(00:02) we have been duped by feminism sexual Liberation and anti-depressants we have been told that we are powerful and free now as women but we feel tired wired and bitter we’re mostly eating right exercising and meditating wrangling to-do lists and arranging playdates and yet there’s a haunting holess beneath the huge complaint what if I told you that there is a huge Storehouse a reservoir of energy inside of you that has not been tapped that you could feel light and pulsing excited and alive in ways that a wellness lifestyle
(00:49) cannot deliver that you could trust yourself that the world could feel safe and that unexpected and expected Delights could start to illuminate your path no coach therapist doctor or Guru required just you learning to get real present and attentive with you I feel like I’m here to matchmake your inner parts for the greatest love affair ever written I want to help you learn first where you’re buying eggs from the hardware store which is the source of all pain I want to help you master entering through the upset which is the
(01:27) only spiritual practice You’ll Ever Need and to get real comfortable putting on your villain Crown which is in my opinion the key to True power and then you’ll attune to your inner yes so you can live the life defined by the specific pleasure of who you are I am so excited to announce my latest book called The reclaimed woman which is available for pre-order now so if you head to the link in show notes you can learn more about bonuses events and companion offerings and I cannot wait to see your gorgeous face on the
(02:03) path so I believe that in order to shift out of the Perpetual struggle of victim Consciousness and into your creator creatrix your claim on your Birthright of Vitality you have to know what’s possible so if you’re new to me or my work or if you’ve been around for some time and just want a reminder of what’s possible I wanted to let you in on my history Mak protol vital mind reset which is a 44 day pattern disruptor for your narrative for your life story so vital mind reset combines nutrition detox meditation and self-empowerment
(02:42) for a truly holistic like 360 signal of safety to be sent to your mind and body so whether you want to get off of prescription meds and heal chronic illness move through stress so-called anxiety and depression or just feel your absolute best for the rest of your life this is the path that I have walked myself and that I have helped thousands walk since so I think the story of this resetter as we like to call the graduates of the program is going to resonate with you or with someone you love if you’ve been struggling with the
(03:15) effects of prescription medication so here’s Gloria’s story in her own words my story is like many of us a concoction of drugs for 20 years and depressive episodes that were getting worse and closer together I was at the brink of complete desperation when when I found Dr Brogan’s book last year it gave me the confidence to start managing my tapering thank you Dr Brogan she says the process took 12 months but as of the 7th of April this year I am completely drug free I could burst into tears as I write that publicly never in my wildest
(03:46) dreams did I think I could do it I was brought up believing that I was damaged goods and if I stopped taking a pill my world would completely crumble I haven’t crumbled I’ve grown I’ve tapped into a strength that was within me all along I just lost touch with it have I got a long way to go yeah I do but I’m getting there slowly and the commitment to VMR is another step I really resonate with this resetter story personally because so many of us cling to the victim stories and narratives that we were brought up with but Gloria reclaimed her
(04:16) health through the protocol and the procedures and the techniques that vital mind reset establishes in your lifestyle in your selfcare and it affords the Reclamation of choice I love celebrating outcome comes like these because it is so important to take in progress acknowledge it honor it and allow it to become your Guiding Light so if you know you’re ready to reclaim your health and to come home to yourself with my support support from my lead coach Jamie and a beautiful community of like-minded like-hearted dedicated humans walking
(04:54) this Reclamation path with you I would love to invite you to join our live vital mind Reset Program that begins at the end of March and calling all practitioners and health coaches resolve your impostor syndrome once and for all legitimize your capacity to set the foundation for evidence-based lifestyle change and become licensed to offer vital mind reset to your clients as a part of your Suite of tools it all starts March 25th check out the link and show notes and I will see you in there [Music] I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as
(05:37) the New York Times bestelling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pul dancer or honorary member of the disinformation doesn’t what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and your expression so that you can finally truly own yourself I want to ignite in
(06:11) you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of who you are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and today I would like to talk science and specifically the published medical literature that makes very clear that chronic illness is something that you can walk away from and so are multiple
