So always work with a psychiatrist as well as a naturopathic doctor. Another thing to remember is that a lot of people have been given too many medications. And what I've found is that why there aren't too many medications is because one, the first medication was not working so well. So the psychiatrist added a second medication and did not remove the first medication. And this goes on and on. And either the doctor forgets or doesn't think it's necessary to remove the first medication.

So there are a cocktail of drugs and we don't know which ones helping them and which ones causing side effects. And so you have to be really careful here and understanding which one to remove first, or which one to reduce the dosage off. And what I typically do is reduce the dose of one drug at a time only. Just to monitor them so I can see okay, what's the side effects of What's happening when they're reducing is what are the withdrawal symptoms. And if there's not much withdrawal symptoms, then it's it's safe then to also start experimenting with reducing the second drug. Right.

And when you have a clear picture, it's much easier to manage withdrawal symptoms. When I'm withdrawing medication or reducing the dose a lot and use adrenal support, either rhodiola ashwagandha, and stragglers, I go through the different hurts later on. And the other thing I use is amino acids. Now I find amino acids really effective in managing emotional symptoms. These are amino acids such as GABA, which reduces anxiety tyrosine which helps improve dopamine levels, tryptophan five HTP. These help improve serotonin levels and melatonin also is great to help with sleep.

And see a lot of people when they're coming off medications, they'll become more anxious and they might have sleep disturbances. So Melatonin is great to help them get that rest, restore their adrenal balance and just be more positive about the whole experience fenny alanine is used often when somebody is in a crisis, there are a lot of emotional pain, physical pain, especially breakup issues. It helps Sue's those strong emotions. So I'll use these amino acids in conjunction with adrenal support and homeopathic remedies as well as Bach flower therapy. So that the person feels in control most of the time. Of course, there might be ups and downs, don't worry about those, right?

Just let your doctor know and work closely with your doctor. And you will get to a place where you feel very comfortable and confident really to be without drugs over time. The other thing that I use, of course, is when the symptoms come up. I'll use Emotional Freedom Technique or EMDR, which is for trauma, as well as psychotherapy, to help resolve really to help resolve emotions from past experiences because when you resolve emotions from past experiences, you come to terms with your life, right? And when you come to terms with your life and you get more strength and confidence, your body crashes less you need less medications, you need less supplements even because you're coming back to resilience. So think about always going for bodywork and counseling while you're trying to come off medications it will just make the journey much smoother.

Now how do I how do I use these amino acids and herbal supplements? Typically, I'll give them about four to six hours away from The psychiatric medication just because number one, it could be interactions. Number two, certain adrenal supplements actually increase serotonin levels. And if you are on an SSRI or snri, which already increases serotonin levels, you don't want serotonin levels to become too high because then you'll get serotonin syndrome, which is basic tremors and fat tachycardia, which means your heart beats faster and these can be dangerous. So you don't want that. The other so the adrenal supplements that I use are rhodiola ashwagandha, a little caucus, which is Iberian Singh, and maca.

And often use a B complex as well, a complex of B vitamins because they also help restore adrenal gland balance. They actually nourish it really well. What I tend to do though, especially with anxiety and depression, and coming off medications is that give these homes before four o'clock in the afternoon because some of these hurricanes are stimulating or they keep the person awake at night. So you don't want that. So ideally before 4pm and if they're very sensitive, then you want to just do it in the mornings after breakfast. Of course, look out for aggravations and because these, these were, of course, lookout for aggravations as well.

If you've had too much of the hurt, you might get things like a faster heart rate, restlessness, a lack of sleep as well. So you know, you need to reduce the adrenal supplements, and also work to continuously taper down the psychiatric medication you're on until you minimize side effects and aggravations. If I find that the person's been through a lot of stress, and the adrenal glands are an issue, they are fatigue, then what else I'll start with low dose adrenal supplements even up to two weeks prior to trying to reduce medication. Because the adrenal glands, the adrenal hurts stabilize the adrenal system, right. And once the adrenal glands are stable, then the likelihood of withdrawal symptoms and relapses are significantly reduced when you're coming off your medications. So prepare your body two weeks in advance before even trying to come off these medications.

