition’s bad. I eat garbage all the time.” I decided that I would go to the

library and I got out all these books. Adelle Davis, Carlton Fredericks. I bring this stack of books

home. I start reading, like, “Oh, I should be eating whole wheat bread because that’s what’s good

for me. Oh, I should be drinking milk, skim milk, because that’s what good for me.”

I started introducing more vegetables which was good, but also adding some other things to mydiet that I really hadn’t been eating much of. I had these some days of great feeling of, “Oh yeah,

I’m pushing through this,” and other days it’s like, “Oh god, I’m back to normal again.” But I did

have glimmers, I did have glimpses of clarity.

Sean: Yeah. Your diet currently, you’re a vegetarian, or a vegan, which one is it?

Ritamarie: Vegan.

Sean: Vegan. How long have you been vegan?

Ritamarie: Almost 30 years.

Sean: Thirty years. Did you decide to go vegan in order to recover your health, or was it something

that you were doing before you had these health problems?

Ritamarie: No, it was what I did to recover my health.


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Sean: Good. You started reading Adelle Davis’ books. You started going to the library and learning

all these things. What part of the education that you got through those materials made you decide,

“You know what, I’m going to go vegan?” I’m just curious.

Ritamarie:Oh, okay. It was nothing to do with any of that. I was sitting, and I went to the bookstoreand I was reading … Do you remember the 5 Day Allergy Cure, and a lot of that stuff back then?

First people started talking about elimination diets. I was reading one of these books, trying to

figure this out. I’d been doing this for almost a year of these ups and downs and all. I’m sitting in a

gas station waiting for my tires to be rotated or whatever, and this guy sees my book and starts a

conversation with me.

“Oh, you’re interested in nutrition?” We start talking, and blah, blah, blah. He goes, “Oh, I have a

resource for you. You need to fast.” I went, “Fast? What do you mean fast?” Well, you know what, I

did fast because this allergy relief book says you should fast for 4 or 5 days and then reintroducefoods. I said, “I felt great while I was fasting, but then as soon as I started eating I felt bad again.” He

said, “Oh, that’s because you didn’t fast long enough.” My eyes bugged out of my head. Five days

isn’t long enough? What is he talking about?”

Sean: No food?

Ritamarie: He tells me about this book I should get called Fasting Can Save Your Life. Then he

gives me a card for this place, this center which takes people in and it just puts them on fast and

lays them in bed. They have a very low overhead by the way.

Sean: You have to go to a center for that?

Ritamarie:Well you know the thing is, if you’re going to do it for more than a few days, you can get

yourself in trouble. You don’t want to be up and about and doing all this stuff. I’m just young and

very impressionable. It sounded good. I read this. I’m reading going, “Oh, this is why I’m … I’m

toxic. I’m not sick. I’m toxic.” My body just can’t deal with the toxic load I’ve been giving it for the

last 24 years. I wanted to do this fasting thing but I couldn’t get off of my job.

I was in this job where I was working 5 days a week. I had 2 weeks a year vacation. They’re talkingabout having me fast for multiple weeks. I’m like, “Okay.” As luck would have it, I ended up in the

emergency room with emergency surgery.

Sean: What kind of surgery?

Ritamarie: I had an ectopic pregnancy, which I didn’t even know existed or what it was. It’s

basically where you’re pregnant and the baby starts growing in your tube, and then you’re tube

explodes.


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Sean: This happened while you were fasting?

Ritamarie:This was before I fasted. I guess I was starting to have the glimmers of “everything

happens for a reason.” As soon as that happened to me, I’m in the hospital. I get out of the hospital.

They said, “You have to be off of work for 6 weeks.” I’m like, “Six weeks, that’s long enough to go tothe fasting center.” So that’s what I did. I went to this fasting center and it was awesome. There were

people there who had cancers, things were reversing, people with all kinds of really serious

diseases.

I was the lightweight there. I didn’t have anything to write home about. I was just pretty well

compared to the rest of the people there. The funny thing was I just kept feeling better and better

and my brain fog cleared. I had this clarity and I started reading every book they had, and I’d listen

to every single tape that they had in there. I was like, “Oh my god, people need to know about

this.” People need to know that they don’t have to go to the doctor who doesn’t know what’s wrongwith them and give them a drug.

They need to work with their nutrition. They need to work with their rest. They need to get fresh air

and exercise. Oh my god, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. This information was not as

common knowledge as it is now. Now you go on the web and there’s umpteen websites that talk

about eating whole foods and detox and all this. This wasn’t available back then. This was a foreign

concept to people. It completely changed my life.

