(Dec. 10, 2023) — In this interview, Dr. Scott Sherr, director of integrative hyperbaric medicine and health optimization at Hyperbaric Medical Solutions, reviews the action of gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) and the role it plays in your physical and mental health.
“I worked with people all over the world, and I worked with clinics all over the world, using hyperbaric therapy as the fulcrum or main focus point of what I do,” Sherr explains.
“I then gravitated towards a colleague of mine who was working in a foundational approach to medicine called health optimization medicine and practice, which is an educational platform.
It’s a nonprofit that’s training doctors and practitioners, including myself, on how to optimize health. And from there I’ve kind of delved into multiple things, including neurotransmitter balancers like GABA.”
Most modern people live in constant fight-or-flight mode and find it hard to relax. GABA helps put you into parasympathetic mode, which is why it helps promote relaxation and stress reduction. Indirectly, GABA can also aid detoxification because detoxification happens during parasympathetic mode.
Serotonin Is Not a ‘Happy Hormone’
Most have heard of serotonin, dopamine, glutamate and norepinephrine, but they don’t realize that GABA is a major player involved in 20% of your brain’s neurotransmission.
Glutamate is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter and GABA the main inhibitory neurotransmitter. These two are always working in conjunction with each other to maintain a balance.
Serotonin is typically referred to as “the happiness hormone,” and deficiency is thought to be the source of depression. That’s why depression is routinely treated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that raise serotonin levels in your brain.
The problem is, serotonin is NOT responsible for depression, and raising your serotonin is the last thing you want to do. Elevated serotonin destroys empathy, love and wisdom, and impairs thyroid function, reduces metabolism, and contributes to reductive stress and insomnia.
Increasing GABA, on the other hand, can indeed be part of the solution for depression. Many who struggle with depression are GABA deficient, and augmenting the GABA system can in these instances make a big difference.
“GABA deficiencies are associated with so many things,” Sherr says. “It’s associated with anxiety, with fear, with depression, with a short temper, phobias, impulsiveness, disorganization, addictions. It’s even associated with schizophrenia and OCD [obsessive-compulsive disorder].
You can also have things like IBS and diarrhea, hypertension, tinnitus, chronic pain, migraines, allergies, frequent urination, flushing, sweating, salt cravings, muscle tension. These are all things that could be signs of GABA deficiency.
Many have been prescribed an SSRI for some of these symptoms, but it may not have been related to a serotonin deficiency. Actually, we know that depression is not related to serotonin deficiency. That’s been well-studied over the last several years now.”
Why GABA Is so Important for Mental Health
As explained by Sherr, GABA decreases the firing of neurons. When GABA binds to its receptor, it prevents that neuron from firing. So, it’s what we would call a postsynaptic neuron. The presynaptic neuron fires and the postsynaptic neuron doesn’t fire because GABA prevents it from doing so.
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Comments
One response to “The Role of GABA in Health and Well-Being”
I am interested in seeing if gaba might help my struggles with OCD and depression. I presently take celexa and lorazepam. I have struggled for a very long time.