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THE DIET CURE
A review of The Diet Cure: The
8-Step Program to Rebalance Your Body Chemistry and End Food
Cravings, Weight Problems, and Mood Swings -- Now by Julia Ross,
M.A., New York: Penguin Books, 1999. ISBN 0 14 02.8652 7. 402
pages with index, $12.95.
At the end of April Susan and Liberty
teamed up with our friend Laura Ritch to attend a nutritional
seminar in Washington. Sponsored by the Weston Price Foundation,
the seminar examined the benefits of grass-fed beef -- grass
as opposed to grain fed. Almost all beef today is fed or at
least finished on grain, because grain adds that intramuscular fat
known as “marbling.” For the last 50 years American tastes have been
led in that direction. Unhappily, feeding grain to cattle
significantly changes (and lowers) the nutritional benefits in their
meat. It sharply lowers conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) content and
alters the Omega 3 – Omega 6 fatty acid balance (It ought to be 1:1
or 2:1). Grass fed beef, on the other hand, not only tastes good,
it retains those nutritional advantages. Since we are trying to
raise grass-fed beef, pork, and lamb (and the Ritches have already
been doing that successfully for a long time), Susan and Liberty
went to Washington to do their background work.
Among the many fascinating speakers they
heard was Julia Ross, a “nutritional psychologist.” She runs a
California clinic that treats eating and weight disorders with
“nutrient therapy and biochemical re-balancing, along with
counseling and education.” Susan and Lib bought her book, The
Diet Cure.
Ross’s approach begins with identifying one
of eight imbalances that cause food cravings and mood swings,
correcting the imbalances, and then maintaining health by diet – not
“dieting,” as you most likely think of it.
ESCAPE FROM MARGARINE
Most everybody has heard by now – and,
unfortunately, ignored – that white sugar and white flour aren’t
good for you. The bigger news is that the whole cholesterol/low fat
campaign may positively harm you. Most vegetable oils – corn, soy,
rapeseed (canola), safflower, peanuts, and cottonseed but not extra
virgin olive oil – are very fragile, and tend to go rancid quickly.
For you that means more free radicals and more heart disease and
cancer. (p. xvii). Here’s something else you’ll love: these
unsaturated vegetable oils sold you as “healthful” actually will
make you gain more weight than good old saturated fats like
butter and coconut oil (she doesn’t add “lard,” but I will. I
have no shame.) This story branches out much further. Your body
requires fats to function properly, and the “low fat” products
marketed so heavily contribute to fat starvation. Suprise! “low
fat” stuff can help you gain weight. So throw out that nasty
margarine that tastes like butter only to someone who has never
eaten butter and come home to butter!
Ross also warns against the widespread use
of soy and soy additives. According to some studies, soy products
can suppress your thyroid and alter your hormone levels. What does
that mean? YES! You are freed from tofu forever!
Here’s another surprise. Dieting (as you
know it) may (and often is) the cause of weight gain, not its
cure. The first diet depletes your body so badly that once it’s
over, your cravings drive you to gain more weight than before. Now
you are in the never-ending dieting cycle.
Working with drug addicts and alcoholics,
Ross heard that nutritional supplements could stop their cravings –
even for cocaine. When she began using them, she found they lowered
those cravings, and also their craving for sweets. In 1988 she
opened a clinic for people with eating disorders and weight
problems. When she used the same nutrients that she had given drug
and alcohol addicts, she found that the supplements “stopped food
cravings even more effectively than drug cravings, and had the
delightful side effect of eliminating mood swings, too.” (p. xx).
So what are the miraculous nutrients?
Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. From them your brain
makes “its most powerful pleasure chemicals” or neurotransmitters:
Serotonin “natural Prozac”
Dopamine/norepinephrine “natural
cocaine”
Endorphin “naturally
stronger than heroin”
GABA “naturally more relaxing than
heroin.”
EIGHT STEPS
Ross presents eight steps “to overcoming
the physical, bodily handicaps that can lead directly to food
cravings, emotional eating, low energy, and weight gain.” (xxi)
These are
1.
Correcting brain chemistry imbalances causing anxiety,
depression, and emotional eating.
2.
Ending low calorie dieting, which creates eating, mood,
energy, and weight problems.
3.
Balancing unstable blood sugar which causes moodiness and
sweet/starch cravings
4.
Repairing low thyroid function, especially low thyroid
function that doesn’t show up on the most-used test.
5.
Overcoming addictions to foods you’re allergic to.
6.
Calming hormonal havoc, which causes food craving and weight
gain.
7.
Eradicating yeast overgrowth, often triggered by antibiotics
or cortisone and causing carbohydrate cravings.