(06:56) medications associated with that illness and a sick identity so I about 10 years ago had a two-year weight list in my private practice in Manhattan because I had become known for my capacity to facilitate deprescribing or the discontinuation of psychiatric meds and others including you know birth control and acid blockers and statins Etc that women were taking sometimes for upwards of two decades and often multiple medic medications what I was up to was not any sort of brain surgery right so it was a basic protocol that I would Implement
(07:40) with my signature energy and my vision that I had for these women it was always came very natively to me to be able to see these women in their full Grandeur somehow even as they were sometimes you know one phone call away from state hospital and you know seriously symptomatic and very much teetering on the edge of hope so I don’t know why I have that capacity however it has served to expand the permission field of those who often find themselves in front of me and you probably know that I’m a huge believer in the concept of permission
(08:18) field so once we know that something is possible we have permission to see ourselves in a different framework and one that is no longer predicated on a deep Brokenness wrongness and like random Consciousness that otherwise is almost inevitable when we are diagnosed and potentially even hexed by a new experience of symptoms as we encounter the allopathic system so when I started vital mind reset it was designed as a companion to my New York Times bestselling book somehow was a New York Times bestseller even though it’s
(08:55) totally blacklisted on every single mainstream media Outlet it was was designed as a companion for that book and very quickly we began to see outcomes through vital mind reset that surpassed what I was seeing in my private practice where my you know consultation fees were literally in order of magnitude more and you had to physically come to New York and all the things so I have some psychospiritual explanations for why we might choose to remain a patient even in the care of a doctor who is intending to render you no
(09:31) longer a patient and you know sort of mommy daddy projections and that kind of a thing but suffice it to say that the Community Field of VMR was a and is a more powerful Crucible than the diad of the one-on-one that I experienced in my practice the outcomes that we began to see were in some cases ones that I literally couldn’t find matched in the medical literature I also had had the opportunity to work with my mentor Dr Nicholas Gonzalez who was churning out outcomes in his field of terminal cancer and neurodegenerative illnesses for 27
(10:10) years so this field of possibility that grew through vitto mind reset seemed like something I wanted documented almost like I don’t know I guess I had a little bit of like a mischievous energy wanting it to appear in black and white in the medical literature so I manifested a team of extraordinary volunteers and we set to transcribing many of these cases and I was able to publish them in peer-reviewed indexed journals and so I will be sharing with you some of the highlevel summary perhaps just so that you can hear and it
(10:48) can rattle around your awareness that these kinds of outcomes are yours to claim I’m just going to take you through the high level aspects of these papers okay so this one is called resolution of refractory bipolar disorder with psychotic features and suicidality through lifestyle interventions and it is a case report this is many of you may know Ali Z and she has gone public with the publication of this paper which is obviously the only reason I’m I’m sharing that so she had eating disorder diagnosis many many of my patients came
(11:28) to me with eating disorder noos as it’s called not otherwise specified or specifically restrictive eating disorder also known as anorexia nervosa or bulimia she developed this face picking psychosis where she had this Sensation that something was literally in her face that she was removing and you know now if you follow her journey the plot has has thickened around you know the role of breust implants in that as far as she is unpacked however what applies to this paper is that before her period every month she developed psychotic symptoms
(12:07) she was prescribed Xanax and then in withdrawal related to Xanax was diagnosed with bipolar disorder so there’s a lot of you know fabrication of the bipolar disorder diagnosis around iatrogenic effects of other medications either withdrawal or intoxication effects like with anti-depressants so and I’ll referen this probably several times but a yell study from some years ago demonstrated that one in 23 people who are prescribed an anti-depressant go on to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and of course I was taught in my training as perhaps you
(12:43) were that the antidepressant is just unmasking that right or those XEX discontinuation is just unmasking it it was already there well I’m not so sure about that so she had self- tapered her medications before coming to my office and was considering state hospitalization she did the protocol you know in a very disciplined fashion and by her second menstrual cycle of our working together she had resolution of her psychotic symptoms and agitation she was doing was one of the examples of a client who patient who was doing a twice
