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© Copyright 2005 Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
Food and anxiety, panic and
calm
There are many foods, particularly some herbs, which will help to make you calmer.
In the e-book part of my self-help kit
Calming Words, the chapter called
Let food be your medicine offers advice about the proven link between your diet and feeling calm. By
diet, I don’t mean a program to become slimmer, I mean ‘diet’ in the sense of everything you eat and drink.
That Let food be your medicine
chapter also provides information about the growing number of food and drink products guaranteed to make you very edgy and anxious. That chapter
is nowhere near as comprehensive as Dr Joseph Mercola’s book Dr Mercola’s Total Health Program which
you can read about on my favourite health website
Mercola.com but it does cover a great deal of useful information most of which I’ve summarised in this summer
edition of Oasis of Calm. Yes, it is summer and very hot here in
Melbourne.
Just so you know, Dr Mercola’s site is not a commercial one and I am
not an affiliate to that site – in fact there are none. I only mention him as I often do, because his site is filled with useful no-cost health
advice. I’ve bought his book and it really is a health program rather than just another book about losing weight.
So as I said, my chapter is not as comprehensive as some of you may
want, but it sets out the two main food group types and their effects. The two groups can be summarised into Acid and
Alkaline foods and yes. They can be characterised as Good and Bad.
Unfortunately, in the Bad Food camp are all the foods we’ve been trained in the last thirty years or so to looooove.
Cakes, biscuits, ice-creams, - the list is endless.
Building a healthy body is
building a calm body
The alkaline foods are the ones that build healthy calm bodies and minds. The foods in that group are the ones your parents may have nagged you
into more when you were growing up. I only say may because many parents actually encouraged a whole generation of children to think that fast
foods, high sugar and highly salted foods were just fine. They didn’t have the time or skills to cook nutritional meals, so a quick trip to the
local hamburger chain, or fried chicken outlet became the order of the day. Literally.
Guess you figured it out: the foods and drinks under the heading of
Acid food group are definitely anti-calming. That’s not open to debate any more. As well as being
anti-calming, a number of negative effects, acid foods actually cause restlessness.
And the number one
anti-calming food is? Caffeine.
What’s right up there at the top of the list of acidic foods?
That’s right:
Caffeine.
By now, you know that one of the reasons you feel you “need” your
coffee, is that the substance is highly addictive. If you can’t kick your caffeine addiction, please make a personal commitment, from this moment
on, to control it.
I can’t be hypocritical. I
drink one cup of coffee per day. Never more than one. At one stage, I kicked the habit completely and may
do that again. For the moment, it’s one coffee a day. No teas except caffeine-free herbal teas.
Soft drinks including colas have quite high amounts of caffeine, so they’re off my diet. There are some newer non-alcoholic beverages with
guarana in them and once again, they are highly stimulating. That’s how they’re marketed – as substances that can
drive you to a frenzy.
I know that you’re an intelligent person.
If you want to de-stress without buying any medication, yet more books, CD or anything else, the first place you have to look at is your diet.
We know that coffee and caffeine in cola drinks, tea and some other
products – we know that they are stimulants. They don’t calm you down. They stimulate, agitate,
energise, whatever way you want to put it.
That’s why I say they cause restlessness.
Foods with a high Glycaemic
Index (GI)
The other major villains in the acidic camp are the foods which have a high Glycaemic Index (GI):
Preservatives, sugar and refined
carbohydrates
That immediately means that all preserved meats, particularly salami,
ham and bacon are just not good for you. Let’s not radically alter your eating patterns overnight. If you
like a salami (or ham or bacon) sandwich and you have two sandwiches with ham/salami/or bacon each week, cut it back to one a week.
After about a month, cut back to one sandwich with preserved meats a
fortnight. Then cut back to one a month, one a quarter. After a few months, see how you feel.
It’s also important to look at the labels on the healthy foods you’re buying to make sure that they are not soaked in preservatives.
Refined carbohydrates –
white flour
The same with white rice and white pasta and all things made with highly refined white flour – cakes, biscuits, pies, pastries and so on. In my
Calming Words e-book I provide more detail about the importance of
the Glycaemic Index (GI). You can go to any Diabetes Institute and read their (usually) no-cost information about GI.
There’s also information on the Internet about why eating low GI foods is important in any health program.
High GI = too much insulin
Very briefly, foods with a high GI cause our bodies to secrete insulin in order to keep our sugar levels on an even keel. The more our bodies are
required to balance our sugar level by secreting insulin, the less effectively our bodies metabolise all foods.
That’s one reason why losing weight is very difficult if you continue to eat refined carbohydrates, sugar and
preserved foods.
Have you ever tried really cutting back on calories, only to find that
you lose a bit of weight, plateau then put it back? Why?
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If your main eating regimen still contains white bread, white pasta, white rice and little sweet “treats”, your metabolism is still under threat.
