too much tension when speaking on certain topics

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Originally posted by jurplesman


Most people when they want to discuss anxiety - or for that matter any other mood disorder - assume that it is a matter of mind over matter. In other words, they believe firmly that by looking at the problem LOGICALLY you can resolve the problem by changing your mind by a set of logical arguments. In fact this is saying to you"you are not logical". Thus you can will away your anxiety problems by changing you thinking patterns.

This completely overlook the fact that mood disorders are mainly caused by biochemical abnormalities that are responsible for the symptoms of diseases, that happens to affect the mind. This is why doctors prescribe drugs. They are smart enough to know it is PHYSICAL and not "psychological",

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except that the majority patients using psychotropic drugs finish up being permanently "treatment resistant" and may have to take drugs for the rest of their life. Good for psychiatry but not good for the patients.

It is very difficult for people without any background in nutritional biochemistry to understand how nutrition can affect the mind. In fact it creates a painful [ucognitive dissonance" in these people usually resulting in attacking the author as a person instead of looking at the content of the scientific arguments. If you look at posts by me, you will find many people accusing me of scamming, or promoting myself or such nonsense. They cannot handle the topic under discussion.

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Clinical nutrition is a evidence-based science just like any other science and it requires you to know the rules of ["scientific method"[] if you want to debate the pros and cons of a scientific hypothesis. Attacking an author himself, instead of the theory, is a sure sign that we are dealing with a perosn with little understanding of science in general.

If you want to understand the connection between nutrition and mood disorders, then you have to realize that most of your neurotransmitters, hormones, enzymes and co-enzymes are derived from nutrients in the food we eat. Thus SEROTONIN - an important feel-good neurotransmitter - is produced from an amino acid in food called, TRYPTOPHAN, with the help of many other nutrients such as zinc, magnesium B12, B6, Vitamin D, and a whole host of other enzymes and co-enzymes found in food.

What is seldom mentioned, even among biochemists themselves, is that in order to convert one set of molecules into another set of molecules, such as the conversion of tryptophan into serotonin, you need biological energy, called adenosinetriphosphate (ATP), to fuel this transformation. Without that energy the body cannot complete the conversion and we will become depressed, or anxious. or whatever affects the mind. ]An active cell requires more than 2 million ATP molecules per second.]. Most hypoglycemic people lack that energy, which then may affect their mind.

Furthermore, when our mind is affected by a biochemical flaw - ie, we become anxious without any reasonable environmental cause - we tend to make up a story as to why we become anxious. The human mind is genetically programmed to link any emotion to an outside event in the environment - past or present. Thus if we have a low self-esteem the idea that "I am no good", becomes very soon "people think I am no good". This is how delusions and hallucinations are created, and this is not only restricted to psychotic illnesses, but normal delusions found in anxiety, phobias and depression, especially in PTSD.
In psychology this is called"Psychological Projection".

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This is the usual technique used by professional psychologists in their psychotherapy sessions with clients "looking for external causes" for symptoms triggered by internal physical illnesses of the body.
Ignoring the biological basis of mood disorders is the most common cause of failure rate in treatment of "mental illness", as shown by numerous studies[, leaving 60 % of patients with "treatment resistant" depression. If psychotherapy thus fails, the client is often left with the feeling that it is his fault

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Yet, despite these studies available to anybody who can read, people continue to mislead "emotionally disturbed patients" with the mantra that their illness can be treated by long convoluted and expensive talk therapy sessions plus mind-altering drugs. Much of this evidenced at this web site, where people try to help others with mental health problems by looking for external environmental causes, past or present. It may sound sympathetic, but utterly useless in most cases. Clients are not looking for sympathy, but a "cure".

Now tragically this may often be misinterpreted by arguing, "therefore psychotherapy does not work". This is not correct. Psychotherapy is sometimes needed if you want to "reconstruct personality" in severely disturbed personalities, such as are found among a prison population. Prisons house the most severely deranged individuals. Even people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can be greatly helped with a combination of nutritional and psychotherapeutic methods. But the cardinal rule in nutritional psychotherapy is that you MUST FIRST treat the biochemical aspect before addressing the "psychological" aspects. You cannot treat a physical illness by talk-therapy!

The other advantage with nutritional therapy is that we have found (working with nutritional doctors) that the majority of people with mood disorders are in fact hypoglycemic, when tested with a proper medical test. This means that majority can be helped by just adopting the hypoglycemic diet. They don't even have to know why the hypoglycemic diet works. This simple idea conflicts with the generally held idea that "mental illness" is a COMPLEX disease. Therefore nutritional therapy is just a "crazy" idea.

This means that it can easily be treated by a change in diet by the client him/herself. If this fails, then a further reference to a nutritional doctor or naturopath may be required, provided they are familiar with hypoglycemia.

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