Food and Healing : food

Beating the blues through diet

Annemarie Colbin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:12:00 GMT

In the early sixties, I got what I eventually recognized as “the blues”. I had a series of low level jobs, and at times had brief fantasies of sweeping everything off the tables and making a mess. These feelings surprised me, as they were new.   I associated the feelings with the German expression “weltschmerz,” or “pain about the world.” Mostly, I felt sorry for myself and didn’t like how I felt. Life sucked, as we would say today. I ascribed it to the state of the world and my understanding of how people messed everything up.

As I recently looked back on those days, I realized that those feelings of nameless despair had long ago disappeared and never returned, regardless of my personal circumstances of trouble or happiness in the ensuing 40 years. What was it that had made the difference?

First of all, diet. Early on I found that the food most clearly associated with the “blues” is sugar.   My late friend William Dufty, whom I knew well and saw often during the late ‘60's and early ‘70s, knew what he was talking about when he called his book Sugar Blues. About 8-10 days after I quit eating sugared breakfasts (coffee with sugar, donuts), as well as desserts, the gloomy feeling lifted completely. In other words, if you are sad, blue, mildly depressed, sighing about the miseries of your life - the first thing to do is to quit eating refined cane and other sugars. And I mean ZERO sugar. No sweetened cereals, no breads or bean salads with sugar in them, no muffins, no cookies, no jams, no desserts. This means careful label reading, as well as very conscious eating – none of this shoveling food into your mouth without noticing what it is.

After eliminating sugar, the next step for me was replacing all refined carbohydrates with whole grains: brown rice instead of white, steel cut oats instead of farina, wholegrain bread instead of white, even whole grains instead of potatoes. That made another big difference, as it gave me a sense of strength and groundedness.   For many, that means also avoiding wheat products and dairy foods, as mild allergies often manifest in emotional states.

Insuring that I got enough protein was another step for mental health, and especially for avoiding sugar cravings. I found that some animal food in each meal (not much, one egg, 4 oz meat or fish) was a great help for insuring steady moods.

Eating only fresh, home cooked foods (instead of frozen meals or canned vegetables), was a major aspect. This is not a new idea, nor is it an airy-fairy notion of the counterculture. More than 30 years ago, in the 1977 report of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs of the US Senate, chaired by then senator George McGovern, there was an extensive discussion of the dangers of relying on frozen and highly processed foods. Mention was made of prisons where inmates stopped complaining about the food and throwing their meals against the wall when they were again fed properly cooked meals.   Mary Goodwin, a Montgomery County public health nutritionist, was quoted as saying “if you eat enough precooked, frozen, reheated foil-and-plastic packed lunches out of machines, part of you will starve to death.” (Dietary Goals for the United States. Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, United States Senate. US Government Printing Office, Washington: 1977)

So the dietary approach to getting out of mild depression includes the following:

no cane sugar (white, brown, or organic); no corn syrup, molasses, high fructose corn syrup, regular fructose (refined), or artificial sweeteners (which confuse the blood sugar regulation system and so can affect moods)
eating sufficient protein (meat, fish, organic chicken, organic eggs) daily
choosing only freshly prepared foods (nothing canned or frozen)

And finally, if food is not enough, look into therapy, acupuncture, energy healing or soul retrieval. We humans are very complex beings.

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

ANNEMARIE COLBIN, Ph.D., CHES, is an award-winning leader in the field of natural health She founded Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts (TM) in New York City in 1977, and is adjunct professor of nutrition at the city’s Empire State College. She is the author of four books, including The Book of Whole Meals (Autumn Press, 1979; Ballantine Books, 1983), The Natural Gourmet (Ballantine Books, 1989, 1991), and Food and Healing (Ballantine Books, 1986, 1996). Her website is: www.foodandhealing.com

Eat your way to lower blood pressure

Annemarie Colbin — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:32:00 GMT

High blood pressure is considered a “silent epidemic,” as lots of people have it but don’t know it. The usual treatment is drugs, and there are some dietary suggestions as well, especially cutting down on salt and fat as promoted by Dean Ornish and Nathan Pritikin. Stress reduction is highly recommended as well. However, there seems to be more to the issue than salt and stress.

