Balancing The Biochemicals: Connecting The Dots Of Your Body With Judith Bowman, M.D.

 

Biochemical imbalances are much more significant determinants of the way we live our daily lives than we give them credit for. We might think of our emotional, mental and physical health as existing in their own little vacuums, but the truth of the matter is that our bodies are much more interconnected than we imagine most of the time. Judith Bowman, M.D. is a specialist in biochemical imbalances, as well as the Co-Founder and CFO of Mensah Medical, LLC. Timothy J. Hayes, Psy.D. sits down with Judith to talk about how these so-called biochemical imbalances impact our lives—most of the time, for the worst. If you’ve ever wondered about the internal workings of your body and how these functions connect to one another, then this is a discussion you should definitely stay tuned for!

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Balancing The Biochemicals: Connecting The Dots Of Your Body With Judith Bowman, M.D.

Judith Bowman, MD is a specialist in biochemical imbalances. Dr. Bowman cofounded Mensah Medical in 2008 with her colleague, Albert Mensah, MD. She combines traditional medicine with the biochemical approach to the treatment of the symptoms of behavioral and cognitive disorders. Welcome. Thanks for joining us here.

Thank you.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got interested in this field?

I was working at the Lake County Health Department in Lake County, Illinois. A large number of my practice was the plethora of the population, but there tends to be a lot of children and women. I primarily focused on pediatrics for the most part and a great deal also on women’s health. One day, I had a three-year-old come into the office that was on psychotropic medications, which made no sense to me at all. This was the only way someone thought that they could control this poor child who was having a lot of difficulties with attention, focus, mood and tantrums. Something in me says, “This is not the way to approach this. There must be a better way.”

The thought was to look for some more of a natural approach in handling these kinds of things. One bit of research led to another and I found the Pfeiffer Treatment Center that was doing things from an orthomolecular approach. At the time, they were looking for physicians to train. I quickly got on board with that and did some more inquiring about it. I still held my position at the Lake County Health Department, but eventually trained with William Walsh. I found out that there’s another way to approach these issues that did not include hardcore medications, particularly in pediatrics.

How long ago was that?

We’re working fifteen years ago at this point.

Now that you’re using the orthomolecular, are you finding a specialty focus in women’s health or children? What is it that you were targeting?

That also came to my attention that a lot of women that I was seeing could not connect the dots between their hormonal concerns and their micronutrients as playing a part in their problems. Many women that started on things like hormonal replacement or birth control pills will be coming for those things for reasons that are obvious. A lot of them were starting to have anxiety and depression and could not figure out the connection between their biochemistry and their hormonal issues. After years have gone by and once again, we have been trained for Pfeiffer Treatment Center, I learned that there were great numbers of imbalances in a certain segment on the women population that were simply estrogen dominant.

As the years go by, there was an accumulation of things that happened to them. When they presented with things like anxiety, depression and postpartum depression, I was seeking to understand why these things were occurring. After having been trained at the Pfeiffer Treatment Center, it became quite clear as to what was going on. It turned out to be this estrogen dominance and copper toxicity. Those are probably the two main items that were causing problems in many different directions. It is like the snowball rolling down the hill.

What happens when there are estrogen dominance and copper toxicity?

Many women are having a hard time figuring out the connection between their hormonal imbalances and anxiety. Click To Tweet

This is how it goes. Generally, this is what I’m telling a patient as they come in with some of their issues. What you have is a situation where a young lady will visit and she’ll say, “I’m having a lot of anxiety. I’m having heavy menstrual cycles. I’m also having some difficulties with the formation of fibroid tumors or endometriosis.” These are all things that are related to estrogen dominance in females. I said, “We need to probably test your chemistry because what we’re finding is that when you have estrogen dominance, there’s a natural physiologic response for metal copper to come into your system. There’s a large release of it that comes in.” When that happens, you’re changing your electrolyte balance in many ways. When copper comes into your system, what does that do? Copper by itself with nothing else wrong will cause anxiety, depression, foggy brain and difficulties processing information. Why does that seem like that’s unusual? It is not.

When you’re thinking about your brain, which is a chemical neurologic network and electrolyte network. Where do we use electricity? We use electricity in anything that needs it, like the light bulb or anything else because it’s a great conductor of electricity. When you think about the brain being an electrical organ and you’re having too much of an influx on copper in a brain, which is already an electrical organ, you can “short circuit processes.” When you do that, you’re short-circuiting the ability to process information, whether you’re trying to figure out a math question or you’re having an emotional response. If you deviate those pathways, they don’t end up where they were intended to go.