And the beautiful thing is that as the dose of medication you need reduces over time. It's easy to increase the dose of the herbal supplements. I always use homeopathic medicines when helping people come off their psychiatric medication. And there are beautiful homeopathic remedies, a combination of homeopathic remedies that help detoxify the body from excessive drug use and why I like these remedies Because they actually help the brain rewire itself in a healthy way even without these medications. And I choose homeopathic remedies for the withdrawal symptoms that a person might have. So if they have a lot of anxiety, then I'll give them things like telecare.

Qabbani comm or cynical aconite, just mem if they have depression, I'll look at ambergris Oram sepia pulsatilla like a podium, depending on their unique symptoms. And of course with insomnia, we can think about maximum mucker coffee and other remedies for insomnia, including melatonin actually, but that's not homeopathic, or I just want to mention melatonin can be used in conjunction with homeopathic remedies. I'll often use low dose homeopathics such as the LM potencies or the 30 C's because they can be taken more frequently. It keeps the patient more comfortable and you have less aggravation that way. And remember that because of the drug toxicity from the psychiatric medications, the body is less sensitive to homeopathic remedies, so you need to take them more frequently. And that's why use low dose homeopathic remedies.

But flowers are also great and by far flowers are specific for specific emotions. So I'll use something like gorse or mustard for feelings of hopelessness and depression. And sweet chestnut when there's a lot of emotional pain, large when there's a lot of lack of confidence. Millis aspirin or rescue remedy when there's levels of anxiety and fear. And you can combine some of these remedies together to manage a variety of symptoms. And like the adrenal supplements, I often do start using homeopathic remedies before withdrawing the person off their medication, especially when I Know that some of their symptoms are due to a past trauma.

And also when the patient is clear about which symptoms they had before starting the medication, right, because that's the state they were in. And in homeopathy, we use the original state of a person to determine what's the best homeopathic remedy for them. The other thing to remember is improving the person's lifestyle. This has health benefits. And also it helps manage withdrawal symptoms and recurrence of anxiety and depression. Right so I'm using for two reasons here.

One is to get them healthier Of course, but also to make it easier for them to come off their medications. First thing is I recommend meditation. Now, a lot of people will complain they don't have enough time in the day so what I say is do small periods of meditation two to three minutes, right? But do it frequently. The key thing is and what they're finding is that frequent meditation is more effective than long periods of meditation that are not done so frequently. The other thing I recommend patients do is alternate nostril breathing if they're having difficulty meditating, and off, alternate nostril breathing, also known as pranayama.

Alone alone is very calming for the nervous system and actually helps balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain and basically goes like this. So the person sits in a comfortable position with their eyes closed, focusing on their brow point ideally, or in something positive. And then I get them to close their right nostril. Take a breath in through their laptop nostril, switch their fingers Breathe out through the right nostril. And then pause and then breathe in through the right. Switch nostrils and breathe out to the left.

Then we left to the left, we then through left sorry. Switch nostrils real to the right. We then through the right, switch to the left. And I get them to continue this for about five minutes. Ideally, you want to do this about three times a day and When feelings of anxiety or depression are coming up, it's really effective in helping these withdrawal symptoms. And also use in patients who are not coming off medication just to help them restore metabolic balance and, and balance in their brain.

And later on inter comes easy for these people to also come off medications then the other thing that I recommend patients do is deep breathing 10 deep breaths three times a day actually lower stress levels. And remember you want to lower stress levels because stress burns out your adrenal system. And we want to minimize adrenal burnout, especially when coming off medications. Emotional Freedom Technique, which I'll teach in another video is fantastic for managing or overcoming symptoms of anxiety and depression and disturbing feelings. This won't necessarily cure or the person after withdrawal symptoms, but it would lessen it in most cases. Of course, you don't want to rely only on Emotional Freedom Technique.

