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Featured On: What EveryBODY Needs with Dr. Ann Barter


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Featured On: What EveryBODY Needs with Dr. Ann Barter

February 16, 2019 by admin

What EveryBODY Needs with Dr. Ann Barter

Your health should be your biggest priority. Chiropractic and integrative care specialist Dr. Ann Barter says taking care of your health earlier is a huge gift. She sees a lot of people coming in who’ve put their health on the back burner for many years and think that they can get it back. From thyroid issues, infections, infertility issues in women, overall fatigue, and overall wellbeing, Dr. Barter has seen it all. As someone who had struggled with some stress and anxiety issues herself, Dr. Barter realized what some of her clients were going through. That’s what got her into Neurotransmitter Therapy and neuro-supplementation. Dr. Barter explains how neurotransmitter deficiency is causing a lot of conditions, and why it’s important to supplement our neurotransmitter and keep the gut microbiome healthy.

Rather read the podcast instead?

 

We have Dr. Ann Barter out of Colorado. Dr. Ann-Marie, how are you doing?

I’m doing well. How are you?

I’m good. Thank you so much for coming on. I hear you have a great life story of how chiropractic saved your life and got you better. Now, you are helping other people do the same. That’s always a great thing.

I’m very passionate about what I do on a daily basis. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I appreciate that.

You see a lot of thyroid issues, infections, infertility issues in women, overall fatigue and overall well-being. I’m excited to jump into that. Before we do that, where are you from?

I am a Colorado native, but I took a ton of growing up in Texas. I’m a little bit of a Southern girl.

What part of Texas?

EM 85 | Neurotransmitter Therapy

Neurotransmitter Therapy: Paleo healed my body back up. I did a variety of supplements and I was completely changed.

 

Fort Worth and Austin area. After I went to school in Oregon, I went to the University of Western States, I landed back in Colorado. It was my mom’s dream to live in Colorado. After I moved back here, about a couple of years later she passed away. We kept the tradition going and started a practice in alternative medicine. I’ve been here ever since.

What got you into chiropractic originally?

Initially, I remember I was in high school. I remember I used to have bad period cramps. Anytime you go to a doctor with bad period cramps, they tell you as a woman, all the women can relate to this, “Suck it up. It’s no big deal.” I remember going there and I was having acne and period cramps and they told me it was totally normal. Apparently, I had a Differin Gel of deficiency. I had no idea that was a thing but my Auntie at the time lived next door to a pharmaceutical rep for Differin Gel. I used Differin Gel. Clearly, it didn’t work. I’m presenting with all hormonal problems. Fast forward, it was about a year and I remember waking up. I love to go to school. I loved high school, etc. I walked into my mom’s room and I was bent over in half. I was in such pain. I told my mom, “I’m having period cramps. Do you mind if I stay home?” This was all odd for me because I never asked to stay home. She said, “Can you stand up?” I’m like, “They’re bad.” We’re going to go to the doctor. I go to a different doctor. He’s concerned, then I’m in the emergency room. My appendix is exploding and I thought the whole thing is the period cramps.

That could be fatal too.

I felt there was a lot of warning signs and the whole time I’m being told through this time that I’m perfectly healthy, there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m only missing my appendix. I’m starting to remove organs at seventeen years old. Fast forward, I’m in college and I started breaking out into hives all over my body. I looked like a creature from Star Trek. I’m walking around with my hoodie. I look horrible. I’m itching. I go to the emergency room and they tell me I have a Benadryl deficiency. They didn’t quite use those words. I did the Benadryl. It didn’t take the hives away, but I was able to sleep through the night. The next night, back in the emergency room clearly another Benadryl deficiency and on and on the week goes.

Later on, my breathing starts to get shallow because my hives were bad. They were swelling up into my throat, which again is fatal. No one ever talked to me about diet. Nobody ever talked to me about what could be causing it. A multitude of alternative health practitioners helped me get back. I had a severe dairy allergy. I was in anaphylaxis, which not everybody does but mine was extreme on top of stress and then the dorms were pretty moldy. It completely changed my life. I ended up doing Paleo before Paleo was cool to heal my body back up. I did a variety of supplements and I was completely changed.

