hyla cass the addicted brain and how to break free addicted brain and how to break free, with dr....

The Addicted Brain and How to Break Free, with Dr. Hyla Cass www.theAnxietySummit.com June 9-22, 2014

© 2014 Trudy Scott All Rights Reserved of 29

The Addicted Brain and How to Break Free, With Dr. Hyla Cass

§ How to recognize the signs addiction § Why do we become addicted and what is the connection to anxiety § Food/carbs/sugar, caffeine, alcohol and drug addictions § How can we end addiction without suffering/withdrawal

Trudy Scott: Good day, hello, and welcome to the Anxiety Summit. I'm South

African, so we could also say howzit, as in "How are you today?" Or goeiemȏre, as in, "Good morning," or goeienag if it's evening, as in, "Good evening."

I'm Trudy Scott, food mood expert, nutritionist, and author of The

Antianxiety Food Solution. And I just thought I'd change up the introduction a little bit so you don’t hear the same thing every single interview.

Today's topic is: “The Addicted Brain and how to Break Free.”

You may be wondering about this topic and how it ties back to anxiety. Well, you're going to hear exactly how it ties back to anxiety from Dr. Hyla Cass.



I have known Hyla for many years and I am proud to have her here to share her expertise on the subject. Welcome, Hyla.

Hyla Cass: It's a joy to be here. Thank you. Trudy Scott: Thank you so much for coming and sharing this great information. Hyla Cass: Oh, I'm so happy, yeah. Trudy Scott: Okay, good. You're happy. I'm happy too, great. [Laughter] Hyla Cass: We're both happy. Trudy Scott: Let me read your bio and then I'll give you a little context based on

some of the other interviews that we've had, and then we'll go right into the interview.

Dr. Hyla Cass is a nationally acclaimed physician, board certified

in psychiatry and neurology, as well as in integrative and holistic medicine. She is one of the country's foremost authors and experts on the subject of integrative medicine combining the best of leading edge nutrition with modern science in her clinical practice of 30 years – writings, lectures, and nationwide media appearances.

She is recognized for helping people to come off both psychiatric

medicine and substances of abuse with the use of targeted nutritional supplements, including her own unique formulations.

They also serve to enhanced mood, hence the connection to

anxiety and mood problems, and mind, energy, and memory naturally. She is quoted widely in newspapers and magazines, including The Los Angeles Times, The Toronto Star, Cosmopolitan, Newsweek, and People magazine. She also appears regularly on radio and television on shows such as the Dr. Oz show, the View, E! Entertainment, and MSNBC.

She's also the author of several popular books, including User's

Guide to Herbal Remedies, St. Johns Wort: Nature's Blues Buster, Natural Highs, Supplemental Prescription: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutrition, Eight Weeks to Vibrant Heath, and The Addicted Brain and How to Break Free. And see her website, cassmd.com, for more information.



Great. We heard from Julia Ross on how we self-sooth and self-medicate with junk food and carbs and alcohol, and even pot. And in my interview with Dr. Kelly Brogan, she said that she has patients change their diets and add meditation for the first 30 days that they're working with her.

And then she looks at supplements and other approaches, and that's wonderful. And many people can just make the food changes. We know how powerful food is. Just changing foods, getting of gluten and adding in breakfast can make a world of difference. But as we both know, Hyla, for many people their addictive nature and their drug of choice, be it sugar or gluten or carbs or wine, or caffeine, or whatever it is – pot or alcohol –makes it so they just can't do it. They can't just make those food changes. They are truly addicted to those foods and need more help. So this is where your great information comes in. So we want to talk about the addicted brain and how to break free. The first thing is how do we know we're addicted? What are the signs of addictions?

Hyla Cass: First of all, in just very simple terms, when there's something that

you just have to have, like, "I’ve got to have this, I’ve got to have my drink before dinner. I’ve got to have my coffee when I get up in the morning. I’ve got to have this donut right now." All of these are addictions, and you can say, "Well, no, it's just my preference. I like my morning coffee. I like my drink with dinner."

That's all very fine, but what's underlying that "got to have it" is an urgency, a need. Because people can actually have preferences for things, but that's not what we're talking about with addiction. And people can fool themselves. I have a chapter in Natural Highs saying "Addicted? I can quit whenever I want to," because that's what people think.

And the truth is not so easy. It's not so easy. And people find that

out when they go ahead and try to stop. People will go to, say, a nutritionist, or a doctor such as myself, who does more holistic sort of medicine and they're told, "You need to stop drinking, stop your caffeine, stop your sugar," and they just feel terrible. "Oh, no, you can't be serious." They panic.

And the truth is – I think you were mentioning earlier how starting

somebody on a good diet, as we all do, can sometimes do the trick.



And we don’t have to quite white knuckle it. If you have an addiction to, say, caffeine, sugar, one of the other bad things, and you turn it around by eating the right foods, because they're replenishing and restoring what's missing, so that craving that you have actually goes away simply because your brain's getting what it needs.

And all of this happens under the radar. You don’t even realize it's

happening. It's very interesting, I can give you some cases from my practice where this has occurred. But that's a first step. The first step is the diet.

The next step is nutrients. And again, when you're missing certain

nutrients – and this is just basic science, basic cookbook science, like baking a cake – in order to make neurotransmitters, in order to make the brain chemicals that send messages around in our brain, we need the right raw materials, just like baking a cake, making a neurotransmitter, making serotonin, making dopamine, making acetylcholine, or GABA, we need the ingredients.

So you can get the ingredients from your diet. It can work. If it

doesn’t work, we're going to get the ingredients from nutritional supplements. And basically I can help someone figure out what supplements they need. Or if they're coming to see me, I'll actually just tell them what supplements they need based on what it is what they're craving.

So rather than they're feeling guilty about, quote, admitting, "Oh,

well, I kind of drink six glasses of wine a night," or, "I drink ten cups of coffee." Rather than feeling like that's a terrible confession, but it really isn't. It's information. It's giving me information that I then use to help them.

And the whole thing can be really not so traumatic, surprisingly

enough. And this whole idea about people having an addictive personality, I don’t think so. I think the personality becomes addictive because of this imbalanced neurochemistry.

