Читать книгу The Mood Cure: Take Charge of Your Emotions in 24 Hours Using Food and Supplements - Julia Ross - Страница 47

Do you find yourself eating high-carbohydrate snacks in the late afternoons and evenings when both the light and your serotonin production start to sink? Does this really get out of hand during the darker months between Halloween and Valentine’s Day? Most of these SAD calories are nutritionally empty, or worse than empty, and they are as potent as drugs in the way they can manipulate your brain and body. They can set off bodywide stress, causing your pancreas to release insulin in order to remove the excess carbohydrates from your bloodstream and store them as fat. The insulin sweeps most of the amino acids out of your bloodstream, along with the carbs. Only one amino gets left behind—tryptophan—and it goes right into your brain, unimpeded by the other aminos that usually crowd it out.

Ice cream, cereal and milk, and hot chocolate are favorite nighttime fixes because they contain tryptophan (all milk products do) as well as sugar. Unfortunately, these sweet foods are also highly addictive and can quickly turn into unneeded pounds. More important, they also raise blood sugar levels too high and can put you at real risk of developing diabetes. Hundreds of our clients have inadvertently developed Type II diabetes, or come close to it, as a result of using sweets to raise their serotonin levels.

Whether you start to yearn for a Snickers bar at three P.M. or ice cream at nine P.M., the real question here is: are you craving carbs because your serotonin levels have dropped with the sun? If you’re a regular afternoon or evening craver, I’d bet on it. If you wake up in the night and eat carbs, it’s a dead certainty. Swallowing one or two pro-serotonin nutrients right before you’d ordinarily crave carbs will typically knock out these cravings on the spot and spare you the negative mood that may have directed you to the fridge in the first place.

Alcohol is another carbohydrate commonly used as compensation for low serotonin levels. Do you find yourself needing a beer, a glass of wine, or a cocktail before dinner, when serotonin levels start to drop rapidly? You won’t need to when you’ve raised your serotonin levels naturally. (Ironically, alcohol and other drugs actually reduce serotonin levels in the long run.)

Marijuana can alter many brain functions, including serotonin levels, which is why so many people smoke pot in the evenings to relax and get to sleep. But marijuana, like alcohol, ends up inhibiting serotonin production and can become addictive. It also has negative effects on brain, lung, heart, and reproductive functions.

One of the extraordinary virtues of natural serotonin boosting is that it breeds neither dependence nor diabetes. You’ll be pleased, as so many of our clients have been, to enjoy its safe, effective, and legal relaxation without any negative consequences. If you suspect that low serotonin has made you, like so many others, dependent on alcohol or pot, please also look into chapter 13.