Low carb and the anxiety, panick, depression connection

[DorianJ]

I keep reading of people who say

"since I have been on Atkins/PP/Paleo/Bernstein my anxiety, social phobias, depression are gone"

So these are people who could have been hospitalized in psychiatric wards by now or be psychotic drugs dependent had they maintained their previous high-carb diet. Seems to me way more important than weight loss and yet it is an underappreciated aspect of nutrition.

Mental issues and a general feeling of existential malaise seems to be more common than obesity is and yet you don't seel people trying a lower-carb diet to improve their depression or social anxiety. Sometimes it happens but the reason to start such diets is a different one.

There's an appaling lack of information about the connection between metabolic impairment and feeling terrible existentially being plagued with fears, agitation, phobias, panick, depressive thoughs, irrational rumination.

If carbohydrate intolerance could be classified as a "mental illness" per se, suffering people could not only be aware of such option to reverse their mood problems and even serious mental issues but could feel not so "humiliated" when discussing with their skeptic doctors who believe people who make research about health on the net are just nuts.

For example there are schizophrenia studies pointing to abnormal glucose transport system across the brain cells menbranes as the cause of schizophrenia itself. As far back as 1920 Dr. Harris Seale found a connection between schizophrenia, depression and what he called "disynsulinemia"

I created this thread because we need to mantain the dialogue open about this issue, suffering newbys need to have access to these information, we need to bypass our physicians unprofessional arrogance.

Right now everything I know to be a real working cure for serious medical issues is considered an unscientific fad and the majority of people are silently suffering about "complex diseases" which being so complex and impossible to connect to a single organic cause (which is terribly naive but apparently what medicine is all about) are easily dismissed (i.e. chronic fatigue syndrome)

So let me being with the first question: why so many people are reversing their anxiety and depression by switching to low-carb? What's about an high intake of carbs which is causing panick and anxiety and negative thoughts? If we consider the fact that carbs are supposed to raise serotonin, they should lead to the opposite like drug-like feelings of exilerating highs. What mechanism we can emphasize when proposing low-carb as an option to mental suffering people?

[Equinox]

I have no idea about the mechanism, all I know is that it works for me. I'm med-free for the first time in a year.

I also take 10000 IU vitamin D and 6 omega 3 capsules a day, so they probably helped, too.

[scthgharpy]

Ever had a sugar crash? You know, eat a bunch of sugar like pixie stix and be all bingy and wacky and then suddenly the CRASH. Its all that immediately available energy, quick burning its way through your brain and body. then suddenly, its gone.

A freind once said about sugar" The white lady will take you up-but then she will bring you DOWN. " -a joke about sugar being like heroin, but its pretty accurate.

in addition, sugar (and other carbs) do a number on your pleasure centers, ooh yes, here comes the serontonin and dopamine. and then the depression comes because there IS no more, you have depleted all your reserves with all the sugar you consumed. feels good for a while, which is why people eat emotionally, and its usually the likes of ice cream. but there is always the crash. Keep your carb levels low, and that keeps all those happy hormones steady.

Im sure youre looking for a more scientific answer. I can testify that it helps with my moods too. when the bipolar stepson gets too much sugar, just hang on, its gonna be a bumpy ride.

[DorianJ]

I found this archived from 1998, great read:

At age three , V. had many illnesses, mainly respiratory viruses or tonsilities, each one followed by a relapse. He would perspire at night for several weeks after each illness. By age four, he was perspiring heavily every night, requiring his soaked pajamas to be changed periodically and his pillow to be turned over. The blue pillow case had a large visible whit salt ring each morning. His hair always smelled sour.

V's kindergarten and first grade teachers reported that, although he ws a bright boy, he seemed unable to concentrate and seemed to have a sort of day-dreaming or pre-occupation although he did learn.

When he was six years old , all these difficulties disappeared. We assumed that he was maturing and it had all been only a phase. We would look at other ill-behaved children and say, "They'll grow out of it. Ours did." What we did not realize at the time was the connection between his behaviour and the fact that my husband had me cook a high protein, low carbohydrate diet so he could lose weight. We were on the diet for aboul 6 months. When the desired weight was lost, I went back to our prior diet making noodle dishes, desserts, and breads. V's behavior reverted back.