Sean: Since then you’ve made it your mission to get this information out to more people?

Ritamarie:That’s exactly right, because I’m in there going, “I need to get this out to people. How

do I do it?” I was in a job in the computer field back then. As a woman in the computer field back in

1986, it was very lucrative because there weren’t a lot of women in there. Plus the computer field

was just growing. I was making like $55,000 a year, which in 1986 was a lot of money. That’s a lot of

money for a lot of people right now, let alone then. I decided that I don’t care about the money. I’m

leaving my job.

I had some savings from having sold a house and I had a new husband at the time who said, “Okay,

let’s do this. You can do this.” We did. I left my job and I went back to school and I started gettingeducation. I got my degrees in chiropractic and then nutrition at the same time. I got a Master’s

degree in nutrition on the weekends while I was going to chiropractic school 35 hours a week

learning the basics of it. Then I ended up going for post-graduate stuff in Herbal Medicine and

Acupuncture.

Sean: You really dove in. Let me tell me how good of a job you’re doing getting the message out. I

was doing a webinar last night for my B-Schoolers and I was going through these questions to help


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them find their values, and 1 of the questions was, “Who inspires you?” You know whose name

came up? Dr. Ritamarie.

Ritamarie: Really?

Sean: Yeah. One of my B-Schoolers, like, “Dr. Ritamarie.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m interviewing hertomorrow.” Yeah. You’re doing really good stuff. We’re talking about brain fog. A lot people deal

with brain fog. A lot of people deal with forgetting where they put their car keys, losing words

sometimes, can’t remember somebody’s name. Now tell us. I want to kind of figure out what’s

good and what’s bad. Is it always bad? Is any of this normal? Is it normal to not remember

somebody’s name every once in a while? Is it normal to be a little foggy every once in a while? Talk

about that.

Ritamarie: Normal and common. It’s the difference between normal and common. Is it normal to

have bloating and gas and indigestion after a meal? No, but if you watch TV you figure out it’scommon, right? Because there’s all kinds of drugs that are giving people that answer. So normal

and common, we have to look at that. Now is it normal for people to get stressed out? Then the

stress, the cortisol ends up zapping your hippocampus which will then effect your short term

memory and then you blank out.

Yes, when you’re under stress, you’re going to have those momentary lapses. But to have that all

the time, and to not relate it that, “Oh, yeah, I’m feeling stressed out. Okay, let me calm down. Oh,

that’s where the keys are.” There’s simple tools to get it back. That’s one thing, and that’s those

momentary lapses like you’re talking about. It happens occasionally. Is it normal? No, it’s not

normal but it’s common and there’s ways out of it. Especially in our society. We’re so laden withstress. On the other hand, having what I had, which people describe to me all the time now, is the

brain fog.

You’re sitting there and you’re trying to focus and it’s literally like there was a cloud there. The

words are coming at me but they’re going, “wah wah wah wah wah wah,” and they have to make

their way through this cloud, and then I’m trying to focus. Here I am this highly paid, highly skilled

person that’s working really hard just to get my brain back. I’m the valedictorian. I couldn’t even

figure out what these people were asking me. It’s like, “Whoa. Something’s wrong here.”

Sean: Yeah. I’m sure a lot of people in our audience are dealing with the exact same thing. We’re

going to go through a few reasons why people are dealing with brain fog. We’re going to talk

about diet today and stress and maybe get to neurotransmitters and the thyroid as well, and the

adrenals. I know you love talking about the adrenals.

Let’s talk about diet first. I was poking around in your blog. I read up a little bit on phospholipids

and their role in memory. I think I’ve had a couple people on this show talk about memory but

we’ve never talked about phospholipids. What are they? Why are they important?


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Ritamarie: Phospholipids are a fat lipid that’s attached to a phosphorus type of grouping. That’s

what phospholipids are. You know when you think about chemistry there’s all these fancy names for

things. When you break it down it’s just telling you the names of the different things that are

bonded. What they’re important for is nourishing and surrounding some of the nerve sheaths and

nourishing the brain. The brain is a very fatty tissue. People go, “Oh, we have to be on a low fatdiet.” You’ve got to be really careful on a too low of fat diet because you need fats to nourish your

brain. It’s really important.

The phospholipids are these chemical constituents that contribute to memory. They contribute to

that speed of thought. It’s one thing to have a thought, but one thing to have that instantaneous

really rapid firing. Somebody says something and you’ve got so many things that just came to you

because your brain is just like “Whoa,” making all those connections. It’s really important for those

connections. The neurons that connect between, or the tails of the neurons, the axons that connect

from one neuron to another and carry a signal. They have to be nourished and phospholipids arepart of that.

