Food and mood

Do you eat mindfully and truly savor your food?

August 18, 2014 By Trudy Scott 12 Comments

Put simply, mindful eating is about eating with more awareness. This method of eating aims to stop mindless eating behaviors like unconsciously popping food into your mouth while watching TV or devouring a carton of ice cream to ease stress.

Studies show that reducing these behaviors can have a significant impact on improving your health, weight, and reducing stress, anxiety and depression.

A 2010 study “Pilot Study: Mindful Eating and Living (MEAL): Weight, Eating Behavior, and Psychological Outcomes Associated with a Mindfulness-Based Intervention for People with Obesity” had participants do 6 weeks of training in mindfulness meditation and mindful eating. The obese individuals who participated in the study “showed statistically significant increases in measures of mindfulness and cognitive restraint around eating, and statistically significant decreases in weight, eating disinhibition, binge eating, depression, perceived stress, physical symptoms, negative affect, and C-reactive protein.”

Here are some tips for mindful eating and what to do if mindful eating isn’t quite enough.

Give thanks for your food, savor the meal, and be mindful.

Give thanks, say a prayer, or do a blessing.
Slow down and savor the flavors, the textures, the aromas, and the experience of eating.
Be mindful and think about the food you’re eating. I once did a mindfulness exercise where we were guided through the experience of eating a single raisin over the course of five minutes. It is something that will stay with me always. First we looked at the raisin, then we touched it and smelled it. Then we put it in our mouths and very, very slowly chewed it, attending to its texture, juices, and sweetness. This is such a contrast to the way we usually gulp our food down.

Sit down to eat and make it a family gathering

Sit down to eat, and eat at the table with family and friends, not in front of the TV.
Keep the conversation positive and light.
I love this idea offered by fellow nutritionist and good friend Robin Nielsen: She suggests that just lighting a candle can be calming and put you in a digestive mode.

Don’t eat when you’re highly stressed or anxious

Chronic stress, anxiety, and depression reduces your production of hydrochloric acid and lowers levels of secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA), an antibody that plays a critical role in immunity in the gastrointestinal tract. This will impair your digestion. And because poor digestion leads to nutrient depletions that make it more difficult to handle stress, it creates a vicious cycle.

Address possible neurotransmitter deficiencies

If you’ve tried all of the above and are still finding it challenging to stay on track then the next step is to address possible neurotransmitter deficiencies.

If you have afternoon or evening cravings for carbohydrates and gluten-containing grains, you may have low serotonin. Tryptophan or 5-hydroxytryptophan may help.

If you crave comfort foods like bread, cookies, or ice cream, they may be providing an endorphin rush. Taking D-phenylalanine (DPA) may help.
If you overeat bread, cereal, pasta, or dairy to calm down, or drink wine to de-stress you may have low levels of GABA. Taking supplemental GABA may help you relax and experience fewer anxiety-related cravings.
If you’re prone to low blood sugar and have intense cravings for something sweet or starchy, glutamine really helps, as it plays a role in moderating blood sugar levels.
If you crave something sweet for a quick energy fix, you may have low levels of catecholamines. Taking supplemental tyrosine may help.

The amino acid questionnaire from The Antianxiety Food Solution can help you figure out which area to focus on.

Do you want to learn more about mindful eating? Join us on the Mindful Eating Summit

Join me and 20 other speakers on the Eating Mindfully Summit August 21-28 with my friend and colleague, Dr. Susan Albers, author of “Eating Mindfully” and Cleveland Clinic psychologist. This summit will teach you how to boost your nutrition, end mindless overeating and stop feeling guilty when you eat!

Here are just a few of the presenters, all of whom offer their own rich, in-depth perspective on health, wellness and mindfulness:

Dr. Brian Wansink Director of Cornell Food & Brand Lab and best-selling author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think
Evelyn Tribole Award-winning registered dietitian and author of Intuitive Eating
Dr. Jim Painter Producer of Portion Size Me, a documentary about fast food and health and featured on CBS’s Early Show
Dr. Katz, author of Disease Proof and contributor to O, the Oprah Magazine
Dr. Daniel Siegel, Professor of at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center
Dr. Alan Christianson, specialist in natural endocrinology with a focus on thyroid disorders
Jonathan Bailor, author of The Calorie Myth

I am also presenting on this summit. The topic of my talk is “The amazing amino acids for eliminating anxiety and emotional eating.”