As V. approached age seven , the problem increased in intensity. We began to disover that we could tell every time someone had given him a piece of candy or sugared drinks or cereals after school because he ould react about an hour and a half later in an irrational or hysterical manner. On days when he had no sugar, our dinner hours were pleasant. Our pediatrician, who acknowledged that some people did react in this manner toward sweets, recommended a high protein, low carbohydrate diet. Three weeks later, V's first grade teacher commented that he no longer seemed tired or distracted in class and that for the first time all year he had played every day on the playground instead of sitting with her. His report card improved. We noted that within a month of going on the diet, the perspiration at night was minimal. Giving him vitamin C stopped the perspiration. We maintained a very strict diet. He became so cooperative that he refused candy shen it was offered to him. He felt so much better without it. Friends commented on his calmer attitude and the sparkle in his eyes. He became noticeably more affectionate. He would sing to himself, which he did not do before, and began to use humor in difficult situations. He concentration and stick-to-itiveness greatly improved.

On two occasions , we allowed the diet to deteriorate by allowing more carbohydrate (no sugar though). Both times, there was a resulting irritability which was completely relieved by returning to eh stricter diet with protein snacks between meals. We note a great improvement when we keep the carbohydrates around 100 gm. V. enjoys counting them and it gives him a more tangible goal when he can see how they add up. Realizing that some bad behavior is a normal part of growing up and not a cause for panic, we can relax and enjoy our lively, playful 8 year old boy.

He eats the following diet which doesn't include many eggs because of his dislike of them.

Breakfast

Sardines/Smoked fish
Hamburger
Cottage cheese
Sausage/bacon

Lunch

Chicken, meat, fish salad
Ham between chees slices
Celery with cream cheese or peanut butter
Fruits, vegetables

Dinner

Meat
Vegetable
Salad

Snacks

Cheese or peanut butter on spoon lick off
Strawberry milkshake-egg-nog with frozen strawberries blended.
1 oz meat, raw vegetables, nuts

[Samantha22]

LCing resolved my blood sugar issues, my high cholesterol, my skin and nails and hair and complexion. My chronic joint and body pain is gone. My indigestion and IBS are gone. I don't sweat all the time....I used to sweat even in the winter.

But I can honestly say that of all the health issues that LCing resolved...My anxiety and depression still exist....

My self image and confidence are better, which in turn, helps with the depression most days....but my anxiety attacks are no less now than they were 5 years ago.

I guess I'll take being thin with anxiety over being fat with anxiety any day :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Equinox]

I think my low self-esteem and anxiety/depression almost all stem from being bullied in school. Since a big part of that was body-related (I was a bed-wetter, I grew fat, I hit puberty somewhat earlier than the other girls in my class), of course the solution to the body distorsions has brought some relief with it.

If your problems have nothing whatsoever to do with your body image, then getting thin will NOT solve anything, but it may well help a lot.

[Fat]

lucky all of you guys

[skeeweeaka]

I think the connection is the processed foods that we eat today and all of the additives (toxic chemicals in foods, water, environment, etc) that cause all of the mental symptoms, as well as vitamin and mineral deficiences that are a result of the terrible eating.

For me, if I go to low on the carbs my depression worsens. However, if I keep my carbs moderate and unprocessed then my mood lifts and I am calmer, less depressed, and have a better outlook on life. I have suffered from major depression and mood swings for 8 years so this is more than a miracle for me...I also started hormone replacement therapy almost 3 months ago so I have to say that has had a huge impact as well!

As Doraian pointed out, my doctors have thought for years that I was bipolar and would not do the blood testing that I needed to see where my hormones were because I believed from the start that it was hormonal! I started charting my moods and noticed that they were worse the two weeks before my cycle but all they said was that PMS can worsen BP disorder. Well, in addition to that I was having psychosis for those two weeks. Once I started the hormones the psychosis ended!!!! I have not had it since!

However, my doctors still refuse to believe...or is it that if they acknowledge that they were wrong there would be grounds for a malpractice issue???? Anyway, what I've discovered myself has truely saved my life...not the doctors! It took me 6 years to get hormones!!! Hormones combined with vitamins and minerals and cleaner eating has changed my life...now if I could just get more energy so that I can be more consistent with exercise and weight loss!!!