Sean: We can get these from food?

Ritamarie: You can get them from food, absolutely.

Sean: What kinds of foods?

Ritamarie:There’s a number of things. Lecithin. You’ve heard of lecithin. Most people have heard

of lecithin. Even Carlton Fredericks and what’s her name that I just talked about …

Sean: Adelle Davis.

Ritamarie: Adelle Davis. I’m getting into my sympathetic.

Sean: You need some phospholipids.

Ritamarie:I need to lower my cortisol. Anyway, so lecithin is one of those, and phosphatidylcholine

is one that’s super important for memory.

Sean: Where does somebody get phosphatidylcholine from though? You talked about soy lecithin,

tell us more.

Ritamarie:You can get it from soy lecithin. Make sure if you’re getting it from soy that it’s non-GMO

because there’s a lot of problems with soy. Sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds contain a lot of it, and

there’s people who actually extract out the lecithin. Of course you can get it from the whole food.

When somebody has a problem that they’re trying to replenish nutrients, we sometimes go to get


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concentrated source. You can get sunflower lecithin. You can get it in a syrup, you can get it in

capsules you can get it in little powder that you can put in your smoothies, and that contains a lot

of phosphatidylcholine.

Sean: Got you. I want to get more into choline in just a second. You just said soy lecithin. I’m sure

people in the audience are going, “Oh my god, the vegan lady is promoting soy on this show forour memory.” You said to stay away from the GMO one, but why is soy lecithin in a non-GMO form

not a problem? Besides the pesticides and all that stuff because most people are going to think

about anti-nutrients and all that. Why would soy lecithin not be a problem?

Ritamarie: Because it doesn’t have all those anti-nutrients. It’s just lecithin that’s been extracted. It

doesn’t quite matter to the body where it came from unless there’s remnants of GMO’s or remnants

of pesticides. Pesticides like fat, so you’re going to get a big bundling of the pesticides from a food

in the fatty tissue and lecithin is not an exception. I usually do sunflower lecithin. That’s what I

usually recommend to my patients.

Sean: You can just buy that at a local health food store?

Ritamarie:You can, and you can buy it online too. There’s a number of places. I like the liquid one

because I like to make these really fun foods. The liquid syrupy kind of sunflower lecithin makes a

really good mousse. It makes really good candies and makes really kind of fun foods, so I do that.

Sean: One of the reasons I really miss eating eggs is because when I have eggs, I feel like my brain

turns on. I remember when I hadn’t had eggs for over a year and then I tried them, I was like,

“Whoa, who flipped the switch? What’s going on?” Is that because of the choline in eggs?

Ritamarie: Yes. They’re high in, they have lecithin, phosphatyidylcholine. Yes, that’s absolutely it. I’ve

had people who’ve had that situation where they have that, but they have an allergy to eggs. If they

eat too many of them then you get these other symptoms. I’ve had them switch to, say, sunflower

lecithin, and boom. They get that same reaction.

Sean: You know what? I’m going to do that as soon as we get done with this show. I’m going to buy

some sunflower lecithin. I’m glad we did this. Yeah. Now choline makes me think of a

neurotransmitter in the brain called acetylcholine. Why is that important?

Ritamarie: Acetylcholine. That’s what’s important for memory. That’s why these phospholipids and

phosphatidylcholine in particular is so important and helpful for memory. It’s a neurotransmitter

that supports memory function.

Sean: Is it possible that some people don’t have enough acetylcholine?


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Ritamarie: Yeah, and let me tell you one of my theories about why. Acetylcholine is a

neurotransmitter that’s part of the parasympathetic nervous system. We look at that autonomic

nervous system which is that nervous system we don’t get to control. We can tell our hand to move,

but we don’t tell our heart to beat. That’s part of the autonomic nervous system. There’s a

sympathetic branch and a parasympathetic branch. Sympathetic are those reactions that happen infight/flight. You see a car, it’s about to come hit you. Your heart races, your palms get sweaty.

You didn’t tell your heart to race, you didn’t tell your palms to get sweaty. It’s an automatic reaction

because your sympathetic nervous system got into play. Sympathetic is the stress response, the

protect me from danger response. Parasympathetic, think about meditation, yoga, bliss, ahhh.

That’s where all healing happens. Healing happens when you’re in that parasympathetic state.

Acetylcholine is part of the parasympathetic response.