(13:20) daily enemas for hormonal support sometimes that can be if it’s clear that there’s a hormonal diathesis that can be helpful and and this report is 10 months after you know the protocol where she was stable and without medication and now at the time of this recording that I’m making today it’s been eight years and she’s medication doctor and diagnosis free okay this one is called healing of graves disease through Lifestyle Changes a case report so this one to my knowledge is the first report in the medical literature of a so-called
(14:04) natural healing of graves disease so Graves disease that is healed without radiotherapy without surgery without medication on paper the antibodies resolve the TSH you know and hormones are normalized so this is in a 34 yearold woman who did the protocol this next one is pretty profound this is schizophrenia symptom alleviation through implementation of a lifestyle intervention protocol and in this case we have a 22-year-old male who was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome who was experiencing suicidal ideation was
(14:42) diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 17 and multiply medicated including clausal and he experienced behavioral change within 19 days of the protocol so the primary manifestation was in his socialization and his capacity to request to leave the house so he was homebound actually the full extent of this case is that his mother was actually considering euthanasia for him with him because of how recidivistic his symptoms were and how at the end of their rope they were I guess and he started to ask to leave the house and
(15:23) then began volunteering locally and he was diagnosed by his providers to have been in remission at the time of this publication where he continued to taper his medications for the ensuing years since we have been in touch okay this next one is successful discontinuation of chronic poly psychotropic regimen and resolution of withdrawal syndrome through nutrition and lifestyle interventions so this individual is 38-year-old woman who was diagnosed multiply so with generalized anxiety major depression anorexia and
(16:07) post-traumatic stress and she wanted to taper her multiple medications in anticipation of pregnancy so the taper involved pipin restoral apexer liml in this case was interesting because this was one of my early cases where before so I was specialized in reproductive Psychiatry so I worked a lot with this population and before I implemented VMR as a requirement for medication taper we had a failed taper so she failed to successfully taper these medications and was so medically destabilized that the contrast was really notable because once
(16:49) we implemented the protocol Not only was it not necessarily a walk in the park but not only was it successful but I continue to hear from the patient to this day you know some 15 years later and included some elements of her commentary in my last book in the section on psychedelic sexually and she has gone on to have just such an extraordinary and inspirational Journey because she came from a very very very severe sexual abuse history most of the cases of complex prescribing you know are in those settings okay a huge part of my journey into my
(17:33) body has been developing a relationship with nature this is also why I moved to Miami in 2018 from the cold hard streets of New York City and why that was one of the greatest gifts I have ever given myself in this lifetime I also know that there are women who are more in tune more aligned with the natural world than I am I like to be around these women I like to learn from these women and I certainly like to know what products they are creating so my friend Katie Hess of lotus way is one of those women she’s basically a flower witch and I
(18:08) have been so blessed to enjoy her products over the years many years actually at this point flower remedies are the most powerful transformational agent that we’ve seen and they are safe and gentle for everyone even pregnant mamas and little ones and they confer alignment to your system in profound ways I’m super excited to share Lotus way with you and the way that you can begin your journey with their products is that you simply choose the flower that you are visually attracted to and that is exactly what you need to support
(18:44) yourself so head over to lotus.com and use the code kelly5 for 15% off so that you can begin your journey home to yourself the link is in show notes for you so the next is healing of dissociative identity disorder borderline personality traits and bipolar disorder through lifestyle interventions a case report so this is a 40-year-old woman who also has a history of sexual abuse she was 16 years old when she began medications and you know which is is very typical of a lot of the you know patients that will clients not
(19:25) sure what to refer them to participants that we will work with is that that they began medications very early in life and then they were sort of like layered on so she actually believe it or not was treated with 30 rounds of ECT electr convulsive therapy for postpartum suicidality she had multiple hospitalizations and through the protocol she resolved both physical and psychiatric symptoms including fatigue acne migraines cold sweats dizziness nausea blood sugar instability she had resting Tremors she had brain fog what
