One of the first things I want to know from all clients is how they eat. Now this might seem rather odd for a psychologist to ask, but I have a purpose. If depression is biological. because after all, you are a biological entity, then it has biological causes and effects. In fact, I liken depression to hibernation. A hibernating bear eats a lot before going into that log for the winter. He eats a lot now and then when the sun comes out. He puts on a lot of fat and wakes up rather thinner one sunny morning. He is not discriminating about what he eats when nature instructs him to fatten up or when he is skinny and starved (ask those folks who think they can outsmart bears and hang out in Alaska prior to hibernation season!) .
When you are depressed, your eating patterns change--some of us eat too much, others too little, but few of us eat well when our mood is slumping. We may eat lazily as well, choosing faster, less nourishing items over slower, healthier foods.
What this has led me to conclude over years of observing clients is that if I can help them to eat better, at least some portion of that depression will lift without me ever applying all those brilliant psychotherapeutic techniques I learned in school. Simple, elegant, and cheap. (Well, except for the cost of real food over chips.)
I have also discovered that most of my clients are like I was when I first got out of college: they know a lot of stuff from TV and government ads and high school health class about food, but not really very much about actual nutrition. Hence, I decided to obtain a certification in nutrition so that I can better serve clients who are confused about food. Work in progress, but I will guide you to make better choices in eating as well as better choices in living as I help YOU to overcome depression now.
There is joy after depression. And there is an after........
The concept of living consciously means slightly different things in different contexts, but to Dr. Lloyd, my co-founder, and I, it meant getting away from the idea that our customers were "patients". When this business was conceived, the idea was to teach people rather than to fix them. We wanted to offer skills and ideas that our clients could take with them and use for the rest of their lives. You, our customers, have been since this business opened, clients who pay for a service. That service is not "me doctor, you patient," but a collaborative process where you and I discuss the symptom or distress that has brought you to me and whatever history is necessary for me to understand it well. We then work together to formulate a plan using tools that I have learned to teach to you, for you to overcome that difficulty and maintain the improvement long-term. These tools must necessarily include some form of homework, as what you do when you are not in my office is as important as what you do when you are in it.
Now this is not to say that you learn this skill once and for all and that no one ever relapses or develops a related problem. In fact, a very wise man, Dr. David Burns, author of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy
, teaches that a relapse is actually a very good thing. If you get over your depression or headache and never relapse, how will you know what actually made it go away? If, however, you have a small relapse and make it go away AGAIN, then you are pretty certain that you have caused yourself to get better using your new skills, rather than that a remarkable coincidence had once occurred. Then you not only are once again rid of your original problem, you have the security of knowing that you have the tools to keep it away and tackle new problems that will certainly arise!So, when I think of "Conscious Living" I am thinking of each client developing a new self-awareness that allows him or her the ability to get rid not only of the problem they first brought to me, but also to overcome later obstacles that life puts forth, and avoid some sorts of life problems altogether. I hope that each client who enters my office leaves one day very soon with new skills for tackling the mundane and not-so-mundane challenges of daily life.
The way I learned it in school, non-psychiatric MDs should NEVER prescribe psychotropic medications, because 1) they are not trained to diagnose psychiatric issues and 2) they are not versed in any other approach to such problems. I also learned how to do psychotherapy in school, which MDs do not. And it turns out that study after study demonstrates that psychiatric problems are responsive to good psychotherapy, but rarely to drugs. It also turns out that a good number of medical problems are more responsive to good psychotherapy than to drugs. Hypnosis works better for IBS and WARTS (yes, you read right) than anything else out there!
The following references will help you get over the drug-company driven belief that anti-depressants are so great we should put them in our drinking water!
Oh, and it is important to note that the side effects as well as the withdrawal effects from various antidepressants include anxiety and insomnia!
Be a skeptical consumer.
Efficacy and Effectiveness of Antidepressants: Current Status of Research.
