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

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СКАЧАТЬ you don’t eat high-protein foods like eggs, salmon, and cottage cheese, you may be stripping your brain of the key amino acids that it needs to make your cats. The more sweet or starchy carbs you eat, the less of these antidepressant aminos arrive in your brain, even if you are eating protein, because carbs cause the insulin release that tends to sweep these aminos out of your bloodstream, into your muscles, and out of reach of your brain.

      Protein-rich animal-derived foods are very high in the crucial amino acid tyrosine, but vegetable protein is not. For example, there are about 840 milligrams of tyrosine in three scrambled eggs, 400 milligrams in a quarter-pound hamburger patty, and 900 milligrams in a chicken breast, but you’d have to eat twenty-four almonds to get a scant 150 milligrams of tyrosine. If you are vegetarian, by the typically low-protein nature of your diet, you run the risk of cat deficiency. If you eat a lot of soy-based foods, you also run the risk of low cat levels because soy tends to inhibit the conversion of tyrosine into the cats.¹¹

      Within two weeks of the start of a low-calorie diet, the cat-feeding amino acid supply can drop so low that cat levels can be cut in half.¹² The amino acids used to make cats are also needed for many other crucial body functions. They’re constantly in demand for muscle repair, for example. Only 2 percent of these precious aminos get to the brain under the best of circumstances, and when you’re dieting, even less is made available. The depletion of other nutrients by too much dieting, skipped meals, or fast food, notably the depletion of B vitamins, vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D, can also contribute to the problem. Like protein, all are key players in both depression relief and stress reduction and are critical to adequate cat function.

      Are You Sedentary?

      Physical activity can raise the cat levels, but if you don’t have enough cats to begin with, you won’t have the energy to start exercising. Don’t push yourself, though. Forced jogs or showing up at aerobics classes when your heart really isn’t in it can just further exhaust you. It’s not that I don’t want you to exercise; I certainly do. But I want you to do it when you feel energized and eager, not when you feel tired and overwhelmed. After a few weeks on cat-producing aminos, you should be ready to undertake more physical activity, which can then raise your mood and energy even more. (If not, be sure to check the thyroid section later in this chapter.)

      Is It Your Sex Hormones?

      Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are surprisingly busy in your brain, interacting intimately with all your neurotransmitters, including the cats. When estrogen in particular falls too low, it can trigger the blahs by failing to stimulate the cats. The same is true of low testosterone. In both the male and the female “pause,” and in the hormonally unstable peri-menopausal years leading up to female menopause, both these hormone levels can drop quite low. If you’re going through any of these hormonally unpredictable phases and experiencing mood problems, you should consider thorough sex hormone testing. I believe that everyone over 40 should have the best information possible on their sex hormone levels, especially if they have troubling symptoms like severe PMS or prostate worries, in addition to mood changes. Any serious premenopausal symptom (such as endometriosis or irregular periods) warrants the same investigation. The best sex hormone testing we’ve found, by far, is saliva testing. You can find all the details on how to do an accurate exploration of your sex hormone levels in the “Sex Hormone Tool Kit,” page 329.

       ADD: Solving the Case of the Sleeping Cats

      If you have ADD (attention deficit disorder), your cats are asleep. Brain images of people with ADD show very little activity in cat-rich areas of the brain. You should be able to wake those cats up with tyrosine supplements, accompanied by a radical diet cleanup (no sugar, flour, or allergy foods) and the other special supplements I recommend in this chapter, along with the basics from chapter 10. Many of our ADD clients have come to us with low adrenal and thyroid functions that needed extra help too. Remember that the cats can be aroused or put to sleep by your adrenal glands as well as by your thyroid gland and your brain. See chapter 5, “All Stressed Out,” if you are easily or excessively stressed, a sure sign of weakened adrenals.

      Both ADD specialist Dr. Daniel Amen, author of Healing ADD, and Dr. Eric Braverman, author of The Healing Nutrients Within, advocate combining cat-stimulating prescription drugs with tyrosine as a second step in ADD treatment, if the aminos alone aren’t enough. If you seem to really need stimulants like coffee, phentermine, or Ritalin, try them with tyrosine to enhance their effectiveness and protect yourself from drug-induced cat depletion.

      TYROSINE TO THE RESCUE

      Tyrosine is a truly phenomenal natural antidepressant. In addition to being the fuel that your brain uses to make its three antidepressant cate-cholamines, it is one of the basic ingredients that your adrenal glands need to produce their heroic “fight or flight” chemicals. If you are no longer able to handle stress, like a soldier with shell shock, your adrenal glands may have run too low on their own special cats. Tyrosine has been studied and found to be effective in reversing the physical and mental consequences of stress in military and other subjects.¹³

      On top of having antidepressant and stress-protective powers, tyrosine is a primary component of your most powerful pleasure-promoting chemicals, the “enkephalins” (cousins of the better-known endorphins). In this role, tyrosine also contributes to an overall sense of well-being.

      Last, but far from least, tyrosine is the raw material from which your thyroid gland makes its vital metabolic regulators, the hormones T₃ and T₄, which stimulate every cell in your body, including your cat-producing brain cells. People with low thyroid function typically have low levels of tyrosine,¹⁴ and we’ve often seen tyrosine supplementation eliminate symptoms associated with this glandular condition, right along with the symptoms of a catless brain.

      Note: There is more of the thyroid hormone T₃ in high-cat brain areas than in any other part of the brain. But if your thyroid is sluggish, it may not be able to supply your brain with enough T₃ to produce the cats, even if you take in plenty of tyrosine. When our clients with the flat, tired blahs do not respond dramatically and consistently to tyrosine supplementation, blood testing almost always reveals a low-thyroid condition that requires medicating. You’ll need to do some of the thyroid investigation described in the second part of this chapter if tyrosine supplements and a few other supportive nutrients plus increased protein intake don’t relieve your symptoms.

      Some Tips on Using Tyrosine

      Before you take tyrosine, please check for any possible contraindications in the “Caution Box” on pages 199–200 in chapter 10. Then start by taking only 1 capsule of tyrosine first thing in the morning, before drinking any coffee. In fact, try to skip your coffee altogether that day (and, hopefully every day, with the help of tyrosine).

      Stan started his antidepressant experiment with one 500 milligram capsule of tyrosine and experienced positive results right away. If you feel no benefit in thirty minutes (it usually takes only ten), take a second 500- milligram capsule. If you still feel little or nothing after another thirty minutes, take a third.

      Few people need more than 2 capsules at a time, unless they’ve been using lots of coffee or other, harder, stimulants like cocaine. But they do need to take them two to three times a day at first: early morning, midmorning, and midafternoon, if they СКАЧАТЬ