Chapter One
Depleted Brain Chemistry
* * *
The Real Story Behind
"Emotional" Eating
Almost everyone who has ever come into my office has felt like a failureat weight loss. They say they just don't seem to have the willpowerto stay on a diet anymore or, even if they did, they can't stick to themaintenance part of the plan. Mostly, this is because they crave sweets orbreads and can't do without them for long. They start with "just a little"and end up eating a lot more than they feel they should. Often theirspouses or other family members criticize them, saying, "Why don't youtry harder?" "If you'd just limit yourself to one ...," which only serves tomake them feel even worse about themselves. "I guess they're right," thesewomen and men would think, "I just don't have enough self-discipline."Yet oddly, these same people are usually doing well in every other aspect oftheir lives. They are effective at work, they keep the bills paid and thecheckbook balanced, they organize their children's lives beautifully. Theymastermind professional projects while keeping their households and personaland creative lives functioning. They are models of willpower.
It's this issue of willpower that usually begins my counseling sessions."So why can't I lose weight?" my clients ask. I point out that they usuallyhave lost weight—dozens, sometimes hundreds of times. Truly, there isnothing harder than dieting. Starvation by any name—famine, drought,or Optifast—is a frightful ordeal. Most of those critical spouses and familymembers could never stand the course of even one diet.
So if it's not lack of willpower, what is wrong with you? Are you anemotional basket case who can't get by without comfort food? That impliesthat if you had more strength, you could power through your problemswithout overeating. Should you feel ashamed of yourself for needingemotional sustenance from foods? No! I hope to help you understand thatyou are using food as self-medication, and why. It's not because you areweak willed, it's because you're low in certain brain chemicals. You don'thave enough of the brain chemicals that should naturally be making youemotionally strong and complete.
These brain chemicals are thousands of times stronger than streetdrugs like heroin. And your body has to have them. If not, it sends outa command that is stronger than anyone's willpower: "Find a druglike foodor a drug, or some alcohol, to substitute for our missing brain chemicals.We cannot function without them!" Your depression, tension, irritability,anxiety, and craving are all symptoms of a brain that is deficient in itsessential calming, stimulating, and mood-enhancing chemicals.
WHY ARE YOUR NATURAL MOOD-ENHANCING CHEMICALS SOMETIMES DEFICIENT?
Something has interfered with your body's ability to produce its ownnatural brain drugs. What is it? It's obviously not too unusual, or therewouldn't be so many people using food to feel better, or taking Prozac fordepression relief. Actually, there are several common problems that can resultin your becoming depleted in your feel-good brain chemicals, andnone of them is your fault!
* You may have inherited deficiencies. We are learning more all the time about the genes that determine our moods and other personality traits. Some genes program our brains to produce certain amounts of mood-enhancing chemicals. But some of us inherited genes that undersupply some of these vital mood chemicals. That is why some of us are not emotionally well balanced and why the same emotional traits seem to run in families. If your mother always seemed to be on edge, and had a secret stash of chocolate for herself, it should come as no surprise that you, too, need foods like candy or cookies to calm yourself. Parents who have low supplies of naturally stimulating and sedating brain chemicals often produce depressed or anxious children who use food, alcohol, or drugs as substitutes for the brain chemicals they desperately need.
* Prolonged stress "uses up" your natural sedatives, stimulants, and pain relievers. This is particularly true if you have inherited marginal amounts to begin with. The emergency stores of precious brain chemicals can get used up if you continually need to use them to calm yourself over and over again. Eventually your brain can't keep up with the demand. That's why you start to "help" your brain by eating foods that have druglike effects on it.
* Regular use of druglike foods such as refined sugars and flours, and regular use of alcohol or drugs (including some medicines), can inhibit the production of any of your brain's natural pleasure chemicals. All of these substances can plug into your brain and actually fill up the empty places called receptors, where your natural brain drugs—the neurotransmitters—should be plugging in. Your brain senses that the receptors are already full, so it further reduces the amounts of neurotransmitters that it produces. As the amounts of these natural brain chemicals drop (remember, they can be thousands of times stronger than the hardest street drugs), more and more alcohol, drugs, or druglike foods are needed to fill newly emptied brain slots. This vicious circle ends when these substances you ingest are unable to "fill the bill" any longer. Now your brain's natural mood resources, never fully functional, are now more depleted than they ever were, and you still crave your mood-enhancing drugs—whether it's sugar or alcohol and cocaine.