Who is recommending all this to you? Were you doing your own research?

I was seeing chiropractors that also did natural medicine. That was a huge game changer. I remember at that time being adjusted and I felt new again. My feet, because I used to be a runner, that was a huge game changer for me. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t found it earlier. I have the flattest feet you have ever seen. I rival Fred Flintstone. Podiatrists didn’t know what to do with me, but this guy adjusted my feet. Put me on orthotics and I felt new again. It completely changed my posture, changed my gate and we all know that affects internal organs. On top of the supplements, the diet and the adjusting, it completely changed my life. I had dyslexia and that also changed.

You weren’t always going to be a chiropractor. You had a different career choice before chiropractic? What was that?

I used to work for Lockheed Martin doing negotiations. I would beat small businesses up for a living. That was my job title.

Were you natural?

I was pretty good at it. Oddly, I went home at night and I felt my soul was being sucked out of my body. I felt bad about what I was doing. I remember my boss’ boss’ boss, three levels, came up to me and said, “We have a special target for you to hit.” I was hitting under the targets I needed to hit. I said, “Sure.” He said, “I need you to get this much under target, whatever it was.” These are multimillion-dollar contracts. I said, “Sure.” I did it. He came back and goes, “I’ve liked for you to hit this target.” I did it.

They were never happy?

He said, “This is for the taxpayers.” I was like, “I get that.” I want to do something great for all the people. I found out that those went into the pockets of the senior management. That was it for me. At the time, the guy that was treating me had helped and changed my life said, “You would do well-doing chiropractic and going to nutrition,” and so here I am.

EM 85 | Neurotransmitter Therapy

Neurotransmitter Therapy: You have to manage stress in a patient’s life. We generally do that with neurotransmitter.

 

You went to the Western States out in Oregon. You moved back to Colorado. What conditions do you see in your office? I’m sure it helps being a chiropractic patient, first and foremost. It’s saved your life. I’m sure you get to resonate with a lot of your patients on that same level too.

I see pretty much everything. Anything that has been failed in traditional treatment, I’m pretty much a last-ditch effort. We can all resonate with that. I see everything from fatigue to depression to anxiety. I see a lot of thyroids. I see a lot of infection. I see some brain deterioration. That’s becoming more and more common as the Baby Boomers are entering into later stages in their life. I’ll see PCOS, hormone dysregulation and some of these conditions aren’t named. They’re fully functional medicine conditions, both where we’re working with primary care physicians. These folks are already on medications. People that are completely opposed.

Let’s talk about thyroid issues. I feel most of the women that come in my practice have that circled on their sheet. They don’t know what to do about it. They’re on a ton of medication for it and it’s not working. How do you address thyroid issues in your practice?

It depends on what’s going on. The thyroid is complex. You have multiple things going on. For example, you have to potentially address the brain. You have to potentially address the TSH or thyroid gland, which is what we all have heard about. Levels of thyroxin, synthroid, armour or whatever people are doing. The big hot thing is the conversion. The thyroid is the last thing to go off. A lot of other body systems are having problems. One thing that I see is it tends to be women. They tend to be heart drivers, it’s very common. They tend to be your A-type personalities, do something for everybody else and put themselves last. They all have had an infection early on primarily mono, which has turned into the Epstein-Barr Virus. It depends on what their thyroid markers look like. For example, most of the time people look at the TSH. They look at the TSH and they say, “Your thyroid gland is normal or you’re hypothyroid.” That’s only a very small part of the picture. Do you have autoimmune hyperthyroid? Do you have a conversion problem? Are you producing enough at a brain level?

