The Food-Mood Solution

Jack Challem

Description

Renowned nutrition expert Jack Challem isolates the nutritional triggers of bad moods, providing solutions that will help you stabilize your moods, gain energy, sleep better, handle stress, and be more focused. He lays out a clear-cut, four-step plan for feeding the brain the right nutrition, presenting advice on choosing the right foods and supplements as well as improving lifestyle habits to help regulate mood swings.
Foreword by Melvyn R. Werbach, M.D.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

PART I The Food-Mood Connection.

1 How Food Affects Your Mood.

2 How Life’s Stresses Do a Number on Your Moods.

3 Neuronutrients, Moods, and Your Mind.

PART II How to Improve Your Moods.

4 The First Step: Take Your Supplements.

5 The Second Step: Eat Mood-Enhancing Foods.

6 The Third Step: Be More Active.

7 The Fourth Step: Begin Changing Your Life Habits.

PART III Improving Your Specific Mood and Behavior Concerns.

8 Dealing with Irritability, Anger, Aggressiveness, and Violent Behavior.

9 Reducing Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior.

10 Reducing Distractible and Impulsive ADHD-like Behavior.

11 The Overweight-Prediabetes Connection to Mood Swings.

12 Dealing with Down Days, Depression, and Bipolar Disorder.

13 Dealing with Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

Afterword.

Appendix.

Selected References.

Index.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Santé mentale & traumatisme
• Diététique
• Santé mentale
• Santé mentale
• Estrés
• Overeating
• Depression
• Diet
• Stress
• Health
• Anger
• Fitness
• Nutrition
• diététique

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118040683
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Our Society’s Increasingly Negative Mood
How Many People Have Bad Moods?
What Causes Bad Moods?
The Nutrisocial Concept: Where Society and Eating Habits Intersect
What’s Different about This Book
Why I Wrote This Book
 
PART I - The Food-Mood Connection
 
Chapter 1 - How Food Affects Your Mood
 
How Blood Sugar Affects Your Mood
Take the Mood Quiz
The Bigger Picture
Which Types of Mood Problems May Be Food-Related?
Nutritional Deficiencies Are Common
Our Amazing Neurotransmitters
How Are Men and Women Different in Their Moods and Behavior?
 
Chapter 2 - How Life’s Stresses Do a Number on Your Moods
 
The Nutrisocial Roots of Mood and Behavior Problems
Changes throughout History in the Foods We Eat
Changes in the Way We Live
Nutrisocial Pressure Points
The Starbucks Syndrome
Marketing through Anxiety
Are You Stressed?
 
Chapter 3 - Neuronutrients, Moods, and Your Mind
 
Neurotransmitters That Calm or Stimulate
Neurotransmitters and Neuronutrients
Neurotransmitters That Relax Your Mind
Neurotransmitters That Stimulate Your Mind
Other Types of Neurotransmitters and Neurotransmitter-like Substances
Other Major Influences on Your Moods
Basic Neuronutrient Concepts
 
PART II - How to Improve Your Moods
Chapter 4 - The First Step: Take Your Supplements
 
Supplements Organized by Mood and Behavior Problem
Essential Neuronutrients for Improving Your Mood and Behavior
Protein and Individual Amino Acids That Improve Mood and Behavior
Herbs That Improve Mood and Behavior
Hormones That Improve Mood and Behavior
 
Chapter 5 - The Second Step: Eat Mood-Enhancing Foods
 
Discover the Joy of Cooking
My Ten Guidelines for Mood-Enhancing Eating Habits
Main Courses for Dinner
Hot and Cold Sauces and Marinades
Marinades
On the Grill
Side Dishes for Dinner or Lunch
Very Fast Lunches
Lunches
Salads for Lunch and Dinner
Salad Dressings
Breakfast
Sample Two-Week Meal Plan
 
Chapter 6 - The Third Step: Be More Active
 
Physical Activity and Mood
How to Make Your First Move
 
Chapter 7 - The Fourth Step: Begin Changing Your Life Habits
 
Your Personal Boundaries
Reshuffle Your Priorities
Unclutter and Simplify Your Life
Create a More Balanced Life
 
PART III - Improving Your Specific Mood and Behavior Concerns
Chapter 8 - Dealing with Irritability, Anger, Aggressiveness, and Violent Behavior
 
Get Aware, Get Willing, and Get With It
Anger and Physical Violence
Sarcasm and Passive-Aggressive Behavior
Vital Exhaustion—A Particular Type of Anger
Dealing with Premenstrual Irritability
Eating Habits
Helpful Supplements
Lifestyle Recommendations
 
