← Dr. Trish Leigh Podcast
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Okay. Welcome Back to the Dr. Trish Leigh podcast. You probably thought I was dead after all of those Jubilee episodes. In fact, I am alive and well. But it was really important for me to give you all that content after I broke it down after the experience at Jubilee. So if you haven't heard the last episodes, please catch up on them. They're very important. But in fact, I'm very glad to be back here with you with some fresh new ideas. Let us dive in. Today we are going to talk about the brain gut axis and how it is affected not only by stress and anxiety, but also by dopamine. And of course, explicit matter is the number one thing that is going to hijack your dopamine arousal system in your brain. So we are going to do a deep dive connection between the brain and the gut, how it's impacted by stress, overstimulation, especially from dopamine, especially from explicit matter. So let us dive in. But before we do that, I just want to remind you that this podcast is part of my outreach program through my nonprofit. It's currently called Porn Brain Prevention. But I have the most exciting things coming for you. But I'm going to hold that@pornbrain prevention.org you can donate. Help me go upstream and help kids. I'm getting more phone calls from parents who are freaking out, and rightfully so, because their sons are addicted to porn and can't stop. So if you find yourself in that position, call me. But if you are generous enough to donate to Porn Brain Prevention, I appreciate it. And all the families who need your help, they appreciate it too. We have prevention programs and we also have remediation programs and we're developing some new programs that I'll let you know about in the future. But pornbrainprevention.org I match every donation. Okay, so let us talk about what we are talking about today. Let's first dive into. You've had those feelings in your gut, haven't you? Or when you've been really stressed out, you might feel like you have an ulcer. I remember back in the day, my brother Mark, if you're listening, sorry for sharing the story. My brother Mark had an ulcer. He was drinking some soda that had like quadruple the amount of caffeine. I'm sure it was nothing compared to the energy drinks of today. I'll have to try to think of the name, but he's a pretty stressed out guy still. He was stressed out back then. Those gut problems, you might think they have to do with food they don't. You know what they have to do with, they have to do with your nervous system, with your brain, and that's what we're going to talk about today. But your gut system actually has what scientists call the second brain. It's called the enteric nervous system. And your gut is filled with neurons. So it's like a whole nervous system in and of itself. And if you're feeling it in your gut, you have digestive problems, you have ibs, anything like that. It's related to your brain performance pattern. So let's talk about it. How does stress affect your gut? Your gut is affected when your brain is in hyperdrive. So what puts it in hyperdrive? First of all, we put our brains in hyperdrive by being in constant motion, by constantly producing at work or consuming passively, consuming content. So you might take a break from your work and start scrolling social media, especially that which is hypersexualized. That is still a brain that's on brain, on producing brain, on consuming passively. When you do that, what you are doing is oscillating your brain between cortisol that's increasing the more you work and dopamine that's increasing the more you escape into the screen. That will wreak havoc on your gut. And there's direct connection from your gut to your brain. Your brain is sending the signal to your gut, your gut becomes upset. Digestion doesn't work as well as possible. It sends the signal back up to your brain that you are in survival mode. This is known as sympathetic dominance. So the way I see that is on Q EEG brain mapping. When I work with people in my one on one clinic, I can literally see how their brains are performing. People tell me all the time this is insane. I never knew that this existed. It is the coolest thing. But unfortunately what I mostly see is people's brains and nervous systems are completely ramped up. They are in sympathetic dominance. This means their brain is going and it's no longer able to stop. It's no longer able to calm itself down. Which is why you feel the need to go to something outside of yourself to calm you down, namely explicit matter or, or even explicit matter on social media. But it also could be food, like ice cream or chocolate cake. It also could be alcohol, like a couple drinks at the end of the night. It also could be cannabis or marijuana, you know, just to take the edge off. It could be endless hours of YouTube. What it is is overstimulation and exertion from stress. Then overstimulation from the screen. This is what is keeping your brain locked and sympathet dominance. Well, what's the opposite of sympathetic dominance? It's called parasympathetic state. Sympathetic dominance