Broken Brains

Mood swings, fatigue, brain fog, insomnia, forgetfulness, irritability, anxiety, feeling tired but wired, inability to focus, depression, hyperactivity… we are in the grip of an epidemic of broken brains.

This week I’ve been watching the incredible eight part docuseries, Broken Brain, covering topics such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, ADHD, autism, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, traumatic brain injury and more. You can watch a highlight reel here.

Dr Mark Hyman was a thriving young doctor in the United States before depression and anxiety became constant companions and extreme fatigue meant he couldn’t even get out of bed. Having been passed from specialist to specialist with little hope he then discovered Functional Medicine which saved him from lifelong depression, anxiety, and fatigue and revolutionised the way he practiced medicine. He, along with over 50 other brain health experts, made this inspiring docuseries to change the way we think about brain health and show that there is a possibility of recovering from a broken brain. It all starts with recognising that our body is one connected system, not a bunch of individual parts that have nothing to do with each other.

This means everything you do to your body, you do to your brain.

This is the very foundation of Functional Medicine and the cornerstone of my clinical practice. With every patient I see it is about considering the body as one connected dynamic system, with every part affecting another. When it comes to broken brains we need to be considering underlying factors such as nutrient deficiencies, inflammation, toxicity, allergies, poor gut function and hormonal imbalances. When it comes to gut function we cannot overstate the importance of our gut bacteria and I’ll be writing about this topic a lot…