Nutritional Psychology
(Functional Lab Analysis)
Nutritional Psychology: Personalized Nutrition for Your Brain.
“After twenty years of practicing psychiatry and seeing thousands of patients, I have come to believe that feeding the brain well is fundamental to the effective treatment of depression. Yet this simple truth is often overlooked.” - James Greenblatt, MD
​
Our brain is the most metabolic, energy consuming, organ within the body. It requires a continuous flow of energy, linked to nutrients and oxygen, or death may occur within minutes. Increasingly, the role of nutrition upon brain function, mood and behavior is becoming recognized. However, most mental health professionals or physicians lack training in nutrition or they apply nutritional recommendations in a one-size fits all fashion.
​
Our physical outward differences are minor compared to the vast individual differences within our brains and our DNA. Conventional treatment methods are based on statistics derived from large group studies. Yet, a given drug or treatment method that may have some effect on the group average, may not be well suited for you.
Personalized or client-centered care, on the other hand, seeks to identify the important factors in your life that uniquely contribute to your mental and emotional health.
The goal of personalized care — far different from industrial or institutional medicine — is to create an individual treatment approach that works for you.
​
This might include psychological assessments, collecting blood, urine or stool tests, and collaborating with other family members or other treatment providers. Functional or integrative mental health care aims to systemically assess how an individual — physically, emotionally, mentally — responds to any given treatment. It is not a one-drug to one-symptom approach. In addition, to relational and talk-based psychotherapies, the use advanced nutrient therapies, sensory regulatory and neuromodulation techniques are often applied to enhance successful treatment outcomes.
The Walsh Approach is offered by Dr. Jeffrey Bruno (see: https://www.walshinstitute.org)
Dr. Walsh has long been a pioneer in the development of advanced nutrient therapies since his collaboration with Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of Princeton, N.J. in the 1980s. He found that nutrient imbalances can alter brain levels of key neurotransmitters, disrupt gene expression of proteins and enzymes, and cripple the body’s protection against environmental toxins. Dr. Walsh’s database containing millions of chemical factors in blood, urine and tissues has identified high-incidence imbalances in patients challenged by behavior disorders, ADHD, autism, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Walsh’s clinical system is used by doctors throughout the world, resulting in thousands of reports of recovery. His (2014) book, "Nutrient Power," provides the scientific foundation for this medical approach.
Dr. Walsh has trained more than 600 physicians and medical practitioners in the use of targeted, individualized nutrient therapy since 2000. Dr. Jeffrey Bruno is one of the first and one of the few psychologists ever trained by Dr. Walsh and his team. Client's symptoms and history, along with laboratory tests of blood and urine are all used to identify individual biotype patterns for mental health treatment.