Trudy Scott: Great. And I like that you say that a lot of people don’t feel that

they are addicted and a lot of my clients say, "I could stop anytime," and coffee's a big one. A lot of people really hold on to the coffee and they self -medicate with it. And the problem being if you're anxious, that caffeine is going to very possibly make things worse, so you do need to break that addiction and so you can get the caffeine out to see if that is a factor.



And being aware that these foods and sodas and sugar can be as addicting as drugs. There's a lot of research now supporting that it actually affects dopamine levels, that we can become as addicted as if we are on a drug. So it's not something to feel ashamed of. It's, as you say, it's a biochemical imbalance that we can address, and then we can actually start to see some results so it's not so difficult.

Hyla Cass: Yeah, it's so interesting, and you repeated this, and I'm going to

repeat it back to you about feeling ashamed and feeling weak, and that there's something wrong with you and if you were just stronger you would be able to quit whatever it was. And we don’t say that about somebody.

Let's say somebody has TB, which in the olden days there were

whole sanitariums of people and they would say, "Well, just go out in the sunlight and get some exercise and eat well, and you'll overcome the TB." Well, not so fast. That might have enhanced your immune system, but ultimately we developed some pretty potent drugs that killed the tuberculosis bacteria.

So it wasn’t just good ole willpower that got people well from TB

eventually. And it's the same thing with these addictions. We actually have something out of balance. It's not a bacteria, but it might as well be, because it's something that's not in your conscious volition. It's under the hood. If you're thinking of a car, like fixing the mechanics of a car.

You go under the hood, you see what's wrong, and you fix it. You

don’t say, "Well, there's a rattle in the hood. If I ignore it it'll go away," or, "If I meditate a lot it'll go away." No, it won't. You know you have to fix your car. It's the same thing with your person. You have a sign. You have a symptom that you're, quote, addicted to something. Well, it just means something's out of balance, something's out of whack, and we need to see what it is and restore the balance.

And I make it sound simple, because you know what? It is. Trudy Scott: We're going to get to that and I'm totally with you because the

tools that we have at our disposal to address this are so powerful. But I want to just go back to what you said. I'm going to even go a little bit deeper. "I'm not feeling ashamed or weak." Because you were talking about this in the context of addiction, and what we're talking about here applies to mental health as well.



A lot of people with anxiety and depression, feel ashamed. There's this whole stigma around mental health, and again, because the anxiety is the Anxiety Summit, I just want to bring us back to anxiety and mental health. Although there's this very close connection to addiction: that you don’t have to feel ashamed. If it's a biochemical reason that is causing you to feel like this, you address that and then it can go away, as you said. You gave a wonderful example of TB. If someone's got a broken leg, you don’t judge them for that. If someone's got anxiety or a mental health condition, we often look at that person a little bit strangely, and we shouldn’t be doing that, because biochemistry plays such a big role.

Hyla Cass: Well, exactly. As a psychiatrist, I've had people sent to me, for

example, with anxiety, and it turned out that what was really going on was they were consuming aspartame in their soft drinks. They were drinking several soft drinks a day and the aspartame, which is the artificial sweetener in the soft drink, was really making them highly anxious and even depressed. And in come cases – I remember one woman thought she was actually losing her mind, she was feeling really crazy.

I took a history, and when I suggested it might be the aspartame, it

wasn’t so hard to take a history, because she walked in carrying this very large awful Coke [laughs] from one of these fast food places, these gigantic ones with straws and the ice and the – oh, my gosh, I can't believe people actually drink these.

And she was just really going to town on it. And when I suggested

stopping it, she was not too excited about doing it, but she was feeling so bad that she was willing to do that. And I gave her some nutritional supplements that would help take the place of the aspartame so it wasn’t like going cold turkey, because it feels that way.

It's like going cold turkey from heroin, poor lady. But I'm telling

you, she got better. Trudy Scott: That's fantastic. Hyla Cass: And she stopped having her mental symptoms. Now just think of

it. Had she gone to a different psychiatrist, she would have been put on, for sure, an SSRI. She might have been put on something like SEROQUEL, an antipsychotic as well.



It's horrifying when I think what goes on out there in the community when people are referred to doctors, not even psychiatrists, but even family doctors, that are prescribing so many medications before taking a history, before looking at what is going on in that person's personal individual life's chemistry.

Trudy Scott: That's wonderful to hear, because you're right. There's so many

different causes, and I'm glad you brought up aspartame. We actually had a great interview with Mira Dessy. She talked about all the additives in your food that can cause anxiety or contribute to some of these symptoms. And aspartame's one of them, and there's a whole host of other things that could be factors. So looking at a person's diet history, looking at lifestyle factors, and seeing if some of those are contributing factors.

But as you said, it's all good and well to say, "You need to give it

up." But if you don’t have the resources to make it easy to give up, then it's very difficult. And I know we're going to go into that and how we can do that.

So anything else around the signs of addiction, or can we move

onto why do we get addicted? Hyla Cass: Well, the other issue in addictions can be that you develop a

tolerance, that you need more of the same thing. So you may start off needing one Starbucks. Then you need two to really stay awake. Then you may need three. Or the same thing with chocolate or cocaine, whatever it is. So that's another part of addiction, is tolerance.

And there are many other more subtle aspects to addiction –

getting into social trouble, getting into sexual trouble, having people unfriend you in real life.

[Laughter] and on Facebook. They unfriend you. And you can also tell that

you're addicted by if you sneak things, if you hide candy wrappers, if you have a stash of whatever your favorite thing is, be it a drug or a drink.

And really, mostly the compulsion to use. You have to use it. If

you don’t, you don’t feel right. So there's all kinds of little signs and symptoms that you can check off. In fact, in my Addicted Brain book, I have a checklist where you can check off whether or



not you're addicted, and then there's another checklist for figuring out what the neurotransmitter imbalance is.

Trudy Scott: Okay, great. We'll provide that link on the download page with the

audio. It's called Outsmart Your Addiction quiz. And then you’ve got the Reclaim Your Brain e-book, which everyone will get access to. Is that correct?

