The Mood Cure: Take Charge of Your Emotions in 24 Hours Using Food and Supplements. Julia Ross
enjoying butter on your potatoes once again.
This book will also recommend some wonderfully helpful nutrient supplements. Take Vitamin D, for example. It can be a powerful mood enhancer and is especially critical for you in the U.K. because you don’t get enough sunlight to stimulate its natural production. In 2002 the results of a study on the use of supplements made headlines all over the U.K. In it two groups of prisoners in a maximum-security prison were given identical meals three times a day. One group was given vitamins, minerals and essential fats as supplements, including 800 IU’s of Vitamin D, the Sunshine Vitamin. The other group was given dummy capsules. Those given the supplements committed 40% fewer violent crimes than those who were not.
Our experience at the U.S. clinic that I run is similar to that of the clinicians who administered the U.K. prison study: we have observed that, even when people adopt a relatively nutritious diet (most Americans subsist on diets inferior to the prison diet in the U.K. study!), it’s often not enough to reverse the deeper nutrient deficiencies that can trigger feelings like irritability, depression, anxiety and stress. The use of therapeutic dietary supplements, for a few months, is usually critical for the effective relief of these kinds of mood problems.
If you decide that you’d like professional help in your mood repair project, you’re in the right country. Fortunately, as you’ll see in The Mood Cure’s Resource Section pages 289–348, Britain is rich in practitioners trained to use specific supplements and dietary strategies to eliminate mood problems. Antony Haynes, whose busy London Nutrition Clinic is regularly featured in the national media, Patrick Holford, author and founder of The Institute for Optimum Nutrition, and Amanda Geary, author and head of The Food and Mood Project are three of the leading figures in this field, but there are many other holistic nutritionists throughout the U.K. Many are members of the British Association of Nutritional Therapists, whose contact information you’ll find on page 290.
Unfortunately, the British public’s access to many mood-saving nutrient supplements is threatened in the European Union by two international directives in particular, operating under the umbrella of CODEX. These are the Food Supplement Directive and the Traditional Medicines Directive. Should these be passed as law, nutrients such as 5-HTP and herbs such as Saint-Johns wort would be under threat. These two supplements feed and stimulate the area of the brain that produces serotonin, our most important natural anti-depressant. As I explain in Chapter 3 the use of these two specific nutrients can be essential for those of you experiencing depression or anxiety and who are looking for an alternative to drugs like Fluoxetine.
I wish you all the best in your personal and collective attempts to retain your access to mood and health-vital supplements. I include, in the Resource Section, specific U.K. sources for the supplements I recommend in The Mood Cure. However I also refer to many resources in the U.S., so that you can be guaranteed of your Mood Cure no matter what local restrictions you may encounter.
CHAPTER 1 Are Your Emotions True or False?
If you’re often feeling depressed, anxious, or stressed, you’re not alone. We’re in a bad-mood epidemic, a hundred times more likely to have significant mood problems than people born a hundred years ago.1 And these problems are on the rise. Adult rates of depression and anxiety have tripled since 1990,2,3 and over 80 percent of those who consult medical doctors today complain of excessive stress.4 Even our children are in trouble, with at least one in ten suffering from significant mood disorders.5 Our mood problems are increasing so fast that, by 2020, they will outrank AIDS, accidents, and violence as the primary causes of early death and disability.6
It’s clear that our moods are deteriorating at unprecedented rates. What isn’t so clear is why. What is this tidal wave of emotional malaise all about? Are our lives so much more unhappy than they were a hundred years ago, or even ten years ago? It’s true that we’re facing some unprecedented adversity in the twenty-first century. But even if it is the high pressure, or the absence of family support, or the terrorist threat, for example, why are we now so unresponsive to traditionally reliable remedies like long vacations, psychotherapy, and spiritual counsel? Why are we forced to turn more and more to medication for solace?
In this book, I’m proposing that much of our increasing emotional distress stems from easily correctable malfunctions in our brain and body chemistry—malfunctions that are primarily the result of critical, unmet nutritional needs. More important, I am proposing a complete yet easy-to-implement nutritional repair plan that can actually start to eliminate what I call our “false moods” in twenty-four hours.
TRUE EMOTIONS VS. FALSE MOODS
Some negative feelings are unavoidable and even beneficial. They’re what I call “true emotions.” These true, genuine responses to the real difficulties we encounter in life can be hard to take. They can even be unbearable at times, depending on the kinds of ordeals we face. But they can also be vitally important. True grief moves us through our losses, true fear warns us of danger, true anger can defend us from abuse, and true shame can teach us to grow and change. These true emotions typically pass, or diminish naturally, and even when they get repressed or misdirected, they can usually be relieved through counseling. But when we suffer for no justifiable reason; when the pain of a broken heart doesn’t mend like a broken bone; when rest, psychotherapy, prayer, and meditation can make little impact—then we must suspect the emotional impostor, the meaningless biochemical error—the “false mood.”
Figuring out the difference between false moods and true emotions is the first step in your Mood Cure. Once you’ve mastered that, you can move on to eliminate the fraudulent feelings, of depression, anxiety, sadness, and irritability, that are interfering with your natural capacity to enjoy life.
Learning to Spot a False Mood
You shouldn’t have to live with these kinds of distorted moods on a regular basis. It’s like having an engine that sputters, preventing you from having a smooth emotional ride. When your brain’s emotional equipment needs a tune-up,