Category: Mental Health

I suffered from severe anxiety for most of my life. From shaking like a leaf during social situations, to all out vertigo and nausea in high stress work environments, to severe palpitations while chilling on the sofa (in other words for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever). I went through it all.

The low point anxiety-wise was when I was forced to give up driving due to increasingly severe attacks and what seemed like the beginning stages of agoraphobia.

A cocktail of medications only made me worse, driving my anxiety to new highs – literally – I suddenly began experiencing manic episodes in addition to the anxiety, and psychotherapists were flummoxed as to what was going on with me.

I’m happy to say that my life-long depression, anxiety and newly acquired bipolar disorder (according to the shrinks anyway!) all resolved thanks to the lifestyle and diet changes I discuss in my chat with Trudy Scott for her wonderful Anxiety Summit.

In addition to myself, and Dr. Ben Lynch of MTHFR.net who kindly introduced Trudy and I, you’ll find a number of speakers covering many aspects of natural anxiety treatment.

Details below…

Do you have anxiety or feel stressed and overwhelmed?
Do you get panic attacks?
Or feel awkward or uncomfortable in social situations?
Do you have obsessive thoughts or behaviors?
Do you have that busy mind that won’t switch off, negative self-talk and/or problems sleeping?
What about emotional or stress eating?
Or do you know someone who does?
Or do you work with clients or patients who have these symptoms?

Anxiety is on the rise and it can often be completely eliminated by addressing nutritional deficiencies and biochemical imbalances, removing toxins, improving the gut, addressing hormonal imbalances and eating real whole food!

My colleague and friend, Food Mood Expert Trudy Scott, is hosting a virtual FREE telesummit called, “The Anxiety Summit.”  She is the author of “The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood and End Cravings” and is on a mission to share the amazing healing powers of food and nutrients for anxiety and mood issues.

Between May 6 and May 20, 2015, she will be interviewing world-class experts and opinion leaders on the topic of anxiety and food.

Here are just a few of the amazing speakers and topics:
– Dr. Daniel Amen MD, “The Brain Warriors Way to Attacking Anxiety, Depression and Aging”
– Ann Louise Gittleman PhD, CNS, “The Parasite/Anxiety Connection”
– Julia Rucklidge PhD, “What if… Nutrition could Treat Anxiety and Depression?”
– Rebecca Katz MS, “Your Brain on Food: The Science and Alchemy of Yum for Alleviating Anxiety!”
– Lierre Keith, “Anxiety, Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet”
– Kaayla T. Daniel PhD, “Real Food for Anxiety:  Butter, Broth and Beyond”

Click this text to check out the complete speaker lineup.

You’ll hear the science and learn practical transformational tools you can apply right away.

Once you sign up (again, it’s free!), you will also receive a link to the page where you can download amazing gifts from many of the speakers, and get access to questionnaires and research.

Here are just a few of the gifts (and more are being added each day)

• “Top of the World” – a custom song co-created by Trudy and Amma Jo
• “Brain Warrior’s Way”: a 3-part online video series – from Dr. Daniel Amen
• “Parasites – Still the Greatest Masqueraders of All Time” – from Ann Louise Gittleman
• Folate video presentation along and methylation pathway planner – from Dr. Ben Lynch
• “Your Health Destiny”  – sneek preview chapters from Dr. Eva Selhub
• “Paleolicious Snack Ideas” – from Dr. Jill Carnahan
• “The Backpain Breakthrough” – series of videos by Joe Tatta
• “Be Souper: 7 Ways to Boost Your Energy and Health with Broth” and broth recipes by Kaayla Daniel
• The MindBody Toolkit, the first 3 chapters – from Dr. Kim D’Eramo
• Is Anxiety Scaring You to Death? from Dr. Kim D’Eramo
• The Pose that Reverses Depression video – from Dr. Kim D’Eramo
• Instant Elevation Technique video – from Dr. Kim D’Eramo
• The 3 Things Keeping You Sick and Tired self-diagnostic quiz – from Dr. Kim D’Eramo
• “Fooducator-approved movies you absolutely have to watch” – from Lebby Salinas
• “How to Rebalance Your Hormones with Food” and Recipes – from Magdalena Wszelaki
• “Micronutrients For Eliminating Anxiety” – from  Mira and Jayson Calton
• “10 Ways to Balance Serotonin Naturally” – from Dr. Peter Bongiorno
• “Grainflammation and Anxiety” – from Dr. Peter Osborne
• “The Power of Yum” – from Rebecca Katz
• “Making Fermented Vegetables” video series – with Summer Bock
• “Taster of My High Nutrient Diet” ebook – by Yasmina Ykelenstam
• A PERSONAL Micronutrient Sufficiency Analysis from Mira and Jayson Calton, micronutrient specialists, authors of Naked Calories
• 3-Chapters of OUR BEST SELLING BOOK: Rich Food, Poor Food – Mira and Jayson Calton, micronutrient specialists, authors of Naked Calories
• Micronutrient Miracle Guide to Reducing Stress, Anxiety and Depression from Mira and Jayson Calton, micronutrient specialists, authors of Naked Calories
• NUTREINCE SAMPLE PACK & COUPON from Mira and Jayson Calton, micronutrient specialists, authors of Naked Calories
• Fab 14 and Terrible 20 Wallet Guide from Mira and Jayson Calton, micronutrient specialists, authors of Naked Calories
• e-report on Micronutrient Competition from Mira and Jayson Calton, micronutrient specialists, authors of Naked Calories