* You may be eating too little protein. In fact, you almost certainly are if you've been dieting or avoiding fatty foods, many of which are high in protein, too. Your brain relies on protein—the only food source of amino acids—to make all of its mood-enhancing chemicals. If you are not getting enough protein, you won't be able to manufacture those crucial chemicals. A little later in this chapter and in chapter 18, you'll learn about complete and incomplete proteins, and what is "enough" protein for you. Simply put, eating the equivalent of three eggs, a chicken breast, or a fish or tofu steak at every meal might get you enough protein to keep your brain in repair.
EATING FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS
At Recovery Systems, we treat people who use food to remedy a varietyof emotional problems. Here are the stories of some typical clients.
* Brenda ate because she needed an energy boost. She needed sweets first thing in the morning to get her going and throughout the rest of the day to keep her going—especially during her three P.M. energy dip at work.
* Sharon ate at night to get to sleep. She couldn't fall asleep by ten or eleven o'clock, even on nights when she was not upset. Being upset made it worse. But a few bowls of cold cereal with milk and sugar would unravel her tension pretty reliably and help her fall asleep.
* Monica ate for comfort. She needed a treat to get through the day. A pastry in the morning, chocolate throughout the day, and a rich dessert after dinner made her life worth living, especially on bad days.
* Paul ate because he was depressed. He ate more in the wintertime and during his lonely nights. Breads, pastas, and late-night bowls of ice cream were his antidepressants.
* Brandon ate when he was angry. He stuffed himself with candy bars to keep from losing his temper, or after he'd finally exploded inappropriately, again.
* Dinah ate to numb her painful memories. She had been sexually assaulted often as a child, and food had become her ally, something she could always count on to soothe her and literally kill the pain.
* Andrea "got high" by starving. When she ate, it not only made her feel fat and bloated, but she lost her elevated mood.
Our counselors found that with clients like these, no amount oftherapy seemed to stop this "emotional" eating. I wondered if there couldpossibly be a physiological cause for this intractable overeating? Eventually,I would find my answer, but it would come from an unexpectedsource.
THE PHYSICAL CAUSE
OF EMOTIONAL EATING
In the late 1970s, I was the supervisor of a large San Francisco alcoholismtreatment program. Our clients were very serious about gettingsober, and we gave them the most intensive treatment available anywhere.Yet they could not stop drinking. Eighty to ninety percent relapse rateswere standard then, and still are, in the alcohol- and drug-addiction fields.
As I studied these heartbreaking relapses, I began to see a pattern. Ourclients had stopped drinking, but they had quickly developed a heavy addictionto sweets. Sugar is almost identical to alcohol biochemically. Bothare highly refined, simple carbohydrates that are instantly absorbed, notneeding digestion (complex carbs, like whole grains, need time to be digested).Both sugar and alcohol instantly skyrocket blood sugar levels andtemporarily raise levels of at least two potent mood chemicals in the brain.This high would be followed by a low, of course. So, just as when they wereusing alcohol, our clients who had switched to eating large amounts ofsugar were moody, unstable, and full of cravings. Since alcohol usuallyworks even faster than sugar does, at some point, caught in a particularlylow mood, they would break down and have a drink to get some relief.One drink would become a full-blown relapse.
In 1980, when I became the director of the program, I began hiringnutritionists to help solve this disturbing relapse problem. They suggestedto our clients that they quit eating sweetened foods, foods made from refined(white) flour, and caffeine, and that they eat more whole grains andvegetables. Unfortunately, these nutritional efforts didn't pay off. For reasonsthat we understood only later, our clients just couldn't stop eating thesweets and starches that eventually led them back to alcohol. For six yearswe struggled for a solution. Then, in 1986, we found one.
