Depression and Anxiety

Written by Cyndi

Cyndi is about educating. Her greatest love is to teach, both in the public arena and within the large corporate food companies, to enable everyone to make better choices so they too can enjoy greater health throughout their lives. Considered one of the world's foremost experts in Nutrition, Cyndi brings over 40 years experience, research and knowledge.

October 27, 2014

What Cyndi Recommends
Read Changing Habits Changing Lives and the reports recommended. Supplement your diet with the Changing Habits Colloidal Minerals, Probiotics, Inca Inchi and Greens. Invest in the Changing Habits Seaweed Salt and Rapadura Sugar to use in place of refined foods.

Reports Recommended

Depression
Drinking Soft Drinks
Declutter
Lying Labels

Just think about this: over the past 30 years, and particularly in the past five years, the rate of depression and anxiety has increased enormously. In the western world alone, depression is one of the most debilitating and expensive illnesses, costing billions of dollars a year. One in five westerners has some form of mental illness and around 6 per cent suffer serious depression. Considering most people are materially better off today and enjoy more convenience than existed just 30 years ago, you have to wonder what has caused the increase. Is it the pressures of the world, or is it a result of the foods we eat affecting the brain chemicals that balance mood, which in turn affects our coping skills?

There are three main chemical neurotransmitters in the brain that help send messages from one cell to the next. They are dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin. Dopamine and noradrenalin are the brain chemicals that keep us alert; they have a tendency to make us think more quickly and they increase motivation, mental acuity and productivity. Serotonin, on the other hand, is the calming brain chemical – it produces a relaxed, more focused, less anxious, less stressed, more euphoric feeling. Our levels of these neurotransmitters are directly related to the foods we eat.

Now I can see you reading with anticipation to find out which foods increase or decrease these chemicals, as there are always times in our life when we wish to have one or the other mood. It’s quite simple really: proteins – such as meat, fish, eggs, freshly shelled nuts, yoghurt, cheese, legumes and complementary proteins – cause an increase in the brain chemicals for alertness (dopamine and noradrenaline), while carbohydrates – such as wheat, rye, millet, oats, rice, bread, pasta and starchy vegetables – cause an increase in the brain-calming chemical, serotonin.

The brain synthesises these chemicals (neurotransmitters) from the amino acids tryptophan and tyrosine. (Amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein, are also present as individual amino acids in carbohydrates.) As tyrosine is the precursor to dopamine and noradrenaline, and tryptophan creates serotonin, you would think that an indulgence of protein with these two key precursors would cause all three chemical neurotransmitters to increase in the brain, thus causing calmness with alertness at the same time. But not so – once again the ingenuity of the body is such that this doesn’t happen.

The more protein you eat, the greater the tyrosine levels in your blood, thus causing an increase in the alertness chemicals in the brain (dopamine and noradrenaline). But this is not true for tryptophan. Tryptophan, tyrosine and four other amino acids enter the brain through the blood brain barrier (BBB), competitively, via the same mechanism. When we eat a protein, tyrosine and the four other amino acids become plentiful while tryptophan becomes scarce, therefore very little tryptophan can pass through the BBB. But when we eat a meal of carbohydrates, tyrosine and the other four amino acids become scarce, while tryptophan found in carbohydrates becomes the dominating amino acid, thus passing through the BBB easily with very little competition.

CHOOSE YOUR MOOD BY CHOOSING YOUR FOOD

Topics I discuss in the depression report; calming carbohydrates, peppy proteins, neutral fruit and vegetables, sabotaging fatty foods, antagonising alcohol, exhilarating caffeine, outstanding omega 3 fatty acids, vital vitamins and minerals, overboard overeating, quality foods, energising exercise,stimulating sunlight, sustaining sleep and mind bending medications.  Each report that I’ve suggested to read relates to foods that effect your moods.  Quality of foods determines the quality of your thoughts.  I also recommend you read my book Changing Habits Changing Lives.  And if you feel you have done everything with regards to diet and you are still depressed then the ultimate mind altering protocol that I suggest is the 4 Phase Fat Elimination Protocol available on this website.

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