is survival mode. So you're locked up neuro rigid pattern. It's like a bear is chasing you. And what your nervous system does is it perceives the threat in the overstimulation and it locks in to stay alive. It will take the resources away from digestion. So you're not digesting food like you would if you were more relaxed. And trust me, this girl has had to learn how to do that because I am programmed to go. I'm programmed from birth to produce and never stop. So I've had to learn to stop. And it became very important to me when I became sick and had autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Paris or sympathetic dominance, Sorry, sympathetic dominance. That became acutely. I became acutely aware that I need to rest more, I need to relax more, I need to spend more time eating slowly. I need to spend more time digesting. So that's all parasympathetic state. Rest and digest relaxation, restoration. I like to think of it as restoration time because then it's the thing that I'm doing. So this is the balance that I'm always talking about. If you're constantly in sympathetic dominance, it's just go, go, go passively consume. Your brain will be hooked on dopamine dependency from the screen. It becomes the thing you go to outside of yourself to calm your brain down and to bring. It doesn't even bring it out of sympathetic dominance, but to take the edge off of sympathetic dominance for a beat. When you get into parasympathetic each day you don't have to escape and you don't have to take the edge off. That's what we're talking about. Brain, gut axis and enteric nervous system that's jammed up because your brain is in sympathetic dominance. When you get into parasympathetic state, it can flow. So what does that look like on a QEEG brain map? What it looks like is red brain on fire. A wired and tired brain, what I like to call strained brain. You will feel stressed and exhausted at the same time. Likely you will have gut issues. You will either feel like you're not digesting food well or you'll have stomach pain, you'll have ibs. After you eat, you will not feel well. All of those symptoms are directly related if you've been in the cycle of explicit matter long term you may have tipped over into drained brain. Drained brain is different. It's not the jacked up brain pattern of the wired and tired pattern. It's a brain that's stuck in neutral. But if you just think about that neutral mode, it means the system's not working. So it will produce very similar symptoms except for you will feel more lack of motivation, you may feel more depressed, you may have erectile dysfunction or sexual arousal dysfunction, sad as I call it because your system is locked into neutral. This drain brain pattern falls out of being in strain brain for a long time. Both of them are visualized on a QEG brain map. Both of them can be backed out of. And the number one question that I am asked is Trish, can I really overcome explicit matter? Can I really heal Ed? Can I really create the life that I love? Those are my words. Yes, you can. 100%. You absolutely can. I want you to know that. So yes, you can. All right, so I want to tell you a story about one of my precious children. She was in a relationship that was severely stressing her out and I didn't even know about it at this point in the story. She was sick to her stomach at all times where she would actually like kind of impromptu have nausea and vomit because her stomach was on fire. I took her to the doctor. The doctor never asked her what's going on in her life. You know what the doctor did? Prescribed her depression medication. That was a very frustrating moment in my life because my precious daughter had just turned 18 and we go into the doctor's office and I try to teach the kids how to adult. So she turned 18. I went in with her, I explained the situation about her gut problem. I held back and didn't say anything about brains because I do like to talk about them. I'll let you be with a nurse practitioner by yourself and you can tell her more. I just stepped outside the door. She comes out one minute later with depression medication prescription, which is enraging because we need to look at the state of affairs of the nervous system. What depression medication will do is take the edge off. It doesn't solve the problem at all. But I actually never told my daughter not to take it because again, I'm teaching them how to adult. I went through the pros and the cons. It's going to take the edge off of how you're feeling right now, but it's not going to address the underlying issue. It has a lot of side effects. She chose not to have it filled. Then she chose to tell me the situation. And then we had to move through a process of actually fixing it. That's a thing that a prescription can't do. Of course, we incorporated neurofeedback in my program with her once I knew the deal, once I saw what her brain was doing. So once I saw it, I could help her heal it step by step. And it's not a lifetime adventure of healing it. The program's four months. If you engage in it, it works. So this is how your gut is connected to your nervous system. And it's at the