A New Approach to Speed up Benzo Recovery

 

Over the years I’ve met a few people who took benzos for a long time and then just swiftly tapered over a month, felt bad for a month or 2 and then were back to normal! Many people will recover gradually over a couple of years however a lot of people suffer terrible benzo withdrawal reactions and the healing process lasts for years or maybe goes on indefinitely; and some people experience a relapse even after a period of apparent progress and recovery.
 
In these pages and videos I’ll explain how it just recent years we’ve come to know how to boost neuroplasticity and I believe that we can use this to speed up recovery in the benzo brain.  

Regeneration of the brain as a natural process, but we now know how to give it a boost

Neuroplasticity is a totally natural process, it repairs and regenerates the brain after traumatic brain injury, after ingesting toxins and damage from drugs including prescription drugs such as benzos and recreational drugs such as cocaine. Even when there is no injury the brain is continuously remodelling itself, breaking down unused old connections, making new connections and repairing connections that are damaged just by normal daily wear and tear from natural background toxins. The goal of my treatment program is to boost and maximise this natural process, to kickstart and speed up the healing processes in the benzo brain. We used to think brains were very delicate structures and that don’t change much after we reached adulthood, but we now know both of these understandings are completely wrong and out of date. Although in a sense the brain is a delicate structure is also incredibly resilient and capable of extraordinary repair, I would say the brain is the 2^nd most repairable part of the body 2^nd only to the liver. Furthermore we now know that the brain is capable of growing new synapses at any age throughout life, it also grows brand-new neurons this is a new discovery, so the brain is not a static sitting duck that just gets progressively damaged throughout adult life, far from it it’s a dynamic repairable, changeable and remodel organ.
 

Restoring health to the benzo brain as quickly as possible

I can simplify the basic principles of my treatment approach down to 2 things:

Step 1. Eliminate anything and everything that undermines the health of the brain and inhibits neuroplasticity. Hidden low-level inflammation in the brain is usually the most significant thing that undermines neuroplasticity and inflammation can come from many sources which I’ll explain below. In addition to inflammation, oxidative and nitrosative damage or stress you may know this as free-radical damage stress can be another factor that undermines neuroplasticity and must be reduced to the minimum. Neurotoxins such as heavy metals (mercury, lead, aluminium et al.) can also profoundly inhibit our neuroplastic abilities. So they delay those waiting in Mexico by up to one week
 
Step 2. Once or at the same time as you have eliminated everything above in step 1 employ multiple techniques that boost neuroplasticity all at the same time. There are diets and specific foods that boost neuroplasticity, not just what we eat but the timing of when we eat can also increase or decrease neuroplasticity. There are multiple supplements (herbs and natural remedies) that boost neuroplasticity and can be stacked together in combination. There are specific types of physical exercises that boost neuroplasticity new experimental therapies such as hyperthermia (heating the body) that also boost neuroplasticity.
 

To boost neuroplasticity use multiple combined therapies

There are no individual natural remedies, drugs or techniques that miraculously boost neuroplasticity; each of the remedies and techniques I use are only capable of boosting neuroplasticity a little bit on their own, but when they are used all at the same time the combined effects can be significant. I did this treatment on myself first in 2012 to repair damage to my bipolar brain probably from excess glutamate activity over many years and for me the results were phenomenal, it more than restored the loss of function I had and miraculously stabilised my rapid cycling bipolar. I started using this treatment protocol on patients recovering from drug use in 2013.
 

Benzodiazepine drugs cause structural changes synapses

Benzodiazepine drugs cause greatly increased activity you could say excessive activity in GABA receptor sites (the places where the calming neurotransmitter GABA attaches to inside the synapses). Initially the increased calming effect of increased GABA activity may feel nice but unfortunately the brain responds to the excess GABA activity by removing the number of GABA receptor sites inside the synapses.  In addition to increasing GABA activity benzos also decrease glutamate activity in the brain, glutamate has the opposite effect to GABA it is the brains primary stimulatory neurotransmitter. The brain responds to the decreased level of glutamate activity by making itself more sensitive to glutamate.
 