Samuel J. Mann, M.D., an associate professor of clinical medicine at the Hypertension Center of The New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, is a hypertension specialist. Dr Mann has seen thousands of people with all varieties of high blood pressure. He began to notice a pattern that did not accord with the common view that stress is linked to this condition. “Even patients with severe hypertension did not seem more emotionally distressed than others,” he writes in his book Healing Hypertension: A Revolutionary New Approach (John Wiley & Sons, NY: 1999). “If anything, they seemed less distressed. Their high blood pressure appeared to be more related to what they did not seem to be feeling than to what they were feeling.” He began to see in his patients that old, un-healed, repressed trauma seemed to be a major culprit in the problem.

These are the main concepts covered by Dr Mann in his book, and they warrant serious attention.
1. Blood pressure fluctuates all the time, day by day, and there has been extensive over-diagnosis and unnecessary treatment of millions of people.
2. Anger or stress can elevate blood pressure temporarily, but do not actually cause hypertension.
3. Here is the kicker: “it is our hidden emotions, the emotions we do not feel, that lead to hypertension and many other unexplained physical disorders.”
4. To deal with hypertension at its core, it is necessary to bring those hidden emotions to the light, to consciousness, and to deal with them.
5. For those who are under the care of a physician for hypertension, incorporating this new information can help the physician select a more appropriate drug, if required, to match it to the cause of the condition.

While for many people there are contributing factors to hypertension such as genetics, obesity, and salt consumption, for countless others it may be driven mainly by repressed feelings due to traumatic experiences. Generally it is not easy to deal with these, and the process can be painful. However, it may be worth it. What I liked best is that Dr Mann points out that we have a choice: those who are willing to face their hidden demons can take on the work of uncovering them, while those who do not want to deal with these issues can opt for the standard medical treatment to help control the condition. What is not advisable is to ignore it.

For a dietary approach, cutting out added salt is the standard route. It would also pay to avoid all manner of commercial foods with added sodium, of which there are many. Read the labels carefully! In addition, high-fat eating may contribute to the problem, so eating lots of vegetables, cooked and raw greens, beans and grains would be a good idea, as proposed by the Pritikin and Ornish diets. Curiously enough, plant foods with natural sodium, such as celery and bananas, can also help in lowering blood pressure, so some pieces of celery daily and a banana before bedtime would be good. Give it a try!

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

Super-immune kids: four tips for the new school year

Annemarie Colbin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 09:21:00 GMT

Here are my four top tips for helping your children to stay healthy and avoid illnesses in the new school year.

The foods that make kids the sickest are sugar and dairy.

1. Avoid dairy

If you can possibly raise them without milk products, you will prevent the most common mucus conditions, especially colds and ear infections. Milk is a great mucus producer; bacteria love living in it, and casein, the protein in milk, is commonly used in laboratories to set up bacterial cultures. Cheese is just as much of a problem, and yogurt is little better. And it’s not because of the fat – in fact, butter does not bring on infections, according to my observations – it is the protein and the calcium, which in cow’s milk are intended to help baby cows become big cows (or steer), and are excessive for humans.

2. Don’t reward them with sugar

If you can avoid giving your kids sugared foods – including sugared breakfast cereals, cookies, cake, candy, and ice cream – you will allow their immune systems to do a better job of keeping them healthy. Sugar is known to depress the immune system, and what is worse, it is really addictive. According to a recent study at the University of Bordeaux, France, it appears to be more addictive than cocaine. I know that we tend to reward the children with sweet goodies, but that habit is perhaps best reconsidered – crayons, balloons, comic books or nuts and raisins might be a better idea for rewards.

3. Give them lots of protein

To keep the kids healthy, they also need to eat sufficient protein (some in each meal, such as fish, chicken, meats, or beans and legumes), with lots of vegetables both cooked and raw, as well as good quality fats (extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, organic butter). See my post on protein breakfasts for more advice.

4. Make sure they get plenty of rest

Most importantly, they need enough sleep and rest, which will allow their bodies and their brains to recuperate and restore, as well as grow. Lack of sleep is one of the major causes of stress and illness.

So there you have it: feed them well, keep them off the ice cream and sweets, and make sure they sleep enough, and they will avoid many illnesses.

Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.