Читать книгу The Mood Cure: Take Charge of Your Emotions in 24 Hours Using Food and Supplements - Julia Ross - Страница 66

Levels of the amino acid tyrosine are known to be low in people with low-cat depressions.³ Tyrosine, found plentifully in high-protein foods like beef, fish, and eggs, provides the unique raw ingredient that your brain uses to produce all three big cats, dopamine, norepinephrine, and adrenaline. Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology initially demonstrated that tyrosine supplementation could increase the cats dramatically.⁴ Many subsequent studies have found that tyrosine could produce impressive antistress,⁵ antidepressant,⁶ and pro-concentration⁷,⁸ results, just as we’ve seen firsthand with so many of our clinic’s clients.

For over fifteen years we’ve been successfully using tyrosine to overcome apathetic depression and attention deficits. We’ve watched as hundreds of flat, tired, easily distracted clients were revitalized soon after taking a few capsules of tyrosine. Typically, it takes only ten or fifteen minutes for this superabsorbable amino supplement to reach the brain and start turning on the lights.

A particularly dramatic example of tyrosine’s effects occurred during the initial meeting with a young Native American man, Stan, who was so depressed and unfocused that he could hardly talk, although he had traveled three hours to get to our clinic and clearly wanted our help.

Stan came from a family where low moods and alcoholism abounded. He’d been in counseling for several years but never got much benefit from it. When I asked him to point on the mood type chart to the negative mood symptoms he was feeling right then, he immediately picked out the symptoms of the blahs—apathy, exhaustion, introversion, and poor concentration—and said, “I’m really ‘down,’ and I’m so tired all the time.” I could see that he was not going to be able to proceed with the interview without help, so after quickly conferring with our nutritionist, I handed him a capsule of tyrosine.

As I’d hoped, Stan began to come to life soon after taking his first capsule. Within ten minutes it had him smiling and moving around comfortably in his chair. Most important, he started to talk, so we were easily able to complete his work-up. Stan took his tyrosine home and continued to take it and feel much less depressed, and much more alert and focused, from that day on. He did better work on the job and started socializing easily with people for the first time in his life.

One thing puzzled us about Stan’s recovery: He got dramatic results from an unusually small amount of tyrosine. The most likely explanation, we later learned, involved his Native American ancestry, which made him by nature a more efficient nutrient absorber than European Americans tend to be. This fact is attributed to a “thrifty” gene that historically allowed Native Americans to extract maximum nutrients from a sparse diet.

While Stan was fortunate in this regard, I can assure you that even with less efficient digestive systems, European Americans also get immediate benefit from tyrosine, they just need to take a little more of it. You’ll get a lot more information later in the chapter on exactly how tyrosine supplements work, but now let’s take a look at how you and Stan landed in the dumps in the first place.