So benzo drugs cause structural changes within the synapses and unfortunately these structural changes can take time to undo.  When you first come off benzos you experience the exact opposite mirror image of what they do when you first take them, instead of having more GABA and less glutamate activity which induces a state of calm, combats anxiety and helps you sleep, you now have a brain that is insensitive to GABA and excessively sensitive to glutamate producing a state of agitation, anxiety, insomnia and more.
 
The good news is that there is a process called synaptic-plasticity whereby the brain can remodel and repair the postsynaptic membrane to restore normal function, the brain can also grow brand-new synapses which once you are off the benzo’s these brand-new synapses have never been exposed to the benzo drugs and function normally.
 

Boosting neuroplasticity isn’t just swallowing a few pills

Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying in these posts, I’m not saying healing the benzo brain is an easy job or that I have some quick fix that can get you off benzo’s and restore normal brain function without you feeling any withdrawal effects or discomfort. On the other hand we know that it is the brains neuroplasticity that enables it to ever heal from benzo’s and we now know how to boost neuroplasticity; I believe boosting neuroplasticity is the best way in fact the only way we currently have to heal a benzo damaged brain.
 
There are also no guarantees of success in any medical treatment but I believe boosting neuroplasticity gives the benzo brain the best chance of making a speedy and complete recovery.
   

Don’t blame your genes

I’ve seen people say that is just a genetic lottery and if you have the wrong genes then you won’t recover but this is not correct because we know that genes can be switched on and switched off by multiple things, from specific supplements and drugs, diet, exercise and even meditation.
 
So your long-term recovery or failure to recover is not entirely determined by the genes you inherited and even if you do have poor neuroplasticity genes then you still just have to work with what you’ve got and do everything in your power to remove things that undermine neuroplasticity and do everything that increases neuroplasticity.
 

Benzo withdrawal recovery treatment program

Below is a summary of my treatment program for benzo damaged brains. There are 3 critically important treatment principles to follow.

Treatment Principles

1. Eliminate things that undermine neuroplasticity.
2. Anything you introduce should be neuro-protective and not just stimulating.
3. Help the Benzo brain to control its level of excitation. 

1. Eliminating the things that undermine neuroplasticity

The first thing you have to do is eliminate all the things that are inhibiting your neuroplasticity in the first place, obviously there is no point boosting neuroplasticity directly if you leave things in the brain that continue to undermine your neuroplasticity.
 
Do not think this first step is just some inconvenient time consuming step you have to get out of the way before you can get to the real treatment of boosting neuroplasticity. This first step may be the most important thing you do. Eliminating the things that are undermining your neuroplasticity may be fixing the very reason why you have developed a slow healing benzo brain in the first place; what is it about your neuroplastic abilities that are unable to restore balance and permanently repair your benzo brain.
 
If you just go straight to boost BDNF and neuroplasticity and leave things that are undermining your neuroplasticity unresolved your treatment is going to be very inefficient. You may not make any gains at all, or even if you do, your recovery will likely be slower and less complete, leaving you more likely to suffer relapses in the future as the destructive elements continue to undermine your neuroplasticity.
 

What things undermine neuroplasticity?

There are many elements that can undermine neuroplasticity, in his treatment to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s disease Dr Bredesen defines 36 individual parameters, I use a somewhat simpler and cheaper system, I’ve also adapted my treatments to the specific issues and needs of the Benzo brain. In a depressed and Alzheimer’s brain we don’t have to worry about overstimulation however in a benzo or bipolar brain that I have myself there are real risks in over stimulating worsening symptoms.
 

1. First and foremost is elevated chronic inflammation in the brain

You might think that you would know if you have inflammation in the brain, so you probably don’t have inflammation right?
Well the type of inflammation I’m referring to is not acute intense serious inflammation that would have obvious signs and put you in hospital, you can have slightly elevated levels of inflammation that you don’t even know you have chronically persisting in the background. This type of chronic low-level inflammation chips away at brain and undermines neuroplasticity.
 