For many females, you have some confusion. You might have some anxiety. You might have emotions that are blown up, where in actuality there shouldn’t be as much of a reaction. You can get much more overreaction. All your five senses can be heightened in such a way that it causes you a level of dysfunction. That’s part of it. That’s one thing that copper will do. The other thing that it will do, it tends to suppress zinc levels. This is where the snowball slowly starts to roll down the hill and many problems can be created. As that happens, copper and zinc have a wonderful relationship that’s usually one-to-one in a normal scenario. When one of them rises, it suppresses the other. As copper rises, it suppresses zinc levels. Zinc is important for the production of neurotransmitters, among many other things that it does. When you are suppressing neurotransmitters, what are you doing?

First of all, in neurotransmitters, whether its serotonin, dopamine or norepinephrine, they all require zinc production. If you are suppressing it with copper levels, you’re not going to have the benefit of producing your serotonin. What happens to your overall sense of well-being? That slowly goes away. Sometimes it’s an insidious process, but it does happen. Females of any age might present with a depressed building or sadness that comes along. If it’s severe enough, very often, you find yourself in your primary care doctor’s office or psychiatrist’s office with a diagnosis of depression. What happens naturally is you may or may not start on an antidepressant. In fact, if we simply balance your chemistry, you get your zinc levels up to where they need to be, you might start making your own neurotransmitters in amounts that are going to be beneficial to you.

That’s not all the copper does. Let me recap a few of the things we talked about. It can provoke a lot of brain system confusion by itself because it’s deviating pathways in short-circuiting pathways in the brain. The other thing that it’s doing is it’s causing you to produce low levels of the neurotransmitters that would be most beneficial to you in certain circumstances, particularly emotional circumstances. A third thing that a copper will do, I don’t know if you remember back in high school when they talked about your mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell.

It’s the energy-producing part of the cell.

It stops those processes in about three different places. In addition to feeling depressed and an inability to process information, you also might be feeling things like adrenal fatigue, fatigue in general and mental fatigue. By the time you put all these symptoms together, these are many of the presentations of females that come into the office. People recognize energy production as ATP. Traditionally, we’re taught in medical school that 36 ATP is what you should make. That will give any cell that is in the energy that’s required. However, if you’re making less than that, your ability to have any stamina or state of weakness is not going to be there for you. That’s the other thing that it does. What I haven’t mentioned is that one of your neurotransmitters, dopamine, which is your euphoric of, “What’s with the world? I won the lottery. I feel great.” That particular neurotransmitter in the presence of copper cannot stay dopamine very long.

This is in everybody’s biochemistry book in medical school. Dopamine in the presence of copper gets converted to norepinephrine, which is equal to noradrenaline, one of the same. Noradrenaline gets converted into adrenaline. If you are a high copper female with whatever amount of dopamine that you have around, if copper gets together with dopamine, we certainly are getting the conversion into adrenaline. Now, she’s feeling anxious. She has a fright and flight. Another thing that we also often hear though, when females come into the office is, “I have a great deal of anxiety and fright or flight. I don’t know where it’s coming from. I have panic that comes out of nowhere. Life should be good, but I am not feeling it.”

If we go back again to talk about what copper does to you are anxiety, panic, fatigue, neurotransmitters that are going to be dysregulated and your overall sense of well-being is simply not there. Those are things that are enough to have anybody come into the office and seek some help. One of the last things for sure that I need to mention is that what’s not known, particularly to the lay public, is that many females who have postpartum depression or even postpartum psychosis often have copper levels that are simply through the roof. I’ll give an example. The medical cutoff for copper levels is 110. Often, the women who come in with major depression or postpartum psychosis will have copper levels that are in the high 200s or high 300s.

When you have that, you have short-circuiting of the brain that is without question going to be extremely problematic. These are the women that you hear about in terms of the horrible stories of walking off of a building, driving the car into the lake or into the White House or killing their children or husband. They simply cannot process information well. Whatever it is that’s going on in their heads, they truly believe that. Unless there’s something that can be done about that, they tend not to fare very well.

 

What is the source of the copper?