Hyla Cass: That's exactly right. And the report has its own questionnaire in it

about your brain chemistry to help you figure out where your brain chemistry is out of balance, and then what you can do about it by balancing neurotransmitters.

Then there's another – I don’t want to get too confusing here, but I

also do have a book called The Addicted Brain and How to Break Free that's separate. That's not part of the bonus that you're getting here, but it is available. And it goes even more deeply into all this.

Trudy Scott: Excellent. And I've read that and it's fantastic – great amount of

detail and lots of great resources. So that's great. Well, thank you for offering the gift. And quizzes are always beneficial, so you can figure out what's going on.

And then just going back to some of the signs, some other things to

think about is this – I always have my clients say, "How is this thing making you feel?" And that can be a clue as to which neurotransmitter deficiency it is. And seeing we're talking about anxiety, a lot of people will go for these foods or alcohol to relax. It's stress eating. And you can figure out if you are eating because you're stressed? Are you eating because you're sad? Are you eating because you need comfort? And that'll help you figure out which neurotransmitter deficiency that you have.

Hyla Cass: Exactly right. Trudy Scott: So how do we become addicted? Hyla Cass: We become addicted for various reasons, and it's not because we

have an addictive personality. First of all, there's often a genetic predisposition. There's something called reward deficiency syndrome that was written up quite extensively by Dr. Kenneth Blum.

And in reward deficiency syndrome, what we have is a deficiency

in dopamine. Now, there can either be not enough dopamine or not enough dopamine receptors. And dopamine is a



neurotransmitter that makes you feel motivated up, energized, focused, wanting to do things, happy, excited.

So when that's not happening, when you don’t have enough

dopamine, you're going to feel not right. You're going to have a problem with attention. It's hard to pay attention and you can end up with attention deficit disorder. You can have a low-grade, low energy and need to hype it up with adrenaline producing activities, and that can be dangerous behaviors, risk-taking behaviors.

So all of these are a part of the reward deficiency syndrome. You

may end up addicted then to alcohol or cocaine, because alcohol is both a stimulant and a relaxant. And what Dr. Blum discovered was that there's actually a genetic pattern here, and many alcoholics have this particular variation of the alcohol gene that he called. He called it the reward deficiency gene.

And when you have that, you have a tendency to want to drink, to

want to use, usually stimulants, and we can actually fix it using the right neurotransmitter precursors, the right raw materials to help make dopamine. So when we help your brain to make more dopamine, you're not going to be craving the bad stuff from the outside.

Trudy Scott: Great. And his research is fantastic. He's published a number of

studies, following on from his initial study, and it's very interesting.

Now, do you know, are there other studies looking at other

neurotransmitter deficiencies in relationship to the whole addiction process?

Hyla Cass: Well, not that he's done. Or are you saying just in general? Trudy Scott: Yeah, like serotonin. Hyla Cass: Well, a lot of the serotonin research has been done by the

pharmaceutical industry, but that's also a little deceptive in a number of ways.

First of all, there's no such thing as a selective serotonin reuptake

inhibitor. If something is affecting serotonin, it's going to be affecting the other neurotransmitters as well. And also, there are many transporters, many different kinds of serotonin receptors. There's not just one serotonin receptor.



So when we're talking serotonin here and I'm talking about precursors to serotonin, how to make more serotonin, I'm talking in pretty broad strokes. I just want to make clear that this is not – if you go to read a research paper, you're going to get into some very detailed information that's really from the pharmaceutical industry and that's what they use to justify what they're doing in terms of giving SSRIs.

Whereas we who do the more natural form of treatment are

actually working in broader strokes and we're also testing for other amino acids, vitamins, and minerals in order to create balance. So it's not simply a matter of low serotonin. That's part of it.

Trudy Scott: That's part of it. Hyla Cass: And actually, to raise serotonin, there are other elements. For

example, women's estrogen, which goes in cycles, very much affects serotonin. So when women are low in estrogen, as in during PMS, there are all kinds of low serotonin symptoms. And the low serotonin symptoms are increased appetite, wanting to eat carbs, really craving carbs, feeling depressed, feeling irritable, having trouble sleeping. Does it sound familiar?

Trudy Scott: Mm-hmm. Hyla Cass: That's a PMS kind of pattern. And that's related to low hormones,

low female hormones. So we treat this not just by giving the serotonin precursor, but we also do it with diet.

Unlike conventional medicine, where we have these magic bullets, we don’t use magic bullets. I might say that somebody is depressed; they have PMS; they're eating too much; they have a sugar addiction and should be taking 5-HTP/5-hydroxytryptophan, or tryptophan, and that will help to make serotonin. And very often that does the trick.

Add a little B6 to that because you need B6 as s co-factor and you also need some other co-factors. And so the truth is if I'm giving 5-HTP I'm also going to give a multivitamin so someone doesn’t have to figure out, "Well, what else? I need zinc, and I need magnesium " You don’t have to figure all that. So it's a lot simpler to give a multivitamin and 5-HTP. And lo and behold, the symptoms of craving, of irritability, of depression, difficulty sleeping, actually go away just from taking these natural products so you never have to go near the medications, which



that's a good thing because the medications themselves have a lot of issues. A lot of side effects.

Trudy Scott: Can you say some of those issues with some of the meds? Hyla Cass: The most popular drugs today are the SSRIs. So Paxil, Celexa,

Lexapro, Cymbalta, which is also an NARI (Selective noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor). It also inhibits serotonin, Wellbutrin, also an NARI.

And the side effects can be pretty serious, they can be anything –

from headache, nausea, agitation, drowsiness, to increased appetite, weight gain – huge problem – literally huge problem – and suicidal and homicidal thinking and behavior.

People, particularly young people – teens and in their 20s – often

will respond to an SSRI by becoming suicidal for the first time. These are young people who maybe were a little depressed and their family doctor put them on an SSRI. And before you know it, they actually attempt suicide.

Trudy Scott: Oh, that's so sad. Hyla Cass: And if they survive – I mean, this is horrifying. If they survive,

they tell it, it's like, "The drug made me do it." I had one woman tell me, she said years ago she had been put on an SSRI and this is the way she related it to me: "The drug told me to get a gun and to go to this particular street corner and to shoot people."