You may be interested in having blood tests to look for inflammatory markers but I don’t particularly advise that for 2 reasons: firstly the tests for inflammatory markers can easily produce false readings and secondly if you got back readings that suggested you don’t have inflammation that it’s only slightly elevated I would disregard the test results. If you have a slow healing benzo brain and you want to change the situation it’s critically important that you eliminate even the possibility that you have chronic background inflammation in your brain.
 
Imagine you were an unusual case and inflammation was only contributing 10% to undermining your neuroplasticity, would you not want to take advantage of removing that 10%? The strategy that gives you the greatest chance of success is to simply target any and every source of unnecessary and avoidable inflammation.
 
Okay so where does inflammation come from and how do we get rid of it?
 
Just for simplicity I’ll go through the common sources of inflammation top to bottom through the body.
 
Inflammation coming from the mind
The mind itself can be a major source of inflammation in the body and brain, it may be turned out to be the most common source of inflammation in the body and brain.
The way it works is chronic psychological stress and trauma in the mind triggers a stress response in the body via the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal pathway (HPA-axis) to release cortisol. Contrary to popular understanding cortisol actually reduces inflammation but when we are chronically exposed to elevated levels of cortisol we become insensitive to it and levels of inflammation in the brain go up.
 
Chronic stress responses also activates the sympathetic nervous system and this also ramps up levels of inflammation in our body and brain.
 
You can begin directly to combat inflammation triggered by stress by undergoing a brain training exercise where you artificially inducing a deep state of relaxation in your body and repeatedly do this until you hardwire this ability into the subconscious systems of the brain takes a few months of work to do this. If you would like a free MP3 recording yours to keep email me. For further reading see the stress solution
If you still have stressful psychology and traumatic memories programmed into your amygdala and hippocampus over activating the stress responses then you may have to do some psychotherapy work on changing those aspects to cut-off this type of psychologically induced inflammation.
 
Inflammation coming from the sinuses can be a source of inflammation and regular sinus infections have to be eliminated. I used to get them myself and used natural therapies to overcome them.
 
Beyond infections inside your body if you live in an environment where you are inhaling mould spores if you’ve ever lived somewhere where there was damp room with black or grey patches in the corner where there was dampness that is probably due to mould and some moulds can release quite toxic spores that can trigger significant levels of inflammation in the brain so this has to be eliminated.

Inflammation arising from the gums and teeth chronic infections underneath that tooth needs to be cleaned out by a dentist, if you do have a root canal make sure you have it done by someone who specialises in nothing but root canals to make sure they push the cement all the way down the little microtubules so there’s no pockets left in this tooth that can harbour bacteria that your immune system cannot eradicate resulting in a chronic infection.
 
Go to a dental hygienist and see is there any indication of infection in the gumline, the gumline where your gums join your teeth should be pink if it’s red that indicates inflammation and infection and excessive gum bacteria can contribute significantly to levels of inflammation that counteracts neuroplasticity.
 
To combat this follow the advice the hygienist gives you, flossing to remove the bacteria between the teeth and up into the gumline that you have to be shown how to do that so you don’t cut the gums and liberate more bacteria into your brain temporarily increasing the levels of inflammation in the brain.
 
It may surprise you to hear but there’s quite good evidence that dietary change can have a more significant effect on levels of inflammation in the gums than improved oral hygiene practices. A high fibre low saturated for diet was shown in one study to reduce inflammation levels in the gums by as much as 75% without any change in oral hygiene practices. Tomatoes which contain the carotenoid lycopene turn out to be a gum inflammation reducing superfood but you have to be huge amounts to have a significant effect consisting at least a bowl of tomato soup a day enriched with at least a teaspoon and ½ of tomato purée. You
 
And while I’m here I might as well mention another important thing to improve neuroplasticity and reduce inflammation in the body is to not use antibacterial mouthwash. We want to remove colonies of bacteria between our teeth and in our gumline but not remove the friendly bacteria that live in the pits or crypts on our tongue. These bacteria are responsible for converting the nitrates in vegetables into Nitrous oxide which has all sorts of effects including increasing blood supply and neuroplasticity within the brain there is also a significantly increased chance of developing insulin resistant diabetes if you use antibacterial mouthwash; today there is a whole new science emerging about the bacteria that live in the body and on the body and you can actually buy oral bacteria are quite fresh and minty to repopulate the tongue bacteria so that you extract the maximum Nitrous oxide from your vegetables.
 