(20:02) she described as anxiety and depression so this participant also lost 30 pounds through the program and interestingly when she was exposed to gluten incidentally sort of like in an unanticipated way but she was able to track her response she noted mood liability brain fog and irrational thoughts like come back online and this is what and then I’ll say and she completed her final medication taper with lamal and bubar over the ensuing two years so she had this stabilization during the program and some remarkable so-called psychiatric
(20:42) and physical results and then she went on to complete her taper which is of course the order of operations I believe in and I was going to mention also in the schizophrenia case and also the graves case that I do believe I also have other unpublished cases including lupus you know 18-year lupus patient that some of these very very dramatic cases of resolution within weeks of symptoms especially physical symptoms I do believe is related to gluten antigenicity and intolerance I you know can’t explain why that is so remarkable in some people and
(21:21) not in others but I do know that the very very strict boundaries around gluten and the homologous proteins in Dairy in this setting it seems to work some Miracles and then there are many you know individuals who are already on a gluten-free diet who go on to have you know Success Through the protocol and obviously it was not related to that so there are other factors that are at play but I do think that in these very radical cases you know I do think that’s an aspect of it okay so this one is a VMR case remote healing of bipolar
(21:57) disorder eating disorder not otherwise specified post-traumatic stress disorder of fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome through lifestyle change so this individual had an extreme very severe not that anything isn’t severe and extreme sexual abuse history including child trafficking she actually did the program on food stamps so that was notable you know that she was able to Corral that level of motivation and organization to she was motivated by my book a mind of your own and she did the program on very minimal
(22:33) resources she had a history of depression diagnosis alcohol abuse bipolar disorder disorder to eating fibromyalgia PTSD she was on a collection of 15 medications had a history of multiple hospitalizations and significant suicide attempts and at the time of this publication she was one year asymptomatic and actually had a report of her bipolar disorder diagnosis being deleted from her clinical record by her prescriber next is clinical remission of treatment resistant depression polysubstance abuse and anti-depressant
(23:13) discontinuation syndrome as it’s called in the literature this is withdrawal through engagement of Lifestyle interventions so this is a 50-year-old woman she had 25 years of exposure to multiple medications which began after she was started on antibiotics as a 19-year-old and then in her 20s she had rounds of antibiotics and she developed depressive symptoms was medicated hospitalized suicide attempts then experienced withdrawal when she attempted to discontinue an snri anti-depressant and stimulants and ab benzo so she attempted to taper these
(23:54) and experienced what she describes as a feeling of being electrocuted this is is very common burning in her GI tract bloating a lot of like fear vigilance volatile moods and minimal exercise tolerance so that’s you know sort of this autonomic instability and her menstrual cycle also abruptly stopped during this medication discontinuation window so we were able to bring her to stability through the protocol she was somebody who was very impacted and benefited greatly from the cond aspects of the program and we got a
(24:33) three-year followup from her where she wrote I like my life so I’m not sure it gets better than that okay so this is a case series that we published it’s called psychotropic drug withdrawal and holistic tapering strategies a case series and essentially there are two groups in this series comparing medication taper ities to another cohort of individuals who were struggling with protracted withdrawal who you know came off their meds on their own in some other way and were still unstable you know months sometimes years later also
(25:13) in this category we put people who were dealing with ultimately what was uncovered as the psychiatric Pretenders so maybe you’ve heard me talk about those but essentially these are physiologic imbalances that often Drive psychiatric diagnosis so things like blood sugar instability gluten dairy or other food intolerances micronutrient deficiencies things like you know B12 after Decades of vegetarianism for example medication side effects so as I mentioned this is a big one where you you have the newa ring or you’re taking
(25:51) birth control or you’ve just started on an acid blocker or a Statin vaccine or antibiotic and you develop you know manic or or depressive symptoms or suicidality out of nowhere or thyroid right so obviously I learned a lot about that through my own experience with Hashimoto thyroiditis and the way that hypothyroidism symptoms line up pretty much line for line with major depressive symptoms and then the postpartum window the thyroiditis that occurs postpartum you know the way that it can overlap with postpartum psychosis and depression
(26:28) and the sort of timing of it is also very notable so in the first group there were eight patients who had exposure to various medications while Butrin proac Adavan clopin zolof Celexa simala and some of them had had failed tapers in the past and they were all successfully tapered through the protocol in the second group there were four patients and this also includes a thyroid case so you know that seemed like she had some psychiatric issues had protracted ongoing symptoms and turned out that that’s what was going on and the