You have to run a multitude of thyroid tests to see what the pattern is. For example, let’s say you have a conversion problem. Your T3 isn’t converting. You don’t convert T4 to the active form T3. A lot of what happens in the liver. In those cases, you generally will see a backed up liver or other problems where it’s not converting. It happens in the gut and in peripheral tissues but primarily in the liver. It’s variable but once you figure out what’s going on, you can treat that. It tends to be in a multitude of steps. For example, you’ll look at their labs and let’s say they have something going on with their liver in the labs, something going on with their immune system which is common in most of the cases. Most of the cases are autoimmune and that’s why at that point the thyroid medication isn’t helping. The thyroid medication treats the TSH or the thyroid. The autoimmunity is an immune system issue. You’re only treating part of the problem. You have to regulate the immune system. There’s a multitude of ways to do it. We go after the infection a lot of times to reregulate and calm down the inflammation and figure out what else is spinning it up? Is it something they’re eating? Do they hate their life? Do they hate their marriage? Do they hate their job? What is it that’s spinning it up?

That can cause inflammation along stress and everything like that.

Which is a huge thing that’s not talked about, but you have to manage the stress in that patient’s life. We generally do that with neurotransmitters. We’ll get neurotransmitter therapy to address the brain so that people will want to maybe say change their diet or be able to do an elimination diet. Mitigate the stress so that they can make a decision. Most of these people can’t make a decision.

Is that like a neurotransmitter supplement?

I do supplements. I’m not able to treat it with food. I feel by the time they get to me, they’re too far gone. I will figure out where the neurotransmitter deficiency is. I use a simple questionnaire and then I will boost it up. It’s easier with trial or error but you can also run lab work to figure out where your neurotransmitter is deficient in challenging cases.

How do you treat serious infections? Before I got to chiropractic school, I was always under the impression that you need an antibiotic to get rid of an infection or else it’s not going away, which is clearly not the case. There’s a wide variety of viruses and infections. How do you go about treating infections?

It depends on what you’re dealing with. Some of this is a lot of trial and error. For example, a lot of times I will go after biofilms because they tend to be deep-seated. They tend to hang out for a long time. Let’s go back to your example of the antibiotics. Have you ever heard of antibiotic-resistant bacteria or strains? This is on the same premise like that. You take an antibiotic and it doesn’t work. You have to take another antibiotic and another and another. What is generally happening is there are biofilms because these critters are amazing. They’re smart and they can wall themselves off, they can adapt, they can replicate and they can communicate. That’s why you have to have that repetitive dosing of the antibiotic.

The same thing goes with viruses. I will do something to destroy the biofilm. An enzyme to eat away at the biofilm and then I will do a variety of things depending on what the patient is responding to. Maybe it is killing the virus off. Maybe it is boosting our immune system by doing high dose vitamin C for a long period of time. The research shows that doing ten rounds of high dose vitamin C, the full vitamin C, not ascorbic acid which everybody takes, will get rid of an Epstein-Barr infection. I have not seen it via 100% in my practice. Sometimes you have to vary it a little bit, but you can. It’s possible.

Do you guys have the IV vitamin drips in your practice?

We don’t. I use liposomal, which is equally as effective. I want to say on vitamin C because there’s so much misconception about vitamin C. Most vitamin C supplements are ascorbic acid. That is like saying you’re eating an orange when you are nine on an orange peel. You’re not eating the entire thing. I want to make that clear. If somebody goes out and they want to kill this and they’re like, “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

EM 85 | Neurotransmitter Therapy

Neurotransmitter Therapy: Getting the nutritional status back up and opening up those detox pathways is very effective for the overall well-being.

 

How long do you have to stay the course to see if it’s working? You don’t want to take them off too soon because maybe it didn’t hit full effect yet. What’s your standard on putting patients on a particular regimen? It’s probably different for every case but how do you know when it’s working and when it’s not? When you should change steps there?

I’ll run the Epstein-Barr virus blood tests to get a baseline of where they are, rerun it. I want to see their symptoms decreasing. Those two markers, they generally feel better. Epstein-Barr is sneaky. A lot of people have it but you’ll see them say, “I lost my mother. My husband lost his job. We had to move and then suddenly I felt terrible.” It was opportunistic. It flared up. It’s in a lot of people’s systems but then it becomes an opportunistic infection because your immune system has gone down. A lot of people have been exposed to it. Long answer to your question, their symptoms and then what their blood work looks like. That’s how I can tell it’s working.