The solution came from Dr. Joan Mathews Larson, the director of anutritionally oriented alcoholism-treatment center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.This brilliant pioneer, the author of Seven Weeks to Sobriety,introduced me to a technique that was quickly eliminating her alcoholic clients'cravings and raising her center's long-term success rate from 20 percent to80 percent! The technique involved the use of specific amino acids thatcould rapidly feed the addicted brain exactly the type of protein that itneeded to naturally fill up its empty mood-chemical sites. The results werespectacular. No longer did alcoholic clients need sweets or alcohol to feelgood! Amino acid therapy revolutionized the work at our clinic, too,dramatically raising our success rates with alcohol- and drug-addicted clients.Moreover, we were able to successfully treat clients with other addictionsas well. In fact, our most spectacular successes were with food-addictedclients. Ninety percent of the compulsive overeaters we have treated withamino acid therapy have been freed from their addiction within forty-eighthours.
USING AMINO ACIDS TO
END EMOTIONAL EATING
When psychological help does not clear up emotional eating, we needto look at the four brain chemicals—neurotransmitters—that create ourmoods. They are:
1. dopamine/norepinephrine, our natural energizer
2. GABA (gamma amino butyric acid), our natural sedative
3. endorphin, our natural painkiller
4. serotonin, our natural mood stabilizer, sleep promoter, and mind-focusing chemical
If we have enough of all four, our emotions are stable. When they aredepleted, or out of balance, what we call "pseudo-emotions" can result.These false moods can be every bit as distressing as those triggered byabuse, loss, or trauma. They can drive us to relentless overeating.
For some of us, certain foods, particularly ones that are sweet andstarchy, can have a druglike effect, altering our brains' mood chemistryand fooling us into a false calm, or a temporary energy surge. We can eventuallybecome dependent on these druglike foods for continued moodlifts. The more we use them, the more depleted our natural mood-enhancingchemistry becomes. Substituting amino acid supplements forthese drug foods can have immediate and dramatic effects.
Toni, a 26-year-old Native American, was referred to our clinic becauseshe was exhausted, profoundly depressed, anxious, and sufferinglifelong trauma from the physical and emotional violence of her family.
Toni drank alcohol and ate sweets to cope. She went regularly to herscheduled counseling sessions but was unable to rouse herself to communicatewith her counselor. She had volunteered to come to Recovery Systems,hoping that a new approach would help. Toni had already beenthrough three long-term treatment programs for alcohol addiction.Clearly, she was motivated to solve her problem.
When we saw Toni's condition, the nutritionist and I conferred anddecided to give her amino acids on the spot. I asked her to tell me onething: What was the worst thing she was experiencing at that moment? Shesaid, "I'm soooo tired." Her slumped body and still, dull eyes confirmedthis.
Our goal? To treat her lack of energy and depression by raising her levelsof the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, the body's natural energizer.We gave her our smallest dose—500 milligrams of L-tyrosine. While wewaited and hoped for an effect, I spoke about how and why amino acidscan be helpful.
After about ten minutes, Toni said, "I'm not tired anymore."
"Great!" I said. And then I asked my next question: "What is the worstthing you are experiencing, now that your energy is better?"
She answered by bending over and grasping herself around the stomach."I'm really uptight."
We then gave Toni the smallest dose of GABA—100 milligrams—anatural Valium-like chemical along with 300 milligrams of L-taurine. Wesuspected that together these supplements would help relieve her tensionand allow her to relax—and they did. She stretched her legs out in front ofher and then stood up, got a glass of water, and went to the bathroom.While she was gone, her counselor came in and happened to tell me thatToni was in a lot of emotional pain because of the chronic alcoholic violencein her family. When her family members drank alcohol, they all becamedifferent people, vicious and cruel. And they had never been able tostay away from alcohol.
When Toni returned, I asked her, "Can we give you something to helpyou endure the emotional pain that you are in?" She said yes, so I gave hera supplement containing 300 milligrams DL-phenylalanine and 150 milligramsL-glutamine. (DL-phenylalanine is the amino acid used to alleviateemotional pain.)