H. Edmund Pigott, Allan M. Leventhal, Gregory S. Alter, John J. Boren,
NeuroAdvantage, LLC, Clarksville, Md. , Department of Psychology, American University,
Washington, D.C. , USA
"Meta-analyses of FDA trials suggest that antidepressants are only marginally efficacious compared to placebos and document profound publication bias that inflates their apparent efficacy."
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ArtikelNr=318293&Ausgabe=254424&ProduktNr=223864&filename=318293.pdf
STAR*D Wars:
The Corruption of the National Institute of Mental Health and the Failure of Antidepressants
"While the FDA’s trust of flawed and fraudulent pharmaceutical company data has long been a problem, NIMH’s STAR*D study is a kind of “boot on the face” for Americans. In STAR*D, U.S. taxpayers paid for a methodologically substandard study done by drug-company connected researchers, who drew unjustifiably positive conclusions about antidepressants. "
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0606/S00351.htm#a
So what is hypnosis? In simplest terms, it is a narrowing of the focus of attention. So that person on stage is attending only to the hypnotist. By choice--or else why did she raise her hand, right? A stage hypnotist carefully selects volunteers from those with raised hands by observing their degree of attentiveness as he speaks.
In the clinic this translates into a way to tap into powers of your mind that you do not use to their fullest potential. The power to change bad habits, to project a happier future, to reframe an unpleasant past event, to calm your immune or nervous system. Hypnosis is not magic and it is NOT me controlling you. It is you being guided to learn to use that deeper potential of you mind to help yourself.
In my office, hypnosis is most often taught in conjunction with rational-emotive or cognitive therapy for overcoming phobias, depression, anxiety, or bad eating habits.
Learn self-hypnosis as a way to carry the new learning with you always.
Can clinical hypnosis help you?
Call the Center at 630-249-1983 for a free consultation.
http://www.centerforconsciousliving.com/hypnosis
Many approaches to mental health rely upon what we call reductionism--the idea that the mind and the body are separate and can be treated separately. The whole idea that mental distress is cured by a pill falls into this category. In contrast, the holistic approach says that each individual is an indivisible whole and must be treated as such. Thus, a mental health issue such as depression is not a "mental illness", but an adaptation of some sort to the individual's current reality, and a whole picture needs to be formed of the individual in order to adequately treat the problem.
In the same way, physical ills are influenced by a variety of factors we call stressors. stressors can be internal or external, mental or physical. temporary or permanent. Even a cold is influenced by the weather and the state of your immune system, not just the exposure to a virus. Some illnesses are more multi-determined that others. Irritable bowel is more a disease of response to stressors than the flu, for example.
The holistic approach requires individual treatment planning and a collaborative relationship between professional and client, rather than a traditional doctor-patient relationship. In this regard, I often refer to myself as a teacher or even a tour guide. The client cures him- or herself--I lead the way. With this approach, you have a sense of control over your fate and gain mastery over the problem that was vexing you.
Wow--what a frightening thought. Probably everyone wonders this at one time or another. And when they are wondering, they are scared. We all count upon our brains to be reliable. We need for the things we see and hear to be really there and the thoughts we think to have some connection to the world around us. Our minds are our interface with reality--what we call "consciousness"--and if we cannot trust that, then there is nothing to trust. So when you are feeling a bit crazy, which we all feel at one time or another, it is particularly frightening.
The truth is, while you may feel "crazy" at times, what we really consider crazy is a rather extreme state where your mind is indeed not a reliable source of sensory input and your thoughts are disconnected from the world around you. Technically, we call that state "psychosis". In true psychosis an individual is not getting valid information from his or her mind about reality or is somehow unable to use the information she is getting to interact with reality. A momentary whacky thought ("I wonder what would happen if I ran this stop light?"), or even a brief false perception ("I could swear I saw a man standing there"), or the occasional inability to recall if something really happened ("I could swear I fed the dog, but her dish is empty") does not qualify as crazy. Even a momentary loss of emotional control in an extreme situation does not qualify as crazy.