You guys have it right...now if we could only get doctors to think about how nutrition impacts all of these illnesses that their patients repeatedly see them for we would save millions of lives and billions of dollars!

Here's a great article regarding this very subject matter...


Depression and mental disorders can be prevented and treated with simple healing foods

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

A new study published in the February 15, 2005 issue of Biological Psychiatry shows that certain foods are better at treating depression than antidepressant drugs. The study found that omega-3 fatty acids and foods high in a compound called uridine were able to reduce the symptoms of depression as well as or better than three different antidepressant drugs that were tested. This research was conducted at the McLean Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard. It's very exciting to see this kind of study, because it shows yet more scientific evidence for the healing effects of food (http://www.naturalnews.com/food.html) as well as the relative uselessness of prescription drugs (http://www.naturalnews.com/prescription_drugs.html).


Based on the results of this study, it seems silly that anyone would continue to use antidepressant drugs (http://www.naturalnews.com/antidepressant_drugs.html) to try to treat depression (http://www.naturalnews.com/depression.html) when there are simple healing foods (http://www.naturalnews.com/healing_foods.html) available that do a better job. This is especially true when considering the potentially dangerous side effects of antidepressant drugs that are now coming to light, including increased risk of suicides (http://www.naturalnews.com/suicides.html), violent behavior, and other similar acts of aggression. But what healing foods in particular are we talking about in this study? In addition to the omega-3 fatty acids (http://www.naturalnews.com/omega-3_fatty_acids.html), these health enhancing substances are found in walnuts, molasses (http://www.naturalnews.com/molasses.html), and fish, according to researchers. They're also found in many other foods.

It's especially interesting to note that molasses is included in this list, because molasses is produced as a waste product from the sugar (http://www.naturalnews.com/sugar.html) refining industry. When you refine sugar beets or whole grains in order to make refined white sugar or white flour, you remove as much as 98% of the nutrition from those natural foods (http://www.naturalnews.com/natural_foods.html), leaving only a white, super sweet, highly concentrated refined sugar (http://www.naturalnews.com/refined_sugar.html), and that's what ultimately gets fed to human beings. The waste product from this is a thick, brown, syrupy liquid -- that's molasses. Molasses contains most of the nutrition (http://www.naturalnews.com/nutrition.html) of the original food, including the vitamins, minerals (http://www.naturalnews.com/minerals.html), and various compounds such as uridine. It is this molasses that's normally sent off to be used in livestock feed, and yet what we're finding here with this research is that this molasses can help prevent depression. Eating molasses is part of a food strategy that's just as good as antidepressant drugs.

All of this also goes to show why people who pursue healthy diets tend to have such a positive outlook and outstanding mental health (http://www.naturalnews.com/mental_health.html) -- it's the foods, stupid, because the food greatly affects your mental state, and if you eat healing foods, and foods rich in vitamins (http://www.naturalnews.com/vitamins.html), minerals, and phytonutrients, then you're going to have healthy mental function and will probably never experience depression, especially if you combine these foods with natural sunlight (http://www.naturalnews.com/natural_sunlight.html). But if you eat processed foods and manufactured foods (http://www.naturalnews.com/manufactured_foods.html), as are generally consumed by most Americans, then of course you're going to be depressed, because you're not giving your brain the nutrients it needs to achieve a healthy mental state.

So it is in fact the food supply (http://www.naturalnews.com/the_food_supply.html) that is causing depression in this country. It's all the refined ingredients that have their nutrition stripped away. That's what's causing depression, but what do we do in this country to treat depression? We come up with new drugs like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, and we give those to people and charge them sometimes thousands of dollars a year to stay on these drugs. They don't need these drugs -- what they really need are just healing foods. They need to go to the grocery store, shop for some healthy foods (http://www.naturalnews.com/healthy_foods.html) like wheat germ, molasses, avocados, and so on, and eat those foods in order to have healthy brain balance and avoid depression. It's really not that difficult.