Inflammation from Chronic throat infections There is growing evidence within the scientific literature that chronic throat infections particularly severe cases of strep throat can create such a significant levels of inflammation in the brain that they can precipitate mental health problems most notably PANDAS which can cause OCD. If throat infections are capable of producing enough inflammation to trigger OCD I believe that they could be capable of producing enough inflammation in the brain to impede the recovery of your benzo brain. If you regularly have throat infections consider gargling with salt water but don’t swallow the salt, zinc lozenges, oral probiotics aimed containing species specifically aimed at the throat and if your tonsils or adenoids have already gone too far to the point where they are necrotic and rotten I’m sorry have to have them surgically removed.
 
Inflammation from Chronic chest infections
A chest infection can provoke very significant levels of inflammation in the body that can persist for a really long time, chest infections himself can persistently quite chronic. I couldn’t count the number of patients I’ve seen for mental health problems who said I have good health except for 3 or 4 chest infections a year, as if that’s an acceptable thing. It’s quite possible that a few chest infections a year could keep your body and brain bathed in elevated levels of inflammatory cytokines more or less the whole year; and it may not be separate infections it might just be the same infection continuously present flaring up from time to time.
Eradicating chronic chest infections is not an easy job and you have to pull out all the stops to maximise your immunity. I got more information about how to do that on my website I think there’s a PDF I made on maximising immunity if you email me I made a PDF flow chart of how to maximise your immunity.
 
Inflammation from SIBO
A small intestines bacterial overgrowth can really put the brakes on healing the benzo brain and it must be eradicated before you can make any progress.
 
The walls of the intestines are not designed to cope with a large colony of bacteria, when they are infected in this way the walls become thinner and leaky; this allows half-digested food and bacteria to leak through the gut wall into the bloodstream and this triggers the immune system and inflammation.
 
A cardinal sign for SIBO, is getting bloated after eating. Eating a diet containing a lot of fermentable plant fibre will make an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestines even worse, but the problem with following a diet that is very low in fermentable plant fibre the so-called FODMAPS diet is that this diet starves not only the unwanted bacteria in the small intestines but it starves the critically important colony of bacteria that we want to grow and cultivate in our large intestines.
 
Let me say that again the other way around, it’s critically important to combat inflammation and boost neuroplasticity that we grow a large and diverse colony of bacteria in our large intestines and the only way to do that is to eat large quantities of a wide range of high fibre plant foods; but if you have SIBO that diet will make the SIBO worse increase leaky gut and a major source of inflammation in the body.
The solution is temporarily go on to a low FODMAPS diet whilst you sort out the SIBO and I’ll be writing of inflammation on how to treat to SIBO on my website in due course.
 
Eliminating SIBO is not just about killing the bacteria that are inhabiting the small intestines in the long run the more important thing is re-establishing healthy self-cleaning motions in the small intestines so that you can then eat high fibre foods which are swiftly swept through the small intestines without lingering down into the large intestines where they feed the large intestines bacteria that we want to grow and cultivate.
 
Another thing I ‘ll say while I’m here is that a varied high plant fibre diet does more than just grow a good colony of bacteria in the large intestines but it also delivers huge amounts of the coloured compounds called polyphenols and flavonoids (see my video on flavonoids) which are in plant foods with the fibre that have directly anti-inflammatory effects and neuroplasticity boosting effects. The consumption of large amounts of flavonoids and polyphenols is one of the cornerstones of boosting neuroplasticity and you can’t follow that diet until you have eradicated SIBO.
 
