Blog

Lifestyle medicine isn't "wellness" or "self-care"—it's the recognition that mental health depends on foundational systems: sleep architecture, circadian rhythms, nutrition, stress management, and physical activity. Learn how addressing these systems can make medications more effective or sometimes reduce the need for higher doses.

Psychotic disorders aren't just "losing touch with reality"—they're dysregulation of reality monitoring, where the brain struggles to distinguish internal from external experience. Discover how antipsychotic medications work best when combined with interventions that support cognition and address underlying drivers.

ADHD isn't just "being distracted"—it's dysregulation of executive function, where the prefrontal cortex struggles to maintain attention and direct behavior. Learn how stimulant medications work best when combined with sleep optimization, circadian stabilization, and stress reduction.

Trauma disorders aren't just "remembering bad things"—they're dysregulation of memory processing where traumatic memories, stored without proper integration, get triggered and flood the system as if the trauma is happening now. Understand how trauma processing requires safety and regulation first.

Bipolar spectrum disorders aren't just "highs and lows"—they're dysregulation of mood stability mechanisms involving circadian rhythm disruption, neurotransmitter cycling, and energy homeostasis. Discover how mood stabilizers work best when combined with circadian stabilization and sleep optimization.

Anxiety disorders aren't just "feeling worried"—they're dysregulation of the threat detection system where the amygdala hijacks the prefrontal cortex. Learn how panic attacks involve sudden sympathetic nervous system activation and how understanding the mechanism helps treatment.

Loss of motivation isn't laziness—it's anhedonia, a neurobiological state where the brain's reward circuitry fails to activate. Learn how depression involves dysregulation across multiple systems and why addressing sleep, inflammation, and nutrition alongside medication can transform outcomes.

When a patient describes feeling like they're "swimming through mud," the timing matters. Light therapy isn't wellness advice—it's chronobiology applied to clinical psychiatry. Learn how circadian phase assessment and strategic light exposure can transform treatment outcomes.

Parents often ask me whether their child's anxiety, mood swings, or behavioral changes warrant a specialist. As an adult psychiatrist, I can recognize the signs—but children and adolescents need someone trained specifically in how these conditions present and evolve during development. Medication dosing, therapy approaches, even the way you build rapport in session are fundamentally different with younger patients. If you're a parent looking for a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist, I'd recommend this practice. It's a colleague I trust and refer to with confidence.

Many people taking an antidepressant for depression wonder whether adding regular exercise could be the extra step that helps — and the general benefits of movement for mood and energy are well established. Whether a structured exercise program adds a measurable improvement specifically on top of the medication is a harder question, and recent studies give a mixed answer.

Emotional blunting — feeling less sad, but also less joy — is commonly reported during antidepressant treatment, and it is a real experience worth taking seriously. What the current evidence cannot yet reliably tell us is how often that numbness is caused by the medication itself versus how much is part of the underlying depression or anxiety.

ADHD diagnosis in adults appears to vary substantially depending on how and where the evaluation is done — with some pathways more likely to over-identify and others more likely to miss genuine cases. Dr. Margarita Krasnova has reviewed 80 published studies on this question; the overall evidence is limited, but it consistently points toward structured, multi-step assessment as the more reliable approach.

Many parents and adults worry that taking prescribed stimulant medication for ADHD might open the door to drug or alcohol problems later in life. Dr. Margarita Krasnova reviewed 23 published studies on this question; the overall evidence is limited and mixed, but it does not show that prescribed stimulant treatment raises that risk — and several studies, including the single largest, suggest it may modestly lower it.