You deal with infertility issues and everything. Have you gotten that patient that came in strictly for infertility? You put them on some things. Get them some chiropractic care and it turns around?

I’ve seen a variety of infertility issues. The first one I saw, a patient came in. She was being supplemented for her thyroid. She had hypothyroid. She was on medication. A lot of women can relate to this. She still felt terrible. She still could barely get out of bed, exhausted, depressed and struggling. She wanted to have another baby. It was important to her. Women feel there’s something wrong with them. On top of that, not being able to get pregnant, they also have this mental state where they feel something is wrong with them because they can’t get pregnant. You’re also dealing with that, which is sad to have that.

In this particular case, I had a feeling she had Hashimoto’s. I ran the rest of the thyroid markers. She had the worst case of Hashimoto’s I had ever seen. This gal is beautiful. You would never know she had Hashimoto’s. She seems by all appearances great to the outside world but barely making it through life. I’m cleaning out her liver and doing other things. I told her that she had to wait a month to get pregnant. She got pregnant within three weeks. After managing that, that made a huge turnaround and a huge change. Putting the right things into our body and supporting that. Seeing what was on labs that had gone awry from a functional range and everybody is different. There’s no protocol that’s like, “We should all do X. We should all do this for a virus killing. We should all do X, Y and Z.” We’re all different in individual and how we go off track is different.

In general overall well-being, things that you can put into your body to make you feel better. I hear celery juice is phenomenal these days. Are there any things that you’ve come across work well for the majority of people?

I generally will detox people initially because our world is crazy and toxic. I will start with something that will open up their detox pathways and flush things out. I’ve seen that be a huge change for folks to number one, get their nutritional status backup and number two open up those detox pathways. I find that that’s pretty effective.

What do you do to detox?

I use a product called Metaboclear by Biogenetix. That one works well for me. There are a lot of supplements in that realm, but I liked that one the best. They have methylated B’s, which I also think are important because I deal with thyroid patients. Most of those people have snips in their MTHFR gene. I like to make sure that I’m not increasing that or increasing their homocysteine levels.

Most people throughout the day, energy levels with a lot of people across the board are low. That stems from a lot of things. What do you do for people in your office with energy issues and chronic fatigue that could barely make it through the day?

It depends on the case. Blood sugar has a lot to do with that, especially with patients that are the 3:00 PM crashers. If I’ve treated blood sugar and their diet is pristine and all of that because most people at this point know about diet and etc. Especially here, I don’t know about there but definitely here. I look at adrenal glands, but I look at adrenal gland a little bit differently. I tend to regulate it at an upper level. For example, if someone is having the motivation or a hard time getting through the day or I don’t want to do my taxes and they’re putting it off or whatever that looks like, I generally supplement with dopamine. Dopamine regulates the adrenal gland is at a brain level. Dopamine is the motivation hormone. Dopamine is like the adrenaline junkie. It’s why people run ultra-marathons. The runner’s high is a dopamine dump.

A lot of people I’ve seen are deficient in dopamine. I know what depression feels like, I’ve been depressed before, but this is almost a lack of motivation. I can’t get through the rest of the day. I don’t care about finishing X, Y and Z. Certain thyroid cases, you have to be careful. I generally start with dopamine if they’re showing dopamine deficiency. Another thing I also check is someone that’s been under chronic stress for a long time, which is a huge thing here. I will generally run pregnenolone. I deal with hormones last because hormones are the first thing to go out of line and the last thing to come back into line. I always deal with hormones last. I make sure all the rest of their system is working. I will run hormones at that point. A lot of times what you’ll see in these incredibly fatigued patients after you’ve balanced everything else out is their pregnenolone is low. There’s something called the pregnenolone cortisol steal. When you’re stressed out, you can steal from pregnenolone based on how the hormone system works.

The cortisol sucks it all up.

We’re constantly stressed out in this process of stress. You can talk to people about dropping their cortisol levels and they’re like, “I’ll do yoga and meditate.” They don’t, they refuse. I feel I have to give them something to calm them down and to energize them. I look at some of those things. I would not willy-nilly recommend supplementing with pregnenolone. I would be very careful about that. I will titrate down and do the rest of the hormones depending on what works. An energy supplement that I’ve found that helps with a lot of people that are fatigued is Royal Deer Antler Velvet, which a lot are used in Chinese medicine. You have to watch how it’s sourced.