In ten minutes I asked Toni how she was feeling, and she smiled andsaid, "Just right."
I was incredulous. How could these small amounts really be helpingher? Our European American clients usually need two to four times asmuch of each type of amino acid to get such dramatic effects.
I asked if she would like any more of any of the aminos I had alreadygiven her for energy, relaxation, or pain relief. Her answer: "Just right," anda shake of her head.
By this time Toni's eyes were sparkling. Weeks later her counselor reportedthat by continuing with the amino acids she had first used in ouroffice, Toni was actually talking for the first time in their counselingsessions, was being praised at work, and was being noticed for the first timeby men.
Mood Foods: How Amino Acids Feed Your Brain
The four key mood chemicals (neurotransmitters) are made of aminoacids. There are at least twenty-two amino acids contained in proteinfoods. High-protein foods, such as fish, eggs, chicken, and beef, contain alltwenty-two, including the nine amino acids that are considered essentialfor humans. Other foods, such as grains and beans, have some but not allof the essential nine aminos, so they need to be carefully combined to providea complete protein (for example, rice and beans, or corn and nuts).
If you are eating three meals a day, each meal including plenty of protein(most people with eating and weight problems are doing neither),your positive moods and freedom from cravings can be maintained. Butmost people need to kick-start the brain's repair job, using certain keyamino acids. This will allow you to actually enjoy eating protein and vegetablesinstead of cookies and ice cream. After a few months, you will begetting all the aminos you need from your food alone and won't need totake amino acids as supplements any longer.
Restoring depleted brain chemistry sounds like a big job—but it isn't.Three of the four neurotransmitters that color all your moods are madefrom just a single amino acid each! Because biochemists have isolated thekey amino acids, you can easily add the specific ones that may be deficient.These "free form" amino acids are instantly bioavailable (in other wordsthey are predigested), unlike protein powders from soy or milk, which canbe hard to absorb. Hundreds of research studies at Harvard, MIT, and elsewhere(some of which date back to the early part of this century) haveconfirmed the effectiveness of using just a few targeted amino acid "precursors"to increase the key neurotransmitters, thereby eliminating depression,anxiety, and cravings for food, alcohol, and drugs.
Stopping Carbohydrate Cravings
It may sound impossible, but you can stop your food cravings almostinstantly with just one amino acid supplement. Any absence of fuel foryour brain's functions is perceived correctly by your body as a code-redemergency. Powerful biochemical messages then order you to immediatelyeat refined carbohydrates to quickly fuel your brain. There are only two fuelsthat the brain can readily use:
1. glucose, which is blood sugar made from sweets, starches, or alcohol
2. L-glutamine, an amino acid available in protein foods (or as a supplement, carried in all health food stores).
L-glutamine reaches the starving brain within minutes and can oftenimmediately put a stop to even the most powerful sweet and starch cravings.The brain feeds on L-glutamine instead of glucose and is satisfied.Don't be intimidated by the strong effects of supplementation. L-glutamineis a natural food substance; in fact, it's the most abundant amino acid inour bodies. It serves many critical purposes: stabilizing our mentalfunctioning, keeping us calm yet alert, and promoting good digestion.
Restoring Energy and Focus
When your brain is adequately fueled with its back-up emergency suppliesof L-glutamine, you are ready to rebuild your four key neurotransmitters,starting with dopamine/norepinephrine, your natural caffeine. Withoutthis natural brain stimulant, you can be slow and tired and have a hardtime concentrating. You don't sparkle and can't stay on track mentally. It'shard to get things done and you can feel dull and sometimes just want tostay in bed. Your physical as well as your mental energy drops without adequatenorepinephrine. The amino acid that provides this jet-fuel is the nutritionalpowerhouse L-tyrosine. L-tyrosine produces thyroid hormonesand testosterone as well as norepinephrine. Like L-glutamine, L-tyrosinegoes to work in minutes to perk you up.