Chapter 9 - Reducing Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior
 
Feelings of Anxiety, Panic, and Obsessive-Compulsiveness
Anxiety Attacks, Panic Attacks, and Panic Disorder
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior
 
Chapter 10 - Reducing Distractible and Impulsive ADHD-like Behavior
 
Distractible, Impulsive, and Addictive Behavior
Impulsive Behavior
Distractibility and Poor Focus
Impulsive-Addictive Behavior
 
Chapter 11 - The Overweight-Prediabetes Connection to Mood Swings
 
Mood Swings, Tiredness, Mental Fuzziness, and Overweight
 
Chapter 12 - Dealing with Down Days, Depression, and Bipolar Disorder
 
Waking Up to Down Days
Mild, Moderate, and Other Forms of Depression
The Ups and Downs of Bipolar Disorder
 
Chapter 13 - Dealing with Alcohol and Drug Abuse
 
How Alcohol and Drugs Affect Mood and Behavior
More Fundamental Effects on Mood and Behavior
 
Afterword
APPENDIX - Resources for Supplements, Foods, and Additional Information
SELECTED REFERENCES
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Copyright © 2007 by Jack Challem. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Challem, Jack.
The food-mood solution : all-natural ways to banish anxiety, depression, anger, stress, overeating, and alcohol and drug problems / Jack Challem ; foreword by Melvyn R. Werbach.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-471-75610-1 (cloth)
1. Mental health—Nutritional aspects. 2. Mood (Psychology)—Nutritional aspects. 3. Nutritionally induced diseases. I. Title.
RC455.4.N8C44 2007
616.89’0654—dc22
2006021036
 
For Helen
FOREWORD
The evidence for a body-mind connection in health and disease is overwhelming. Our bodies and minds are deeply interconnected and mutually dependent. As but one example, we’ve long known that optimists tend to live healthier and longer lives compared with pessimists, and that stress and depression increase our risk of disease. Why is this? When we’re happy, our bodies and minds make numerous health-promoting chemicals. When we’re sad or angry, our bodies and minds make many disease-promoting chemicals.
As self-evident as a unified, integrated approach to healing may be, we are just now emerging from many centuries in which the body and the mind were treated as if they were totally separate entities. How misguided this dichotomy has been! The same nourishing blood that flows through our hearts also feeds our brains. Although Western medicine is slowly awakening to integrative concepts, it still suffers from the remnants of its body- or -mind heritage. The training of mental health practitioners is frequently restricted to either psychological or physical approaches to treatment. All too often, a person’s mental health, emotional feelings, and behavior continue to be treated as if they have nothing to do with physical health.
It’s not that a purely psychological or a purely physical approach is wrong. The problem is that a limited approach will produce only limited results. The power of an integrative approach is that it weaves together multiple interventions, increasing the chances of improvement. An integrative approach to negative moods and behavior doesn’t seek only a single cause. Rather, it usually identifies many intertwined causes. Likewise, an integrative approach doesn’t treat a problem in just one way. Rather, it treats the problem in as many ways as possible. Such multipronged treatments focus on methods that are safe, effective, easy to follow, and inexpensive.
So many self-help books offer “do this” or “take that” suggestions for improving moods, behavior, and relationships. These books provide some useful advice, but they frequently suffer from too limited a perspective. This tunnel vision ultimately fails the reader because it ignores so many potentially helpful approaches. Not surprisingly, the results of such narrow approaches are often disappointing.
In his latest book, The Food-Mood Solution , Jack Challem avoids these common pitfalls. He draws on his training as a sociologist and his experience in the field of nutrition to describe what could be called the body-mind-nutrition connection. What has nutrition got to do with moods and behavior? It is nutrition that feeds both body and mind. The food we eat supplies the biochemical basis for everything that happens (or should happen) in our bodies. Nutrients enable our bodies to turn genes on and off, to catalyze the tens of thousands of necessary chemical reactions that occur every second of every day, to enable the functioning of our heart and lungs and skin, and to make the many essential brain chemicals that influence our moods and behavior.
It is easy to consider nutrition the missing link in modern medicine, when it should rightfully be treated as the foundation of health. In my many years of psychiatric practice, I frequently found that different people with identical complaints responded to different treatments. These differences are related to individual variations in genetics, stress, lifestyle, and nutrition. I learned early on that nutrition was one of the most important aspects of an individual’s health to consider, and that knowledge of how nutrition affected mood and