Sometimes stress causes the mind to run a bit haywire momentarily, and while frightening, if it is fleeting, then you can calm down and regroup and work at reducing your stress. The mere fact that you are wondering if you are crazy means you are testing your thoughts and perceptions against reality, and indeed is a good sign. But if the stress becomes too much, please do consider psychotherapy to help you manage your stress and get back on the right track. You need your mind to be reliable and your emotions to accurately reflect the state of your reality.
Daily in my office, depressed clients tell me about the mental illness in their families or describe what is wrong with them as a "disease". Personally and professionally I am uncomfortable with this notion for many reasons. In physical medicine, a disease is something caused by a germ or pathogen, such as a cold or flu, or a foreign process such as a tumor, or a degenerative process such as arthritis. In physical medicine, a disease is not defined primarily by its symptoms, but by its cause--the process of disruption of the physical body. And there are tests that demonstrate the presence of such diseases. When we try to apply this to mental health, it causes misconceptions.
What, exactly causes depression? In truth, we do not know. What we do know is that there is not just one cause. Some depressions are influenced by hormomal imbalances, others by brain injury, still others by upsetting situations combined with non-productive thinking. And even this is too simplistic--for example, is just a hormonal imbalance enough to cause a major depression or are there also purely psychological causes that interact with the physiological issues? In any case, the disease model does not help us to understand what causes depression.
Additionally, the disease model ought to help us to arrive at a treatment. While with viruses the treatment is mostly rest and good self-care, for other medical illnesses there are specific treatments informed by the diagnosis. Mental conditions are different, Regardless of television ads, medication is not a cure for depression--it may or may not alleviate symptoms, but what it is not is a cure. Psychotherapy, on the other hand, has the potential to creat a cure. Both change the brain, but in the case of medication, the change is not specific to YOUR depression, while in the case of psychotherapy, you are volitionally making changes in how you think, act, and feel, with the guidance of a therapist, which at some point, if the therapy is valid, will lead you to stop being depressed. AND if you relapse YOU will have the tools at your immediate disposal to repeat the process and cure yourself again. In many cases this process becomes permanent--that is to say one or two times of relieving yourself of depression often retrains your brain not to go there.
To take another approach to this question, we all agree that humans are biological entities--mammals to be precise, and that what happens to us is a result of biological changes. Depression is indeed more than just a bad mood--it is a combination of emotional and physiological changes that resemble another mammalian behavior--hibernation--essentially the organism is declaring that is it going to go back in that cave and hide until conditions are safe to come out! Hibernating animals eat more food less often, are sluggish, sleep most of the time, do not play. In the case of actual hibernation it is because conditions are physically not safe and the animal has biological mechanisms to compensate. In the case of depression, it is often psychologically unsafe conditions that lead us to seek shelter from everyday life by reducing our involvement. So rather than calling depression a disease, I prefer to call it an adaptation to unsafe conditions and treat it that way. When we learn how to make ourselves feel safe, we interact differently with the world.
Depression is not a life sentence; it is not a disease; and it is not YOUR FAULT. Neither are you helpless in the face of depression. Take control. Get help. Rational Emotive Therapy (the precursor to cognitive behavioral therapies) combined with clinical hypnosis is a particularly effective way to tackle depression. Call today to see how this can help you.
Did you ever stop to ponder the odd modern phenomenon we call "working out"? When did it begin? Why? When did it become ubiquitous? Once the only specific fitness activities kids did were gym classes in school and swim or gym at the local YMCA and various sports. But they walked or biked to school, ran around for hours after, did chores inside and out, and walked or biked nearly anywhere they needed to go. Adults did sports, worked physically at jobs or housework, and did a remarkable amount of walking or biking as well. And the only guys who lifted weights were body builders. Then it began to change.
Modern jobs are averagely more sedentary, as are modern lives. How many folks walk to the market? To the movies? How many kids walk to school these days? Modern schools give out more homework, and modern kids have more after-school actiivties, not all of which are sports. The result of all of this modernization is a more sedentary populace.
Add to that mix modern diets in America with lots of fat and sugar, and you have more obesity and more people struggling to stay fit. Enter the modern gym. Or an epidemic of gyms in all sizes and shapes. But sometimes it is even tough to schedule the gym in on a weekday. Not everyone can afford a membership. Some people hate fitness centers. And unless you go most days, it is not enough. What to do?
