Your Mental Health Is Connected to More Than Your Mind

Mental health is connected to much more than what happens in the brain. Nutrition, gut health, movement, sunlight, sleep, stress, and everyday habits can all affect how we feel.

In this Masterclass, Dr. Jana Schmidt, ND, explores the relationship between the body and emotional well-being, including the role of neurotransmitters, nutrition, lifestyle, and the gut-brain connection. She also shares practical approaches to support mood, focus, resilience, and overall wellness.

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• How neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine influence mood and mental well-being
• Why gut health and nutrition may play a role in supporting mental health
• How sunlight, movement, sleep, and everyday habits can influence mood
• Natural lifestyle and nutritional approaches Dr. Schmidt discusses for supporting emotional well-being

What does your gut have to do with your mental health?

Depression can affect mood, energy, concentration, motivation, sleep, and many other aspects of daily life. But understanding mental health also means looking beyond symptoms and considering what may be happening throughout the body.

In this Masterclass, Dr. Jana Schmidt explores a whole-body perspective on mental wellness. She discusses neurotransmitters, the gut-brain connection, nutrition, herbs, movement, sunlight, stress, and other lifestyle factors that may influence how we feel.

The Brain–Body Connection

Our moods are influenced in part by chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. Dr. Schmidt focuses on three commonly discussed neurotransmitters linked to mood: serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine.

These neurotransmitters support functions ranging from mood and motivation to sleep, memory, focus, and energy.

But this story doesn’t begin and end in the brain. Dr. Schmidt explains that neurotransmitter activity is also connected to the gut, highlighting why digestive health can be an important part of a broader conversation about mental well-being.

Why Gut Health Matters

The digestive system and brain are closely connected.

Dr. Schmidt discusses how the gut microbiome can influence neurotransmitter levels through metabolic processes and explains why supporting digestive health may also support overall well-being.

She explores foods that support a nutrient-dense diet, including leafy greens, berries, nuts, seeds, healthy fats, fermented foods, and other whole foods.

Her broader message: when thinking about mental wellness, it can be valuable to consider what is happening throughout the body—not only in the mind.

Nutrition, Herbs, and Nutrient Deficiencies

Dr. Schmidt explores several nutritional and herbal approaches, including green tea, chamomile, lemon balm, turmeric, mushrooms, magnesium, and other foods and nutrients.

She also discusses how nutritional deficiencies may sometimes influence energy, mood, sleep, and other aspects of well-being.

Rather than treating one food or supplement as a universal solution, the class introduces factors worth discussing with a knowledgeable healthcare practitioner based on an individual’s needs.

The Role of Sunlight and Movement

Sometimes supporting well-being begins with surprisingly simple habits.

Dr. Schmidt discusses how sunlight can influence serotonin production, circadian rhythms, sleep, and stress. She also explores how regular movement and exercise support neurotransmitters linked to mood, focus, and motivation.

Walking, stretching, swimming, yoga, and other forms of movement can all become part of a broader lifestyle approach to supporting mental and physical health.

Everyday Practices That Support Well-Being

Mental wellness isn’t only about what you eat or how much you exercise.

Throughout the class, Dr. Schmidt explores other everyday practices that may support emotional well-being, including music, journaling, spending time outdoors, maintaining social connections, and establishing healthy routines.

She also discusses time in nature and gardening as simple ways to combine movement, sunlight, connection, and time away from everyday stressors.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s understanding how small, consistent choices can become part of a healthier daily rhythm.

Looking at the Whole Person

Mental and physical health don’t exist independently from one another.

Nutrition, digestion, movement, sleep, stress, environment, relationships, and daily habits can interact in ways that influence how a person feels.

Dr. Schmidt’s approach encourages viewers to consider the whole person and explore the many factors that may contribute to emotional well-being rather than viewing mental health through a single lens.

For anyone experiencing persistent or severe symptoms of depression, these strategies should complement—not replace—appropriate evaluation and care from a qualified healthcare professional.

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What Happens When Medicine Loses Its Ethical Anchor?

Medicine has always required more than scientific knowledge. Physicians make decisions involving human dignity, suffering, responsibility, trust, and the obligation to protect the individual patient.