So do join us on the Eating Mindfully Summit August 21-28 with host Susan Albers. You can sign up here:
http://mindfuleatingsummit.com?orid=6083&opid=4

What’s lurking in your food: book review of The Pantry Principle

August 1, 2014 By Trudy Scott 10 Comments

mira-exhibittable — The fun and enlightening quiz Mira did at the Weston A. Price conference

There is so much lurking in our food and The Pantry Principle: How to Read the Label and Understand What’s Really in Your Food does a wonderful job educating us about all the nasty stuff that can make us anxious and sad, affect our digestion, give us ADHD symptoms and so much more.

Mira Dessy is a certified food educator, is known as the Food Ingredient Guru and is a Real Food Advocate. We are colleagues and I was honored to have been asked to do an advance review of her book for inclusion on the book cover. This is what I said:

“Mira Dessy’s book, The Pantry Principle is a real gem! If you eat, this book is a must-read – so you really know what’s in your food. It is a user-friendly, comprehensive, well-researched and eye-opening resource. I look forward to recommending it to all my clients!”

I work with anxious, stressed, overwhelmed women and I do now recommend it to my clients. It’s a perfect companion to my book The Antianxiety Food Solution for taking shopping and eating to the next level.

Initially I wondered how relevant it may be since I recommend real whole food to my clients, rather than packaged foods. I found out very quickly that is it very relevant!

Here is a great example of the relevance even when you are eating real whole foods:

a possible new coating for bananas which will delay the ripening process by up to two weeks
the product is made from chitosan, which is in turn made from shrimp and crab shells.
as Mira says: “this could present serious problems for those with high-level seafood allergies.”

I really do like that it contains the most current information. The banana coating information is from a 2012 report. I also really like that I learned about things I had not heard of before! I’m a nutritionist and I learned new facts!

And Mira keeps us up to date with this ever-changing world via social media and her great blog called Grains and More.

It is also quite provocative. Just wait until you read about castoreum and other surprises you will find in your food! Mira mentions castoreum in this blog post about shellac and candy: shellac is:

“confectioner’s glaze,” “confectioner’s resin,” “candy glaze,” or even simply “natural glaze.”

It’s essentially the insect version of castoreum. Harvested from trees where the female lac bug lays down cocoon-like secretions, it is scraped off the trees (often along with bark and insect parts) and heated until it liquifies. It’s strained and then allowed to cool in thin sheets. This is then reconstituted with denatured alcohol when manufacturers are ready to use it to give foods that shiny coating.

Here is a sampling of what Mira covers in the book:

How to read a nutrition label
Understanding Additives
Artificial colors
Sugar and where it’s lurking
Fake fats
Packaging
A GMO ingredients list and much more

You can see the complete table of contents via the Amazon preview and buy your copy of The Pantry Principle via my Amazon link.

Mira will be exhibiting with me at the upcoming Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference next month so if you’re at the event come on by and meet her and get a signed copy of the book.

Mira was also one of the guest experts on the recent Anxiety Summit. Her topic was “How Additives in Your Food Can Make You Anxious” and it was a great interview (you can check out the other speakers here.

Please ask questions below. If you have already read this book do share some of your favorite tips in the comments below.

Eat fish and prevent anxiety, depression, inflammation and insulin resistance

June 27, 2014 By Trudy Scott 18 Comments

Stuffed salmon

How much wild fish is in your diet? Are you eating wild salmon or sardines two or three times a week? If you’re not, there are plenty of good reasons to start doing so!

Research shows “the likelihood of having depressive symptoms was significantly higher among infrequent fish consumers than among frequent consumers”

A 2011 study supports omega-3 consumption for mood disorders.

“DHA modulates some of the same genes targeted by current psychotropic medications, as well as increases myelin-related gene expression. Myelin-related gene expression decrease is a common, if nonspecific, denominator of neuropsychiatric disorders. In conclusion, our work supports the potential utility of omega-3 fatty acids, specifically DHA, for a spectrum of psychiatric disorders such as stress disorders, bipolar disorder, alcoholism and beyond.”

A 2012 animal study shows that sardines lower insulin resistance and has other wonderful health benefits.