Taking a lesson from history, a couple of things come to mind. The first has been written about here before: eat a more natural diet with a more natural proportion of fat and sugar and a lot more plant foods. The second is even more obvious. Move more. Not JUST at the gym, but all day long. I know you have heard this a zillion times, but take the stairs instead of the elevator. Think about how often you park as close to the door as you can, avoid carrying your own purchases, and otherwise rely upon wondrous modern conveniences to save time. The problem is that when we save time this way, we also save energy, and mathematically, if you consume more energy than you expend, you will gain weight. So down with saving energy--walk to work, climb those stairs, park far away, walk around at lunch, and take a few short work breaks to do something physical (that's right--breaks are NOT just for smokers). Regular expenditure of energy in addition to weekend sports and trips to a gym will help you stay healthy and keep those extra pounds at bay.
Some time in the last few years, kids stopped coming to my door to offer to shovel my snow in the winter or rake the leaves in the fall--bad for them, good for me; these chores are a crucial part of my work-out routine. I hope to never own a snow blower or a leaf blower.
But there can be too much of a good thing. We are consuming too much medical care. It has become common knowledge that over-reliance on antibiotics has led to the existence of drug-resistant bacteria. How often do we look to other means to cure an earache or chest cold? I am not talking about lying there hoping you get better, but there are indeed other means than prescription medication to help your body fight off infections. And when you must take that antibiotic, does your physician discuss the fact that it kills off the bacteria that help you digest carbohydrates, prevent the overgrowth of harmful organisms in your gut, and make vitamin K?
Many of the ills of modern society have more natural cures than pills and surgery. Certainly not all, but quite a few. Now some folks prefer medicine versus changing their lifestyles, and this is a valid choice, but for the undeniable fact that medications have side effects. So in health care, as in all things, there is no free lunch, so to speak. When you take a pill, do you read that long list of potential side effects? Most people don't; which can be a good idea--no need to worry about things that hardly ever happen. Additionally, some side effects of medications do not appear in those leaflets. And others sneak up on you after you are no longer taking the prescription, like those stomach cramps that signal a lack of intestinal flora or the miserable constipation, sending you to the doctor for yet another pill to get rid of the new symptom that might just be a side effect from pill number one! Human bodies are self-healing organisms--in many cases your physician or a natural health care practitioner can guide you to an alternative treatment with fewer side effects.
The same situation exists with psychiatric medications. While many have a desireable effect, the side effect profile is often mistaken for a new symptom rather than a drug effect. Additionally, many psychiatric medications have rather severe discontinuation symptoms. New evidence suggests that psychotherapy alone is often more effective than medication. Again, psychotherapy requires the client to do something different and is more of a commitment than taking medication. It can be difficult to make such a commitment when you are feeling miserable. However, the results of psychotherapy can last a lifetime, and give you a personal mastery over that problem, while the drug approach often requires you to be medicated on and off for a lifetime.
You can take charge of your health. Be an informed consumer of health care.
