Razz
08-11-2010, 09:17 PM
I just saw a post on here giving some very bad diet advice. This is an area of my education so take what you will from this.
You do not want to be on a low fat diet with anxiety. The brain is 85% lipids (fat) by volume....it loves fat and you must have cholesterol to manufacturer hormones including neurohormones. Every nerve cell in your body is wrapped in fat and the brain requires many fatty acids for healing.....it in fact loves butter. Too low fat and you are stripping the insulation off the nerves wiring, starving the brain from its major building blocks and wrecking the whole hormone feedback loops. Some of these loops are the switch for anxiety to stop.
Next blood sugar or glucose. Anxiety and stress burns huge amounts and when you run out the adrenals give you a nice jab of anxiety producing adrenalin to liberate more from the liver...sometimes hundreds of times a day if you do not eat right. We need to eat every 2 to 3 hours and include high quality protein, COMPLEX carbs and fats with each meal and snack. A diet high in simple carbs or junk food will almost insure your adrenals will make your anxiety neurons sit up and howl !!!
You brain runs on 100% glucose - it will make you insane if your don't insure a constant, high quality supply. Give it too much with low quality Glycemic simple carbs and it will revolt just as if you were starving it. This will cause an insulin spike which increases brain glutamate that is the rocket fuel for anxiety....and if you bathe neurons and cells in too high glucose concentrations is simply kills them. This is why diabetics have amputations, more Alzheimer's and blindness.
Your brain is happy when it gets a small drip of high quality glucose all day long.
Protein: every repair or recovery of body tissue requires high quality protein. Anxiety and stress use huge volumes of neurotransmitters and THE MAIN THING THEY ARE MADE OF IS PROTEIN. It is very difficult for a vegetarian to eat sufficient amino acid concentrations to replace these neurotransmitters and it takes longer for the body to assemble the amino acids into protein molecules from vegetable sources...can be done but you have to really know your nutrition and eat substantial quantities.
If you are taking a SSRI or benzo and not getting enough fats or proteins your medication is firing blanks.
Alcohol: the brain has zero pain receptors, numb the scalp and brain surgeons can poke around at will and never have you feel any pain. So when you feed the brain toxic substances it can't say ouch until it is so far damaged you have a mess on your hands. Want to know what the brain really thinks of alcohol - next time you have a really big cut pour alcohol on it...yep that what the brain wishes it could tell you !!
And here is the really big thing with alcohol: it binds to the same receptors as benzos....out BEST FRIEND GABA - the main inhibitory neurotransmitter that stops anxiety and panic. Drinking alcohol tends to piss off the receptors so GABA does not work well....and many times this receptor up regulation will not manifest for days after drinking. If you drink often it can take over a year for the receptors to repair...AND THEN YOU GET TO LIVE WITH ANXIETY THE WHOLE TIME>
Caffeine: Lets make this simple, caffeine from any source blocks the biding of the Neurotransmitter GABA. GABA is the brains major inhibitory neurotransmitter (read the main character in insuring your anxiety system is turned off). AND used often enough it can alter the shape of the GABA docking sites so your own natural GABA is working hard to plug the anxiety faucet and can't fit the holes.
Cigarettes - come on, over 1,000 chemicals and over 300 that are nero-toxic. May as well fix a fine Swiss watch with a hammer. In reality these chemicals are both excitory and inhibitory. It jerks the CNS from pole to pole and makes it hypersensitive.
Finally water: for millions of years our bodies have adapted to use pure water for all the physiology processes. You can hydrate with many man made substances but they are all stress on the body. Sorting out the water from other beverages make the whole system work harder.
Bon Appetit
James
You do not want to be on a low fat diet with anxiety. The brain is 85% lipids (fat) by volume....it loves fat and you must have cholesterol to manufacturer hormones including neurohormones. Every nerve cell in your body is wrapped in fat and the brain requires many fatty acids for healing.....it in fact loves butter. Too low fat and you are stripping the insulation off the nerves wiring, starving the brain from its major building blocks and wrecking the whole hormone feedback loops. Some of these loops are the switch for anxiety to stop.
Next blood sugar or glucose. Anxiety and stress burns huge amounts and when you run out the adrenals give you a nice jab of anxiety producing adrenalin to liberate more from the liver...sometimes hundreds of times a day if you do not eat right. We need to eat every 2 to 3 hours and include high quality protein, COMPLEX carbs and fats with each meal and snack. A diet high in simple carbs or junk food will almost insure your adrenals will make your anxiety neurons sit up and howl !!!
You brain runs on 100% glucose - it will make you insane if your don't insure a constant, high quality supply. Give it too much with low quality Glycemic simple carbs and it will revolt just as if you were starving it. This will cause an insulin spike which increases brain glutamate that is the rocket fuel for anxiety....and if you bathe neurons and cells in too high glucose concentrations is simply kills them. This is why diabetics have amputations, more Alzheimer's and blindness.
Your brain is happy when it gets a small drip of high quality glucose all day long.
Protein: every repair or recovery of body tissue requires high quality protein. Anxiety and stress use huge volumes of neurotransmitters and THE MAIN THING THEY ARE MADE OF IS PROTEIN. It is very difficult for a vegetarian to eat sufficient amino acid concentrations to replace these neurotransmitters and it takes longer for the body to assemble the amino acids into protein molecules from vegetable sources...can be done but you have to really know your nutrition and eat substantial quantities.
If you are taking a SSRI or benzo and not getting enough fats or proteins your medication is firing blanks.
Alcohol: the brain has zero pain receptors, numb the scalp and brain surgeons can poke around at will and never have you feel any pain. So when you feed the brain toxic substances it can't say ouch until it is so far damaged you have a mess on your hands. Want to know what the brain really thinks of alcohol - next time you have a really big cut pour alcohol on it...yep that what the brain wishes it could tell you !!
And here is the really big thing with alcohol: it binds to the same receptors as benzos....out BEST FRIEND GABA - the main inhibitory neurotransmitter that stops anxiety and panic. Drinking alcohol tends to piss off the receptors so GABA does not work well....and many times this receptor up regulation will not manifest for days after drinking. If you drink often it can take over a year for the receptors to repair...AND THEN YOU GET TO LIVE WITH ANXIETY THE WHOLE TIME>
Caffeine: Lets make this simple, caffeine from any source blocks the biding of the Neurotransmitter GABA. GABA is the brains major inhibitory neurotransmitter (read the main character in insuring your anxiety system is turned off). AND used often enough it can alter the shape of the GABA docking sites so your own natural GABA is working hard to plug the anxiety faucet and can't fit the holes.
Cigarettes - come on, over 1,000 chemicals and over 300 that are nero-toxic. May as well fix a fine Swiss watch with a hammer. In reality these chemicals are both excitory and inhibitory. It jerks the CNS from pole to pole and makes it hypersensitive.
Finally water: for millions of years our bodies have adapted to use pure water for all the physiology processes. You can hydrate with many man made substances but they are all stress on the body. Sorting out the water from other beverages make the whole system work harder.
Bon Appetit
James