We need to manage it using the nutritional supplements I recommended, as well as the homeopathic medicines. And other things to look at is social support, you know, laughter watching positive movies, reading inspirational books, using affirmations, these all these things rewire the brain using neuroplasticity. And they rewire the brain in a way so that the person becomes less depressed over time. The other thing that rewires the brain is positive psychology. You know, writing things you're grateful for or thinking what went well for you the previous day or the previous week. So every morning, the first thing to do when you wake up is think about what went well for you or what didn't go wrong.

In all the positive experiences you've had in the past week Then again in the evening before going to bed do the same thing. When you do this consistently, for over three weeks, the brain starts expecting you to think about positive things. And that reprogramming, actually reprograms the nerves, the nerve connections in your brain as well physically. Okay, let's go through some cases where patients have either reduce their medication or come off medication. The first patient I want to talk about is married 33 year old woman. She had insomnia, migraines, depression, PMS symptoms, and I say PMS symptoms.

I include this on purpose because PMS remember is related a lot of the times to the liver. She also had the feeling of being abandoned by her mother as a child. And the other thing she had was constipation. And remember that with constipation, it's usually due to the fact that the liver is not producing enough bile so there's less lubrication So automatically with the PMS symptoms and the constipation, we know that the livers involved she has been on Prozac for about two years. And so what we did was, of course, he'll deliver with a milk thistle dandelion complex. And I gave her not near as a homeopathic remedy to because it fit the feeling of being abandoned by the mother, by the mother.

Hmm, the next thing we did was heal the gut and glutamine probiotics specials and diet changes that reduces inflammation in the body and that stabilizes cortisol levels. When you stabilize cortisone levels, of course, then and you also detoxify the liver of course, neurotransmitters then come more into balance, and therefore it's easier to come off the Prozac. Now we also included some body therapy. different ones I recommend is either acupuncture or osteopathy, or reflexology because that helps just calm down the nervous system and rebalanced the adrenal system maybe did really well in this protocol. within about five weeks, we had half the dose of Prozac. And within six months, she was actually off Prozac.

So it was a really good case here. The next patient I want to talk about is Jane 44 year old patient, chronic depression, insomnia, binge eating as well. Now, she worked in Somalia, so very stressed out. And she had a lot of stress, stressful conflicts with her colleagues. Since childhood, she also had a lot of headaches. And we found out that it started after when, during the time when her father was abusive to her mother.

So there was a direct correlation between an emotional environmental cause and the headaches and that was also contributing to a state of depression. And that's what she needed antidepressants. She had been on some for about three years. And what I want to point out is, she's a fearful perception. Right? And her vulnerability during childhood, her childhood stress made her feel very vulnerable when she had conflicts with her colleagues.

So these are the signs you want to look at when you're assessing how safe it is also to take someone off medication because we got to know these symptoms give an indication of, you know, what are the causes of depression and what needs to be managed while you're coming off medication. Of course, the word stress and the conflict with her colleagues exhausted her adrenal glands. So here we have childhood trauma, right? So we need psychotherapy, we need counseling, we need homeopathy. And we also have to work stress and conflict which is exhausting her adrenal glands. So we also need adrenal support.

Yeah, to stabilizer while we're reducing the medication and of course, it binge eating, cause sugar spikes, insulin spikes, and that's destabilizes blood sugar levels and that will also make the adrenal glands crash. So you can see here we have a range of approaches we need to manage. While she's reducing Cymbalta and, and what we did was basically use psychotherapy to resolve childhood trauma. And we use Emotional Freedom Technique as well, as well as homeopathy to stabilize blood sugar levels, and to stabilize basically the nutrients in the body in order to eat more protein and carbohydrates. So she didn't have these sugar spikes and insulin spikes, which were disrupting her adrenal function. And then of course, because of the chronic stress she's been on, she has significant adrenal fatigue.