What else is exciting here is that we're seeing yet more benefits of omega-3 fatty acids (http://www.naturalnews.com/fatty_acids.html). These omega-3 oils are almost miracle-class healing nutrients. They enhance heart health (http://www.naturalnews.com/health.html), they reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (http://www.naturalnews.com/disease.html), they boost brain function and nerve system function, and now we're seeing they even function as effective antidepressants (http://www.naturalnews.com/antidepressants.html). Clearly, omega-3 fatty acids are one of the most exciting nutrients in foods that are available to American consumers, and you can get these in everyday foods, or as nutritional supplements (http://www.naturalnews.com/nutritional_supplements.html) in things like salmon oil or flax seed oil. You can also eat chia (http://www.naturalnews.com/chia.html) seeds if you'd like to get some good, healthy omega-3's.

By the way, the news of the healing potential of these foods and the fact that these foods can treat depression better than antidepressant drugs may be new to the general public and conventional medical doctors (http://www.naturalnews.com/medical_doctors.html), but it's old news to those in the fields of holistic nutrition and natural health. This has been known for a very long time. We know that eating nuts (http://www.naturalnews.com/nuts.html) and molasses and getting good nutrition (http://www.naturalnews.com/good_nutrition.html) greatly affects mental health. And we know that most of those who are depressed in this country are only depressed because of a lack of nutrition, whether it's through a lack of nutritionally balanced food, or a lack of what I call vibrational nutrition, which is natural sunlight. In fact, virtually every common disease today can be treated if not entirely prevented through foods and lifestyle changes (http://www.naturalnews.com/lifestyle_changes.html). Even those diseases that sound mysterious and seem to have some weird genetic origin, such as fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, are really just names placed on patterns of symptoms that are more often than not caused by nutritional deficiencies in the first place.

But what's really amazing is that this is the first time we've seen studies really exploring the degree of the healing impact of these particular foods. Why is it that we live in a nation with health care (http://www.naturalnews.com/health_care.html) priorities that cause us to spend billions of dollars testing antidepressant drugs and synthetic chemicals (http://www.naturalnews.com/synthetic_chemicals.html), but yet we will spend very little money on testing the healing qualities of natural foods and nutritional supplements? Clearly we have our priorities backwards, because it turns out that the answer to depression is readily available to every American consumer, right in their grocery store, right now. You can literally walk into your grocery store and find cures for depression, cures for early stage cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/cancer.html), cures for diabetes, and cures for heart disease (http://www.naturalnews.com/heart_disease.html). There are cures right there in every grocery store, available right now.

In fact, I'm going to be working on a book called Grocery Healing that takes you through a grocery store shopping experience and shows you how to buy foods and products that can prevent or even reverse any of the modern common diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and so on. And of course I'll include depression in that book, and I'll be talking about molasses, nuts, fish oils, and wheat germ (http://www.naturalnews.com/wheat_germ.html). So the answers for these diseases are really right in front of us every single day. And if you're willing to take one step further and actually visit a health food store or a natural grocery store, then you can find even more healing foods. You can bring in even better nutrition and more potent phytochemicals for preventing these chronic diseases.

It's really no big mystery -- what we need to do as a nation is simply get back to our healing foods as they come out of the ground, as they are provided by mother nature (http://www.naturalnews.com/nature.html). We need to recognize the disease-promoting problems with processed and manufactured foods, everything from carbonated soft drinks (http://www.naturalnews.com/soft_drinks.html) to packaged instant rice products. And we need to be honest and say, look, these are the foods that are causing disease in this country, and that if we are going to be a disease-free nation, we've got to stop trying to find new synthetic chemicals (http://www.naturalnews.com/chemicals.html) to mask symptoms of disease, and stop poisoning ourselves with the food supply (http://www.naturalnews.com/food_supply.html). We've got to ban toxic ingredients like hydrogenated oils (http://www.naturalnews.com/hydrogenated_oils.html). They should have no place whatsoever in the food supply. We've got to outlaw things like homogenized milk fats, because of the way they promote atherosclerosis and cardiovascular heart disease. We have to eliminate ingredients like sodium nitrite, which causes cancers (http://www.naturalnews.com/cancers.html) throughout the body, especially cancers of the digestive tract such as colorectal cancer.

The list goes on and on, and if you want to know more about this list, check out the book called Grocery Warning at www.truthpublishing.com, (http://www.truthpublishing.com,/) which tells you what items to avoid in the food supply. Because truly, the health outcome you experience in everyday life at both the mental and physical level is determined almost entirely by the foods you eat.