A lot of people are deficient in acetylcholine because they’re in so much stress all the time andthey’re producing a lot of adrenaline and cortisol. That dampens their parasympathetic and their

acetylcholine. When I’m trying to help people get their memory back, the first things I start with are

“Let’s just breathe and appreciate. Let’s go into like a HeartMath type of a response, a meditative

type of response to just calm it down, dial down the sympathetics, dial up the parasympathetics,

and then we can work on the nutrients to help support it.”

Sean: Got you. Just a quick running tally here for your tips. Eat more eggs and/or more soy lecithin

and sunflower lecithin. Speaking of acetylcholine and how stress and cortisol can deplete this

acetylcholine, stress and cortisol can also cause problems with the hippocampus, correct?

Ritamarie:Yes. There’s actually a study. It actually damages…cortisol can damage the

hippocampus.

Sean: What is the hippocampus?

Ritamarie: The hippocampus is part of the memory, it’s right in the center there. It’s got some of the

role of short term memory. Converting some of the memories from immediate, short term and then

into long term memory. You see the keys and you put them down. You walk in, you’re not even

thinking, you’re worried about this or that. You drop them on the counter. You come back 5minutes later and you go, “Where’d I put my keys?” because you didn’t transfer that memory of

putting the keys down into a longer term memory. It’s just gone. It’s just gone. Never got stored.

Hippocampus is important for that.

Sean: So reducing stress, does that over time help to repair the hippocampus? Or is the damage

just always done and going to stay that way.


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Ritamarie: That’s a great question. By reducing the stress you certainly reduce the continued

damage, and certainly long term. But I think sometimes you have to get in there and do some

damage control. Getting back to phospholipids, there’s another one called phosphatidylserine that

has been shown to calm down the cortisol response, but also to repair the damage to the

hippocampus.

Sean: Very cool. So phosphatidylserine. They call it PS as well. Stress also, from what I understand,

reduces your B vitamins. Is that correct?

Ritamarie:Oh yes.

Sean: How is that relevant when it comes to brain health and brain fog?

Ritamarie:You talked about neurotransmitters before, right? One of the key B vitamins that’s a co-factor for the conversion of amino acids into neurotransmitters is B6. Big time. Vitamin B6. If you

don’t have enough B vitamins, in particular B6, you’re not going to make enough

neurotransmitters. That’s just one example. There’s others. The B vitamins are important in

mitochondria, the Krebs cycle to create energy. Every cell has to create energy.

I talk to people about not only the external energy, like, “Yeah, I can ride a bike and I can run up the

stairs,” but the internal energy. Can their cells actually repair themselves? Can they fire? Can your

brain cells fire quickly enough to send the signal in a quick enough fashion for you to feel like you

had the thought and then boom, a whole bunch of other thoughts came? The B vitamins are

important, like B2. Riboflavin is an important one. Niacin is especially important in the Krebs cycle.

Sean: If someone’s under stress, should they increase their intake of B vitamins? Should they get a

B-complex vitamin and start taking that when they’re under stress?

Ritamarie: I think it’s a good idea. I’m a big fan of getting as much as you can from food, but we live

in an unnatural situation. We’re just zonking ourselves with stress or eating foods that are not

consistent with our physiology. You’ve got to do something to help and jump in for damage

control.

Sean: Got you. I know when I record this podcast, the difference between a good show and a bad

show is…when I have a bad show, it’s usually because I haven’t had any food for a while and my

brain just can’t come up with words. I just don’t feel right. I made it a point to have lunch maybe a

half hour before our call today. Why, if I don’t, or if people in general don’t eat enough food, why

does their brain go kind of wonky?

Ritamarie: It could be that you have some difficulties with your blood sugar management. We

should be able to go a long period of time without food and still function really well if we have the


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right balance between insulin and glucagon. That keeps a steady blood sugar. That’s one of the

possibilities is that your blood sugar’s going down too low. Eating a high glycemic meal which

raises the insulin can cause the plummet of blood sugar right after because the insulin’s clearing it

and you can end up with that, “Whoa, ah.” That sort of feeling like “I can’t make my brain function.”

It doesn’t have the right nutrients. It’s not picking it up.

Sean: When a client comes to you and they’ve got brain issues, what kind of diet are you putting

them on? What suggestions do you make for them?

Ritamarie: First of all, I’m just going to quote you, just eat real food is a good place to start.

Sean: JERF it up. Yep. JERF it up.