She said the drug was talking to her. And this is not a woman who

is ordinarily hearing voices or psychotic at all. But there's something about these drugs that can have that kind of effect on some people. Doesn’t happen to everyone, but if you're the one or that's your family that's the one, it's bad.

So these are the things we have to be very, very cognizant of. We

hear of the school shooters, the women – oh, the women who kill their children. This is so horrifying, so horrifying. And very often, if you look, it's not that they weren't medicated. It's not that they were psychotic and weren't medicated. These were women who were on medication and had either recently been put on or had their medication changed, or had something added to their medication.

And I checked this after the last big school shooting. I went

through the records, and there are quite a few articles. I actually



wrote a Huffington Post blog about this, saying it is guns, not drugs, that's causing these shootings?

And it's a big concern. So that's a very long answer to a short

question that you asked me, but I really want people to be aware of this, that if you're on an SSRI or someone in your family is, be aware of this. That if there are any suicidal or homicidal feelings and thoughts, you must report them to the doctor and then go off of the medication.

But never take yourself off of medication, because then you go into

withdrawal, and that's difficult. And that can also be dangerous. Trudy Scott: Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. It's really good hearing

from a psychiatrist talking about this, and it's very disturbing, I agree. And I would love to share your Huffington Post article, so we'll get that from you and we can make sure to include it with the gift downloads so people can go and read more about what you have to say about this, because I think it's really important.

Hyla Cass: Oh, that's great, thank you. Yeah, what I am actually going to

include is Reclaim Your Brain and the addiction quiz. Now we have three things that we're going to include, which is the guns, not drugs link.

Cool. We really have to educate people as much as possible. This

information is what should be taught to kids, to parents, to everybody, and be just sold a bill of goods by the sort of standard of care out there, because it's not healthy.

Trudy Scott: Yes, and to know that there are options. A lot of people are going

to medications because they don’t know that there's an option. They don’t know. They're feeling terrible and they want help. And you can understand why they would do this, because this is what they are told. This is the only option that you’ve got, this or therapy.

And the fact that we are doing this summit is a way to reach people

to show them that there are these other options. And you writing those articles on Huffington Post, it's great. It's just a great way to get the message out and to share this information. So thank you for doing what you're doing. It's really, really great.

Hyla Cass: Thank you. And thank you for doing what you're doing. I was so

excited to hear that you were doing this summit, because by the



way, I love your book. I love it. I just ate it up. I read it cover to cover and I was so excited.

Trudy Scott: Oh, well, thank you so much. Hyla Cass: It was the kind of book – and every once in a while I read one and

say, "Oh, I wish I'd written that. [Laughs] But you did it better. You did it even better than I would have done it, and I just love that. And I'm sharing it with everybody that I can think of, and I'm very glad that you're augmenting it with this summit and bringing in everyone else as well, so thank you.

Trudy Scott: Well, thank you. Coming from you, that means a lot. I really

appreciate it and I love your books too. I think having books are a great way to reach people. You probably found that you're hearing from people all over the world.

I'll get an email from someone in Turkey. I get an email from

someone in Israel. And you're probably getting the same. You're able to reach more people with your message.

And know when I had my anxiety in my late 30s, I devoured

every single book that I could get my hands on. So having a book is wonderful, and you’ve written many. I commend you for writing so many, because it was a lot of work just writing one. [Laughs]

Thank you for your compliments. I appreciate it. So where did we get to in the addicted brain discussion? We talked about how it happened. Did we finish that? Was there anything else we need to add into how we become addicted?

Hyla Cass: Stress can cause addiction, because with stress we use up certain of

our hormones, and certain of our neurotransmitter precursors to make adrenaline and cortisol. Now we don’t have them left to make the calming neurotransmitters. So as a result we end up having a lot of anxiety and depression.

Very often, people who are anxious and depressed really are

actually low adrenals. And when I ask what's the history, what's going on, what's been happening in their life, it turns out that they’ve been through a very stressful period – a divorce, a job loss, a death in the family, whatever.

So that causes this low feeling, and then that can very easily lead to

addiction, just to feel better, to consume sugar, alcohol, cocaine,



whatever it is. So this is not necessarily caused by your genetics. It's actually caused by your circumstances

Trudy Scott: Yeah, and then related to that, basically anything that could cause a

nutritional deficiency could essentially contribute to these neurotransmitter imbalances.

So if we have a gluten intolerance, we've got damage to our gut

lining and we're not absorbing zinc and some of the co-factors that you mentioned, and that could contribute as well.

Hyla Cass: Absolutely. And anything that makes you deficient – the B

vitamins, you're not going to be able to make neurotransmitters. And this is again, so the baking the cake of neurotransmitters. You're not going to get a really good cake. You're not going to get a really good neurotransmitter if you don’t have all the good ingredients, and that's the whole point. That's what you and I do – make sure that people have all the ingredients that they need and have really good, healthy neurotransmitters that really work and give your brain what it needs.

And good brain – we also need to feed the brain itself, the brain

cells. And with that, for that we use essential fatty acids, because the brain is made 60, 70 percent fat. So by the way, that old low-fat stuff is very unhealthy – very important to have good fats in the diet.

Trudy Scott: GoodToo many people are still eating low fat and it horrifies me

when I work with someone who's on the low-fat kick and their whole family's eating low fat, and here they’ve got their kids growing up eating low fat or no fat, which is just so detrimental and so harmful for the kids' developing brains. So it's not a good thing.

Hyla Cass: Oh, wow. I have pregnant women actually taking fish oil. It's a

little risky for them to be eating fish because of the mercury level. So I want to make sure that they are actually taking fish oil caps and ones that are proven to be clear of any kind of chemicals or heavy metals.

Trudy Scott: Okay, good, good point. So what are the different kinds of

addictions that we can have? Hyla Cass: Let me name them. [Laughs] There are the food addictions, and

it's usually in the realm of carbohydrates, and that's because our



brain runs on glucose. So anything that's sugary, we get a buzz from, and that's what the carbs do. It's quick sugar.