Copper is ubiquitous. It’s always around. It’s in the foods that we eat. It’s in quite many things, but mostly from our food sources, perhaps our water sources. Believe it or not, high copper foods are some of the most nutritious things that we can have. We shouldn’t have them in large numbers if we are those people who cannot process copper well. I need to talk about that because this is not every single female on the planet. High copper foods, for instance, avocados, it is a wonderful fruit/vegetable, but it’s high in copper. Things that we love like cashews. One of the number one lovely things on the planet is chocolate, but it is also extremely high in copper. Those three things are enough that if you eat them on a regular basis, and some people do, you may run into a little difficulty if your body is not able to metabolize or at least get rid of copper in a timely manner.

Another thing is almonds. I love those myself. Once again, these are commonly eaten foods. If you happen to be a female who doesn’t metabolize copper well, you get a slow accumulation. That can be over the years. I need to preempt it by saying that, not every female on the planet will have this difficulty, but there is a segment of the population, maybe 50% to 60% tend to be on the estrogen dominant side. Those are going to be the females that for whatever reason can’t get rid of copper in a timely manner. That’s usually noted after their first menstrual cycle. They’ll have their first menstrual cycle. Copper comes in and it is important for the development of blood vessels and that’s its natural physiologic response.

Every month, she’s going to have a cycle and she’s going to develop little blood vessels. If there’s no fertilization of the egg that came down, then you swap that off. That becomes the menstrual cycle that happens every single month on a regular basis. Over the years, the copper levels keep rising to a new set point. It is almost as if there’s a hole in the bucket theory, but the hole is small and you can still overfill it. For reasons like that, you get the slow accumulation over time of copper levels. Many females think that all of a sudden, they have depression, sensory processing issues and other things that arise from high copper when in fact over time, this has been happening to them. That’s how it works.

What is it that’s needed to start either getting rid of the copper or balance it out? You mentioned zinc. Is that all you do is increase other minerals to balance out the copper? Is there a detoxification process for the copper?

We do a little bit of all the above. Certainly, when I mentioned the relationship between zinc and copper, zinc is one of the tools that we use to try to balance copper and zinc, which should be 1:1. Zinc is used. There’s also something called molybdenum. Interestingly enough, we’re finding that many women are not able to absorb molybdenum. It is another metal, which gets out of the ground. It’s in the food that you grow. If they can’t absorb that and they may have some malabsorption issue, that’s going to be a problem because it’s one of the natural elements that sequesters and keeps it in check. The bottom line is, copper can be free radical copper, which by itself is a charged particle running around. In actuality, that should not happen generally when it comes into the body. It’s supposed to be tagged to its protein.

It has a carrier protein that keeps it out of trouble. I’m going to use a little story. It will paint a mental picture of why copper needs to be tagged to its carrier protein. I use the example of the little yellow school bus. Everybody knows what that is. The school bus itself, if you let that represent the carrier protein called ceruloplasmin. Let that be the carrier protein. Let the little children who are supposed to get on the bus represent free radical copper that we get from the foods that you eat that’s coming into your system. The idea is for duping enough school buses to get all the children on the bus. The purpose is to take them where they’re supposed to go to school and drop them off. They go into the school, come out of school, get back on the bus and go back to their respective homes. If you don’t make enough school buses, there are not enough school buses for all the children to get on.

Those that cannot get on are going to be problematic. They’re going to get into trouble. They’re going to go kicking cans, fighting each other and acting like little gang members. A lot of times, many women don’t produce enough ceruloplasmin to have some copper be tagged to its protein. This is where the dangerous part of free copper comes into play as a charged particle. You can’t have charged particles running around willy-nilly. They get into trouble. They attack enzymes, hormones, proteins and neurotransmitters. They upset the electrical balance in the brain because they are charged particles.

I have worked with a number of women over the years who had the emotional issues you’re talking about. Occasionally, I run into somebody who’s also got chronic migraines. Is that related to the same estrogen-dominant and copper you’re talking about?

That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The category that I’m talking about is presented often with heavy menstrual cycles. They will present with endometriosis at times. Many of them go to develop a whole bunch of things like fibroid tumors. A lot of women end up with a hysterectomy because of heavy menstrual cycles, often known as menorrhagia. It’s a problem that if you don’t know about, it’s difficult to connect between problem, mood and demeanor issues.