You will also have the option to purchase the MP3s and/or transcripts (digital or CD version) of all the interviews if you’d like to keep them for your learning library.

I hope you’ll join the summit!

ps Listen from the comfort of your own home for FREE! And listen from your computer if you prefer.

pps. Be sure to share this information with family, friends and colleagues who you think may benefit from this summit, here’s the link: http://www.easywebautomation.com/app/?af=1625260

The Anti-cookbook and all liquid Anti-Detox Book, don’t treat any conditions, but are high in the high nutrient antihistamine and anti-inflammatory ingredients that have been instrumental in helping me feed myself on a limited diet. The Anti-cookbook features a six page list of antihistamine and anti-inflammatory foods and comes in regular and Paleo. 

The Low Oxalate Cookbook features antihistamine and anti-inflammatory rich recipes. 

Don’t miss the Low Histamine Beauty Survival Guide for non-toxic beauty tips, the skinny on histamine releasing (mast cell degranulating) beauty ingredients, antihistamine and anti-inflammatory beauty alternatives and the top brands natural brands I’ve found.

Take a peek at my other low histamine and antihistamine cookbooks for more high nutrient recipes and sign up to my mailing list for freebies. 

While you could say it’s pretty normal to be down in the dumps over having been sick for most of your life, I’ve often found it interesting that an impressive number of us with histamine intolerance, mast cell activation disorders and mastocytosis appear to suffer from crushing depression.

So convinced was I of the link, that I never really bothered to look it up for myself, until it dropped into my lap, as it did a few months ago when I shared the news that researchers in Finland had successfully treated schizophrenia with antihistamines, rather than anti-psychotics (read my post here). This wasn’t news to me given that I had previously experienced almost ALL the schizophrenia symptoms during high histamine episodes/attacks. Yes, even hallucinations.

I know, what more could a gal ask for?

An increase in the number of emails I get about a possible depression link finally lit a fire under my butt and I instinctively knew that NIH funded mast cell/histamine researcher Dr Theoharides [1] was the man to approach on this. His groundbreaking research has linked mast cells/histamine to: multiple sclerosis, autism, cancer, parkinson’s, alzheimers, depression, schizophrenia and more [2].

(Disclosure – I am a huge fan of his work).

He’s a busy guy, but sent over a bucket load of research (most of it too complicated for the layperson – myself included) and this line: Mast cells are definitely associated with depression due to release of cytokines that affect brain function.”

His research clearly shows why those of us with mast cell activation/histamine intolerance disorders are more likely to suffer from depression and other psych conditions – the kind that are likely to get us a psych (mis)diagnosis, rather than a mast cell histamine one. As I did, starting with simple anxiety diagnosis for the shaking I was experiencing, progressing to depression after I was prescribed downers (xanax), then into bipolar as the SSRI drove me into complete manic episodes and then down, down, down the rabbit hole for 8 years before I finally re-claimed my sanity through diet.

According to a growing body of research, by Dr Theoharides and others, shows that pro-inflammatory brain cytokines are implicated in depression  [3]. In English: mast cells cause inflammation in the brain, which causes depression. For all of you histamine intolerance folks: there’s histamine in the body already, stored in mast cells, until we need it for healing and other important body functions, and there’s the histamine we get from foods. More on that later…

Dr Theoharides notes that the role of inflammation in neuropsychiatric diseases was long suspected, but new findings report decreased mitochondrial function in as many as 60% of autism patients, “a neuropsychiatric developmental disorder showing many similarities with schizophrenia…[4]”

In short, neuroinflammation, involving mast cells, can manifest in many different ways. In some people it can cause disorders involving a loss of speech (autism) or psych disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar, major depression), or demyelination disorders like Multiple Sclerosis. Please understand, I’m not saying that autism is a psychiatric disorder.