In this Grand Rounds, Dr. Francis Christian traces the historical foundations of medical ethics and examines what happens when medicine loses the principles that once guided it. From centuries-old medical oaths to modern challenges involving institutional pressures, individualized care, and artificial intelligence, he asks a fundamental question: What should anchor physicians when they are deciding what is right?

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• Why physicians throughout history have relied on ethical principles to guide difficult medical decisions
• How the Hippocratic tradition and other historic medical teachings shaped the responsibilities of physicians
• Why the physician-patient relationship, informed consent, and individualized care remain central to ethical medicine
• What emerging technologies like AI could mean for trust, human judgment, and the future of medical care

What should guide a physician when the right decision isn’t obvious?

Medical technology may change, but ethical dilemmas are nothing new.

Drawing on more than 30 years of experience in trauma and oncological surgery, Dr. Christian argues that physicians throughout history have faced difficult decisions involving suffering, treatment, responsibility, and human life.

What changes from generation to generation are the circumstances. The deeper question remains: What principles should guide the physician making the decision?

The Historical Foundations of Medical Ethics

Dr. Christian traces medical ethics through several traditions that shaped physicians' responsibilities across centuries.

He explores the Hippocratic tradition and the writings of Maimonides, Al-Ruhawi, and Thomas Sydenham, each of which placed obligations on physicians that extended beyond personal preference.

Across these traditions, he identifies recurring ideas: physicians are entrusted with the lives and well-being of others, medicine carries moral responsibilities, and the physician’s decisions should be guided by principles greater than individual self-interest.

When Medicine Loses Its Anchor

Dr. Christian uses a striking metaphor to describe what he believes has happened to modern medical ethics: a ship that has lost its anchor.

Historically, he argues, societies looked outside themselves for moral and ethical standards. As those shared foundations weakened, medical ethics increasingly shifted toward frameworks that could change with institutions, cultures, and prevailing ideas.

The result raises an important question: If ethical standards become relative, what ultimately determines whether a medical decision is right or wrong?

Lessons From Medical History

History offers powerful examples of what can happen when medicine serves institutions, ideologies, or systems rather than individual patients.

Dr. Christian examines periods in which physicians participated in practices later recognized as profound ethical violations, including examples from totalitarian regimes and the medical experimentation that ultimately contributed to the development of the Nuremberg Code.

These examples reinforce one of the class’s central questions: What protects the patient when institutional priorities conflict with the physician’s responsibility to the individual?

The Physician-Patient Relationship

The discussion moves from history to a foundation of everyday medicine: the relationship between a physician and patient.

Dr. Christian and the panel discuss patient autonomy, informed consent, confidentiality, individualized care, and the physician’s responsibility to provide thoughtful counsel rather than simply follow a system.

They also examine how protocols, guidelines, third-party payment systems, and institutional pressures can influence medical decisions—and why ethical medicine requires remembering the person behind every diagnosis.

Can Ethics Be Taught—or Must It Be Lived?

Medical ethics is not learned only from a textbook.

Throughout the discussion, the physicians reflect on the role mentors played in teaching them what ethical medicine looked like in practice: treating patients with dignity, showing up when needed, refusing to judge the person seeking care, and putting responsibility to the patient ahead of convenience.

The conversation raises an important distinction between knowing an ethical principle and actually living by it when doing so becomes difficult.

AI and the Future of Medical Ethics

The conversation eventually turns toward one of medicine’s newest ethical challenges: artificial intelligence.

AI may become increasingly capable of processing medical information, identifying patterns, and assisting with clinical decisions. But Dr. Christian argues that medicine includes elements technology cannot easily reproduce.

A machine cannot physically examine a patient, share human experience, or truly feel compassion. As technology becomes more integrated into healthcare, the class asks what role human judgment, accountability, and the physician-patient relationship should continue to play.

Restoring an Ethical Foundation

Dr. Christian ultimately argues that restoring trust in medicine requires more than new policies or another set of guidelines.

It requires recovering an ethical foundation centered on responsibility, human dignity, the individual patient, and principles greater than personal preference.

His closing proposal looks back to the historic medical oaths and to a principle that has endured across centuries:

“Do unto others, as you would have others do unto you.”