As much as I hate to admit it, most women don’t like to hear it. When someone says, “Is there something going on in your menstrual cycle? There tends to be this thing that happens about once a month.” “You don’t seem to be doing pretty well, but only maybe two weeks out of the month, what is the problem?” This is usually the problem that has to do with a lot of brain chemistry disarray, neurotransmitters that are out of balance. I don’t like to give people excuses, but this is one where there is an excuse why she feels more irritable and agitated, along with the physical discomforts that come along with it. When we test those women, they indeed have chemical imbalances that are responsible for that. It’s in the range of high copper or copper toxicity.

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Are there treatments, food sensitivities or things that the layperson can do to assist this? Is it necessary to have specific treatment from someone like you who’s a specialist?

A layperson can also help themselves by having the information and knowing that this could be part of the problem. You can spread out over the course of a week or so the number of high copper foods that exist. If you google foods highest in copper and not eliminate but rather spread them out, it won’t be as quick as an accumulation of copper. It’s not every woman on the planet that this happens to, but it’s a matter for us to test to find out if you’re in that category so we can further advise you in terms of what to do. Certainly, if we know what your chemistry is, we can advise on what nutrients might be helpful to you. Things like using molybdenum, taking the zinc because perhaps you’re zinc efficient. That’s playing into the imbalance. There are other things as well. A substance called metallothionein, which everybody makes that particular protein. That first part, metal from metallo and thionein is the protein that helps one to balance the minerals and metals that should be there. If it’s not working well or it is not as potent as it should be, you may have problems even with copper toxicity or other metal toxicity.

Metallothionein, to paint another movie of how this particular protein works, it looks like a giant well, but this is how it works. Metaphorically, it’s like a giant golf ball where every little dent on that golf ball is specifically for a mineral or metal that should be present in any cell at any time. What this giant protein does is it walks into a cell and says, “It is only supposed to be 110 copper there. Why is there 140? I need to take 30 of those out, then I’m going to roll myself into a position and look at zinc.” For zinc, “There should be at least 90 there. Why is there only 65?” It goes into his little zinc pocket and appropriates the amount of zinc that should be there. In other words, it will go down a list of hundreds of minerals and metals that should be there in a particular proportion and then regulate that. That particular cell has got every mineral and metal that should be there in the right proportion and it moves on to the next cell. If your metallothionein doesn’t work well, then you won’t have that ability. You’re going to have some electrolyte and mineral disturbances. That’s another thing, metallothionein in the right form with the right potency is going to play into this as well.

Is the metallothionein a supplement that can be taken?

It is. It’s called metallothionein. What we do is we call a day Metallothionein Promotion Therapy, which means that we can give you a series of amino acids, zinc, and some other formulations that go into it that provoke your own metallothionein to get moving and going. Do what you need to do. Regulate these cells. Interestingly enough, it does in both the gut and the brain, which is where you have this gut-brain connection thing that comes with this all. If it can regulate and get some integrity going with the membranes in the gut as well as the brain, then you can have a good functioning GI tract as well as the brain.

We hear a lot about gut health. The idea as I understand it, as a non-scientist in that realm, is that if the chemistry in the digestive process isn’t balanced properly, then I can’t use the nutrients in the food I’m eating. What part of the work that you do with the orthomolecular work is looking at the gut health?

It’s probably one of the larger issues we have, particularly in the pediatric community. There is a gut-brain connection. The problem is, if you are malabsorptive, how can you have the building blocks that are needed to do the jobs and to make things that your body needs? How can it make its enzymes, hormones, proteins, the neurotransmitters if indeed you can’t get the building blocks on board? In our basic design, we’re designed to eat. Food is our medicine. We need to be able to get that in. If you cannot absorb it, you need to find out why is that? In extreme cases, we know that some people have celiac disease. They’re going to have some difficulties when they’re trying to eat things that contain gluten. In fact, they’re going to have some disasters if they do.

When you take in items that seem to be inflammatory to your GI tract, it produces a malabsorptive state. Often, it will produce also inflammation. Inflammation, in and of itself, is going to decrease your ability to absorb many of the things that you need. If that happens over a long period of time, you can get into what’s called a nutritional deficit. If that’s a problem and your body is all about maintaining a good physical status, great physiology, a good physical structure, that is going to be a priority. Believe it or not, your brain gets the leftovers after your body takes what it needs. It’s all about survival first. When you find out that there are not enough nutrients on board and that your brain is going to get some of the leftovers, it’s not going to function properly in its maximum capacity.