And evolutionarily, that's how we developed. When we were cave

people, you couldn’t go to the corner and get a candy bar or a donut. They didn’t have Krispy Kremes out there in the jungle. So if you found some berries or you found something sweet, that was a good thing. And we were geared to feel rewarded from it, because that gave us a good lift.

However, now that sugar is so plentiful, and in fact is actually

unfortunately engineered into all of our food, it becomes a very unhealthy pattern, and an unhealthy product. So the sugar and carb addiction is huge, and the food industry feeds off us as we're feeding off of all that junk.

Trudy Scott: That's a great quote. The food industry feeds off us as we are

feeding off all that junk. I love that. [Laughter] Hyla Cass: I just made it up. Trudy Scott: That's a quotable quote. [Laughter] Hyla Cass: All right, you can have it. Trudy Scott: I'll attribute it to you, don’t worry. [Laughs] Hyla Cass: Oh, thank you so much. So there's carbs. There's also the stimulants. Everything from

caffeine to cocaine and meth, because if we have reward deficiency, we want things to give us a buzz, make us feel better. And it could be sugar, but it could also be caffeine or cocaine, or meth. But we want anything that gives us that kind of a dopamine rush.

If we have a serotonin deficiency, we're very often again craving the carbs, or we could be craving alcohol. In fact, alcohol goes sort of across the board, because it's actually – alcohol is a stimulant and a relaxant. So usually you're deficient in a number of things when you have an alcohol problem, but we know how to fix that – with diet and with the right nutrients.



And that's a whole issue with things like gambling, and porn, or shopping, or television, or video games. These are all the habit addictions, when you can't not do these things, when you're compelled to do them. And there is kind of an OCD, an obsessive compulsive disorder, aspect to it. And in fact it does affect a part of the brain that is involved in OCD. In fact, the treatment of this, because it's an addiction and a compulsion, women when you have these what are called paraphilias, or habit addictions, one of the products that we have found to be very useful besides a good diet, besides 5-HTP and a multivitamin for the co-factors is N-acetyl cysteine, something like 500 to 1,500 milligrams daily of NAC has been very, very useful in dealing with these habit patterns, including ones with some young people particularly who pluck out their eyebrows and their eyelashes. It's something called trichotillomania. And you can have psychoanalysis from here till the cows come home. It's not going to do it. Now, there's behavioral therapy, behavioral mod, cognitive behavioral therapy. They're all very nice. But let me tell you, you change the chemistry and you really cut through. You really cut through to the chase and you can get rid of the issue. It's not a psychological issue. Now, what you choose to be addicted, there might be a psychological determinate. But taking the NAC and the other nutrients will actually stop the need, and then you can also – I mean, therapy is always good. And particularly if somebody's been addicted to anything. Like if you're a gambler, you have a whole lifestyle built on gambling. I'm going to casinos. I'm hanging out with certain people. Well, when you stop the behavior, it also means stopping your social life. Or if you’ve hung around people who are heroin addicts, that's your life. Those are your buddies. That's your social milieu. It may not be a nice one, but that's what you do. So again, you have to learn new behaviors, make new friends, have new habit patterns. Or if you're giving up smoking, if your habit is to smoke after a meal or smoke after sex – I never could figure that one out, but there you go. [Laughter]



I've never been a smoker. But then you need to do something else. Well, the one after sex is, I say, cuddle instead of smoking. That should handle it.

Trudy Scott: I would agree on that one. [Laughter] Hyla Cass: Smoking is yucky. But for smokers – a lot of smokers think it's

yucky too, but when you're addicted, you're addicted. I remember when I was a medical student and I was seeing a patient. It was in thehospital, and the men were smoking. The patient was smoking in bed. In those days they allowed patients to smoke. This was a long time ago.

So the patient was smoking. And I looked at them and I wanted to

say, "You're going to get lung cancer." And I looked at his chart. He had lung cancer.

So I didn’t tell him not to stop smoking. I didn’t say anything.

The poor guy was addicted. So even though he had lung cancer, he was still smoking.

Trudy Scott: Do you find that the cigarette addiction or the tobacco addiction is

one of the toughest ones to quit? Hyla Cass: It is a tough one. It is a tough one. It's not impossible, and believe

or not, there are people who just decide, "I'm going to quit," and they do. It's pretty amazing, but they can, and I do people that have quit. And they just decide, "I'm going to quit."

But there are some tricks to it. I actually cover that in my The

Addicted Brain and How to Break Free book, which is not the e-book. It's a different e-book. In The Addicted Brain I talk about going on your basic detox diet and then taking certain supplements, which actually help you to restore your brain balance so you're not jonesing after a cigarette. And that works too.

You take Vitamin C. You take chromium to balance your blood

sugar, or a multivitamin that's high in chromium, and I carry some of those. And in fact, I find that so many people are unbalanced in their blood sugar that my multis always have a really good amount of chromium. And sometimes chromium is all it takes to deal with a sugar addiction, because it keeps your blood sugar balanced.



Trudy Scott: Yeah, it's a great mineral for keeping the sugar balanced. Hyla Cass: It's quite amazing, actually. And I want to come back to the

chromium in a second, because it just reminded me of something, but I want to just finish this list of what to do for smokers. And that's Vitamin C, chromium, and niacin.

Niacin will give you a niacin flush, so if you don’t like the niacin

flush, which actually is good for you – it expands your blood vessels and enhances your circulation. But some people don’t like the niacin flush, and those people I say just take niacinamide 500 milligrams instead.

And then cal-mag is very helpful – calcium and magnesium that

helps to neutralize the acidity that people have that are smokers. And that also helps cut the cravings. And 5-HTP is another very useful amino acid for smokers.

So I have my little tricks there, my little protocol for people. But

getting back to the chromium, I remember I was consulting once to a group, and one of the men pulled me aside, because I was consulting to them on a whole health project, not for the individual.

But he pulled me aside during a break and he said, "I'm having this

problem where partway through the day, like afternoon, I get really tired and start craving sugar, and I just don’t feel right. And this man was actually a black belt martial artist as well. And he worked in a high pressure corporate job.