“these results support the beneficial effect of sardine protein in fructose-induced metabolic syndrome on such variables as hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, hyperlipidemia and oxidative and inflammatory status, suggesting the possible use of sardine protein as a protective strategy against insulin resistance and related situations.”

I grew up in South Africa eating sardines and love them! I always have a few cans with me when I travel in case I’m stuck somewhere without a good protein source! Here is a blog post I wrote on: Healthy travel food ideas when you have food sensitivities.

Here is a great resource for making the best choices when it comes to seafood: “The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program helps consumers and businesses make choices for healthy oceans. Our recommendations indicate which seafood items are ‘Best Choices’, ‘Good Alternatives’ and which ones you should ‘Avoid’.”

A wonderful source for great quality fish is Vital Choice. They are “a trusted source for fast home delivery of the world’s finest wild seafood and organic fare, harvested from healthy, well-managed wild fisheries and farms.” I have met Randy Hartnell a few times and I love this company and everything that they stand for!

“We capture the fresh-caught quality of fine, sustainably harvested Alaskan salmon and other Alaskan and northwest Pacific seafood by cleaning and flash-freezing it within hours of harvest.

The fisheries that supply most of our seafood are certified sustainable by MSC (look for their blue logo) or the State of Alaska, or are widely considered sustainable.”

Enjoy some beautiful salmon for dinner or have a yummy sardine snack and see mood, blood sugar and overall health benefits!

The Anxiety Summit: Rooibos – A Functional Food in the Management of Stress

June 26, 2014 By Trudy Scott 28 Comments

Amanda Swart, associate professor from the Department of Biochemistry at Stellenbosch University in South Africa was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Rooibos: A Functional Food in the Management of Stress

The role rooibos plays in the maintenance of normal cortisol levels
The influence of rooibos on cytochrome P450 enzymes
The polyphenols and flavonoids found in rooibos
Other health benefits of rooibos

I am such a research nerd, and I like to keep up with the latest research on anxiety and stress and mood. I immediately contacted the author when I came across this study, “Rooibos Influences Glucocorticoid Levels and Steroid Ratios In Vivo and In Vitro: A Natural Approach in the Management of Stress and Metabolic Disorders.” For you research nerds out there, this was published in March this year, 2014, in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research.

Here are some great gems from my interview with Amanda:

The plant world is amazing, that’s where our medication comes from usually. The drug companies base most of their drugs on what is available in nature, and they just change structures a little bit.

If you can remember… back in the seventies and eighties, people weren’t really that stressed out yet. Stress is a very modern disease.

In the human study, they drank rooibos for six weeks, and they had six cups and they soaked the teabag for ten minutes. We didn’t see that cortisol levels decreased significantly, but what we did see is that the ratio of active to inactive was vastly improved.

If the ratio active cortisol to inactive cortisol is high, this is normally associated with metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

Here is a link to the rooibos publications on Amanda’s ResearchGate site

Here is the prostate cancer study that Amanda discussed – how one of the adrenal androgens – 11 hydroxy androstenedione, may be implicated in castration resistant prostate cancer. (This in unrelated to rooibos consumption but Amanda’s rooibos cortisol work lead her to this work)

~~If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here www.theAnxietySummit.com~~

UPDATE: the summit concluded on Tues 6/24 – season 2 of The Anxiety Summit will be in November 2014. If you’d like to be on the notification list just sign up here www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts + interview highlights and listen when it suits you

The Anxiety Summit: BioIndividual Nutrition and Special Diets

June 22, 2014 By Trudy Scott 14 Comments

Julie Matthews, Certified Nutrition Consultant and author of award winning book, Nourishing Hope for Autism, is interviewed by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

BioIndividual Nutrition for Anxiety: How special diets and avoiding certain foods can support individuals with anxiety

how the body and brain are connected
opiates, salicylates, amines, glutamates and oxalates
how special diets can help: GFCF, GAPS, low oxalate diet, FODMAPs
how to support biochemical pathways such as sulfation and methylation

Here are some great gems from my interview with Julie:

the brain is not this isolated island all by itself: it is connected to the body and all the biochemistry in the body affects what’s going on in the brain

different people might have similar biochemical pathways that are impaired, but they may manifest that differently – for some, with anxiety, some might have ADHD, some might have autism

gut flora is a really important factor in mood

I highly recommend Julie’s book Nourishing Hope for Autism: Nutrition and Diet Guide for Healing Our Children

And Julie shared this about her book and her work

My book is called Nourishing Hope for Autism, but a lot of people that have other conditions get my book, particularly because I call kids with autism the canaries in the coalmine. They’re the ones that are telling us that our world is too toxic, there’s too many stressors, it’s too deficient in nutrients, and we need to change our ways by adding more nutrition, more absorbable forms of supplements, getting supplements in general, eating good foods that are nutrient dense. These principles are principles that apply, in my experience, to almost all healing. So we learn a lot from the kids with autism on how it might apply to anxiety and other conditions.