root of the stress, maybe the depression, the anxiety, the ibs. They are connected. Explicit matter plays the role. Let's pivot there for a minute and really, really talk about it. Is that explicit matter is part of the dopamine hijack. When your brain gets hijacked by all of that dopamine, what it does is it puts you in a dopamine deficit state when you go back into your actual life. So when you're consuming explicit matter, the dopamine's flowing, you're going to feel good, numbed out, escapism, dissociation, not present. That's not present. Joyful, content, peaceful in your life. It's escapism. It's pleasure at high levels, but pleasure doesn't. It's not really sustainable. Pleasure hits and then it creates pain. Something I call the pain pleasure paradox. In my book Mind over explicit Matter, which is right here. Mind over Explicit matter has been out now for six months. It's amazing. And if you don't have this book, you need to get it. It's a first line resource that will teach you way more than what I'm telling you right now. But it will expand what we're going to talk about here. So the idea is your brain's flowing with dopamine, that pleasure hits, but then you're going to feel the pain. The pain comes from the dopamine deficit. It comes from you're in more of a cortisol, stressed out, sympathetic dominant state. You are in survival mode and you're stuck there. Dopamine's locking that in. That's why now you go to work and it doesn't do what it used to do. You actually start questioning, do I even like doing this anymore? The answer is don't make that judgment until your brain is free of the dopamine dependency. Same thing about your, your hobbies, same thing about your people. Because science shows there'll be less satisfaction with your partner and your relationships. Your body image goes down. So there's A lot of ramifications, not only ED and sad, but also mental health and self image and image of the people around you. It becomes very distorted. This is all because of the hijack from the dopamine dependency. So it's really more about the pursuit of pleasure than it is about pleasure itself. Dopamine is the molecule of motivation, more and pleasure. And really the key is thinking about motivation and more. It is motivating you back for more and more and more, endless more of that feel good, numbed out, feeling dissociation that you got. But I want you to remember pleasure isn't happiness. The happiness trifecta comes from healthy levels of dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin for connection. That's what is waiting for you on the other side of an explicit matter compulsion. Yes, masturbation falls into this too. But we're not talking about it in this episode. But trust me, there'll be some episodes coming in that degree. Now, how does this happen? Basically what happens is the limbic system goes into overdrive. And I like to think of that as the gorilla in the hull of the ship of your brain. He's in there demanding bananas. I want bananas. I want bananas. He's conditioned for one thing, to only want bananas. That's what happens in your limbic system, the prefrontal cortex up in the front, which is connected to that area, it's the CEO or the captain of the ship of your brain. But it's knocked out. It's decreased in function and structure. Scientific studies show this. What that means is that captain, he's no longer set the course, nor is he trying to follow it. So now you've got a gorilla in charge and all that man wants is bananas. When you use neurofeedback in the program that I offer, what it does is it invigorates the captain again and it tranquilizes the gorilla. Let me say that again. What the neurofeedback program my one on one clinic offers is tranquilization of that gorilla in the midbrain and enlivening that captain in the prefrontal cortex. So now you can make good decisions. You can set the course for what you want to create in your life, and you can actually do the steps that get you there. You, you can silence that gorilla who only wants the bananas of dopamine from explicit matter or from digital input. That's the solution. So in the program, for the first month of the four months, what we do is we regulate your brain with brain tech. There's Brain tech out there that I use. And honestly, it's world class brain technology that I am grateful to be able to use at the highest levels, to be able to make your brain stronger in the first month. Once your brain's stronger, then you can do all those things you can't do now, like stepping away from explicit matter, like putting your phone down, like engaging with your people without feeling stressed out, like getting a lot of work done and feeling awesome about it. Those are the things that this program can bring to you. Because we know neurological dysregulation is at the core. It's causing those gut issues in the enteric nervous system and it's keeping you going back for more dopamine from the screen. So before we wrap up, I want to give you three brain hack strategies that you can use right away because we don't want your brain being lit up on fire like the QEEG brain maps that I see. We