Ritamarie: Most people are not eating real food. They’re eating stuff out of cans and jars and offthe fast food shelf. You really have to eat real food. Fresh. As fresh as possible. Abundant in plant

food. Lots and lots of green leafy vegetables and foods that contain a lot of antioxidants. You need

a good source of protein. You can choose to get organic free range well-raised animal protein or

plant protein. There’s an abundance of that in your green leafy vegetables and your nuts and

seeds. Plenty of that.

Then fats. Especially for brain, it’s important to have the right balance of omega-3 and omega-6

fats. You need a good source of omega-3 fats. A lot of people come in to see me and they are

vegetarian and they’re going, “Well I eat plenty of flax seeds and chia seeds and walnuts.” But then

we do a fatty acid panel and go, “Well, you’re not converting them. What’s happening?” “Well, youknow, I’m also eating the white flour here and I’m eating my cookies over here and I’m eating my

cake over here. But it’s vegan.” It doesn’t matter if it’s vegan or not. It’s depleted. It’s not real food.

Abundance of nutrients that support every single function in your body. It’s critical.

Sean: How do you make sure that they get that conversion? From what I understand, if you take the

fish-based or the meat-based forms of omega-3 fats you don’t have to convert them, but if you take

the plant based types of omega-3 fats, a lot of people, I think you get like a 15% conversion, or

only 15% of the people who do that actually convert it? Something like that. It has something to do

with the 15%.

Ritamarie: It’s a low conversion.

Sean: How do you make sure that people are able to get enough when they’re consuming vegan

sources of omega 3 fats?


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Ritamarie: That’s a good question, and I just want to clarify something. Fish is an awesome source

of DHA and EPA. Meat is not.

Sean: DHA, EPA are what?

Ritamarie: Those omega-3 fats. Those 3 forms of…they’re called long chain omega 3 fats. DHA has

a lot more to do with brain health. EPA is really important in inflammation and spasm in the body,

and they all tie together. Fish is an awesome source of that but meat is actually not. Meat generally

has higher amounts of an omega-6 fat called arachadonic acid, which is actually inflammatory.

When you look at fatty acid pathways…I kind of see my life in biochemical pathways, so I see the

pathway in front of me. You have to be careful about the amount of meat that you eat because it

can inhibit that DHA/EPA conversion and can actually inhibit the effectiveness of EPA.

Sean: Just real quick, it depends on the type of meat you’re consuming though, right? Grass fedversus conventional CAFO?

Ritamarie: Yes. Conventional stuff is way off the charts omega-6. Very little omega-3. The grass fed

is still not in the ideal ratio of omega-3 to 6, so you do have to be careful with that. Fish on the

other hand is just predominantly omega-3.

Sean: Got you. So if someone is vegetarian or vegan and they don’t want to consume fish, how

would they get their omega-3 fats and make sure that they’re able to convert that?

Ritamarie: Great. Great question. Things like chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds are short chain fatsand they need to be converted. There’s a whole plethora of nutrients that are required. What I find

is that the people that have trouble converting are generally not getting all those nutrients. Things

like magnesium, vitamin C, D, some of your B vitamins, boron, manganese, zinc. Super important

for that conversion.

The average American is not getting those nutrients because they’re eating processed foods. Even

the average vegetarian or vegan who’s not been educated and studied, will go for the bread with

fake soy meat on it instead of the sandwich. It’s still processed food, and those foods are depleted

in those nutrients. You have to make sure that you’re eating real food, whole food to get thosenutrients.

Sean: You can get all those nutrients from food, from eating real food, or do you also recommend

some supplementation as well, on top of that for your vegan/vegetarian clients?

Ritamarie:I recommend supplementation if they’re not really well educated and dedicated. You

can do it. Anybody can eat a really good diet, if they have the discipline, the time, the dedication.

Most people, a lot of people, are not willing to go to those extremes. I think you can. I do it most of


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the time. I take supplements from time to time. I take algae based supplements. Algae is what the

fish eat to get their omega-3. Most people don’t realize that. You’re eating the fish who ate the

other little fish who ate the algae. I just like to go right to the source and eat the algae.

Sean: Got you. I want to get into supplements with you in just a minute. I want to cover a couple ofyour favorite topics: adrenals as well as the thyroid. How do the adrenals come into play here, or is

it just the whole cortisol connection?

Ritamarie:It’s the cortisol connection big time. Yes, absolutely it’s the cortisol connection.

Sean: Now, moving on, what about the thyroid? How can the thyroid cause brain fog?

Ritamarie: Thyroid effects metabolic rate. That’s what your thyroid hormones do. They go to the

cells and they tell it to up regulate or down regulate metabolic rate. How quickly they burn fat,which means how much energy you’re going to produce. If you’ve got a low amount of thyroid

hormone reaching the cells, then what happens is those cells are going to react in a sluggish way

because they don’t have enough stimulation. You don’t have enough fueling, basically. They’re

tanks are turned down. Their metabolic engines are turned down.