Enhancing Your Ability to Relax
The next key mood-enhancing chemical is GABA (gamma amino butyricacid), our natural Valium. GABA acts like a sponge, soaking up excessadrenaline and other by-products of stress and leaving us relaxed. It seemsto drain the tension and stiffness right out of knotted muscles. GABA caneven smooth out seizure activity in the brain. My colleague, Elliott Wagner,a specialist in drug detox, taught me that GABA can even give relief toheroin addicts going through the severe anxiety of early withdrawal. Thinkwhat it can do for garden variety stress and uptightness!
WHEN FOOD IS COMFORT
For many people, overeating helps compensate for a depletion of thenatural pain relievers, the endorphins. Life's pain can be unendurablewithout adequate amounts of these buffer chemicals. Some of us (for example,those of us from alcoholic families) may be born with too littlenatural pain tolerance. We are overly sensitive to emotional (and sometimesphysical) pain. We cry easily. Like our alcoholic parents, we needsomething to help us endure our daily lives, which seem so painful.Others of us use up too much endorphin through trauma and stress. Wejust run out, especially if we were born short on endorphins to begin with.When our comfort chemicals run low, many of us turn to comfort foods.
If you need food as a reward and a treat, or to numb your feelings,your natural pleasure enhancers, the pain-killing endorphins, areprobably in short supply. Foods that elevate your endorphin activity caneasily become addictive. If you "love" certain foods, those foods are firinga temporary surge of endorphins—the"love" chemicals that are thousandsof times stronger than heroin. Endorphins can do more than kill pain, theyprovide the sensation of pleasure, too. ("That chocolate truffle tasted sogood.") Orgasm releases a surge of endorphins. Euphoria, joy, the "runher'shigh"—these are all feelings produced by endorphins. Some peoplehave so much natural endorphin that they smile all the time and get greatpleasure from everyday life. Of course, we all endure suffering and loss.But, with enough endorphins, we can bounce back.
For anorectics and bulimics, the trauma of starving and vomiting cantrigger an addictive endorphin high, because trauma of any kind can setoff an automatic burst of soothing endorphins. You may know of peoplewho felt no pain for hours after a terrible physical injury. Runners don'tget their big endorphin high until they have run past "the wall of pain." Atthat point, they have run too far!
Raising Serotonin, Our Natural Prozac
Low serotonin can be the easiest deficiency of all to develop. Very fewfoods are high in the amino acid tryptophan, which is the only nutrientthat the body can use to make serotonin. According to a 1997 Lancetstudy, tryptophan is one of the first nutrients to be depleted by weight-lossdieting. If, in addition to dieting, you inherited low serotonin levels andexperience a lot of stress, your levels can fall low enough to set off a majoreating disorder or serious emotional disturbances.
Restoring your serotonin levels can be a life-or-death matter. Suicidesand violent crimes are closely associated with deficiencies of serotonin.The fatal obsessions and self-hate of bulimics and anorectics are clearlylinked to low serotonin levels.
Do you have any obsessions that might be caused by low serotonin levels?The women I have worked with who report obsessive behavior tend to be"neat-niks" and suffer from negative obsessing about their physical appearance,while the men are often "neat-freaks," although they also complainabout troubling sexual fantasies they can't stop. As we all know,anorectics (who are low in serotonin) are driven to obsessive control oftheir food intake. Obsessive fears and phobias are common among peoplewith low serotonin levels.
It may be a difficult adjustment for you to begin to see symptoms likecontrol, fear, and low self-esteem as biochemical problems, not just psychologicalones. But the success of drugs like Prozac has already alertedus to the biochemical nature of many symptoms that don't respond topsychological help alone.
Drugs like Prozac are called serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) becausethey keep whatever serotonin we have active. But they do not actuallyprovide additional serotonin. For this reason, most people using SSRIsoften continue to have some low-serotonin symptoms. Before there wereSSRIs, the pharmaceutical compound L-tryptophan was commonly usedto increase serotonin levels. For more than twenty years, psychiatrists andhealth food stores enthusiastically recommended it for relieving depressionand food cravings and normalizing sleep without side effects. Manypeople found that their symptoms were eliminated permanently after onlya few months of L-tryptophan use.
