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Let Food Be Your Medicine

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.

Anxiety, panic attacks and their opposite - calm - can all have a nutritional component to them. There are many foods, particularly some herbs, which will help to make you calmer. And quite a few foods which can make even the calmest cucumber agitated.

In the e-book part of my self-help kit (www.calmingwords.com) there's a section about the proven link between your diet and feeling calm.

That Section also provides information about the growing number of food and drink products guaranteed to make you very edgy and anxious. It's nowhere near as comprehensive as Dr Joseph Mercola’s book Total Health Program which you can read about on my favourite health website www.Mercola.com, but it does cover a great deal of useful information, which I’ve summarised here.

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.

THE TWO MAIN FOOD GROUPS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON ANXIETY
The two main food group types can be summarised into Acid and Alkaline foods. They can also 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. They're the foods your parents may have nagged you into eating when you were growing up.

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, acid foods actually cause restlessness.

THE NUMBER ONE ANTI-CALMING FOOD IS?
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're highly stimulating, therefore de-calming. That’s how they’re marketed – as substances that can drive you to a frenzy.

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 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, WHITE RICE.
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.

That advice can be summarised as 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. Even if you reduce the number of calories, if those calories are coming from white bread, white rice, white pasta your metabolism is still under threat. Your body will continue to secrete too much insulin.

SUGAR IS ANOTHER STRESS-INDUCING 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.

Another confession: 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 thought 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.

THE NUMBER ONE NUTRITIONAL ANGEL, THE BEST 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 (www.calmingwords.com). 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%.

Look out for my article on vitamins and minerals that keep you calm. For now, to your continued health and happiness.

Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles

Jeannette is a Melbourne-based consultant and solution-oriented counsellor specialising in establishing mentoring and coaching programs in businesses and Universities. As a counsellor she has successfully helped thousands of people who have anxiety and panic attacks, particularly in relation to public speaking. For FR+EE e-zine Oasis of Calm please go to: www.calmingwords.com/ezine_login.html

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