Suggested readings:
Gut Flora
Medicine Safety and You: Understanding Side Effects
Harmful Effects of Medication on the Digestive System
Unexpected Side Effects
GERD Drugs May Cause Unexpected Side Effects
Unexpected Psychotropic Medication Reactions
Shakespeare's Hamlet asserted that, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Perhaps on the face of it, this seems ridiculous, but let's analyze. You get tripped and fall. Angrily, you look for the offending root or rock. Is the root bad? Did it volitionally attack you? Clearly, that root has no moral agency--it did nothing but be a root, growing where you chose to walk. We'll label the tripping "A"--the activating event (these labels are part of the Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy paradigm). Now tripping is hardly a preferred activity--we do not awaken in the morning and decide this will be an auspicious day to spend tripping on roots, but it is also not in itself a BAD THING. We'll label the consequence of tripping "C" --physically, you might get a stubbed toe or a twisted wrist from falling. Emotionally, you might become angry at the root, the world, your toe, your boots. The anger is the part you can change, sprained ankle or no. How did you make yourself angry? We'll call that part "iB"--your irrational beliefs. You are telling yourself (here is where Shakespeare comes in) that it is terrible that that root spoiled your walk, how dare it be in your way, what a terrible klutz you are, or that you cannot stand this inconvenience. Now these are irratonal beliefs because they involve overstatements, assumptions, generalizations, demands, globalizations, and other distortions that are the actual cause of your anger, rather than the root or the tripping. If we add "D", the dispute, you can tell yourself, as above, that the root is an inanimate object with no agenda to harm you, that it is unfortunate, but not a total disaster that you have tripped, that while your walk may be curtailed, it is a fine day to read a book, etc. In this way, you may remain dismayed about the outcome of your walk, but can be undisturbed as you salvage a reasonable outcome. "E" is your effective new philosophy--"I would vastly prefer that things not interfere with my walk and that I were a rather more graceful walker, but sometimes things do not go as I prefer." Now, you are not going to be ecstatic about that hurt ankle, but you can be undisturbed and remain contented in the aftermath of unfortunate events.
REBT is a remarkably effective way to make long-lasting changes in your mood and attitude and make yourself calmer and more contented. Dr. Low has recieved advanced training in REBT and is happy to assist you in learning the ABCs of making yourself calmer and less disturbable.
Suggested readings:
A Guide to Rational Living
How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything: Yes, Anything
How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable
That said, research and experience demonstrate some things that work with kids better than others. Authoritatian "do it because I said so" parenting does not work as well as authoritative "there is a reason for you to do it this way" parenting. Nor does permissive "do it however you like" parenting! Logical consequences work better as a concept than punishments: if the ball is thrown at the window, we take away the ball and bring the child indoors rather than taking away the computer. Threats never work--amazingly, kid tend to hear threats as a dare: "If you throw that ball at that window one more time, I will ground you for life" is heard as "I dare you to throw that ball again," and they do! Labels are scary for kids. "Good girl" said when she is putting her toys away, gives her little mind the notion that she is a BAD GIRL when she is not. "Thank you for cleaning up your things" avoids the label problem.
Kids are easily overwhelmed with feelings. Teaching them how to change their frightening or upsetting thoughts for calming ones will get their feelings under control. They will be calmer and happier, and you will have a happier household.
Strange as it seems, there is a sort of logic to understanding your children, but it is not adult logic. The readings below are a start at understanding how kids tick. Feel free to phone for an appointment if you need further guidance over a rough spot with your children.
Suggested readings:
Between Parent and Child: The Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Parent-Child Communication
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk
Rough Spot Training: A Manual for Helping Children Develop Emotional Self-Control, Self-Soothing, and Behavioral Management
How To Raise An Amazing Child the Montessori Way
You are heading out for your daily run. Are you worried about how you look? Are you wondering if that cute guy or gal will be running today as well? Are you worried about how fast your time will be or whether you will do better than that fellow over there? Or are you focused on the joy of moving your body with grace and efficiency? Are you in the moment learning to improve your personal performance? It is your ego who feeds those earlier and not very useful thoughts and takes your focus away from the joy of the moment and the learning that every moment can contain.
Your ego has another insidious trick--making excuses. When it does not like your performance, it tries to disavow responsibilty--"Well, it was too cold to run today anyway," "He is taller so it is easy for him to run faster," "She got started a little sooner," "I am stil not quite over that virus." What if you ignore your ego and focus on feeling good that you got yourself out in the cold to give it a go? Or that you are running more smoothly than before your injury last summer? When you focus on the games of the ego, your behavior will suffer. In fact, we most often end up looking and feeling foolish when, instead of focusing on the positive aspects of the moment, we are struggling to placate our tricky ego.
There are many ways to achieve the peace of mind that comes with living in the moment and refusing to get caught in ego traps. Some use mindfulness meditation; others simply choose to refocus their energies in the present rather than the past or future. Rational Emotive Therapy is a great tool for learning to stop judging yourself and others and develop unconditional acceptance for them and you; which gives you more personal power to change your behavior rather than getting stuck in self-criticism. Stop getting stuck in ego traps!
