Nutritional Healing + Brain Chemistry Balancing For Eating Disorders

I'll be speaking on Brain Chemistry Balancing through Target Nutrition Therapy® at the International Conference on Nutrition & Food Sciences, Valencia, Spain 23-24th of Sept 2014. Complete Speaker program will be up here.

 

Want To Break That Addiction?

Your plate is a direct reflection of who you are.

Your truth is in the details. 

Everything you do reflects who you are, what you believe life is. 

Is life beautiful, abundant, something to be worshipped and savored, or is your belief-system based on deprivation (dieting)... or perhaps something that you stuff down, binge on and then feel sick to your core, because you do not savor the flavors (of life)? 

You are what you eat. It's the small things that count.

What's Your Story?

I think this shirt is pretty awesome. In fact, I am considering giving it to all my girlfriends.

If there's one thing that we all need to change, and that we in fact are in total and complete control over, it's the crap we tell ourselves day in and day out. 

And for a lot of us, it has to do with a very disturbingly poor bodyimage. Often we are so used to this, that we don't even notice that 75% of our awake time goes with talking crap to ourselves - and every time we eat, catch our reflection in the window and when we wake up - we tell ourselves how fat, ugly etc. etc. we are.

The issue is, that we in fact become what we tell ourselves - where focus goes, energy flows, and that's why it is imperative to let go of our narcissistic focus on our body, because we can simply never evolve as humans and reach another level of being and thinking, if all our time is spent with trying to fix a facade or constantly just hurting ourselves with telling how not-worthy we are. 

This is a huge issue, not just for chicks. The thing is, that it is incredibly emotionally draining and spreads a lot of negativity, when we surround ourselves with people who talk crap-talk consistenly about themselves. No one wants to hear it, and we need to stop for a minute and think about what effect, we are having on other people. Because we do affect other people. And you do not want to be that person, who constantly talks about dieting, needing to lose weight, needing to get married, needing to get xyz needing this needing that and yadayadayada. It's desperate and it turns everyone off - even your goddamn cat doesn't wanna hear it.

Even if you have to fake it at first - do it. Just stop verbalizing all your negative self-talk step 1, and step 2 find a mantra that reenforces the person you want to be. Step 3 repeat this mantra til it becomes your new story.

That's it. 

Simply changing your story and what you tell yourself, not only changes your own life, and how you treat yourself, but it also draws in a completely different friend crowd, and you will no longer be that person who drains the energy out of other people, because you are so caught up in your own vanity that you don't even notice others, but only you, yourself and your issues.

Life is too short for issues. And it's all in your mind. It really is. So get over yourself - there are more important things to life.

New Breakthrough in Treatment Resistant Anorexia: Brain Implantation.

A brain implant that gradually stimulates normal appetite and lifts mood. This is the first time the brain implant treatment has been tried on severely anorexic patients, and suggests that other mental illnesses like eating disorders might be treated similarly. Six patients, all women with severe anorexia nervosa aged 24 to 57, were in such poor health that they agreed to enroll in the risky treatment pilot study at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre in Toronto, Canada. None of them had responded to previous eating disorder treatments, and all were at a high risk of dying of the illness. One of the patients suffered from anorexia symptoms for 37 years, and four of them had been admitted to the hospital more than 10 times. All of them except one also suffered from psychiatric conditions like major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Researchers say that the study results, published in the medical journal The Lancet on March 6, "give hope to patients with especially pernicious forms of the disorder and their families."

Reference: Lipsman N. et al. Subcallosal cingulate deep stimulation for treatment-refractory anorexia nervose - a pilot study. Lancet 2013 Mar 6

Neurotic Eating Tied to Emotional Nuttiness: Hello Hollywood.

Just adding to the bunch of studies that show how your eating affects your thinking and emotional health.

With a constant focus on thinness, garbage diet food products and a "less is more" default thinking when it comes to eating in the Western society; no wonder we are seeing a rise in neurotic behaviors and a general lack of people skills/compassion in society that manifest in a variety of ways. So perhaps we should begin consider exchanging marriage counseling for diet counseling: it is not uncommon that my clients report improved social relationships once their nutritional needs are met and matched to their genetic blueprint - which is not really surprising, since we need our basic needs met (cf. Maslow's hierarchy of needs), before we can evolve and connect to other people in a balanced manner and form healthy bonds that are not linked to abusive disorders or emotional dysregulation, simply due to not having mastered the art of feeding ourselves properly.

A new study shows that women with abnormal eating behaviors, such as binging or extreme fear of gaining weight, misinterpreted facial expressions in others, especially anger and fear, compared with a control group, researchers report in the journal Appetite. Women with abnormal eating behaviors mistook fear, bottom right, for anger, left, and sadness, top right, in a series of images of emotions, including happiness, top left.

Abnormal eating is associated with poor social skills and an impaired ability to recognize facial emotions. This study is the first to identify a pattern in recognition errors, researchers said.



Reference: 
Appetite. 2012 Aug;59(1):181-6. Epub 2012 Apr 24.
The influence of emotional intensity on facial emotion recognition in disordered eating.
Ridout N, Wallis DJ, Autwal Y, Sellis J.

How Starvation Affects Your Rationalization Skills.

Girlfriend catty?
No, she's not really a bitch; she's just on a diet.

Everyone who has ever been on a diet that's not right for their genetic blueprint, knows that you get kinda crappy. You are not exactly the life of the party, while you are busy counting the calories in that cosmopolitan in your hand.
Personally, I think everyone who goes on the average, ridiculous, low-cal diet should wear a shirt that says, "hey! I'm NOT an emotional nutcase, I'm on a diet!". It would really explain so many irrational behaviors these days with all the weird, one after the other, trendy diets taking over and messing with your unique brain chemistry; causing you to react like a nut.

And now a new study just came out emphasizing the absolute disaster starvation has on your social problem solving skills. Starvation is SO yesterday - eating right for your genetic blueprint is the only way to a STRONG MIND in a STRONG BODY!

People with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) have well-documented socio-emotional and neurocognitive impairments. As yet, little is known about their ability to solve problems in social situations, although a link with cognitive avoidance has been suggested.

A just newly released study explored social problem-solving (SPS), using an experimental task comparing Anoroxia Nervosa sufferers with healthy controls. Secondly, the role of cognitive avoidance in SPS was investigated. Participants were asked to generate both the optimal solution and their personal solution. Solutions were rated in terms of how socially sensitive and practically effective they were. AN patients produced relatively poorer personal solutions compared to optimal solutions than healthy control participants and had higher scores on a measure of cognitive avoidance than the healthy control group. In AN patients, cognitive avoidance was partially associated with poor social problem-solving.

These findings suggest that whilst people with AN have no difficulty in generating socially sensitive and effective solutions to problems, but may have difficulty applying this knowledge to themselves. 

Reference: Psychiatry Res. 2012 Jul 16. 

Ashley Simpson's nose job linked to body dysmorphic disorder

Body dysmorphic disorder:
Ashley Simpson has struggled with eating disorders
 in addition to having undergone plastic surgery.

According to a new study, one-third of people who get nose jobs also have symptoms of moderate to severe body dysmorphic disorder, a mental illness where a person is so dissatisfied with real or imagined flaws that it disrupts daily life. The disorder can lead to suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, depression, anxiety and -- as is evidenced by this study -- unnecessary cosmetic surgery.

The new research, reported in the August issue of the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, also shows that body dysmorphic disorder is especially common among people who have had more than one nose job.

Vanity. It kills.

Reference: http://journals.lww.com/plasreconsurg/pages/default.aspx

Analyze this: The celeb with a serotonin overload!