In 1989 a series of bad batches of L-tryptophan, which killed forty peopleand made many more very sick, prompted the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) to stop all U.S. sales. One Japanese company, Showa Denko,had produced all of these batches, which, it was found, were contaminatedbecause they had eliminated three filter systems that they'd been using foryears—just why they chose to take away these safety filters is a questionthat remains unanswered. Showa Denko has never made tryptophan again.Despite evidence that no other manufacturer has ever made a problembatch, the FDA recommended for years that L-tryptophan not be used as asupplement. (Interestingly, they have made no effort to stop the sale of infantformulas, most of which contain L-tryptophan.)
With L-tryptophan unavailable, SSRI drugs like Prozac, Zoloft, andRedux have become our primary tools for combating the crippling symptomsof low serotonin. Unfortunately, these drugs provide only temporaryand incomplete benefits, and often have uncomfortable or dangerous sideeffects. Fortunately, in 1996, many compounding pharmacies began providingL-tryptophan again, by physician prescription, and a new version oftryptophan called 5HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan) became available overthe counter in 1998 without FDA opposition.
Whatever mood-enhancing brain chemicals you have in short supply, theycan be replenished quickly, easily, and safely. Chapter 9 will give you detailedinformation on how to create an amino supplement plan individualizedfor your unique brain chemistry needs.
Amino Acids Help Post-Optifasters
In a study published in October 1997, University of Texas researcherDr. Kenneth Blum and colleagues monitored two groups of dieters fortwo years after they had completed a medically monitored fast. The fastershad used the product Optifast, a powdered nutritional drink containingvarious vitamins and minerals, which dieters use to replace one, two, oreven three meals a day. In Dr. Blum's study, 247 Optifast graduates weredivided into two equal groups. One group took a formula consisting ofthree amino acids, the other group took no amino acids. As we know fromOprah Winfrey's highly publicized experience with Optifast, and from the1992 Senate investigation of Optifast and Nutrisystems, a quick regain ofweight after a liquid fast is to be expected in more than 90 percent ofcases. However, this did not happen to Dr. Blum's amino acid-takinggroup.
At the end of two years, the amino acid takers showed:
* a twofold decrease in percent overweight for both males and females;
* a 70 percent decrease in craving for females and a 63 percent decrease for males;
* a 66 percent decrease in binge eating for females and a 41 percent decrease for males;
* and the experimental group regained only 14.7 percent of the weight they lost during fasting while the control group regained 41.7 percent of their lost weight.
How Effective Are L-tyrosine and GABA?
A few years ago a young couple came into my office for help witha big problem. She had discovered that her husband was using speed(methamphetamine) on a daily basis. Her father had just died of alcoholism,and she had come home from the funeral to discover her husbandwith his drugs laid out on the kitchen table. She was distraughtand furious (and she had a tendency to be tense and edgy, anyway). Shetold him he had three days to assemble a recovery plan or move out. Hethrew his drugs away and made an appointment to see me. He told methat he had started to use speed on the road as a performer when hisenergy had started to sag years before. Now, years later, he was alwaystired unless he was on speed. He'd been secretly using it daily for years.When he got to me, he had used no speed in two days, and he was exhausted,trying hard to stay awake.
As they sat together, the husband was slumped dejectedly back intohis chair, and his wife was ramrod straight on the edge of hers. I left toconsult briefly with our nutritionist and came back with 1,000 milligramsof L-tyrosine for the husband and 500 milligrams of GABA forhis wife. Within twenty minutes, the wife was sitting back, relaxed andsmiling, while her husband was straight-backed and alert. Correctingtheir brain chemistries helped enormously in getting their marriageback on track: He left the next day for an inpatient treatment programthat I referred him to, she went home with her GABA. It is now fiveyears later, and he has not used drugs since. He is back on stage and hisenergy is fine without drugs, largely because of the L-tyrosine that heused for six months to rebuild his own brain energy system. His wiferelaxes with her GABA whenever she needs to.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Diet Cureby Julia Ross Copyright © 2000 by Julia Ross. Excerpted by permission.
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