Presently, the United States of America (http://www.naturalnews.com/America.html) is home to the most chronically diseased population ever observed in the history of civilization, and it's no coincidence that we also eat the most processed foods (http://www.naturalnews.com/processed_foods.html), the most fast foods, the highest levels of sugar, salt and food additives than any other country in the world. In fact, we are the home to fast food (http://www.naturalnews.com/fast_food.html) chains that we franchise all around the world so that we can export disease to other countries in exchange for making a buck in the name of capitalism. We are the creators of the candy bars (http://www.naturalnews.com/candy_bars.html) and the carbonated soft drinks that are now known around the world. We have taken a population that was relatively healthy fifty years ago and we have turned it into a highly diseased population, simply by altering the food supply.

And people say, oh no, that's not true, people are living longer now than 50 years ago. And actually, that's a distortion, because most of the deaths 50 years ago were infant deaths. Infants died of infectious disease due to a lack of good public sanitation. Back then, if you made it past the age of 5, you were going to live a lot longer than people live today. So the lifespan from age 5 is actually lower today than it was 50 years ago when people were eating out of their own gardens, and when they didn't have all these processed foods to consume, and when they didn't have candy (http://www.naturalnews.com/candy.html) bars and carbonated soft drinks and hydrogenated oils, margarines, shortening, potato chips, snack food, and so on. They were much healthier. They had much greater mental health, too.

Today we live in a nation where people are mentally unstable. We've got kids picking up automatic weapons in schools and blowing away their classmates, and then it turns out they were taking antidepressant drugs. You know, that whole thing probably could have been prevented if those kids were fed some molasses, nuts, fish oils (http://www.naturalnews.com/fish_oils.html) and omega-3 supplements, and taken off of the antidepressant drugs. And all you'd have to do is put those healing ingredients into the school lunches.

But no -- today the school lunch (http://www.naturalnews.com/school_lunch.html) program in our public schools is an atrocity. It has no resemblance whatsoever to good nutrition. We feed kids processed foods, refined sugars, cows' milk, and foods with artificial colors and additives that actually cause attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We do this across the nation, and then we sit back and wonder why our children can't learn. So the answer to that, by the public school (http://www.naturalnews.com/public_school.html) system, is to water down the curriculum. Let's make the classes easier, so that people can graduate now. You've got a whole nation of kids graduating from high school and many of them can't even read. They can't do basic math -- they can't calculate a 15% tip when they go eat at a restaurant. They're mentally unstable, and it's all traced back to the food supply.

So now finally, with this study, we're starting to see some of the healing effects of foods and how these foods stabilize mental health. Imagine what we could do in this country if we encouraged people to eat these healing foods. Imagine if everyone had stable mental health. Imagine if the people running our country had stable mental health -- what kind of a positive impact would that have on foreign relations and domestic priorities? It would have a huge impact. And the foods are available right now -- it's just that a lot of the time, these foods (like molasses) are just being fed to livestock. So we have mentally stable livestock and we have mentally deranged people. And the mentally deranged people are actually eating the mentally stable livestock. So who's really crazy around here anyway?

One final thought on all of this -- if you're the kind of person who follows a healthy diet and you take care of yourself, if you eat healing foods and you avoid processed foods, you've probably had the thought that half the people around you are crazy. And I actually believe that's true. I think at least half the population is mentally deranged because of their terrible diet, combined with the fact that they're on prescription drugs. You put these two together and you get a mentally deranged population; the kind of population, for example, that can't make a rational decision when it comes time to vote, or that can't understand the importance of fiscal sanity and why we need to have financial balance in this country rather than spending ourselves into oblivion.

We have a population where about 50% of the people really cannot think -- literally, they cannot think. They cannot make healthy decisions, they cannot express balanced emotional states, and the only thing conventional medicine (http://www.naturalnews.com/medicine.html) can do to help is hop them up on more prescription drugs. Here, take some antidepressants. Oh, your cholesterol is too high? Take some statin drugs. Oh, do your joints hurt? Take some COX-2 inhibitors. And then, when your heart starts failing, they'll line you up for an organ transplant to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars that really adds nothing to the quality of life of the patient, but greatly enriches the surgeons of hospitals handling that procedure. This is what we have in this country -- this is the state of the nation, right now.