Dr Theoharides chart

Dr T concludes, in an editorial for the Journal for Clinical Psychopharmacology, that: “there is no doubt that available evidence indicates brain mitochondrial dysfunction and heightened immune response in neuropsychiatric diseases. However, it is still hard to understand how in certain cases these changes affect mostly behaviour, whereas in others they lead to loss of speech (autism) or demyelination and mostly neurological problems (MS).[5]”

In my interview with her, pioneering mast cell doctor Marianna Castells shared her discovery (along with her teacher) of mixed organic brain syndrome:

“The cognitive changes consisted of diminished attention and memory, and the affective changes of anger, irritability, and, to a lesser extent, depression. These manifestations fluctuated with the level of disease activity, and appeared in some cases to respond to histamine antagonists and disodium cromoglycate, medications used to control the excessive mast cell activity. It is important for psychiatrists to be aware that mental status changes can represent psychiatric manifestations of mastocytosis, a readily treatable medical disorder. [6]”

The psychological manifestations of mast cell/histamine disorder can be so extreme, as to be heartbreaking. In our interview Dr Castells relayed the story of a woman committed to an institution by her family. She exhibited bipolar type tendencies and clouded thinking. By chance the woman fell over (not from a great height) and broke her collarbone. Someone was smart enough to wonder why such a young woman would break bones so easily (the majority of mast cell peeps have bone density issues due to disrupted calcium absorption), and so Castells was called in to consult. A quick round of testing revealed that her tryptase was elevated, in addition to her prostaglandins, which according to Castells are one of the reasons for brain fog, or “mixed brain syndrome” as she and her predecessor dubbed the condition 20 years ago. After a short treatment with mast cell meds and antihistamines, the woman was “cured” of her psych issues and released to her family.

I can’t imagine that was a very happy home coming.

All I can say is that I can’t stop thanking my lucky stars that I found my depression cure through diet. Not a low histamine diet, but rather a high nutrient diet rich in anti-inflammatory and antihistamine foods. The kind of diet that helps prevent cancer, alzheimer’s and certainly in my case, lifted the life long depression that inspired doctors to prescribe meds that flushed the best years of my life down the toilet, the depression that caused me, in my darkest days, to harm my body in an effort to feel anything through the numbness, the impenetrable haze of ambivalence towards my precarious non-existence.

Please don’t wait almost a decade, as I did, to examine your mast cells, histamine levels, and really, truly lift a microscope to your diet.

Please don’t forget antihistamine, pain killing foods can still hurt us, so please always check with your doctor before adding new foods to your diet. 

————-REFERENCES————-

[1] www.mastcellmaster.com

[2] www.mastcellmaster.com

[3 + 4] http://www.mastcellmaster.com/documents/brain-health/J-Clin-Psychopharm-2011-Brain-Inflammation.pdf

[5]  http://www.mastcellmaster.com/documents/brain-health/J-Clin-Psychopharm-2011-Brain-Inflammation.pdf

[6] http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/48/6/437.short

Any/all of this sound familiar?

Early symptoms may include:

Irritable or tense feeling

Trouble concentrating

Trouble sleeping

As the illness continues, the person may have problems with thinking, emotions, and behavior, including:

Isolation

Reduced emotion

Problems paying attention

Strongly held beliefs that are not real 

Thoughts that “jump” between different topics (“loose associations”)

Hearing or seeing things that are not there (hallucinations)

The condition whose symptoms are listed above is schizophrenia.

What does a serious psychiatric condition have to do with mast cell activation, histamine intolerance and mastocytosis? Very simply – histamine. It’s official – researchers in Finland say that schizophrenic psychosis can be treated with a large dose of antihistamines – H2 receptor blockers (similar to zantac/ranitidine) specifically [1]. While it’s easy to get very carried away jumping to conclusions, we can at this stage say that schizophrenia is either aggravated or caused in part by some kind of histamine involvement. Those of us who have experienced high histamine’s dark side – violent mood swings, temper tantrums, obsessive thinking or irrational fears, can attest to the mind altering effects of what an excess of in other non-mast cell challenged peeps causes nothing but the sniffles.

On a personal level – I’m sad to say that I have at some point experienced all of the aforementioned symptoms.

Irritable or tense: me after a glass of orange juice.

Trouble concentrating: brain fog anyone?

Trouble sleeping: histamine messes with the circadian rhythm. On one end of the scale it can give you never ending insomnia, or put you to sleep for days.