EM 85 | Neurotransmitter Therapy

Neurotransmitter Therapy: Supplementing with neurotransmitters helps people deal with anxieties, be able to get through the day, and stick to an elimination diet.

 

I’ve heard football players are using it for rapid recovery.

They use it to boost growth hormone. Growth hormone is a master conductor hormone and it’s very powerful. You have to watch where it’s sourced. We source it out of New Zealand and no animals are harmed. They have a deer farm that they use.

Have you ever tried it personally?

It works like a charm. Times that I’ve been run down and stressed out and there’s nothing going on in my lab work. I need a vacation and to rest, I’ve used that. I represent a huge amount of the population. I’ve tried it. I’ve been there, I’ve done it. That’s why people will resonate with me because I’ve walked the walk. I’ve been through all of the things that they been through. Try all the supplements before people take them.

What I see a lot of the times is with anxiety, depression and all that. Sometimes it’s structural and physiological. You correct it and people feel great. Other times people hate what they’re doing the majority of their life. They don’t like their job. They don’t like everything that’s going on in their life. You can’t adjust that away because they go right back into that negative feedback loop. It’s a vicious cycle over and over again. Supplementation is going to help that person, but they have to figure it out and break that cycle to start living a better life. It’s tough by all means. It’s tough to pick up and change everything but sometimes that’s the case too.

Stress is a huge component. I was in Belize. This was a few years ago. We’re down on the islands. I asked the guy that was driving us around. I said, “Where’s the nearest hospital?” He goes, “Two hours away.” I said, “What do you do if something happens?” He’s like, “Like what?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” You’re by the ocean, maybe a shark bite. You have tiger sharks. They go to the hospital, it’s two hours away. He immediately said, “We are not like you Americans.” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “We’re not stressed. All your diseases come from stress. We don’t have the same problems that you have.” He was a matter of fact about it. That’s a big piece of it. I manage a ton of stress in practice.

Do you have to do that psychological component as well?

I originally got into neurotransmitter therapy and changing the neurotransmitters because I realized everybody was depleted. Tell you a story out of my own life. My commute increased ten minutes. I always ended up being in the car for an hour. I’m sure you’re like, “That’s what we do up there.” My commute increased to an hour. I was on the road for two hours a day. I found myself stopping at Whole Foods and getting a cookie. I know better. I don’t do that. I know what sugar does, etc. I preach it all day. I’m like, “That’s weird. I had a little bit of stress and I’m craving sugar.” I started listening to my patients when I would put them on an elimination diet and they would say, “I can’t do this. I can’t stick to this.” These are people that wanted to get better. They want it to do better. I started supplementing with neurotransmitter therapy.

Neurotransmitters are serotonin, which you think of with an antidepressant or dopamine, which we talked about with running and excitement. There’s GABA, which is our calming one. When you’re deficient in that you’re a whole lot like Tigger. When you’re deficient in dopamine, you’re a whole lot like Eeyore. ACH is about memory and focus. Remembering numbers or remembering why you walked into a room. I started realizing that these people were trying to feel better throughout the day and that’s why they craved certain foods. I started supplementing with the neurotransmitters to help them deal with these anxieties. Help them deal with being able to get through the day. That helped people stick to an elimination diet.

Did they flip it around a little bit? Where they were able to stick to the protocol?

The sugar is going to naturally increase that neurotransmitter short-term and then you crash again. It’s a temporary high. That was my experience with finding that because I had never struggled in my own life to eat a completely clean diet until that time, where I found myself craving sugar. I’m almost addicted to it. I had a lot more empathy at that point in my practice and realizing what some of these people are going through.

What do you call that neuro-supplementation?