I’m going to bring it back again to this metallothionein scenario. It has four types. What’s extremely important, particularly in growth and development, there should be enough metallothionein both in the gut and in the brain. That’s metallothionein-2 so that the integrity of the cells in the gut and the brain both function at maximum capacity. You then get the best of both worlds. You get great nutrition, great absorbency and the ability to get what you need in order to make enzymes, hormones, proteins in neurotransmitters in amounts that are going to be beneficial. It’s a comprehensive viewpoint of how to live well if you can get these balances going.

What’s another major set of issues, whether it’s in the general population or women’s health, that you find responds well to the orthomolecular work that you do?

I would say overall health. What we try to do is provide what’s needed from every aspect both mentally and physically. It’s more of a comprehensive scenario. A patient comes in and they have their set of complaints that they find to be most dominant in their life that they would like to have a solution. They would like to have this resolved and fixed. They also have some other things that are going on with them that they may or may not recognize. What we find after testing and finding out whether biochemical imbalances are, many of the other issues that they may have had also tended to get much better. Granted that no one’s perfect and no one lives forever, what we’re trying to do is maximize their personal blueprint and what their DNA was supposed to be at its best. For that to happen, both physically, physiologically, mentally growth and development, everything needs to be balanced. That’s what it is that we do. We target those special areas of concern. There tends to be a great deal of biochemical imbalance when we do discover that’s where their problem is.

 

With the issues of the mental-emotional health tying into the physical, gut health and brain function, do you work in conjunction with other professionals? Do you refer? Are you exclusively looking at the nutritional side?

It’s a wonderful thing for you to ask because this is not a one-way street. It does take more than one modality. It’s like running a race. There are many different things that you need to do. You need to eat right, to practice. In many cases for athletes, you need to supplement. There’s also counseling that needs to take place, whether that comes in the form of religious adventure, psychological counseling or any kind of counseling that you get. There need to be multiple modalities that have happened and for this whole thing to work out the way that it should. When you’re running your race, there are many different things that you need to do to do. Only one of them only gets you to strength in one area.

We do refer to psychologists and psychiatrists. Many times, our patients came to us already having those modalities in place, which is great because we encourage them to stay with that. At some point in time, you have to get out and tried to do those things which you’ve been shy on doing because you felt you didn’t have the capacity or the mental stability to do it. We have patients that are going back to school, going back to work and completing whatever their goals were. Once their biochemistry is balanced and that correlates with other symptoms that they were having in terms of improvement.

Do you have a couple of success stories that you could share with our audience?

We have probably many success stories. I do recall a young man that came into the office. We often will see patients that have bipolar disorder. Often, their bipolar disorder is secondary to an imbalance in their chemistry. There’s something called Pyrrole Disorder, where zinc and B6 seem to be very low supply. When that happens, there tends to be rapid cycling of mood and demeanor, anger or flightiness. People go on excursions and do things and it seem flighty and inappropriate. Once you can stabilize that mood, they become organized individuals. This particular young man was trying to get involved with the family business. He was paralyzed by his own feelings to be able to participate. Several months later, he was running the family business and has done so for years simply because their chemistry is already balanced.

We’ve also had young people go away to college. This is a typical story. I’ve seen them go off to college. Many of them when they get to college have a nutritional deficit because they were probably not eating quite right. A staple in college tends to be ramen noodles, spaghetti, pizza and a lot of high starchy food. Your vegetables are pushed off to the side. Maybe there are other things that you’re doing as well, but there tends to be more of a nutritional deficit for some of the people that can’t afford that. Often, something happens with a mental breakdown because neurotransmitters regulate it. They’re trying to balance for the first time their school, work, social life and activities in daily living. They’re managing themselves for the first time, one foot out of the door.

Many of these kids will have a break. When we get a chance to evaluate them, they have a tremendous nutritional deficit and biochemical imbalances that are quite dominant that’s causing the problem. Once they are balanced, they are able to achieve their goals. We’ve watched them freshman year all the way through graduate school. They thrive well in terms of their overall functionality. We’ve also seen a lot of our kids in the autism spectrum disorder. I probably consider it one of the most challenging things that we do. These kids come in and everything you can possibly test, everything that you can evaluate is off the charts in terms of abnormalities. Their guts are in terrible condition. From a mental challenge standpoint, you’ve probably seen children with autism, they have a great deal of challenge relative to making any sense of the world.