The last thing I say while I’m on this subject is that once you can eat a diet high in fermentable plant foods for the benzo brain you want to seed your intestinal microbiota with the bacteria lactobacillus reuteri and Lactobacillus rhamnosus these 2 bacteria produce GABA which can travel up the vagus ner present we ve and have a moderating effect on anxiety improve sleep quality.
Incidentally feeding prebiotic fibre that feed intestinal bacteria in the morning improves sleep quality significantly and the most neuroplastic change and repair occurs whilst we sleep; also take your probiotics in the morning if you want better sleep.
 
Inflammation from visceral fat and excess body weight
We now know that fat tissue is not inert it actually releases hormones and exerts a significant inflammatory effect throughout the body; internal visceral fat is the worst and if you’re carrying this you have to eliminate it to achieve a drop in inflammation levels and a significant improvement in your neuroplasticity. Even though as you can tell by looking at me I’ve never suffered from a weight loss problem I do actually know a lot about the science of weight loss and if you’re interested I can give you some techniques that help trick your brain into thinking it’s even more calories than it has so that you end up eating less calories without feeling uncomfortable and gradually eradicate internal visceral fat.
 
One of the best techniques for reducing excess body fat is intermittent fasting not only is intermittent fasting a weight loss technique but it is also a stand-alone way of boosting neuroplasticity. So it’s not just what you eat but also the timing of how you eat that determines your neuroplasticity. Loading the majority of your calories in the morning has a significant weight loss effect and is very important to not eat for 2 and half hours before going to sleep because as soon as melatonin is produced at night it makes our body insulin resistant and it’s critically important that you don’t have any carbohydrates remaining sugars remaining in your bloodstream from your evening meal when your melatonin is produced because otherwise you’re stuck with the low sugars in an insulin resistance state overnight.
 
Inflammation from insulin resistance and type II diabetes.
If you have type II diabetes or insulin resistance and even just if you regularly eat foods with a high glycaemic index the increased levels of insulin ramps up inflammation in the body. In 2010 a remarkable new treatment strategy for actually treating and reversing type II diabetes was discovered, it involves some pretty radical dietary fasting to eradicate internal visceral fat but the results are remarkable.
 
Inflammation from Dietary errors
Diet can be a major source of inflammation, consuming excessive amounts of omega-6 and not enough omega-3, consuming carbohydrates with a high glycaemic index, consuming trans fats, too much saturated fat and more.
 
Conversely the right diet can also be a significant way to reduce and control inflammation so it’s really important to follow an anti-inflammation diet. Eating a diet containing a lot of fermentable plant fibre is an essential requirement of an anti-inflammation and neuroplasticity boosting diet
An important requirement to reducing inflammation in the body and boosting neuroplasticity is to grow and develop a healthy microbiota or colony of bacteria inside your large intestines and the only way to do that is by eating a diet very high in fermentable fibre from plant foods, but you can’t do that if you have an overgrowth of bacteria in your small intestines.
 
Other sources of inflammation
There are many other things you need to consider, such as you must not smoke, drink excessive alcohol and you must eradicate critical vitamin deficiencies including B12 and D3.
 
Regarding taking nutritional supplements some people with benzo brain said that they had bad experiences when they use those supplements that may be that they took too much too quickly from a very low deficient level and it produced an over stimulating effect. There are ways to navigate through that to get to the point where you have adequate levels of those to eradicate them as a source of inflammation and then allow your neuroplasticity to prevail and win the battle so to speak.
 

Eliminate any and every source of inflammation you can

I hope the above discussion gave you some insights into the depth and way that you should be looking at your body and possible sources of inflammation. If you leave any one of these
Once you’ve covered all of the above and a few more additional things then it’s worth investing in a stack of supplements and use other therapy techniques to boost BDNF production and neuroplasticity, but it’s important to use the following 2 principles to determine which remedies and therapies you can use in the benzo brain.
 

