Emotional regulationHormone balance

Measure your mood

Together we discuss what tests suit you best and with your results we make practical lifestyle and nutritional recommendations to help meet your specific goals. Examples of some tests are below.

If you seek a caring professional who is a registered naturopathic doctor in Guelph with a functional medicine approach, you’ve come to the right place. Dr. Laura M. Brown, ND knows how to stimulate your body’s natural mechanisms to repair damage and rebuild health.

How Does Your Mood Affect You?

  • I wake feeling unrested
  • Sleep is difficult for me
  • I am always tired, fatigued or lack lustre for life
  • Concentration and focus are a challenge
  • My motivation is low
  • I am always forgetting things
  • I am often irritable and grumpy
  • My sex drive is low
  • Weight control is difficult and my love handles or muffin top are embarrassing
  • Hormones drive me crazy (PMS, menopause)

If you checked three of more of these things, you might want to measure your mood!

Top Five Laboratory results that guide clinical decisions with clarity and focus:

  1. Dried urine take home tests are available for Organic Acid Testing (OAT), which is a measurement of the breakdown product of nervous system chemicals (neurotransmitters). The tests collect the urine breakdown products of serotonin, dopamine, GABA, epinephrine, norepinephrine, glutamate, melatonin, cortisol, estrogens, progesterone, androgens and more.
  2. Bring me your Anscentry.ca or 23andme results and we can process your raw data through a nutrigenomics engine. Ensure your genetic flaws don’t become your destiny.
  3. Nutritional status. Deficiency of vitamins and minerals can certainly affect your mood.
  4. Food sensitivity testing. Food can affect your mood!
  5. Microbiome analysis. Mood can be a reflection of an imbalanced gut.

 

I find it amazing that the gut makes 400x more melatonin than the brain and that 90% of the serotonin your body makes comes from the gut.

 

See also

[1] Clarke, G., Stilling, R. M., Kennedy, P. J., Stanton, C., Cryan, J. F., & Dinan, T. G. (2014). Minireview: Gut microbiota: the neglected endocrine organ. Molecular endocrinology (Baltimore, Md.), 28(8), 1221–1238. https://doi.org/10.1210/me.2014-1108

[2] Reigstad, C. S., Salmonson, C. E., Rainey, J. F., 3rd, Szurszewski, J. H., Linden, D. R., Sonnenburg, J. L., Farrugia, G., & Kashyap, P. C. (2015). Gut microbes promote colonic serotonin production through an effect of short-chain fatty acids on enterochromaffin cells. FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 29(4), 1395–1403. https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.14-259598

[3] Reigstad, C. S., Salmonson, C. E., Rainey, J. F., 3rd, Szurszewski, J. H., Linden, D. R., Sonnenburg, J. L., Farrugia, G., & Kashyap, P. C. (2015). Gut microbes promote colonic serotonin production through an effect of short-chain fatty acids on enterochromaffin cells. FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 29(4), 1395–1403. https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.14-259598

[4] O’Mahony, S. M., Clarke, G., Borre, Y. E., Dinan, T. G., & Cryan, J. F. (2015). Serotonin, tryptophan metabolism and the brain-gut-microbiome axis. Behavioural brain research, 277, 32–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2014.07.027