And I said, "Why don’t you just try chromium?" We only had a

very short break and I didn’t have a lot – I couldn’t really go into the whole history with him. I said, "Try chromium, see what happens." And that was it.

I saw him about three months later when I went back to that same

place to consult and he said, "You changed my life." He said, "I've lost weight. I feel better. I have more energy in the afternoon. And what I did was I started to take chromium a couple of times a day – 200 micrograms twice a day." He said, "That totally changed my relationship with sugar, increased my energy, and I feel better."

And I was so happy. And that reminded me of a book by a Dr.

Davidson from Duke University who is a conventional psychiatrist



who discovered that with atypical depression, there were people who were totally unresponsive to the drugs – nothing worked – those patients did really well with chromium. And he thought he made the biggest discovery in the world.

Well, for a psychiatrist, for a conventional psychiatrist who does

not use vitamins at all in their practice as supplements, that would be a pretty far out discovery. For us, it's every day. It's what we do.

Trudy Scott: Right, exactly. Hyla Cass: But I thought that was pretty good. And he wrote a book about it. Trudy Scott: Good. Hyla Cass: He did some research and wrote a book. Trudy Scott: Well, your case study is great. I love the success. That's

wonderful. Well done. I was not familiar with Dr. Davidson's wook out of Duke University, but when I was doing research for my book, I came across quite a number of studies talking about how chromium was very beneficial for anxiety. So it's a wonderful nutrient and it's a common deficiency and can make a big difference with helping to even out blood sugar levels.

But I want to get back to a few things that you said, that I just want

to reiterate, and then also comment on and then ask you a question. Firstly, I'm really glad you brought up smoking, because a lot of people smoke to relax, and the kind of anxious person, who uses smoking as your drug of choice for relaxing. Then you’ve got some resources, yes, so thank you for sharing those.

I had a quick question about smoking. Have you found that people

do better getting off cigarettes with hypnotherapy at all? Because I have had quite a few people said that that helps.

Hyla Cass: Oh, absolutely. I've had people in one or two sessions, and that's

all they needed. Trudy Scott: In addition to the nutrients as well. And then going back to the

hair pulling, I was just going to comment on the fact that you mentioned these behaviors, like the gambling and the porn and the TV and the shopping. A lot of people don’t realize that some of these nutrients that we're going to talk about in a second, that help break the food addiction or the alcohol, or the drug addiction,



actually help with some of these behavior addictions. And a lot of people don’t realize that, so I'm really glad that you brought those up.

And then going to the hair pulling, you talked about NAC, and that

was really interesting. That was new to me, so thank you for sharing that. And I wondered if you could just comment on inositol for some of the OCD type behavior, with the gambling – this has an OCD aspect to it – and then with the hair pulling. Do you find inositol's helpful?

Hyla Cass: Yes, and I use that – when you use inositol you have to really step

it up at least 1,000 milligrams twice a day. It usually comes in 500-milligram capsules, so you can take two twice a day, or you can take the powder. It comes in a power form.

So I use inositol a lot. It's a secondary transporter. It actually

helps to augment serotonin. So you may be giving 5-HTP or 5-hydroxytryptophan, or actually L-tryptophan, to enhance serotonin, but then you add – inositol's a secondary messenger, and that helps to boost your serotonin. So that's actually a really good one.

And there's something that I wanted to add here, and that's

glutamine. And it's one of my real favorite and simple tricks. It's quite remarkable, because it acts like sugar, like glucose in the brain, so when someone is having an urge to drink, like, "God, I have to have a drink," if they open a capsule of glutamine, it could be a 500-milligram capsule – it comes in 500-milligram capsules, or 1,000-milligram capsules, or you can buy the powder – I carry capsules on my website. And it's really inexpensive stuff.

You open up a capsule under the tongue. It tastes rather sweet and

you put that under your tongue, and the urge goes away. So it's quite interesting. I had a woman email me and she said, "What's in that chromium?" She said, "I was about to go out to get a drink –" it was like at midnight one night. You know she's an alcoholic. She was about to go out and buy some alcohol.

And she said, "I took this glutamine like you recommended and I

didn’t go out." And she said, "Next few times I did the same thing and I haven't drank anything since." So isn't that amazing?

Trudy Scott: It is. Hyla Cass: Such a wonderful, beautiful solutions, that people don’t have get

stuck in taking – first of all, get stuck in being just not being



treated at all, or stuck taking these medications that then drive them down a difficult road. Because once you're on one of these medications, it's really difficult to get off.

And it's been found – I'm just going to backtrack a little – that

people who go through a depression and come through the other side unmedicated – medicating only with, say, supplements or with exercise, or therapy, whatever – whatever people did to cope in the old days – they actually do better.

They're actually through it in a couple of months, as opposed to

somebody on an SSRI, which we've shown doesn’t really work anyway. It's a placebo effect. But it does create habituation. It does create addiction.

So that person, those same three or four months later, whereas one

person is better defined – they’ve come through it – the person on the SSRI is still struggling or they're now addicted and they can't get off the medication.

So this is where informed consent ought to come in, where people

should be told, "This is a treatment and just know that once you're on it it's going to be kind of hard to get off it. So let's be sure this is the right thing to do and let's look at some other choices." And that's not done. That's not done in the standard doctor's office, and I think that's actually malpractice.

Trudy Scott: Well, thank you for saying that. [Laughter] Important to be said. Hyla Cass: I have strong feelings here, because I just think people have been

sold a bill of goods and it's not right. It's not right, because we have the information. We have a lot of information and we must share this with the public, and that's why I'm so happy that you're doing this, that you're writing what you're writing, that you're doing this tele-summit, that you're speaking – and me too. I mean, I'm really glad to have the opportunity to do it here and wherever else I do it.

Trudy Scott: Yes, and we'll be speaking together. at the Integrative Medicine for

Mental Health Conference in September. I'll see you in San Antonio.



Hyla Cass: Oh, I'm so excited, yes. [Laughs] Trudy Scott: Yes, it's always glad to see you and hang out. So that'll be good. But we really want to talk about how to end your suffering, that

you don’t have to suffer with this addiction. I mean, we've touched a bit on some of the amino acids and some of the nutrients, and there's a few more that I want to make sure that we don’t forget to address.

