My humble attempt to answer questions raised on recent podcast (the illusion of consensus) with Rav Arora

All about my understanding of mental illness, mental wellness, healing from chronic illnesses, about life and everything else :)

Thank you Rav for inviting me on your podcast - the illusion of consensus. We covered a lot of topics. However, we did not go in depth into any issue. We also did not have time to address the questions brought in by your subscribers. I look forward to doing another podcast where we can delve deep and also tackle some of the questions. Meanwhile, I will share my thoughts here in the hopes that it will address many of the questions raised.

I'm Dr Aruna, holistic psychiatrist. I am board certified in Psychiatry and Geriatric psychiatry. I practiced like a regular psychiatrist until my mini-epiphanies that began with my first pregnancy. One big change I made during my pregnancy was to stop eating at a hospital cafeteria! Then I wondered if the food served was not good for me or my baby, how is it good for people hoping to heal and recover. This led me to study nutrition and mental health. Until then this was not taught to me in my medical and residency education programs. I started with Dr Google and pubmed. Eventually, I found my way into holistic medicine conference. This started in 2013.

I had no idea about how unhelpful my prior psychiatric practice was until I studied integrative medicine, functional medicine and Ayurveda. I began to fully realize how unhelpful and even harmful, mainstream psychiatry approach was. My approach now is to never start anyone on a psychiatric medication unless they are experiencing psychosis (delusions and hallucinations). Even in patients with psychosis, I do not force these meds and I will look for natural ways to help them. For this purpose, I would love to have an inpatient psychiatric unit where holistic treatments (healing diet that is freshly prepared, supplements, massage, sauna, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, IV nutrition therapy, etc) are offered in a truly safe, secure, compassionate setting. Having worked in psychiatric hospitals, I can say that to my knowledge, such a setting does not exist today in the US. It exists in India at NIMHANS - National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru. This is where I completed my first psychiatric residency way back in early 2000 -

https://www.nimhans.ac.in/

Here is my current understanding of disease: I now understand that there are only 3 root causes for any disease: Diet (lifestyle), Trauma and Toxins. I call this the DTT effect. These root causes create chronic inflammation and/or degeneration in various systems of our body. When any diagnosis is given in western medicine paradigm, for eg: depression; we are told that it is a brain disorder and caused by chemical imbalance in the brain. However from my perspective, I would say that the 3 root causes mentioned above are showing up as depression because the brain is affected. Then I work to explore what other organ systems are affected, how it started, where did it begin. In exploring these questions, I found a common pattern irrespective of the diagnosis. This pattern begins with problems in the GI tract - gut issues - appetite changes, reflux, bloating, burping, changes in bowel pattern. Typically these symptoms are ignored and no changes are made, then over time, other problems show up - acne, migraines, fatigue, skin rashes, weight changes, irritability and eventually anxiety, depression, and even psychosis. This is the most common pattern but the timeline varies. For some, it may take decades for multiple organs to become diseased. For others it takes days. It depends on each person's genetic predisposition (methylation genes for example) and if they have any mitigating environmental factors - safe and secure upbringing, healthy diet, exercise, loving relationships, etc.

So in treatment, I use certain measurements to map out all the symptoms (from head to toe) a person is having, understand their unique bio-energetic signature (known as 'Dosha' in Ayurvedic medicine), get relevant labs (blood work, functional medicine tests, gene analysis) and begin a comprehensive treatment plan to address the root causes of DTT.

Hence, I prescribe specific diets to be followed for a few weeks - for gut lining repair, address microbiome imbalance, restore digestive function, enhance detoxification pathways, help people learn self-love and self-worth through meditation and other self-care practices.

I mainly teach people 'connection' with themselves, their family/friends, and with nature. I teach people to live in sync with their own natural rhythms which are in tune with nature's rhythms. I teach people to live whole and sovereign lives and become stewards of their life and destiny.

As you can see, I do not treat diagnoses – so it does not matter to me whether you have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar, or addiction. My approach is to look beyond these labels and figure out where all there is a failure of optimal function within your mind-body-spirit system; and my treatment is geared towards restoring function in every organ system of the body. Using this approach, patients who came in with trauma but also struggled with infertility would get pregnant naturally as they healed from trauma. Patient with schizophrenia healed from schizophrenia and from her Hashimoto’s and secondary infertility. Patient with anxiety and ulcerative colitis healed from both. Patient with bipolar and asthma healed from both. Patient with depression, anxiety, acne and migraine healed from all of the above. It is one comprehensive treatment that helps in healing from all these various diagnoses. In other words, I am not prescribing a medicine or supplement for migraine, then another one for acne, and a third one for depression. I prescribe diet, supplement and self care practices which address the common root causes of all these various diseases.

Patients heal to the extent that their mind-body-spirit system allows. No diagnosis is exempt from this. Depression, Dementia, autism, cancer , all these diagnoses can be approached in the same manner.

Some questions are about ADHD, others about vaccine injury, some are about depression, phobias, etc – For all these conditions, I apply my same foundational framework and then rinse and repeat until we reach our goals.

Each person’s recovery can look different. I truly believe a main factor for this is their belief in this process and especially their belief in their own healing. So I do my best to make this process make sense to my patients and also work to help them see their own potential. I also encourage my patients to write detailed reviews about their experience and even consider doing a video testimonial for me so others can resonate with real patient’s life stories. If you can see yourself in the pain and struggle of a patient, then you can also see yourself in their healing and recovery and hold that same potential for you. Readers can also visit my substack:

and also visit my website blog page: https://psychiatry2.com/blog/ and my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@trinergyhealth6998

Happy to answer more questions. Let’s spread this information and knowledge that healing and recovery is possible for all of us!