Suggested readings:
The Myth of Self-esteem: How Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Can Change Your Life Forever
. I am in love. What a great title. Wish I had thought of it. Whatever can he mean? Well, as in that old joke about insanity (you know: "Insanity is hereditary, we get it from our kids"), depression is hereditary in much the same way! We get it from our environment. We either learn to cope with adversity or we don't. We either learn to see things in a positive light or we don't. We either gather social resources in our lives or we don't. We either exercise or we don't. And we learn those things from others when we are quite young. What this means is that there is hope for your depression, and the hope comes from learning new ways to take care of yourself, deal with adversity and stress, and form and maintain relationships. Techniques that have existed for quite a while--rational emotive therapy, cognitive therapy, and clinical hypnosis are demonstrated to help you learn new ways of handling things that come up, and if needed, looking backward at how the patterns that you need to unlearn evolved. Fight back. If depression is contagious, there is a vaccine, and the vaccine is to change how you think and act.
It is time for Veggie Fest in Naperville--two days of fun and informaton and food. Please join us August 8-9 at the Science of Spirituality Center, 45 175N Naperville-Wheaton Rd, Naperville, IL. Hope to see you there!
Even worse, if that pain does not have a traceable source, such as pain from migraine, complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS-1 or RSD), or fibromyalgia (FMS), those standard pain medications are unlikely to help.
Back to the original question--when is the pain "all in your head"? Pretty much always! Remember, pain is a perception--the translation by your brain of a series of signals from your body that things are not right. When we treat pain, we are treating your brain. Pain medications work on pain receptors in the brain, which is where that complication of physicians having to be concerned about the addictive potential of effective pain medications comes in. Now people in pain rarely abuse their medications, but it can happen, and we all know the government has no tolerance for that margin of error.
With the sorts of pain that do not have a specific source of origin, the brain is already flooded with chemicals that block the efficacy of medicine, and the pain signals are actually a result of the distortion of brain-body communication, so other treatments are needed. Just because it is all in your head, does not mean you are crazy or pretending, though. Nor does it mean you do not deserve to be comfortable.
Regardless of which kind of chronic pain you suffer with, hypnosis is often quite effective at controlling it. The first type of pain has been shown to repond directly to hypnosis--brain scans actually demonstrate the effectiveness of hypnosis at reducing the pain signals. The second type of pain is more complex, because the pain signals are providing misinformation about the condition of the body--in these cases hypnosis as part of an integrated treatment program to re-educate the nervous system can be quite effective!
Treat your pain where it is generated--in the brain! Hypnosis works.
Let's take weather. Weather happens. It always has, and it always will. Really. We had weather when I was a kid and when my parents' parents were kids, too. Weather varies from wonderful to dangerous on a fairly regular basis. It is great that we have modern warning systems to tell us when the weather is genuinely dangerous. But should not our common sense kick in, too? When I was little, if it was dangerously hot, we opened a fire hydrant or went to the beach. There was no air conditioning in most homes. We drank lots of "Kool-Aid" (yuck!) and sold lemonade at the corner. We knew to take it easy. We knew what to do in a thunderstorm and did it. In tornado season, we had drills and knew what to do. Sometimes we even had to do it for real. These days, every change in the weather seems to result in raised voices on the news and frantic folks everywhere.
On to the economy. It is a great hardship to lose your job, and startling when many of your neighbors do, too. But is that a national emergency? What if neighbors all pitched in to help one another when someone loses a job? How many of us would not bring a meal to the neighbor whose wages were suddenly gone? But now we assume the government should do it. This has several bad effects. The first is that fewer of us step up. Another is that we must be taxed more for the government to do so. The third is that there are now fewer tax payers to handle it. A vicious cycle is thus created, resulting in that family being in a bad way. Another bad effect seems to be massive panic resulting in even more worsening of the economy as folks wait with trepidation for the other shoe to fall.