(27:11) protocol was helpful in that regard so there’re also a number of references in this particular paper at the end if you’re interested for you know things like the gut brain axis and gluten nutrition and even enemas Okay so the crown jewel is this is an IRB approved amazingly I still Rob Abbott is the reason that that happened and he worked some serious magic and such an amazing collaborator as were all of these authors and this is an IRB approved randomized trial of VMR and there were 71 subjects between the ages
(27:51) of 20 and 64 and they all had a pre-existing major depressive disorder diagnosis and 60% of them had three or more diagnoses okay so these are you know the walking wounded you know in many ways because that sounds like oh they must have been really sick people and obviously in some cases of these reports we’ve just gone over these would be considered you know severely mentally ill individuals and certainly you know women who have struggles greatly in their lives however it is very easy to accumulate three psychiatric diagnoses
(28:29) and you know this can happen over the course of your 20s if you’ve had a bad breakup in college you can find yourself with you know three or more diagnoses and be somebody who might be in a position to do an online protocol and program so all that is to say these are I think a very representative sample so 60% had three or more diagnoses and roughly 66% were taking one or more medications so 37 of them did VMR and 34 were on the weight list so that the weight list was the control so they just wen’t waiting you know so that’s a
(29:09) pretty common control method in these trials so 26 completed the protocol and that included these specific clinical measurements because remember in Psychiatry this is how we do things it’s like quizzes essentially so the phq9 the sf36 and the msq and there were 20 six folks who completed those these are men and women and then there were 27 ultimately on the weight list and what we found was that there was statistical Improvement so statistically significant Improvement in mental health and vitality so believe it or not those are
(29:45) actually like the terms Vitality I thought that was on the nose so from these assessments and that the mean scores suggested a statistical Improvement in the total symptom burden so essentially all of this is to say that the protocol was validated as efficacious for its intended outcome which was mental health and there was a side bonus of Vitality so that was a very exciting moment in the history of this protocol because to my knowledge other than the bredeson protocol which is for an entirely different you know
(30:23) intention population outcome in the dementia world this is the only one that I know of that has this level of published literature this last paper I thought to share with you all not because it’s related to you know VMR per se but because it’s one of the reasons why VMR might be a good idea especially if somebody is on medications recently started on medications or withdrawing from medications because we know based on lucier and K’s report from a decade ago that certain folks are at risk so run-of-the-mill folks you know your
(31:00) uncle your therapist your you know neighbor at risk for impulsive violence towards self and others when they are started on these medications and I have shared some of the whistleblowers in this realm who have experienced very personally some like unspeakable losses and this is a report that I was you know honored to support and it’s called treatment emergent violence to self and others a literature review of neuros psychiatric adverse reactions for anti-depressant and neuroleptic psychiatric drugs and general medications it’s quite thorough
(31:39) and lengthy and essentially what it looks at is the pharmacog genetics you know and we’re just going to make a lot of assumptions about the validity of these research methodologies that you know that genes are what we think they are and that we actually have ever identified a receptor and you know when I spend enough time around my colleagues I question to that level however for the purposes of our discussion it’s about the pharmacogenetics of eatha and violence in the setting of both treatment and treatment withdrawal so in
(32:12) case this is interesting it is published and all of these papers are published in the peer-reviewed literature you can find these papers and many many more testimonials on our website at Kelly Brogan md.com outcomes and and I hope that this serves to remind you that your illness is a question only you can answer and often the first step in that journey is the Reclamation of the power of your choice and the restoration of the Locust of control within you sending this signal of safety so that you can begin to regenerate reclaim and restore your
(32:57) vital force energy energy and to make sense out of why it is that you were expressing the symptoms that you were experiencing the struggle with your health that you were this has been done this path has been well trotten by thousands I have had the Deep honor of bearing witness to and something that I’ve experienced in my own process and journey home to self all right until next time