I do a couple. I use NeuroAmino from Apex, which has all the neurotransmitters in it. I also will individually supplement. I use a Biogenetix GABA, which is liposomal. That one works the best. I use Apex neurotransmitter. They have a supplement called Dopatone. I know Metagenics also has one. They have a serotonin, which I don’t use that much because generally that’s caught with antidepressants. Occasionally, I do ACH a lot and phosphatidylcholine also goes on that.

What is the best way to find out what you’re deficient in? What do you need? How to self-correct that?

EM 85 | Neurotransmitter Therapy

Neurotransmitter Therapy: A lot of times, the gut will come back online after you put in what you need to in the body.

 

We do have a form on our website that you can fill out. It goes through some of the neurotransmitters. Each section has serotonin and dopamine. We’ll be putting a quiz on for each individual neurotransmitter to help you and to tell you what you’re deficient in. One thing is most people have a primary neurotransmitter deficiency. They also work on a teeter-totter together. You have to be careful. An antidepressant increases serotonin most of the time. That brings that up and then dopamine goes down. They’re on a teeter-totter together. A lot of times you’ll see somebody say, “I feel happy. I’m glad to be here but I don’t feel motivated. I don’t want to get off my couch.” You’ll see those changes even if they’re being supplemented for something like serotonin. You have to clean up all the neurotransmitters potentially. A lot of people aren’t sleeping and if you get them sleeping they will start to make neurotransmitters.

I was on antidepressants for my concussions. I had unexplained anxiety, depression. I couldn’t snap out of it. These neurologists were like, “Take these antidepressants. They’ll help boost your mood.” I took them one time. They started working for a while. I didn’t want to take anymore more so I stopped. I got depressed again. I started taking them again and the second time I took them I got way more depressed for no reason. Do you know what’s going on there? Where one of the side effects is more severe depression while taking those anti-depressants?

I don’t know. It would depend on what you were on. Generally, another neurotransmitter is low because of they all crossover. For example, you’ll feel it’s a serotonin deficiency but a dopamine deficiency means feeling worthless, hopeless, not feeling motivated, having to drink coffee to get going in the morning, all of those things. My guess is you’re deficient on another meridian. Deficient probably on dopamine or maybe GABA is what I would guess. Clearly, it wasn’t addressing the main problem. Another thing that can lead to depression, thyroid is one, but blood sugar is another one where you see people get more depressed. All of the neurotransmitters or a lot of them are made in your gut. It could also depend on when someone’s depressed, they tend to eat what they want because they’re trying to shove something down. All of those things could be factors.

They say 90% of our immune system’s in our gut. That’s huge. What do you do for gastrointestinal issues and all that stuff?

It depends on what someone’s presenting with. Each case is a little bit different. For example, we’re getting into the IBS cases, the Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, or inflammatory bowel cases. First thing I always do is an elimination diet. I do the whole 30 autoimmune, simply put with a few tweaks. I have somebody do that for four weeks and see how they do as well as evaluating their labs. I will fix whatever problems are there in the labs. We slowly start incorporating food back in. A lot of people are much better at that point. I sometimes have to do cleaning up of the gut. There are probably pathogenic bacteria. We’ve all heard of candida overgrowth, parasites or whatever. You have to evaluate to figure out maybe what’s going on. Some of that you can easily see from basic labs. You can see that from what’s called CBC. Your primary care runs it. You look at white blood cells, red blood cells, all those things that you’re like, “What do these terms mean?” That’s a basic CBC. That test is $10 and you can get a soft reading what your immune system looks like in that test. I will generally treat the inflammation if I need to. You’ll treat anemia and anything else. A lot of times the gut will come back online after you put in what you need to in the body. It depends.

I had a case with a fissure. They’ve had to drain it multiple times. All I did for this case was an elimination diet. I told her, “In these particular cases, there generally tends to be an infection.” She was on rounds of antibiotics because the doctors were trying to drain this and get to the bottom of it. Clearly, you have probably a biofilm around something that’s why these haven’t worked. Her liver was backed up because Denver is a big drinking city. I detoxed her out and I saw her for her follow-up visit and she was 90% better with that. That’s a straight gastrointestinal. That’s all she had going on. She was worried about that. Bigger cases that I’ve seen where there are fissures, fistulas, hemorrhoids, everything going on. It takes a while to get those cases better. I’ve had to run specific labs for the gut microbiome, including uBiome, to balance the gut bacteria, etc. It depends on how evolved the case is, how old the patient is. Do you have a specific case for me?