I use rhodiola with her as well as ashwagandha later on, beautiful combination that really helped her feel energized more recently. And, and also improved her ability to withstand stress. So even though she was in the environment still, she was less affected by it. And that's the beauty of adrenal Herbes. They really support you emotionally, even though you're in a stressful environment. And, of course to also calmer nervous system down.

I use acupuncture, as well as Bowen therapy, because that all resets the adrenal system and takes her out of the fight or flight response. So, you can see that as we're reducing medication, we made sure that the pillars of health the fundamental pillars of health, right, the adrenal system, the diet, the blood sugar levels, all these have been taken care of, so that she goes through this transition much, much more smoothly. The next client I have is a 47 year old woman. And she's gone through a recent divorce. So she had extreme financial stress, she felt cheated. And she also began having suicidal thoughts like inability to cope.

Of course, when the financial stress and the divorce stress, he started burning out as well. She'd been taking Xanax for about five months. So the first thing I looked at was Hauser physiology. Now, her diet had not been good before. So we had to repair the gut. So what we did was use glutamine probiotics specials vitamin D, in order to heal the gut.

And then, because of the adrenal fatigue, I use rhodiola, as well as the B complex, and that really helps stabilize your neurotransmitters. Now that was that intervention using the probiotics and the gut healing nutritional supplements as well as the Herms was good enough to stabilize her physiology. Now remember though she's gone through trauma as well right? The divorce, the financial stress and all the senses of betrayal. So, this is where we need some form of counseling and also homeopathy. And the remedy I chose initially was Oram that was more as a precaution because of the suicidal thoughts and like Oram I like using Oram there because it helps reduce the tendency towards suicide, if used in small doses, yeah.

So, the other remedies we used was nature muriatic um, that was the 200, c high, hypo and C that was more for the sense of betrayal and feeling cheated and losing a loved one. So, after a week, we had some mild relief. The suicidal thoughts were gone, but she was still very anxious and not sleeping. Well. Yeah, because the rhodiola and the B complexes Of course, are energy improved. And so their focus, so she started feeling a bit more confident at work.

And when you feel confident at work, her sense of financial stress also reduced right. So, the adrenal support and the consequences of naturopathic medicine gave her a sense of resilience and change her outlook on her life. And so she's less affected by the same stresses because she's less affected by the stressful environment. She will experience less trauma and therefore will relapse less. All this time I was trying to reduce the sadness because she wanted to come off it. She felt it was just disrupting our hormones and just our sense of well being.

Later on, we are introduced to five HTP to help with asleep. Now I made sure that was taking far away from the Xanax was and it was taken during the daytime to manage your anxiety. And I think the last time she took was probably about four o'clock or five o'clock in the evening, just when she finished work started the Irish TP mostly in the evenings to help with sleep. And then I gave her magnesia diagnostician a fantastic homeopathic remedy for a sense of betrayal, and also his sense of anxiety. So it was a good remedy to introduce, for the sense of anxiety that might have been happening while she's coming off the Xanax. And this worked really well.

We also did some Bowen therapy and some acupuncture to stabilize her adrenal system and just common nervous system down. And once I found that she was calm enough, and she felt more resilient and confident to go to work and was just feeling more energized at work. That's when I started with counseling. Right. So in this case, I actually delayed counseling because I think she was just so anxious to get her body energized and just be able to cope at work. She was willing to hold off to counseling.

And when I found that she was really stable and grounded and able to listen, the counseling work much better. Okay, so these are a few examples of how I combine naturopathic medicine, different approaches of healing trauma, as well as stabilizing the adrenal system, reducing inflammation by healing the gut, and also detoxifying the liver in order to make it safer for patients to come off medications. So look at these avenues, right, look at look at the liver, look at past trauma, look at adrenal fatigue and also look at food allergies and sensitivities as the first step. And please remember also to include counseling because patients feel a lot better when they're supported emotionally and prepare them for the side effects of coming off medications. Don't do it They'll do it much faster. Thank you