And yet the answers are so simple, they're right in front of us -- these healing foods that are affordable, that are readily available, that anyone can pick up and eat, and that are absolutely delicious. So it's time, I suggest, that doctors (http://www.naturalnews.com/doctors.html) stop prescribing drugs when there are healing foods that do a better job. They should tell patients to start changing their diets, tell patients to eat some molasses and avoid processed foods. They should teach people to eat some raw nuts, including cashews, peanuts, and macadamia nuts. This will turn around the health of our country. But of course, that would require that we actually educate doctors about nutrition, and so far that hasn't happened in this country.

General practitioners are some of the most nutritionally illiterate professionals in our country. But that's changing. If you're a GP reading this, you probably understand how important it is to integrate nutrition into your practice. But it's the old school medical doctors who refuse to learn nutrition, who refuse to believe that food has any effect whatsoever on healing, and who continue to stick to drugs, surgery, and radiation as the only modalities for treating patients. And that is a mindset that I think belongs in the dark ages of medicine. It's time to move beyond that. It's time to get back to the foods that can enhance quality of life and that can create healthy mental statesin our population.

It's time to use the natural resources nature has provided in order to turn around the health of our population and restore some sanity in this country, because having only a 50% sanity rate is not enough. If you're in a democracy, you need at least 51% of the people to be able to think straight if you want to have any future whatsoever for the country. And right now, we are teetering with democratic disaster because of the rates of mental instability and insanity in this country. So let's get some healing foods into the mouths of people around this country. Let's try to reach for a 75% sanity rate, and then maybe we can make some good, democratic decisions about the future direction of this country. Let's get people off of these antidepressant drugs, let's end the massacres in the public schools, let's end the violence and the suicides associated with these drugs, let's get people onto healthy foods, and bring back the kind of friendly neighbor attitude we had in this country 50 years ago. It's well within our reach -- we just have to have the awareness of the root cause of this problem and be willing to invest in nutrition education. And in our medical community, we've got to be willing to insist that patients take responsibility for the foods they put in their mouths, and we have to stop apologizing for those patients when we are doctors or health care practitioners. It's time for the doctors to take a stand and insist that their patients follow good lifestyle habits -- that's what's going to create healthy patients in the long run. The responsible doctors out there are doing that already today. That's how you know you're working with a good doctor, by the way -- when they take the time to tell you about nutrition and teach you about lifestyle changes that can help eliminate disease in your body. If you have a doctor like that, stick with her!;)



TJ :rheart:

[Ann1231]

I found this archived from 1998, great read:

At age three , V. had many illnesses, mainly respiratory viruses or tonsilities, each one followed by a relapse. He would perspire at night for several weeks after each illness. By age four, he was perspiring heavily every night, requiring his soaked pajamas to be changed periodically and his pillow to be turned over. The blue pillow case had a large visible whit salt ring each morning. His hair always smelled sour.

V's kindergarten and first grade teachers reported that, although he ws a bright boy, he seemed unable to concentrate and seemed to have a sort of day-dreaming or pre-occupation although he did learn.

When he was six years old , all these difficulties disappeared. We assumed that he was maturing and it had all been only a phase. We would look at other ill-behaved children and say, "They'll grow out of it. Ours did." What we did not realize at the time was the connection between his behaviour and the fact that my husband had me cook a high protein, low carbohydrate diet so he could lose weight. We were on the diet for aboul 6 months. When the desired weight was lost, I went back to our prior diet making noodle dishes, desserts, and breads. V's behavior reverted back.

As V. approached age seven , the problem increased in intensity. We began to disover that we could tell every time someone had given him a piece of candy or sugared drinks or cereals after school because he ould react about an hour and a half later in an irrational or hysterical manner. On days when he had no sugar, our dinner hours were pleasant. Our pediatrician, who acknowledged that some people did react in this manner toward sweets, recommended a high protein, low carbohydrate diet. Three weeks later, V's first grade teacher commented that he no longer seemed tired or distracted in class and that for the first time all year he had played every day on the playground instead of sitting with her. His report card improved. We noted that within a month of going on the diet, the perspiration at night was minimal. Giving him vitamin C stopped the perspiration. We maintained a very strict diet. He became so cooperative that he refused candy shen it was offered to him. He felt so much better without it. Friends commented on his calmer attitude and the sparkle in his eyes. He became noticeably more affectionate. He would sing to himself, which he did not do before, and began to use humor in difficult situations. He concentration and stick-to-itiveness greatly improved.