Which brings us to what I see in my office; what may be the worst effect of all of this new idea of living in a constant state of emergency. (Is it really always "Condition Orange" at the airport?) Normal people with miserable symptoms. From anxiety to irritable bowel to hypertension, people's bodies are reacting to the constant tension to which they are subjected. Emergency rooms are flooded with people in pain. And a lot of that pain is the result of stress and tension. It is NOT "all in your head," though it does come from your response to the stress and tension all around and within you. This means you have to recalibrate your perceptions AND quiet the inner, scared voices. Modern life does have its dangers, but they are less often life-threatening than they once were. However, our bodies cannot tell life-threatening danger from the milder dangers and stresses associated with high-pressure, fast-paced modern living. What if the news really reported the news? What if, even if they continue to sensationalize everything, we could all be calmer and more comfortable? You can. Try Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy!
Let's start with that idea of a diet. Your diet should be the food you eat. Emphasis on "food". It should not be some weird aberration from a book or a TV show that you try every time you cannot get into your favorite jeans or some guy at the club can bench more than you. What is food? Real food is the veggies that grow out of the ground; it is healthy animals raised for consumption as their nature intends (note that this means cows do NOT live on corn--cows, being ruminants, should eat grass.); it is whole grains with the bran and germ attached; and fats and sugars only from real plants and animals.
Eating real food is a commitment. Choosing good, wholesome food requires knowing something about how food is produced. Then one must know how to prepare edible meals from raw materials. To shop correctly, we need to understand why our bodies crave things that are not good for us and avoid those processed items! Sugars and fats, scarce in nature, are plentiful at your supermarket. But your body was made to crave them for fuel because, being naturally scarce, they needed to be sought as precious commodities and consumed when available. Modern society has solved the scarcity problem without solving the craving problem. We all know the result of that, a host of modern diseases caused by the excessive consumption of artificially derived fats and sugars with lots of added salt: heart disease, obesity, hypertension, stroke, gut disorders, adult-onset diabetes among them. Say no to the illnesses of the modern western diet! Eat food.
When a diet becomes a plan for eating real food, and your family expects to see food that requires preparation when they open the fridge, you will be well on your way to a healthier household!
Your daughter has functional abdominal pain. It can come with or without irritable bowel, with or without diarrhea, with or without vomitting. In any form, it is not fun. There seems to be an epidemic of kids with pain these days. Modern life is complicated and stressful. Kids are under more pressure than ever to perform in school, to make tough decisions, and to do more and more. Parents are ill-prepared to help their kids navigate modern adolescence--your kids's lives make your stressful adolescence look benign in comparison.
There is help for your child and for you! All of you can learn to negotiate the stressors of modern life, and your child can return to being the happy, healthy kid you once knew. Clinical hypnosis has been shown in studies on IBS to help to return the gut (or other organ or system) to its normal function. Your child also needs professional help to explore how he reacts to his life that got him into this mess. Rational Emotive Therapy will help him or her redirect that sense of being overwhelmed and get hm or her back on track. Parents and kids are often amazed at how easy it is, with the right tour guide, to rediscover a comfortable, happy life.
Suggested readings:
Edelstein, Michael R. & Steele, David R. (1997) Three Minute Therapy: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
Ellis, Albert (2000) How To Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You
Hauck, Paul (1975) Overcoming Worry and Fear
Pharmaceutical Industry Hustlers Part I
SSRI Antidepressants Pushers
By Evelyn Pringle
"After twenty long years, it appears that the epidemic in mental disorders in America might be coming to an end. It won't happen because of any great medical breakthrough but rather because the perpetrators of the greatest healthcare fraud in history are finally being exposed. The demolition of the giant "psycho-pharmaceutical complex" appears to be on the horizon."
Pharmaceutical Industry Hustlers - Part II
Pushers of SSRI Antidepressants
by Evelyn Pringle
"To gain approval for treating children, all a drug company has to do is submit two positive studies to the FDA to prove a medication is safe and effective for kids. However, after 20 years of feeding the new generation of antidepressants to tens of thousands of kids in clinical trials, the only one ever approved is Prozac."