We have had children called flipping the child into the mainstream. They came in with the autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Some of them you cannot tell that it ever happened because they have graduated into the mainstream. We have a few people here and there, but many of them are living regular lives. The bottom line with that though, if you don’t get these kids in early up to about seven years old, the chances of the mainstream become a little less realistic. The brain is indeed a plastic organ up to a point. There’s a lot of plasticity. There are some things that you can turn around, things that you can fix, the things that can set a kid on a course of mainstream scenarios. If you don’t get to them early enough, that tends to slide away if you can’t have early intervention.

The summary that I’m getting is specifically related to these college kids. I had the pleasure of interviewing Catherine Adams, who does a lot of work with early identification of psychotic episodes. She had a statistic that’s mind-boggling about what percentage of young people between 15 and 30 is going to have a psychotic episode or some dysregulation of their central nervous system that gets diagnosed as a psychotic episode. Once the process in terms of information gets scrambled, the way the world looked to them all of a sudden, doesn’t look that way anymore. They get disoriented. What you are saying is that it responds well to the analysis you do in the orthomolecular targeted nutrient therapy work.

There are many children whose problems are rooted in tremendous nutritional deficit and biochemical imbalances. Click To Tweet

Let’s bring in another factor that we haven’t talked about. Maybe if these things are predictable in terms of the timeline. When you mentioned somewhere between 15 and 30 years old, often you can see that these are things that are somewhat insidious. They are happening a little bit at a time until they get to a point of break. There is a genetic predisposition that things tend to run in families. It doesn’t mean they have to manifest, but they can. There’s also what you call epigenetics, which is simply the buzz word these days for the environment imposed upon your DNA. Everybody has a little bit of a different set point in terms of when things become stressful that they might have a break. Between the ages of about 15 and 30 seems pretty much right on target in terms of when some of these things happen. When you think about the kid going off to college and all those stressors that are imposed upon them, when they were in their home environment, things seem to be quite defined.

Everything’s good. We’re all balanced. Life is good. Stepping a foot out the door and having to deal with life’s issues of daily living, classes and socializing, whatever else is going on, it can be tremendous stress upon that particular person. The imposition is the environment imposed upon a DNA where it’s weakening to the point of perhaps a break. Sometimes when that happens, it’s like a train that’s running wild. You have to stop it at some point. You can do that and revert to what normalcy was. If you can at least do that person in balance biochemically.

There’s a tie-end of if you can get to these people with the autism type issues at 3, 4, 5 or 7, they can get into the mainstream. The research that Catherine Adams is working with, they’re doing a lot globally with this work, but here in the US as well says, “Without a doubt, the earlier you get intervention and help these people stabilize and have supported, the better the outcome and the return to normal.” Some studies were saying 72 weeks. Some were saying, “It’s more like twelve weeks if you can get to somebody within the first couple of months of them having a disruption like that.” I would imagine it would be right in line with what you’re talking about. The sooner you balance the body and brain chemistry, the better and the less damage is done.

A lot of people hold back because of the stigma that comes along with it, but that’s not the time to hold back at all. It’s called jumping on this right away. That’s the best way to have success. The longer you wait, the more problematic that that’s likely to be.

Is there some area of the work you do or the people that you like to reach that we haven’t even touched on yet?

It’s just anybody who has an issue and they suspect that it could be anything from a mood disorder, autism, ADD, ADHD, attention focus problems, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. For women, estrogen dominance, hormonal issues and all of those things we deal with. It all starts the same way in terms of how we have our approach is to test the chemistry and then resolve the issues.

You probably see a lot of people who have exhausted what the traditional psychiatric and medical profession can do for them. If they’re already on 2 or 3 medications, that example you were using at the beginning of the talk, there was a three-year-old on several medications. You said that people shouldn’t use that as an excuse not to come and get evaluated. That you can work with them even if they’re on a whole bunch of meds.

Half of our patients come to us already on medication. By all means, it does not mean to stop your medication. Let’s try to build two bridges for you. You have one that’s given you some level of stability. I prefer that children not be on medication, but medication has helped many a child to gain at least a bit of stability, particularly when it comes to attention and focus issues and ADHD medications. In terms of any medication that’s out there, if you’re on a medication that is fine, it doesn’t collide with what we do. It means that we’re going to try to build you another bridge and try to provoke your own system to do what it needs to do in terms of enzymes, hormones, proteins and neurotransmitters. Only at that time, when you are still looking at about 1 to 1.5 years out, we’ll say, “Maybe this is the time to see whether or not you can even wean down to either what might be the lowest effective dose or maybe you can wean off of medications can do well.”