want you to have a green zone brain map, which is the goal in the program. Calm, focus, able to regulate from within, able to rock out your best life. So here is your first brain hack strategy for the day. It has to do with what's called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the largest nerve, and it basically runs down from your brain into your body. It can help soothe those gut issues. Now, especially if you're dealing with stomach issues or you feel that palpable stress in your system, vagus nerve stimulation can really, really help. And honestly, I do this every single day, just as a preventive mes, as a preventive medicine or a preventive measure. Here's what you can do. You can hum, you can breathe slowly. You know what I find myself doing, which is wild. I sigh. My husband be like, what's your problem? And I'll be like, obviously, I don't have a problem. The only times I sigh just inherently is when I'm calming myself down, just resetting my brain. It doesn't mean I was upset. It means I was working all day and I'll come out and I'll go. That sigh is. It's stimulating this vagus nerve. It's helping me go from sympathetic dominance to parasympathetic. So just inherently, I do it when I come out of my office and go back into my home because my commute is 10 seconds, right? So that's me offloading the stress of the day and getting into that parasympathetic state. I also like to sing. Yes, it can be terrifying at times, but I go downstairs, I Crank up music. What was I cranking earlier today? I don't know. There's a new Jason Mraz song. It was pretty good. I don't know the words yet, but I will crank up music and just enjoy it while I'm cooking. Music, singing, humming, sighing will stimulate that vagus nerve. Splashing cold water on your face, that will help. So this is one strategy that you can do. Number two, I'm sorry to tell you, because you might not want to hear it, you could really benefit from a digital detox. That means 30 days of stepping away from whatever you're doing on the screen that's giving you the most dopamine. Unhealthy dopamine. If it's explicit matter, it's got to go. If it's explicit content on social media, if it's onlyfans, and you know, it doesn't have to be porn proper, it has to be explicit matter. If you're consuming explicit matter, it's got to go because it is bringing you back into this state of dysregulation, of parasympathetic, of sympathetic dominance. So it's got to go. A detox from all that dopamine. So no edging, no endless scrolling. What are you going to do instead? You're going to have to fill those holes in your schedule. Get outside in nature, go for a walk, go work out, go do the hobbies that you love. My son, Seamus, who's just gone away to college, he just texted because he wants to go see Hamilton on stage at the movie theaters. Apparently it's on the big screen. He's like, he's coming home and I haven't seen him since he left. So fun, right? So he's like, I don't know if you're busy Friday night. I'm like, I am not. And even if I was, I'd be canceling it because I want to be with this man. I want to spend time with him. That's his passion. He loves movies. Sign me up, bro. I got us tickets and I'm already looking forward to it. That is going to be a time of parasympathetic for me with one of my beautiful children. But get outside. Get real human connection going. Do something you love. All right, number three, simplify your inputs. Stillness is golden. You know, they say that about silence every morning. I start with, honestly, it's about an hour of stillness and silence, unless the hubs keeps talking to me. I was doing neurofeedback this morning with my eyes closed, and I was totally in the zone, getting all the feedback, and I open my eyes. That man's 10. Not even. He's like, 2 inches from my face. But silence and stillness, and that will help you to sync up your brain. It's going to chill out that limbic system. It's going to fire up that prefrontal cortex and help you out. So you're going to engage your vagus nerve, stimulate it, and get that parasympathetic system going again. It'll help your gut, it'll help your stress levels, it will help you to be able to go get dopamine in the real world. You're going to detox your dopamine input from digital devices while you're also simplifying your inputs. Silence is golden. All right. I hope this helps you out. I'm alive and well. I am back. I am working on some really cool things. I have a new. I've had the channel, but I'm sparking it up on YouTube, another channel called Super Normal. It is going to expand Explicit Matter. This podcast is going to be on it, so if you're hearing it, please go over to super normal YouTube channel. Dr. Trish Lee. I've also recommitted myself to my channel, Sanity After Betrayal, to help partners who find themselves in infidelity, cheating, porn addiction, anything that's disrupted their primary relationship. So if you're a woman and you find yourself in that position, you can be a man. But mostly it's women. Please go over to that channel and check it out. And as always, control your brain or it'll control you. I'll see you next time.