8.
Fixing fatty acid deficiency.
The Diet Plan then devotes a full
chapter to explaining each of these steps and the problems they
address. Without examining every one, let’s concentrate on the
amino acid supplements that are crucial to her plan. In her
Washington presentation she outlined four carbohydrate-addicted
brain types.
Type 1 is low in
serotonin. These people show
depression, negativity, obsessiveness, PMS, irritability, rage,
panic attacks, late day cravings, insomnia, fibromyalgia. Since
they are low in serotonin they need the precursor to serotonin, the
amino acid L-tryptophan (available now as 5-HTP) in the mid
afternoon and evening. (She also discusses the tragic events of
1989 when some bad batches of L-tryptophan killed 40 people and made
many other ill. In response the FDA stopped all US sales, although
an investigation showed that one Japanese company had produced all
the contaminated batches. 5-HTP -- 5-hydroxytryptophan -- is a
different version of tryptophan.) Tryptophan occurs naturally in
many foods, but plentifully in turkey.)
TYPE 2 is low in
endorphin. These folks are very
sensitive to pain (emotional or physical), cry easily, and crave
treats (food or drugs). D-Phenylalanine can help them.
TYPE 3 is low on GABA
(gamma amino butyric acid). Symptoms
here include stiff, tense muscles, stressed and burned out feeling,
inability to relax. GABA is not an amino acid, but is
available as a nutritional supplement.
TYPE 4 is low in
norepinephrine. Since norepinephrine
serves the body as a sort of natural caffeine, people who are
depressed, lack energy, drive, or focus, or have attention deficit
disorder may benefit from supplementing with L-tyrosine.
Finally, L-glutamine
tends to benefit all four types.
Susan and Lib came back convinced that
amino acids were the answer to all our problems but money. Justin
and I were elected guinea pigs, on the grounds that we are
occasionally somewhat irritable. I would vehemently dispute this,
but never mind. Let’s get on with the book review.
We started taking these five supplements –
5 HTP, D-Phenylalanine, GABA, L-Tyrosine, and L-Glutamine.
Then we all watched to see what would happen. I do suspect that a
certain sweetness and patience and energy that we had not manifested
before might have crept into our behaviour. All right, I’ll
admit it. We were both less irritable, and the effects (as
Ross predicts) were evident within 24 hours.
CHANGING YOUR DIET
Ross also has much to say about dieting –
much that is both welcome and accurate. Rather than the usual
carbohydrate (sweet and starch) laden American diet, she recommends
much more fruits and vegetables, lots of protein (Take that,
vegetarians!) and plenty of healthy fats and carbohydrates. In
fact, she recommends a diet of 3,000 calories or more a day.
[Actually, Ross is very considerate of vegetarians.] “If you have
been a `serious’ dieter, your average daily food intake in calories
may have dropped below the amount provided at the dreaded Nazi camp
at Treblinka: 900 per day.” According to the World Health
Organization, “starvation begins under 2,100 calories per day.”
Thus what you may have suspected all along
is true: you need food to live. Dieting truly is stupid, so break
out the butter and steak and chow down.
Here I have to shortcut details (or you’ll
never finish reading this article) but Ross’s dietary criticisms and
recommendations tally with what we’ve been learning from other
sources. Frankly, the whole country has been taken in by the
vegetable oil and cholesterol hoax, and by an eatables industry –
and agriculture -- that cares vastly more about their bottom line
than your health.
For us personally, eating right doesn’t
present a great problem. We live on a farm where we have
yard-raised eggs, grain-fed beef and pork, raw milk and butter, and
plenty of fresh or home-canned vegetables. And we raise it all on a
farm where we use no pesticides or herbicides and no hormone
treatments for the animals or confinement raising. If you live in a
city, you’ll have more trouble and expense eating sensibly. Then
again, you have to ask yourself, how much is my health worth?
BOTTOM LINE
Pay careful attention: my bottom
line advice is not that every living soul who reads this
review should run out and buy these supplements and start taking
them. Never do that without checking with a professional.
If you think you might benefit from them, get Ross’s book first,
read it, and then take it to a trustworthy health care professional
and discuss it. Even with that warning, I do encourage you to get
the book and read it at least. Many people will find help there for
particular illnesses and diseases, and everyone can benefit from the
dietary changes Julia Ross recommends.
-- F. Sanders
P.S.
Two reliable sources for high quality supplements are Vitamin
Research Products, 3579 Hwy 50 East, Carson City, Nevada 89701;
(800) 877-2447,
www.vrp.com and Tahoma Clinic
Dispensary, 801 SW 16th Street, Suite 121, Renton, Washington 98055
(425) 264
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