But seeing we're talking about drugs and the side effects, I would

love you to just touch on the drug that's prescribed for getting off cigarettes. I know there are some bad side effects. And then there are even some drugs that are used for helping people get off alcohol, and those have some pretty bad side effects. Could you just touch on those?

Hyla Cass: Right. Chantix is the one that is used for getting off of cigarettes.

Chantix, which actually is Wellbutrin, but is under a different name. So by giving it a different name, they could have the patent on it.

In 30 percent of people it causes nausea, it causes sleep problems,

constipation, vomiting, and some other more serious problems as well. I don’t know if it was taken off the market, but there were some talk about taking it off the market, and that if you drink while you're on it, you can actually have some mental problems, like depression, and even suicidal thoughts. And again, like all the other SSRIs, you can have suicidal thoughts and feelings, or homicidal thoughts and feelings. So it's not a walk in the park.

Trudy Scott: No, it's not. Hyla Cass: So I think there are better ways to go. This whole idea of a pill for

every pill is just wrong. It's wrong. When we have a symptom, the symptom is a sign. It's a sign that we need to look. We need to look more deeply. It's a message from the body. It's not something just to treat.

It's not like depression's a Prozac deficiency. It's ridiculous. We

need to look at, "Well, what's causing it?" In fact, it could be a thyroid problem. It could be an adrenal problem. And by just treating with an anti-depressant, you're missing that opportunity to really treat and really do what's right.



So rather than these supplements being weaker than the drug, they're actually stronger than the drug, because they're actually addressing the real cause of the problem.

Trudy Scott: Beautiful. Hyla Cass: And that's what we're always doing, you and I. We're looking at

what the real cause is. If someone has anxiety, it's not a Valium or a Xanax deficiency. It could be a GABA deficiency. And that could be due to stress. So if you're low in GABA, there are some really cool things to take –theanine, glycine, taurine. Actually GABA itself, gamma-aminobutyric acid, which so it's not only a neurotransmitter, but it also comes as an amino acid.

So all of these – in fact, I have a product called CALM Natural

Mind, in which I have all of these, because at the time that I put these together, we couldn’t get the combinations on the market. They weren't to be found.

So after I wrote Natural Highs I actually created some of my own

formulas just because I wanted to, because what we know is that these different products work synergistically. The different nutrients work together and when we add them together, it's more than the sum of its parts.

So adding glycine and GABA together is going to give you a better

result and you don’t have to use as much as each of the individual ones. So that's nature's Valium.

Trudy Scott: Yep. Hyla Cass: And of course Valerian. Valerian is well known. And you can add

that in at bedtime to those other ones that I mentioned. And I have a Nightly Calm that does that.

So we have really wonderful ways to handle all of these things. If

you're having trouble focusing and concentrating, when you have this dopamine deficiency, reward deficiency syndrome is what I described it as before.

We're craving anything from caffeine to cocaine. The solution

there is phenylalaline and tyrosine. And those are the precursors to dopamine. They help to make dopamine.

So wouldn’t you rather make your own dopamine than try to fool

your brain into thinking it's there and then causing a bunch of side



effects? I mean, that's so silly, when we could actually make the right product in the brain to feel good and you get off your addictive substance. You feel better and you’ve handled your problem. You don’t have the additional problem now, not only as an addiction, but now you have an addiction to the drug that was given to you, the medication that was given to you to handle your addiction.

So you’ve kind of compounded things, and I see this all the time,

particularly unfortunately in the addiction treatment centers. And I think that's not the wisest thing to do, because you're trading addiction for addiction.

Trudy Scott: Right, and we know that the addiction treatment centers don’t have

a very good success rate, because we're not getting to the root cause of the problem and addressing it, so it's a revolving door. People are coming in and going out, and then coming back in, because they can get it for a certain length of time, because their addiction's there and it hasn’t been addressed. It just comes right back.

Hyla Cass: And they make more money. Trudy Scott: Yeah. Hyla Cass: Oh, no, what a concept. [Laughter] Trudy Scott: But we do know that there are some addiction treatment centers

that are on board with us. And I want to just mention that we're both members of a great organization called The Alliance for Addiction Solutions, and it's a group of practitioners who get this and use a lot of these nutrients that Hyla's talking about to help people with addictions and mood problems, and addressing all the biochemical issues that may be contributing to the addiction and/or the anxiety and/or the depression, because we often see all of those go hand in hand.

And Hyla, I've got another quote that you said that I think is

brilliant, but I want to add on to it. You said, "A pill for every ill is wrong," which I think is brilliant. But why don’t we say "A pill for every ill is wrong, unless it's an amino acid." [Laughs]

Hyla Cass: That's right, yeah. [Laughs] But even so, but it's not one amino

acid for every ill



Trudy Scott: Right. Hyla Cass: It's not a single magic bullet. It's never a single magic bullet, even

though I might be saying if you're low in dopamine take phenylalaline and tyrosine; if you're low in serotonin take 5-HTP or tryptophan. You also need to first of all, clean up the diet. And the other thing is you need to take the co-factors.

Trudy Scott: Yeah, Hyla Cass: So we're both right. But don’t think it's just going to be a simple

solution. But it could be a much better solution than taking the pharmaceutical route.

Trudy Scott: Yeah, we'll just stick with your quote and leave out my part

[laughs] because you're right, it's so much more to it and there's no one size fits all. There's no quick solution. We have to figure out what the issue is for each individual person.

Hyla Cass: Yeah. And even so, saying that, the good news is that most of the

nutrients are water soluble. So very often, for example, if somebody is coming off a number of addictive substances – let's say sugar and caffeine and alcohol – I'll just give them my Brain Recovery AM and PM packets. And I don’t try to sort out, "Well, you need this much of this product and this much of this nutrient," because the brain will sort it out. This is the beauty of nature.