It was not like we are coo-coo with medication. It has allowed a lot of stability for a lot of people. It works a lot faster to nutrient therapy. Nutrient therapy takes a while and we look at it as a stair-step way. Maybe in three months, you’re better. In six months, even better, and nine months and so on. It tends to be stair-stepping your way up into biochemical balance that’s going to take some time. Without changing too many variables meaning, “You should get rid of your medication.” That is not at all what we would advise because that’s one thing that’s given you a little bit of health there. It’s got side effects. We’re going to try to help protect you against those side effects while you’re on that medication, but we’re also going to try to build that other bridge of functionality before we think about changing that medication profile or perhaps even get anything off of it.

I greatly appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. The primary way that I know to reach you is through MensahMedical.com. Is there another way? Do you have other avenues that you want to leave in the show for people to reach out to you?

We have our phone number, anyone can call our office at area code (630) 256-8308. Our clinical coordinators will help guide you on how to be a patient if that’s your desire. That is the best way to get in touch with us. You have alluded to look at our website at MensahMedical.com. You can look at our videos that are there. There are many of them, all of the subject areas that I mentioned, documents. I am doing one on women’s health and estrogen and copper issues. Feel free to look at that one.

 

I look forward to following how things develop. I know that when I was talking to Dr. Mensah, he was talking about getting some research going. It’s been a great pleasure to meet you again and to have the interview. I look forward to our next conversation.

You are welcome. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity. I appreciate that.

—

Judith Bowman, MD is a specialist in biochemical imbalances, received a BA from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Medical degree from Finch University of Health Sciences, Chicago Medical School. She received her certification and license by the American Registry of Radiologic Technology and Board Certification in Nuclear Medicine Technology, following the completion of her training at the Northwestern University’s School of Nuclear Medicine. She utilized her skills in diagnostic imaging and participated in the research and development of radiopharmaceuticals. Dr. Bowman completed her residency in Family Medicine at the Resurrection Hospital in Chicago, where she also served as Chief Resident. After medical school, Dr. Bowman worked as a staff physician for the Lake County Health Department in Illinois and as the Midwest site staff physician providing medical services for patients with learning disabilities at The Dore Achievement Center in Schaumburg, Illinois.

Her interest and experience with behavioral learning issues and autism steadily increased when she joined the medical team at Pfeiffer Treatment Center in 2005. During her tenure at Pfeiffer, Dr. Bowman became known for her consistent presence and care at each and every US outreach clinic. Dr. Bowman cofounded Mensah Medical in 2008 with her colleague Albert Mensah, MD. Dr. Bowman combines traditional medicine with the biochemical approach to the treatment of symptoms of behavioral and cognitive disorders, autism spectrum disorder, depression, including postpartum depression, anxiety, eating disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia and other biochemical imbalances.

Important Links:

• Mensah Medical
• Pfeiffer Treatment Center
• Catherine Adams – past episode
• MensahMedical.com

About Judith Bowman, M.D.

Judith Bowman, MD, a specialist in biochemical imbalances, received a B.A. from Illinois Wesleyan University and a medical degree from Finch University of Health Sciences-Chicago Medical School. She received her certification and license by the American Registry of Radiologic Technology and board certification in Nuclear Medicine Technology following the completion of her training at Northwestern University’s School of Nuclear Medicine. She utilized her skills in diagnostic imaging and participated in research and development of radio pharmaceuticals. Dr. Bowman completed her residency in family medicine at Resurrection Hospital in Chicago where she also served as chief resident.

After medical school, Dr. Bowman worked as a staff physician for the Lake County Health Department (Illinois) and as the Midwest site staff physician providing medical services for patients with learning disabilities at The Dore Achievement Center in Schaumburg, Illinois. Her interest and experience with behavioral/learning issues and autism steadily increased when she joined the medical team at Pfeiffer Treatment Center in 2005. During her tenure at Pfeiffer, Dr. Bowman became known for her consistent presence and care at each and every U.S. Outreach Clinic.

Dr. Bowman co-founded Mensah Medical in 2008 with her colleague, Albert Mensah, MD. Dr. Bowman combines traditional medicine with the biochemical approach to treat the symptoms of behavioral and cognitive disorders, autism spectrum disorder, depression (including post-partum depression), anxiety, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other biochemical imbalances.

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