Julia Ross - The Mood Cure - Take Charge of Your Emotions in 24 Hours Using Food and Supplements

On November 13, 2000, I made a presentation to a scientific conference held in San Francisco on mood and the brain. 8My staff and I had been asked to review the files of one hundred randomly selected clients who had come to our clinic with significant mood problems. Of the one hundred, ninety-eight had reported major improvements in mood within two weeks, most within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, using the amino acids, the basic nutrient supplements, and the good-mood foods that you’ll be reading about in this book. Twelve weeks later, eighty-three had sustained or exceeded those improvements. The depression , anxiety , oversensitivity , and stress that had brought them to us in the first place had disappeared.

You can expect to experience the same kind of relief from your own false moods, just as quickly. After all, you’ll be using the same techniques. As you’ve seen, many of the nutritional strategies I’ve discovered were developed while I was directing treatment programs for people with addictions and eating disorders. As a result, they’ve been honed on some very serious false moods. If the Mood Cure worked for them, it’s very likely to work for you.

But the Mood Cure is not for everyone. I would love to be able to say that at our clinic we’ve learned how to eliminate all false mood problems, but I can’t. We do not specialize in, and have very little experience with, severe false mood states such as autism, psychosis, bipolar disorder, violent rage, or paranoia—the biochemical imbalances commonly referred to as mental illnesses. Other clinicians have had experience treating these conditions with natural therapies, sometimes very successfully. Suggestions on finding practitioners, clinics, books, and Web sites that can advise you on how to deal naturally with mood disturbances that The Mood Cure does not address can be found in the “Resource Tool Kit,” page 289. If you have such problems, please do not use the supplements suggested in this book without expert guidance. They could actually make your particular biochemical imbalances worse.

The first step in your Mood Cure, like the first step in any successful repair job, is to identify what needs fixing. In the next chapter, you can start getting down to particulars by filling out the Four-Part Mood-Type Questionnaire. After you’ve completed this false mood profiling, you can move on to the specific repair chapters and the excitement and relief of experiencing your own personal Mood Cure.

Once you’ve actually shed your false moods for good, you’ll be able to use psychotherapy for any remaining true emotional problems stemming from your early life or from more current difficulties. You’ll certainly be much better equipped to do effective work if you do decide to go into counseling. You’ll also find it much easier to pray and meditate and to exercise, rest, and relax. With this full array of emotional, spiritual, and physical resources available to you, you’ll be able to face whatever lies ahead with strength, serenity, and a sense of humor.

There’s a large chart mounted on the wall of our clinic that lists all the symptoms of the four false mood types. As soon as our clients walk through the door, their eyes are drawn and then glued to this chart. They’re fascinated by the four different groups of symptoms, exclaiming, “Yeah, that type is me, but that one isn’t,” or, “Wow! I have symptoms of more than one type,” or, “What does it mean if I have all the symptoms on the whole chart?” This deceptively simple chart was fifteen years in the making and is based on the thousands of client interviews and hundreds of research papers that enabled us to gradually identify each of the symptoms of the four false mood types. The questionnaire that you are about to fill out was adapted from this chart.

To identify your own false mood symptoms, start by circling the number next to any of the symptoms on the questionnaire that apply to you. Don’t minimize! Really think about it. If you’re in doubt about whether a certain symptom applies to you, ask someone honest who knows you really well. And don’t be frightened if you have most, or even all, of the mood symptoms on the entire questionnaire. Many of our clients do. It won’t be a problem. You’ll address them all at the same time, using a combination of amino acids and other nutrients.

When you’ve gone through all four parts of the questionnaire, go back and score each part to see which false mood type (or types) you seem to fit.

Circle the number next to each symptom that you identify with. Total your score in each section and compare it to the cut-off score. If your score is over the cut-off, or if you have only a few of the symptoms described in a section but they bother you (or those close to you) on a regular basis, turn to the chapter indicated.

3Do you have a tendency to be negative, to see the glass as half-empty rather than half-full? Do you have dark, pessimistic thoughts?

3Are you often worried and anxious?

3Do you have feelings of low self-esteem and lack confidence? Do you easily get to feeling self-critical and guilty?

3Do you have obsessive, repetitive, angry, or useless thoughts that you just can’t turn off—for instance, when you’re trying to get to sleep?

3Does your behavior often get a bit, or a lot, obsessive? Is it hard for you to make transitions, to be flexible? Are you a perfectionist, or a control freak? A computer, TV, or work addict?

3Do you really dislike the dark weather or have a clear-cut fall/winter depression (SAD)?

2Are you apt to be irritable, impatient, edgy, or angry?

3Do you tend to be shy or fearful? Do you get nervous or panicky about heights, flying, enclosed spaces, public performance, spiders, snakes, bridges, crowds, leaving the house, or anything else?

2Have you had anxiety attacks or panic attacks (your heart races, it’s hard to breathe)?

2Do you get PMS or menopausal moodiness (tears, anger, depression)?

3Do you hate hot weather?

2Are you a night owl, or do you often find it hard to get to sleep even through you want to?

2Do you wake up in the night, have restless or light sleep, or wake up too early in the morning?

3Do you routinely like to have sweet or starchy snacks, wine, or marijuana in the afternoons, evenings, or in the middle of the night (but not earlier in the day)?

2Do you find relief from any of the above symptoms through exercise?

3Have you had fibromyalgia (unexplained muscle pain) or TMJ (pain, tension, and grinding associated with your jaw)?

2Have you had suicidal thoughts or plans?

Total__________ If your score is more than 12 in part 1, turn to chapter 3, page 25.

3Do you often feel depressed—the flat, bored, apathetic kind?

2Are you low on physical or mental energy? Do you feel tired a lot, have to push yourself to exercise?