Your body will continue to secrete too much insulin.
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Sugar is another
stress-related food
Sugar is one of the many substances we eat and drink that make us even more jumpy than normal. You can see its immediate effects on very young
children. Even people who are not particularly interested in healthy eating will say about their little child : “Oh
look at him! He’s always so hyper (active) after he’s had those lollies (that candy, those sweets).”
Most of us can see that eating candy with particular colours make us very agitated: blue and green artificial colourings are the worst.
I love sugar but I’ve had to cut it out of my eating regimen, apart
from a very occasional treat like a birthday cake. I have such an obviously adverse reaction to it that although I though I could never do it, I
have had to break the sugar cycle.
Monitor your own reaction to sweet things.
Do you love eating an ice cream at the movies but feel quite tired most days? That general low level fatigue could very well be due to
over indulgence in refined sugar.
Now for the good foods and the
good news
The calming foods are the ones in the low glycaemic index (GI) groups – proteins, good fats, the whole grained breads, whole meal pastas, brown or basmati rice, fresh raw fruits and
vegetables.
The way our consumption of sugar and refined flour has escalated in
the last 100 years, it now seems like all the enjoyable foods are the ones in the acidic camp. In the end it’s your choice.
It’s also a matter of habit.
You can become used to the taste of foods that support your health rather than deplete it. I know that after months of basmati rice or brown
rice, I now find white rice pretty tasteless.
I must confess that on my recent trip to Paris I couldn’t resist their
white bread baguettes but generally I’ve found that switching to whole grain bread means the bread is tastier and I eat about a 1/10 of what I used to it.
The number one nutritional
angel is the ultimate fast food – sprouts.
Apart from eating them raw, the very best way to eat a number of vegetables and grains is to sprout them.
For example, the vitamin B content of oats soars by 200% when
sprouted. I provide more information about the nutritional value of sprouts in
Calming Words. Here I just
want to alert you to their amazing health benefits.
Alfalfa sprouts have more
chlorophyll than spinach, kale, cabbage or parsley. Soybean sprouts have 28% protein – twice that in eggs and only 10% of the fat. Lentils,
recognised as a great source of protein, when sprouted comprise 26%.
Vitamins and minerals to
help you de-stress: Vitamin B – the great anti-stressor
You may have seen in Pharmacies/Drugstores and health food stores, that the B group vitamins are usually marketed as anti-stress. In the main,
that claim is truthful. With a good diet, I doubt very much that you need to spend a growing amount of money on vitamin supplements.
Among the B group, vitamin B5 is a particular hero.
You’ll find that in peanuts, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and some meats. Beans, lentils, pulses, bran, wheatgerm,
and all green leafy vegetables will supply all the vitamin B you need.
The vitamin A found particularly in raw carrots, eggs, butter, leafy
green vegetables is another well researched counter to stress.
Vitamin C – found in kiwi fruit, blackcurrants, blueberries as well as
the traditional vitamin C fruits of oranges and pineapples. If, like me, you love Brussels sprouts, you’re lucky because they’re not only a
source of Vitamin C but also of antioxidants and fibre.
The vitamin E found in eggs, dairy products and raw fruit is also a
powerful antioxidant.
Magnesium, the mighty mineral
Found in wholegrain flour and cereal seeds, Magnesium helps fight stress. It’s absolutely vital for any of you who have to endure muscle cramps, or restless
legs syndrome.
Helpful herbs
There is now enough epidemiological evidence to support the fact that the following substances have a calmative effect on the body. As well as
that, they are known to be non-addictive.
St John’s
Wort is often prescribed as an anti-depressant.
The warning here is that if you have been diagnosed with depression, and you’re taking a prescription medication for that condition,
please don’t touch
St John’s
Wort.
I take
St John’s
Wort when I’m working on projects like
Calming Words.
I’m not used to typing, and when I have to spend hours, and hours (and hours) at a computer screen, my eyes sometimes develop a very annoying little twitch.
Nothing seems to help that as much as
St John’s
Wort.
Valerian
was used extensively in the 19th century as a sleeping potion. Although there are some people who are slightly allergic to it, it is
an excellent help for those of you who have to put up with insomnia.
L-Theanine:
In addition to relaxation, research suggests that L-theanine may have other positive benefits with no known downside. Those benefits include,
improving learning performance, heightening mental acuity - neurotransmitter, and promoting concentration.
L-theanine takes effect within 30 minutes after consumption.
It is considered to be safe based on its historical use as a component of tea. It is estimated that a heavy tea drinker (6-8 cups daily) will consume between 200 to 400 mg of L-theanine
daily.
Other herbs known to aid in the body’s response to stressors – living
in the 21st century being a great source of stress – are Passion Flower, Ginkgo Biloba,
Schizandra, Chamomile Extract, Jujube Seed and Inositol.
© 2005 calmingwords.com. All rights reserved.
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