Most people’s gut biome is shot and depleted, whether it’s from antibiotics or overall diet and all that. A lot of people come in with overall gut, IBS and gastro issues in general.

A big piece is looking and seeing what the patient is eating that could be inflaming them. Removing that inflammation and then seeing from their symptoms. There’s a bacterium called Lactobacillus rhamnosus and that is a cool gut bacterium that produces GABA. For example, someone presents in and they’ve got all these gut problems, they’re all anxious and nervous. I generally know that they’re not farming their own rhamnosus. I will put that in but it takes months to be able to farm it themselves. In the meantime, I’ll give them GABA and a lot of those people have anxiety. IBS, a big piece is anxiety and a lot of people with IBS have been abused physically, emotionally. There is some mental piece to that, which generally hasn’t been addressed. There’s an anxiety. A lot of functional med doctors have gone through and said, “Leaky gut, the microbiome and all of that.” That’s all important but the psychological component of IBS and the stress around that is presenting a little bit in the gut and also needs to be addressed. Due to the birth of a disease, a child’s cerebral palsy given to me from the birth, Valium periodically I accept from an early childhood. The active substance is diazepam. And they assigned it for me for spasticity – to relax the muscles, and to treat sleep disorders. I can say that both, and the effect of Valium is indeed observed. From the side effects I only have a slight lethargy during the next day after taking the pill at night, although the instructions for the remedy at consejocounseling.org side effects described many side effects.

Ann Marie, what I like about what you guys can do too is you can see patients over Skype. They don’t have to come to your office, which is a lot like functional medicine doctors do. People can find you and they could schedule a consult with you online. They can get the blood work locally. They send it to you and then you recommend what they should get?

We do that. We can run all the labs ourselves or we also try to be respectful with people’s primary care. I always send a letter out to someone’s primary care, telling them what’s going on with the case. What I’d like to see. I tend to get a lot of primary cares on board to be involved. I feel our profession between alternative health practitioners and MDs has been divided. I’d like to get back on the same page.

I feel it’s getting better.

We all have different roles that we’re working on. I believe emergency medicine is incredible. I’m seeing more doctors get on board with functional medicine out here. Colorado is pretty progressive and I’m seeing a lot more doctors get on board with that, even MDs get on board with that and are excited about it. We’ll either work with their primary to run it through that. We will run the labs ourselves, especially if I don’t think the primary is going to be as open to that. We’ll run all the labs ourselves, stool testing, saliva testing for hormones. A lot of those things can be sent because those are little packages or boxes that you could ship around the country.

Dr. Barter, what is one piece of advice that you have taken with you over the years that you would like to give the audience that has resonated with you and helped you out?

Your health should be your biggest priority, to be honest with you. I see these people come in and they’ve put their health on the back burner for many years and think that they can get it back. People will go years, work hard and they’ll say, “I’ll worry about my health later. I’m young. I can get by with that.” Taking care of your health earlier is a huge gift. I see those people be so much healthier than somebody that shows up honestly in their 50s into my office. All the wheels are coming off. Preventative care is important. Getting your labs run early for preventative care to get a baseline. Problems that you think are small, get them addressed because they’re simple turnarounds. That’s what I would say is probably my biggest piece of advice and rules that I like to live by.

Ann-Marie, where can people find you? What’s your website, social media and everything?

Our website is short for Alternative Family Medicine, www.AltFamMed.com. We’re doing some cool things on our website where we’re going to try to put on some quizzes like the neurotransmitter health and all of that. You can get information on that. Our social media is Alternative Family Medicine and Chiropractic. We have a Facebook page and Instagrampage. We’re at Longmont and Denver, Colorado. We have two offices.

Dr. Barter. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Have a great life.




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Copyright by Alternative Family Medicine 2019. All rights reserved.



Copyright by Alternative Family Medicine 2019. All rights reserved.