2 Neuro-Protection

The 2^nd really important principle in treating the benzo brain is that the majority of this remedies and treatments you apply should have a neuroprotective effect so that it’s helping the brain to heal, as opposed to the things that just stimulate the brain. The focus should be on stimulating neuro plastic regeneration in the brain not just boosting GABA levels.
 
So for example I no longer use GABA supplements because it has no neuroprotective neuroplasticity boosting effects however I do prescribe chamomile that contains apigenin because in addition to having a GABAergic effect it has multiple healing effects on the brain, it boosts neuroplasticity controls inflammation and so forth.
 
Zinc is another example of a remedy that has multiple neuroprotective effects, it boosts BDNF, is anti-inflammatory and antioxidant as well as assisting the brain to control excess glutamate. The amino acid taurine similarly is very neuroprotective beyond just having a GABAergic effect so it is an acceptable and potentially beneficial inclusion in the prescription.
 
The point being think about everything remedy and treatment approach you are using and asked the question does it stimulate neuroplastic regeneration and or have a neuro-protective effect.
 

3 Assisting GABA/Glutamate balance

You can read stories are people saying that they were overstimulated buy magnesium or B vitamins or vitamin D but these substances are critically important to healing the brain and you cannot heal the brain if you are deficient in any of them. So how are you going to introduce these critically important remedies and also use neuroplastic remedies that have a slight stimulating effect when your brain can’t manage its own speed/activity level. The solution is to simultaneously use remedies that have GABA enhancing (but non-benzo like) effects and that dampen down excess glutamate. This enables us to introduce critically important nutrients without revving the brain up to much and it enables us to use neuroplasticity boosting remedies that may also have slight stimulating effect.
 
Although the aim is to apply the strongest neuroplasticity boosting treatment the Benzo brain has to be eased into this gradually and given lots of assistance to control its level of excitation and prevent the treatment causing increased levels excitation and aggravation.
 
Because the Benzo brain has a weakened GABA system and an excessively active glutamate system, like a car with weak brakes (GABA) and to much gas (glutamate) flowing to the engine, treatments and remedies that that have any potential to be stimulating must be counter balanced with remedies assist the brain to control its level of activity. Until your brain is able to have enough GABA activity and diminished glutamate activity to control its own speed part of the prescription should include remedies that stimulate GABA activity and dampen down glutamate activity. Eventually of course the goal is to get the brain to be able to do this for itself but in the beginning until it can manage this regulation it’s liable to be overstimulated and speed up creating agitation when you use any remedies that have a potentially stimulating effect.
 

Supplements for the benzo brain

Now there are a lot of supplements that can boost neuroplasticity, but one thing is to understand is that natural remedies are quite gentle and so in order to get a significant effect you have to put a lot of them together at the same time in a large stack; you just won’t get a significant effect by taking a single remedy.
 
The problem with this is that it can set off alarm bells inside the anxious and benzo brain, concerns about interactions, side effects and how do you know which remedies are doing what. To make matters worse you probably read stories of people taking these some of these remedies individually and having bad effects.
 
I don’t have a solution to your concerns all I can do is tell you that in order to get good effects you have to put a lot together all pushing or pulling in the same direction at the same time it’s like putting multiple people on a rugby but one person on a rope you get certain amount of force you put to put 20 all pulling together at the same time and you get a really strong force.
Time after time I’ve had people receive a prescription from me and then say can I not try all of the remedies one other time and there are 2 reasons why that is a bad idea firstly a single remedy on its own maybe not strong enough to produce any effect at all, see you try one remedy and say it didn’t do anything move onto the next one that didn’t do anything move onto the next one and so and after a year you tried all the remedies and nothing happened but if you have taken all of them together at the same time it could have produced a sufficiently strong combined effect to produce an effect. 
 
The second reason taking too few remedies is a bad idea is as I’ve explained we should combine essential nutrients that can have a stimulating effect with remedies that help the benzo brain to control that stimulation.
 
REFERENCES

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• DOI: 10.1002/jnr.24476 The role of inflammation and the gut microbiome in depression and anxiety Jason M. Peirce