The Mood Cure: Take Charge of Your Emotions in 24 Hours Using Food and Supplements. Julia Ross

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       CHAPTER 4 Blasting the Blahs

       Rebuilding Your Energy, Motivation, and Capacity to Focus

      Our clinic has had a major impact on the local coffee merchants. Because of us, they’ve lost hundreds of their former hard-core customers. Our secret? Being able to restore animation, energy, and focus naturally. If you can’t get going in the morning without caffeine, if you can’t remember the last time you were genuinely excited about things or able to concentrate easily, this chapter is for you.

      In “Lifting the Dark Cloud,” I described a type of depression known for its symptoms of negativity, irritability, anxiety, sleeplessness, and obsessive behavior. That syndrome arises from a lack of the neurotransmitter serotonin. In this chapter, I talk about a different brand of depression (although you could have both)—a state in which, rather than too little sleep, you may get too much sleep and have trouble dragging yourself out of bed. One in which you may often wish you were obsessive, because you don’t seem to have enough focus and concentration to get things done. Rather than feeling emotionally agitated, you may not feel much of anything. Rather than getting angry or upset at people, you may just nod and give in because you can’t summon up the energy to react. Rather than being full of dark clouds, your mental sky may be colorless. I call this type of depression “the blahs.”

      There are two obstacles that could be at the root of your problem, and their mental and emotional effects can be almost identical: one is a lack of a group of vitalizing brain chemicals called “catecholamines.” The second is a lack of vitalizing thyroid hormones. Since, like many people, you could be lacking in both, be sure to read this entire chapter to sort through each of the possible causes of your blahs, as well as each set of solutions I propose. But don’t be discouraged. Even if you have the double blahs, you’ll find that getting revved back up on a permanent basis is quite doable.

      THE THREE CATS: HOW BRAIN SLUMP HAPPENS

      Let’s start with brain stall. If your brain is producing lots of the catecholamines, you should feel energized, upbeat, and alert. If your system is underproducing any one of them, you will suffer from some form of the blahs. There are three kinds of catecholamines: dopamine, norepinephrine, and the best known of the trio, adrenaline. Since there are more similarities than differences among the three, and to spare you repetition of these awkward names, I’m going to call them collectively the “cats.”

      Your sparkle—the feeling of zest and excitement that may be missing from your life—is derived from this trio of supercharged brain chemicals. All three cats can arouse and excite you emotionally, mentally, and physically if they’re working up to speed. Dopamine, the parent cat, produces the other two and is the most prolific in your brain. Its two offspring, norepinephrine and adrenaline, are very active in your brain as well, but they’re also famous for their activity in your adrenal glands, where they provide the jolts of energy that help you respond to stress.

      “Attention!” is the cats’ marching call. Cats are intended to make you alert to all of the important events taking place around and within you, so that you can act on them quickly and decisively. They enthuse you in the face of positive news and alarm you in the face of threats. They prime you to take action and even program your physical movements. They are your internal cheering squad and drill sergeant combined.

      The extent to which you are extroverted or introverted likely depends on how much cat activity your brain is producing. If you tend to be the quieter one—more the listener than the outgoing conversationalist—it could be a cat issue. Watch and see if you don’t start taking up more verbal space, sharing more of yourself, when your biochemistry becomes more extroverted.

      The cats are particularly active under high-stress conditions, but any exciting prospect can elevate their levels: the anticipation of a meal, a run, or a vacation, for example. If you’re low in the cat department, though, you may not react strongly to anything. Having too few cats is also why you may have trouble with focus and concentration. Are you deficient in the number one cat function: attentiveness? Even when paying attention involves being physically still, extraordinary mental activity may be required. For example, the cats should be very busy while you read a book. If you find yourself rereading paragraphs, your distractibility probably has to do with having too few cats on duty.

      Easily distracted people have sleeping cats. The areas in their brains that contain the most cats may work pretty normally until they turn to a project that requires concentration. Then the cats can get strangely quiet, and quiet cats can’t get your attention.

      If you’re low in any of your cats, you’re almost guaranteed to be drawn to stimulating substances of some kind. How much do you like cat boosters like coffee, chocolate, or NutraSweet? Are you one of the people for whom tobacco, alcohol, or marijuana acts like an “upper” instead of a “downer”? Do you dance on the table or do your laundry while you’re on one of these cat substitutes? Or does it take cocaine or some other major stimulant to get you going?

      Any of these drugs can temporarily increase your cat levels by as much as 1,400 percent. Cocaine and amphetamines, for example, both force a huge cat release,¹ but the effects are short-lived. These drugs almost inevitably quit giving real satisfaction over time because your brain simply can’t produce enough cats to meet the relentless demand. The ultimate result, cat depletion,² is what accounts for the long-term withdrawal depression that stimulant addicts experience after they quit taking drugs, and it’s what drives 90 percent of them back to their drug use.

      Whole classes of antidepressant medications have been designed to try to mimic or amplify the cats’ activities in the brain—notably, the popular Wellbutrin (or Zyban), СКАЧАТЬ