So I put together the Brain Recovery AM and PM, and by taking

the more stimulating amino acids in the morning and the more calming ones in the PM, or with dinner, and then, multivitamin in both of them, you're actually giving your brain everything it needs to make all the neurotransmitters. And whatever you don’t need, literally your body will take care of and eliminate. So that's the good new.

Trudy Scott: The body is amazing. We give it the right fuel in terms of

nutrients and in terms of food, and in terms of a stress-free life and it can do what it's supposed to do – very, very cool.

Hyla Cass: Yep, it's really miraculous, I mean how the brain works and how

the body works. Just give it a chance and it will do it all for us. Trudy Scott: Yes, it absolutely will.



So it's been so fantastic interviewing you I loved all the information you’ve shared, all the resources that you're going to have available.

Just a reminder for everyone, Outsmart Your Addiction quiz,

Reclaim Your Brain, and then you mentioned another report that you're going to include with that as well, and the link. Do you want to mention what's the other report that's going to be with us?

Hyla Cass: Well, you were going to add this to your website And that's the

Guns, Not Drugs. Trudy Scott: Yep, for each speaker I will have a link to the free gift, and then

I'm also going to provide some links to additional resources that we actually talk about on the interview. And I'm probably going to get that information about Dr. Davidson and share that as well, because I thought that was pretty interesting about Dr. Davidson and depression and chromium.

So yeah, I want to make everything that we talk about available to

everyone, so we share that. And if anything else comes up that you think you'd like to share, we'll make sure it gets on the page.

And any final comments before we end off? Hyla Cass: Oh, the other thing that I'm offering is a ten percent discount on

my Better Balance formulas, and a free copy of the Addicted Brain and How to Break Free, which I keep referring to, which was not a give-away. But you do get a give-away when you buy my products, so that's another little thing, because I really want people to read this book and I really want people to take the right formulas. So that's another gift of mine.

Trudy Scott: Oh, well, thank you so much. Yeah, and they will see that once

they sign up. Hyla Cass: Oh, yeah, yeah, you don’t have to take notes here. I want to

emphasize the Alliance for Addiction Solutions, and I'm sure that's on your website, but I'm just emphasizing again. You don’t have to be a professional to join, and you get a lot of information about addiction, how to treat it, and there are resources all around the country of various facilities. And there aren't a lot, the facilities and clinics that will treat more naturally, so I encourage you, look for that.



And it's been a pleasure. I mean, I'm very grateful to have this time with you. When I say you, I mean you, Trudy, and you, all of you who are listening, because this is important. You have one brain. You want it to work optimally. You want to take the best care possible of your brain and your body, and this is your opportunity. And I encourage you to do everything you can to make it the best body and brain that you are able to.

And you'll be rewarded. I mean, the rewards don’t come in

heaven. They come right now. [Laughter] You treat your body right, you eat right, you exercise, you get rid

of the bad stuff, the chemicals, the addictive substances, and you'll have a happy life, a happy and joyful and wonderful life.

Trudy Scott: Wonderful. Hyla Cass: And that's what I wish for everyone. Trudy Scott: Thank you, thank you. Great ending words. Thanks very much,

Hyla. It was lovely to speak to you, lovely to get your information, and thank you, everyone, for listening into yet another great interview on the Anxiety Summit. I encourage you to listen to the other interviews that are coming up.

And we have a link there where you can comment, on the bottom of the replay page. Let us know what you're thinking, how you're enjoying it, if you’ve got any questions, and share this information so we can help more and more people eliminate the addictive tendencies, the addictive behaviors, the cravings for sugar, alcohol, to self sooth, to self calm themselves, and to feel better and happier, so we can all feel as Hyla is happy and calm and joyful. We deserve it. We absolutely deserve it. This is Trudy Scott signing off from The Anxiety Summit.

Here is the The Anxiety Summit blog post for this speaker. It has additional information and useful links: http://www.everywomanover29.com/blog/anxiety-summit-the-addicted-brain-and-how-to-break-free/



Dr. Hyla Cass, M.D. board-certified in psychiatry and integrative medicine and the author of Natural Highs and The Addicted Brain and How to Break Free

Dr. Hyla Cass is a nationally acclaimed physician, board-certified in psychiatry and neurology, as well as in integrative and holistic medicine. She is one of the country’s foremost authors and experts on the subject of integrative medicine, combining the best of leading-edge natural medicine with modern science in her clinical practice of 30 years, writings, lectures, and nationwide media appearances. She is recognized for helping people to come off both psychiatric medication and substances of abuse with the use of targeting nutritional supplements, including her own unique formulations. They also serve to enhance mind, mood, energy and memory, naturally. Quoted widely in newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times, The Toronto Star, Cosmopolitan, Newsweek, and People Magazine, she also appears regularly on radio and television, on shows such as The Dr. Oz Show, The View, E! Entertainment, and MSNBC. She is the author of several popular books including User’s Guide to Herbal Remedies, St. John’s Wort: Nature’s Blues Buster, Natural Highs, Supplement Your Prescription: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutrition, 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health, and The Addicted Brain and How to Break Free. See her website for more information cassmd.com



Trudy Scott, CN, host of the Anxiety Summit, Food Mood expert and author of The Antianxiety Food Solution

Food Mood Expert Trudy Scott is a certified nutritionist on a mission to educate and empower women worldwide about natural solutions for anxiety, stress and emotional eating. Trudy works with women one-on-one and in groups, serving as a catalyst in bringing about life enhancing transformations that start with the healing powers of eating real whole food, using individually targeted supplementation and making simple lifestyle changes. She also presents nationally to nutrition and mental health professionals on food and mood, sharing all the recent research and how-to steps so they too can educate and empower their clients and patients.

Trudy is past president of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals. She was recipient of the 2012 Impact Award and currently serves as a Special Advisor to the Board of Directors. She is a member of Alliance for Addiction Solutions and Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Trudy is the author of The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood and End Cravings (New Harbinger 2011). The information provided in The Anxiety Summit via the interviews, the blog posts, the website, the audio files and transcripts, the comments and all other means is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for advice from your physician or other health care professional. You should consult with a healthcare professional before starting any diet, exercise, or supplementation program, before taking or stopping any medication, or if you have or suspect you may have a health problem.

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