On two occasions , we allowed the diet to deteriorate by allowing more carbohydrate (no sugar though). Both times, there was a resulting irritability which was completely relieved by returning to eh stricter diet with protein snacks between meals. We note a great improvement when we keep the carbohydrates around 100 gm. V. enjoys counting them and it gives him a more tangible goal when he can see how they add up. Realizing that some bad behavior is a normal part of growing up and not a cause for panic, we can relax and enjoy our lively, playful 8 year old boy.

He eats the following diet which doesn't include many eggs because of his dislike of them.

Breakfast

Sardines/Smoked fish
Hamburger
Cottage cheese
Sausage/bacon

Lunch

Chicken, meat, fish salad
Ham between chees slices
Celery with cream cheese or peanut butter
Fruits, vegetables

Dinner

Meat
Vegetable
Salad

Snacks

Cheese or peanut butter on spoon lick off
Strawberry milkshake-egg-nog with frozen strawberries blended.
1 oz meat, raw vegetables, nuts


this is straight from http://www.fred.net/slowup/hai38.html

it is a bulletin from http://www.fred.net/slowup/hai.html

that site literally saved my life in 1997. I was very sick from undiagnosed hypoglycemia. I was in severe depression and my dr. even told my husband to watch me for suicide. (I wasn't suicidal, just very sick and knew something was very wrong). Everything I ate made me sick (it was vegetarian high carb) and yet I had gained from 123 to 186. There were days at a time I could barely get myself out of bed the panic/anxiety, depression was so intense. There was no way I could continue like that. When my 3 month blood sugar average came back at 52, I did a TON of research on the web and found that site. Within two months I dropped almost 30 pounds, regained my mental capacity, no longer had depression and felt like I was human again.

Low carb absolutely saved my life and the hai site was the one that got me back on my feet again. Now when I hear someone saying they have depression, anxiety, severe lack of concentration, etc., I always ask what their diet is like.

[purr_cat]

I was on a no-carb ketosis diet for about a month once and I lost a lot of weight but I became very anxious. I think ketosis diets cause anxiety.

I'm on a low-carb diet now though and it's very good.

[fatnewmom]

I love my antidepressant AND this diet combined. Losing weight helps me feel more positive, and having no food cravings gives me a sense of control. So definitely the diet is having a positive effect, but I doubt it would "cure" a baseline depression in my case.

[Jayppers]

I like this thread. Anxiety is certainly a chronic issue for me that requires daily management for me to greater & lesser extents.

I too find truth in the fact that too many carbohydrates induce stronger anxiety and depression; However, it is a double-edged sword for me, because not enough and my cognitive capacity lacks and I get severely depressed and low on energy, but too many and I'm wound up tight, can become irritable, short on concentration, and simply anxious with thoughts of impending doom and overall fear that is completely unwarranted.

I strongly feel that the carbs elicit higher dopamine, which in excess can induce anxiety & fear (which is easily achieved with my neural net). With sufficient carbs and fat soluble nutrients, my social inhibition lessens, but too many carbs and it's too much, inducing anxiety and a racing 'too much... too much' feeling.

Finding the sweet spot is usually between 30+ but no more than 60 grams of carbs per day, which is relatively in line with the Optimal Diet & Lutz's Life Without Bread recommendations.

[skeeweeaka]

I've definitely been experimenting lately with whole foods and I feel better...but I'm still not losing any weight so I'm confused as to what is going on. I know that as long as I eat whole carbs I'm fine, but when I introduce processed foods my depression worsens and when I go too low on carbs it worsens...

I'm not counting carbs but trying to get at least 3 veggies and 2 fruits and other whole foods...that seems to be working in terms of the depression and anxiety.... I'm still suffering from chronic fatigue which limits my ability to exercise consistently...

I was taking a lot of supplements but have started food blending to get those in...trying to get away from synthetic vitamins and minerals...

Anyone have any advice????

TJ :rheart: