Holiday Mood Swings?

Oct 22, 2015

Ever had stress or depression all but ruin your holiday season? I know I have, and my dear friend and I had a good laugh when her adult daughter confessed that she absolutely dreaded Christmas when she was a little girl because her diligent, single mom ran herself absolutely ragged and became a total bi-otch trying to provide the perfect holiday for her daughter. Apparently no fun for anyone. More than once I have had to remind my self that, after all, I made the list, and I can take things off of it!

I’m not helping matters either when my lifestyle choices – what I eat and how much I move (or not) – are adding to the stress load. Anxiety itself depletes nutrients. Did you know that 85% of Americans are considered nutritionally deficient and 80 million of us complain of mood disorders, with anxiety in our children on a dramatic increase? Coincidence? Trudy Scott, author of The Anti-Anxiety Food Solution suggests that as a nation we are medicating poor nutrition.

Lack of serotonin might manifest itself as: pessimism, irritability, fretting, worry, dark cloud thinking, busy-busy brain, early waking with obsessive thoughts, phobias as well as late afternoon and evening sugar cravings. Lack of GABA (gamma amino butyric acid) might feel more like overwhelm with symptoms of physical stiffness and tension. Ever find yourself trying to soothe just those kinds of feelings with alcohol at the end of a trying day?

When your cortisol is continuously elevated from chronic low grade stress, you raise blood sugar, lose bone mass, grow more plaque in your arteries and shrink your brain.  If you overeat over that stress (especially sugar), you grow a tire of fat around your waist of fat that spits out inflammatory chemicals 24/7.

There are some simple ways to give your body the best possible opportunity to provide the feel-good chemicals you need to help you manage this joyous but often challenging time of year. Unfortunately the Christmas cookies we all know and love are unfortunately not providing them!

The feel good neurotransmitters serotonin, GABA, endorphins and catecholamines are made from very specific fats and amino acids that require certain vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals (found in plants) to do their work. These mood managing nutrients are found in the very same foods I would be recommending to you if you came to me for weight management or with any of the chronic illnesses Americans suffer and die prematurely from every year (dementia, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer – all inflammatory in nature). I would always, every time be directing you to clean proteins (grassfed, organic, free range, sustainably raised), healthy fats (coconut, avocado, macadamia, olive) and tons of colorful, non-starchy vegetables. Does your diet include these raw materials?

While you can effectively target specific amino acid supplements for mood regulation (here is a link to Trudy Scott’s website for a home study program she is about to launch), there are several ways to increase serotonin and GABA with lifestyle choices you make everyday.  Think of these as “coulda’s” not “shoulda’s”:

• Physical activity (any, but especially burst mode training) raises serotonin and decreases cortisol. Even better, do it in outside in the sunlight.
• Sunlight increases tryptophan, the precursor to serotonin, and sunscreen doesn’t block it. There are also special lamps for the winter months.
• Epsom salt baths are a great way to relax while bringing magnesium in through the skin. Magnesium (found in dark green leafy vegetables, nuts and fish) is a calming, muscle relaxing mineral needed for over 400 reactions in the body and a common deficiency.
• Pumpkin seeds are a great and easy source of both magnesium and zinc necessary for serotonin production. I like the Trader Joe’s lightly salted because I eat them with the shells the shells have the added benefits of providing fiber, slowing down my consumption and being naturally self-limiting. They also contain healthy omega 3 fats, another backbone of neurotransmitter production.
• Omega 3’s are a structural requirement for neurotransmitters, and while our bodies will use whatever crap fat we give them (like the time machine in the final Back To The Future film), these chemicals will not fire properly and do their job of mood regulation they way the should. Interestingly there is just as much Omega 3 in grassfed meat as there is in salmon along with the other minerals like zinc and magnesium necessary for serotonin production. One colleague carries small cans of sardines in olive oil whenever she travels – easy and portable and likely no one will steal them!
• Eating prebiotic fibers as found in jicama, jerusalem artichoke, and many other plants helps to support the microbiome (the world of little critters living in your gut). Check out Brain Maker or visit drperlmutter.com for the latest research. This is another area of tremendous research for both mood disorders and obesity (see Gut Bugs and Extra Pounds?Seriously?!).
• Eating lots of colorful vegetables and healthy fats decreases inflammation and can help with moods. There is an increasing body of evidence linking inflammatory chemicals in the body to depression.
• Roobios Tea (Red Bush Tea from South Africa) is the subject of much current research for its ability to calm stress chemicals and increase serotonin.
• Meditation – all the spiritual and nutritional practitioners point to meditation as a key to calming the crazies. I know I have difficulty quieting my mind (“No, really?” you say) and I have found that guided meditations work well for me. They are something I can do (sink my teeth into). Oprah is about to launch another 21 day guided meditation journey with Deepok Chopra starting on November 2, 2015. I have found these really helpful and sort of an appointment I can make to connect with myself each day.
• HeartMath is handheld, inexpensive biofeedback technology that allows you to synchronize your heart rate and breathing with your brain waves to achieve stress relief, and inner calming. This article on the Bulletproof blog explains the effects of stress and gives more detail on HeartMath technology.

Try focusing on what you could add to your food and lifestyle plan, since adding is easier than subtracting, do easier than don’t.  A more nourished body does a better job of making these calming chemicals naturally so it will be easier to reduce sugar and processed foods.

What would be one degree of change in this direction for you today?