We discussed the overlaps we see in autism and mood disorders: digestive issues, neurotransmitter deficiencies, gluten issues, low blood sugar, pyroluria etc.

Here is an article on Dr MacFabe’s work on gut bacteria: Spotlight on the Gut Bacteria-Brain Connection in Autism

Get your free gifts from Julie:

Using Food and Nutrition to Improve Autism and ADHD (includes info on some of the special diets even though title is about autism/ADHD)

Two hour oxalate interview and transcript (for Practitioners)

~~If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here www.theAnxietySummit.com~~

UPDATE: Season 1 of The Anxiety Summit concluded on Tues 6/24/14. If you’d like to be on the notification list for the next summit just sign up here www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview and want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts + interview highlights and listen when it suits you

The Anxiety Summit: coffee, chocolate, fish, water and more

June 21, 2014 By Trudy Scott 41 Comments

This is day 14 of the Anxiety Summit and the final wrap up call by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety: coffee, chocolate, fish, water and more – and where to go next

the anxiety-provoking effects of coffee! and what about chocolate?
the bad-mood effects of gluten
wild fish, water, pumpkin seeds and laughter to boost your mood and calm you down
questions answered ( a few from the blog and facebook page)
what you can get out of the summit, resources and where to go next

This is the great quote by Jamie Oliver (I saw it on Josh Friedman’s super Facebook page):

Homicide is 0.8% of deaths. Diet-related disease is over 60%. But no-one talks about it

We’re talking about it! And we’re being heard! There obviously a big need for this information – as of the end of the 13^th day of the summit we have officially reached just over 10,000 people!

This is the cover of Time magazine: Eat Butter. Scientists labeled fat the enemy. Why they were wrong. About time ! (no pun intended)

For decades, it has been the most vilified nutrient in the American diet. But new science reveals fat isn’t what’s hurting our health”

Here is the blog post that has the video of Angie trying the DPA/Endorphigen for low endorphins. She calls it a miracle, no longer desired chocolate and felt euphoric!

amazing nutrient DPA (d-phenylalanine) or Endorphigen. It is SO effective if you’re low in endorphins! Just watch Angie’s reaction when she sampled some….she actually called it a miracle! – See more at: https://www.everywomanover29.com/blog/end-emotional-eating-no-willpower/#sthash.ocYcUhhQ.dpuf

This is the blog post that mentions the research on how water affects serotonin and dopamine levels, thereby affecting your anxiety levels.

Based on the food mood research done by Dr. Felice Jacka and the results I see when my female clients add back red meat into their diets I am a proponent of grass-fed red meat. You can read some of Dr Jacka’s findings and information about our interview here. Be sure to check out the comments in this blog – I mention other research on grass-fed red meat and mood,

In line with this we have the new Anxiety Summit quote:

Sugar is the most abused anxiety drug

Grass-fed red meat is the most underutilized antianxiety food

~ Trudy Scott, host of The Anxiety Summit and author of The Antianxiety Food Solution

This is from the editorial called Nutrition and Psychiatry in the American Journal of Psychiatry. It was published when Dr. Jacka’s Western diet/traditional diet study was published in 2010.

It is both compelling and daunting to consider that dietary intervention at an individual or population level could reduce rates of psychiatric disorders. There are exciting implications for clinical care, public health, and research”

I always say “yes compelling but not daunting with what we know” and with we’ve learned on the Anxiety Summit.

~~If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here www.theAnxietySummit.com~~

UPDATE: the summit concluded on Tues 6/24 – season 2 of The Anxiety Summit will be in November 2014. If you’d like to be on the notification list just sign up here www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts + interview highlights and listen when it suits you