The future of medicine may look very different from its past. But the physician's responsibility to the person seeking care remains fundamental.

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What Makes a Product Worthy of the GoldCare Name?

Countless supplements, skincare products, books, and wellness products compete for your attention.

The GoldCare Store was created with a different goal: not to offer the most products, but to carefully select products that meet GoldCare’s standards for quality and transparency.

In this special class, go behind the scenes of the GoldCare Store to discover how products are evaluated, meet some of the people behind its first offerings, and learn why the Store was intentionally designed to grow slowly.

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• Why GoldCare chose a small, carefully curated Store rather than a massive product catalog
• How Dr. Jana Schmidt evaluates ingredients, manufacturers, testing, and product quality
• The stories behind some of the first products featured in the GoldCare Store
• How anyone can shop the Store—and how GoldCare members automatically receive 10% off

Why Did GoldCare Build a Store?

The idea of a GoldCare Store goes back almost to the beginning of GoldCare itself.

For years, however, the priority was building the larger GoldCare platform and creating the infrastructure needed to connect members with independent healthcare and education.

When the team finally returned to the idea of a Store, one question mattered: What should a Store carrying the GoldCare name actually look like?

The answer wasn’t to start big.

It was to start carefully.

A Store Designed to Grow Slowly

The GoldCare Store intentionally launched with a limited number of partners and products.

Rather than filling the Store with hundreds of options, GoldCare chose to expand gradually, keeping quality at the center of decisions about what gets added next.

That means the Store may offer fewer choices than a massive online marketplace—and that’s intentional.

The goal is quality before quantity.

What Does “Quality” Actually Mean?

As GoldCare’s Director of Wellness, Dr. Jana Schmidt, ND, plays a central role in evaluating products.

And as she explains in the class, not all supplements are created equal.

Dr. Schmidt looks beyond the name printed on a bottle. She evaluates individual ingredients, where they come from, their forms, potential fillers and contaminants, and the documentation manufacturers can provide about their products.

For GoldCare, what’s inside the product matters just as much as what’s written on the label.

Going Beyond the Label

Dr. Schmidt’s vetting process can involve much more than reviewing a product online.

She contacts companies directly, asks questions about their manufacturing processes, requests certificates of analysis, and, when possible, visits facilities herself.

And quality verification isn’t necessarily a one-time process. Documentation and testing may be reviewed over time to ensure standards remain consistent.

“We want complete transparency of all ingredients and where they come from.”

The People Behind the Products

GoldCare also looks at the people and companies behind the products.

In the class, John Richardson Jr., President and CEO of Richardson Nutritional Center, shares the history of his family’s work with apricot seeds, amygdalin—commonly called B17—and other nutritional products.

Serena Atkinson shares how her own experience with skincare as a teenager led her to begin using tallow and eventually create her own line. Her products are closely connected to her family’s cattle, giving her visibility into the process from pasture to finished product.

Their stories highlight another part of GoldCare’s approach: understanding not only what a product is, but who is behind it.

More Than Supplements

The GoldCare Store isn’t limited to supplements.

Members can explore a focused selection of nutritional products, skincare, books, and other resources aligned with GoldCare’s broader mission.

Dr. Simone Gold explains in class that many companies have approached GoldCare about featuring their products—and most have not been accepted.

The Store will continue to grow, but the goal is to add products carefully rather than simply add more choices.

Built to Be Shared

Much of GoldCare is intentionally built as a closed member community.

The GoldCare Store is different.

Anyone can visit store.goldcare.com, whether they are a GoldCare member or not.

That means members can easily share the Store with friends and family and give them direct access to products and resources GoldCare has chosen to feature.

GoldCare Members Save 10%

GoldCare members receive an additional benefit when shopping the Store.

Simply enter the same email address associated with your GoldCare membership at checkout. The Store will recognize your membership and automatically apply your 10% member discount.

No promo code is required.

Quality Before Quantity

The GoldCare Store isn’t designed to overwhelm you with endless options.

It’s designed to grow carefully.

The principle behind it is simple: when a product appears alongside the GoldCare name, the standards behind that decision matter.

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