That’s where thyroid comes in. But it’s not as simple as making enough thyroid hormone, as you

know because you’ve done the thyroid summit. There’s so much more. There’s conversion from T-4

the storage from to T-3 the active form, which gets affected by cortisol. Cortisol decreases that

conversion. Then there’s the receptors on every cell in the body for thyroid. You can make all the

thyroid in the world, have the greatest conversion in the world, but if those cells that are going toreceive it are shut down, they’re saying, “Nope, nope. Can’t do it. Done.”

Or they’re blocked, then we don’t get enough of that metabolic engine stoked by the thyroid

hormone, even though the blood looks good. There’s a number of considerations there. The thing

about the stress and the cortisol and all this, cortisol also damages those membranes. It makes

them enflamed. It causes increase in cytokines, inflammatory mediators and they damage those

receptors. In addition, if you do have a conversion issue from the cortisol, it causes more reverse T3

which then lodges into those receptors and blocks out the T3 which is what you need for your

metabolic engine.

Sean: You’re saying that we can have problems converting T4 which is the inactive form of thyroid

to the active form which is T3 due to stress, cortisol and whatnot. We can also have receptor

problems where the cell is resistant to actually hooking up with thyroid hormone so it can boost

the metabolism and do what it’s supposed to do. You’re also saying that we can increase reverse T3

which can be a problem as well, slowing down the metabolism. I’m going to assume it’s very

difficult to have a sharp mind when you have a slow metabolism, right?


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Ritamarie: Yeah. Your brain cells are slow too. Yes. It’s very difficult.

Sean: Got you. Okay, let’s do it again. Eggs, soy, sunflower lecithin, phosphatidylserine if your

cortisol levels are high, reduce stress, get your B vitamins, eat real food, get your omega-3 fats and

look into your thyroid and your adrenal health. Anything I missed in there?

Ritamarie:Another important one, making sure that there’s enough protein, and that the protein’s

earlier in the day versus having high carbohydrate breakfast because that gets the whole thing

wonkers. Then you’re craving and brain fogged by mid-afternoon.

Sean: Explain how that works for those who don’t know, those who are new to the show. Why if

they eat a high carb meal do they find themselves crashing and kind of wonky a couple hours

later?

Ritamarie: What happens when you eat a high carb meal is your body’s responding. It’s going,“Oooh. We got all this sugar. What can I do with this sugar. I need to get it into the cells.” Your

pancreas produces all this insulin. The first few times you eat these high carb meals, you’re doing

just fine, but it’s over time, the pancreas gets worn out of making so much insulin, or it makes so

much insulin because the cells go, “Ooh, too much, too much,” and the receptors get resistant, so

you develop insulin resistance. When you develop insulin resistance, your pancreas just keeps

pumping out that insulin, pumping out that insulin. Then after a while, all that sugar gets converted

to fat. The insulin is clearing the blood out, and it over clears so then you have low blood sugar.

You’re like, “Oh, man, I need more,” or you’re hungry because the cells are starving even though

you just ate this high carb meal. It’s not getting into the cells. The hypothalamus, which is like yourthermostat regulator is going, “Well, I don’t feel full yet. I don’t feel full yet.” Then leptin gets

resistant. Then leptin’s not sending out the signal. Leptin’s another hormone that’s produced by fat

cells, but you get resistant. There’s this whole plethora of hormone resistance and hormone

fluctuations that are way beyond what they should be.

Sean: I have to assume that you see this all the time with your clients. Most people, they’re on their

way to work, they grab a cereal bar, they grab a bagel, they grab a croissant. Something that’s really

fast and easy and high in carbohydrates. Do you find that all the time?

Ritamarie: I get a lot of very sophisticated folks that I see now. I used to see a lot more of those

folks. I see a lot more of the people who are, instead of grabbing for the croissant, they’re grabbing

for the fresh squeezed orange juice. It’s a similar effect on the body. Or they’re grabbing the whole

wheat bagel. Whatever. They’re doing it in a much healthier way, but they’re still loading their body

with carbs first thing in the morning.

Sean: Let’s get into a few more solutions. I have a list right here that I pulled from your website.

What is HeartMath?


