Taking a New Approach to Mental Health – Dr. Ellen Vora & Dave Asprey : 827

<p>In this special episode of Bulletproof Radio,&nbsp;I asked holistic psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora what she thought was the single most important element that supports vitality at any age. She answered “community.”</p><p>“Not only do I believe that, but the evidence supports that actually having good social connections, feeling held in community, that's really our most potent anti-aging medicine,” she says.&nbsp;</p><p>When people are part of a community, they are happier and able to see things with different perspectives, Dr. Vora continued. “They can have a little bit more of a resilient mindset on things. People are just a little more cognitively nimble when they're surrounded by good people and happiness.”</p><p>And that’s important when it comes to depression, anxiety and sleep. Three things Dr. Vora sees a lot of in her medical practice. We talk about why so many people struggle with those issues.&nbsp;</p><p>She&nbsp;takes a functional medicine approach to mental health, considering the whole person and addressing imbalance at the root cause.&nbsp;Dr. Vora received an undergraduate degree from Yale University, graduated from Columbia University medical school and went on to become a board-certified psychiatrist, medical acupuncturist, and yoga teacher. She specializes in depression, anxiety, insomnia, women’s mental health, adult ADHD, bipolar, autoimmunity and digestive issues.</p><p>Our conversation goes into sympathetic and parasympathetic stress, meditation, flossing (!) and psychedelics.</p><p>“What we know is substances like psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, ketamine, they do cause a release of BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor. So, you have an increase in neuroplasticity and neurogenesis and you start to see a brain that can grow and change.”</p><p>Another biggie that affects your mental health? Adverse childhood experience. “[The ACE] research renders everything else you've ever studied and paid attention to in healthcare totally irrelevant because what we're real