Calista Flockhart has long been speculated to suffer from Anorexia. Although she has vehemently denied those speculations in the past, she admitted in an interview after finishing filming The Ally McBeal Show, that a grueling work schedule, made her stop wanting to eat. Flockhart says, "I was seriously stressed. I was working 15-hour days on the set and then I was dealing with the end of the show, which was basically my life. I started under-eating, over-exercising, pushing myself too hard and brutalizing my immune system. I guess I just didn't find time to eat."

Here is the thing: how people respond to stress is based on how their brain is wired. Your stress management skills, the way you perceive life and your personality traits reveal how your brain is wired.

Just as Britney Spear's deficiency of serotonin sets her up for binging behaviors, Calista Flockhart's behaviors reveal that she is disposed to have an excess of serotonin.

Brain chemicals need to be balanced - a surplus of any one neurotransmitter is just as health threatening as a deficiency.

So, which key things stand out that reveals that Calista has an excess of serotonin?

• Anxiety (chronic stuck in fight or flight mode)
• Obsessive compulsive behaviors (counting, exercising, washing your hands over and over again etc.) 
• Perfectionistic 
• Rigid
• Structured
• Hyperactive
• Feeling stuffed after especially carbohydrate rich meals 
• Always pushing yourself 
• Distorted bodyimage 
• Inability to relax and calm down - always running around or fidgeting. 
• Passive-aggressive

So what is the natural reaction to help calm down an overexcited central nervous system due to elevated serotonin levels?
Well, you begin to starve yourself - because restricting (especially carbs), depletes serotonin - and you begin to feel a bit more comfortable in your own skin.


Starvation becomes your addiction, because you use it to cope with emotions and control your mood.
Any weight restoration program or recovery program that does not take this into consideration is bound to fail, due to the simple fact, that eating foods that do not match your brain and biochemistry type will set the individual up to become wired and overload the brain with serotonin. Thus the fear of feeling worse when eating is enforced and you go back to starving yourself to feel somewhat better.

However, if you know which nutritional strategies to take in order to balance those chemicals, then you will experience that you can actually feel better while in recovery.
And ultimately, a stable brain chemistry enables you to focus on other things that are much more important than weight, looks and the size of your neighbors thighs.
When you FEEL good, you will automatically LOOK good!
It's about understanding how to treat what is causing you to feel and look like trash.
Once you understand why you are acting the way you are, and that you are NOT nuts - but your brain chemistry is - then you are on the path to a STRONG MIND in a STRONG BODY. Effortlessly and permanently!

You are welcome to contact The Nutrition Doctor to hear more about what we can offer you on your path to recovery!


Take care of yourself - you're worth it.

SKINNY is The New Fat

"Jennifer Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, looked as if she’d eaten one sugar plum too many; and Jared Angle, as the Cavalier, seems to have been sampling half the Sweet realm." - NY Times

Apparently the writer of these lines (referring to the ballet dancers pictured to the right) seems to have switched his glasses for magnifiers. Or perhaps, he is just another victim of society's "you can never be too young, too rich, too thin etc." mantra. And may I add "too stupid" along those same lines, or so it seems.

When normalcy is Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton and Keira Knightley...
All of whom are rumored to suffer from eating disorders (either that or their derrières have just decided to go awol) - and ballet dancers that show no sign of an ounce of fat on their bodies are critiqued for not looking like Auschwitz victims, you know society is absolutely losing it. Challenging both common sense and the laws of nature simultaneously; that certainly seems like a recipe for a disaster in the making.

Can anyone say Eating Disorder Epidemic?
Are these really the values that we want to pass on to our children?
This is just plain sad - this NY Times review reflects not just the writer's messed up ideals, but an increasingly sickening body image that has become the new normal.

Sometimes I wonder if freedom of speech should not be somewhat restricted 
At least to those with an IQ of min. 90 (which also requires that you had more than that skinny latte for breakfast in order for your brain to function...).

There is just too much time spent on listening to none-sense from nitwits.