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Ritamarie: I love HearthMath. HeartMath is a process that was developed by the Institute of

HeartMath. It’s basically a system of combining breathing and appreciation to shift yourself from

sympathetic nervous system that we talked about earlier to parasympathetic nervous system. You

can do that in an instant. You can train yourself to be able to do it in one breath. Your brain fog can

lift in that instant. You have to keep doing it and practicing it for your brain fog to lift permanently,but you can go from “Okay, where are the keys, I’m nervous, I got to go get, I got to get there in

time.” Then you go, “Okay, wait. Ah, okay, that’s where the keys are, good. Done.”

Sean: Just the calming down can bring your brain back online.

Ritamarie: It’s the process of having appreciation. The emotion of appreciation brings the heart

waves into rhythm, and it brings the heart and the brain into what they call coherence. It’s an

amazing process. I’ve been using it with people for probably close to 10 years. I would say the

results are nothing short of miraculous.

Sean: Isn’t there a piece of equipment that you attach to your ear that’s hooked up to a little

monitor as well?

Ritamarie: Yep. You can do that. You can do it on your own. You can just get the book, read about it,

listen to one of my tapes, or you can get this cool device. There’s one that actually hooks up to your

iPhone and you can stick it on your ear. It’s a little thing and it’s measuring your heart rate variability

You can actually look at it and it will tell you are in the red zone, the blue zone or the green zone.

It’s like a biofeedback thing.

You go, “Well, I thought I was relaxed but boy that thing’s telling me I’m not relaxed. Okay, what do

I have to do.” Then you do your technique and you go, “Oh, that’s what it feels like to be in that

system.” The more you do it the better you get at it. It does take practice, and a lot of people want

to just learn the thing and go, “Oh yeah, I’ll do that when I’m stressed,” but they don’t practice it.

Then when they’re stressed there’s no way they can access that.

Sean: Got you. That’s called HeartMath. You recommend a book called Transforming Stress. Why?

Ritamarie: It’s because it’s simple. It’s written by the Institute of HeartMath. It’s a little, $11 thinpaperback, maybe 140 pages. It takes you through, step by step, the ins and the outs of why it’s

important and how it affects you physiologically, but in a simple way. Then it has little exercises.

They have little places in there, they say, “Okay, put down your book and just take out a pen and

just journal on this and write a few words about what you’re feeling and how you can transform

that.” Very practical. Very easy to read.

Sean: You also recommend turning off the news and turning off your social media and focusing on

good stuff. Why is that?


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Ritamarie: What kind of state do you get into when you’re listening to all the disasters that

happened in every part of the world? Do you get into a nice calm happy place or do you feel like,

“Rrrr,” and you feel helpless, which is one of the worst, in terms of health wise, one of the worst

feelings because it’s like, “There’s nothing I can do here. These people are suffering on the other

end of the world, or there’s a disaster, or there’s a murderer running loose and I hope they don’tget my family member who lives in that town over there.”

You get yourself worked up. I say to people, “If you can get yourself to the point where you can

listen to what’s going on in the world and you can detach from it,” and I don’t mean detach in a

negative way like, “Oh, I don’t care about those people,” but you can just go into appreciation and

go into a calm state. More power to you. Most people can’t. I’m not there yet. I’m not there at all.

Sean: Yep. Let’s do one more thing. It’s definitely hard to be happy when you’re watching the news.

There’s so much bad stuff going on out there. It can only stress you out, and cortisol, as ourlisteners know, causes a lot of problems, when there’s too much cortisol going on. Let’s do one

more. Get off the gluten. Why?

Ritamarie: Oh, man. I’m sure you’ve had lots of experts, including Tom O’Bryan talk about gluten

ad nauseam for some people. There’s a number of things with gluten. In addition to the obvious,

some people are allergic to it. People say, “I’m not allergic to it. I’m not sensitive to it. I can still eat

it, right?” It’s been shown to be inflammatory. It affects the junctions, the tight junctions in the gut,

which causes a leaky gut, which can create all sorts of problems which I know you’ve talked about a

number of times on your show.

In addition, partially digested gluten, it’s not completely digested into amino acids, but it’s partially

digested. It actually resembles opiates. It gets into your bloodstream. There’s this compound called

gluteal morphine. You can measure it on a lab test, in fact Cyrex labs does that. You can actually

measure it and it goes in and affects the opiate receptors in your brain, which gives you that

temporary, “Ah.” You eat a bagel and you feel like you’re on top of the world. Then 2 minutes later

you’re craving another one and another one and another one, which is kind of like people who are

cocaine addicts do.

A little bit is good but then you want more and more and more because your body builds up atolerance. That’s another reason. They’re finding that’s a really big piece of a lot of autistic children.

They’re going into these gluteal morphine stupors and they inflict pain on themselves to try and

get the feeling back. That’s one thing. It’s inflammatory, a lot of people are sensitive to it, it affects

the brain in the way of gluteal morphine. It puts you into a stupor. It causes inflammation.

Joint pain, gut inflammation, brain fog, it stresses your adrenals, thyroid big time. I know you had a

number of people talk about that with the antibodies that cross-react to other tissues and cause the


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body to then attack the thyroid. There’s a lot of reasons and I’m just going into, trying to narrow it

down.

Sean: There’s a lot.

Ritamarie: There’s a lot. We could talk for days on that alone.

Sean: Yeah, I recommend the listeners listen to anything I’ve done with Dr. Tom O’Bryan. Dr. Peter

Osborne and I did a really good show on gluten as well. We’ve got a lot of stuff here, Dr. Ritamarie.

We’ve got eggs, soy and sunflower lecithin, we’ve got phosphatidylserine, reduce stress, B

vitamins, eat real food, get your omega-3’s, look into your thyroid and your adrenal health, eat

more protein especially at breakfast, read the book Transforming Stress, do HeartMath, turn off the

news, and get off the gluten. There’s a lot of stuff, and people are stressed out already so I’m sure

that they want to know where do they start?

Ritamarie: Where do they start?

Sean: Is it different for everybody?

Ritamarie: If you have problems, then it’s a matter of what’s going on. Have somebody help you

look at that and see what’s going on. It could be your gut, it could be your adrenals, it could be just

getting the low stress. I would start by eating real food, first of all, and getting off the gluten. That’s

a really good start, because that’s going to take away a lot of that stress. I would also incorporate

some sort of stress transformation break, whether it’s HeartMath, you can research it, or whether it’sEFT Tapping or the Sedona Method of Release or any of a number of things.

Meditation, short meditations because meditating for an hour, people say, “Ah, I can’t do that, I’m

too busy,” but meditating for 5 minutes can work. Yoga poses, things like that. Having something to

keep from getting so stressed out. Also, sleep is so important for the brain. We didn’t touch on that

at all, but sleep is super, super important for your brain because how can your brain work properly

if you haven’t cleaned out the baggage from yesterday? How do you clean out the baggage? You

go to sleep.

Sean: Yeah. Tom Malterre talked about that. I interviewed him a couple weeks ago for the

Depression Sessions. He was talking about when you sleep and you go into deep sleep, the brain

washes itself. It just washes itself out. I can only imagine people who don’t sleep have got dirty

brain. You got dirty brain, you got brain fog. No dirty brain. Go to sleep.

Ritamarie:Go to sleep.


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Sean: Very important. Dr. Ritamarie, this has been fantastic. You’re website is DrRitamarie.com.

You’ve got blog posts over there, you’ve got some other cool stuff. You’ve got some programs over

there. Talk about any programs you want our audience to know about.

Ritamarie: I’ve got a number of them. Right now we’re in the process of doing an adrenalprogram. We call it CAFE, correcting adrenal fatigue and exhaustion. I actually take people through

how to assess their adrenals, running some lab tests, showing them how to interpret their lab tests,

showing them how to just actually get on programs to help them with adrenals.

I have another one on blood sugar balancing. One of them I have, if you’re a practitioner listening

in and you want to know more, I have a practitioner program called The Nutritional Endocrinology

Practitioner Training. I founded The Institute of Nutritional Endocrinology. It’s all about how do you

take what you know, what we know about how the body works and use that to our advantage using

nutritional medicine, herbs and foods and the whole process of thought and sleep and all that.That’s out there too.

Sean: Very good. That’s all out there at DrRitamarie.com or are there specific links for those?

Ritamarie:The Nutritional Endocrinology, if you just go to NutritionalEndocrinology.com, we have

a nice little resource pack that we give. Some audios and videos and checklists and things like that

to get started or to add to your practice. For the CAFE program, the adrenal program, it’s

cafeprogram.com, and that will tell you more about that program and how to get involved there.

Sean: Outstanding. Head over to those sites and check those out, and again, go toDrRitamarie.com. Dr. Ritamarie, thanks so much.

Ritamarie: Thank you so much, Sean. This has been lots of fun.

Sean: All right pals. We will see you next week. I’ve got Gerald Roliz, who is the author of The

Pharmaceutical Myth, a really good book. He’s also a part of the Depression Sessions. I interviewed

him a couple of weeks ago. He’s got a crazy story. He was a pharmaceutical sales rep, and got tired

of selling his soul to the devil and decided to move away from that and learn how to heal people.

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