Isolation: my immediate instinct is to dive under the duvet and avoid all contact with the outside world.

Reduced emotion: wanting to crawl out of my skin was often accompanied by an out of body type feeling.

Problems paying attention: seriously? Yes. Big time.

CLICK HERE TO CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONALISED HEALING HISTAMINE PLAN. 

Strongly held beliefs that aren’t real: hmmm, where to start? How about the time I came home to a locked bathroom and became convinced I had disturbed a a burglar who was now locked in there (rather than the door having locked itself as a result of being slammed on my way out). Or the time I was sure that house painters were trying to enter the house at 3am to smoke joints. These two incidents seriously freaked me to the point where I almost called the cops (till I calmed down and common sense prevailed/my histamine level calmed down). Too many weird ones to name.

Thoughts that jump: served me well as a journalist, till I became incapable of stringing sentences together during attacks.

Hearing/seeing things that aren’t there: at times when my histamine was super high I would see things moving out of the corner of my eye, or ghastly faces/ monsters coming out of the dark to get me, or the more benign almost cinema screen like images that would appear just behind my eyelids as I attempted to get to sleep. Even a quick glance at a carpet/curtain pattern would turn into a seriously psychedelic experience. Oh, and let’s not get started on the auditory hallucinations.

An impromptu whip-around of my online groups revealed, once again, that I’m not the only freak in this road show, with many adding their own freaky experiences.

The hallucinations and delusions occurred at times of great stress when I felt what I called “warm brain” which I now associate with a very intense neurotransmitter fluctuation. I have swung from feeling intensely terrifying emotion to feeling nothing at all; almost as if I were watching someone else control my body from afar. Scary stuff that has not been part of my life for years. Interestingly, at the height of my “psychiatric” symptoms (in the run up to the Iraq War while working at CNN) I was given anti-psychotics, just to help me “get some sleep” mind you. Brings to mind the first doc prescribing just a little 0.25mg “baby xanax”. The anti-psychotics turned me into a zombie for two days and promptly found their way into the bin before I was able to convince the doc that xanax would allow me to actually do my job  rather than struggle to sit upright to do nothing but drool on myself.

Hopefully for those suffering full blown schizophrenic psychosis the antihistamine treatment will offer a more humane option. In light of this study (and others) I wonder if a diet high in nutrients and antihistamine foods might also offer some relief (as an adjunct to therapy), as outlined in the Anti-Cookbook: High Nutrient Antihistamine & Anti-inflammatory Recipes for Health.

——————————————REFERENCES————————————-

[1] http://www.healthcanal.com/mental-health-behavior/40385-new-treatment-for-schizophrenia-discovered-in-finland.html

Additional studies on the role of histamine in schizophrenia:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17349864

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15334189

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histamine#Schizophrenia

Those of you who follow my blog (or who know me through the forums) are familiar with my psych background: psychiatric misdiagnoses up the wazoo, accompanied by 14 different psych meds: antidepressants, benzodiazepines, anti-epileptics, mood stabilisers and sleeping pills. Shrinks really had me convinced that the anxiety, shaking, dizziness, depression, mood swings etc were simply bipolar, borderline personality and a bunch of others, that would require me being drugged to the gills for the next decade.

Interestingly, I was able to withdraw from four concurrent meds, against the advice of several shrinks, in a terribly short time, once I fixed my diet. Practically overnight, within days of starting Dr Fuhrman‘s Eat to Live diet, I found my mind buried under the layers of numbed out grey matter and misfiring neurons. Within weeks, despite working 20-24 hour days as a journalist during the Lebanese War of 2006, I was able to reclaim my brain from the haze. I did so under the supervision of a lovely psychologist in Beirut, who basically made sure I was still playing with a full deck.

I would never ever recommend withdrawing at my speed. I was incredibly lucky not to end up in a chronic withdrawal syndrome. Please check out my friend Monica’s incredible Beyond Meds website. She shares her misadventures in psychiatry, how to withdraw safely from meds, and how she ultimately found out that histamine intolerance was behind a number of symptoms.

But after fixing my diet, things went awry, probably because while eating healthy was an improvement, a number of the foods I added were actually high histamine. And so the rashes that had plagued me throughout most of my life made a come back just a year later, as did the nausea, vomiting and a few others. Reaching crisis point with no answers whatsoever, I was once again convinced by friends and doctors that I had bipolar disorder. It was hard to argue – my moods flipped faster than a McDonald’s burger jockey. And so I went another few bouts with with mood stabilisers and alprazolam (xanax) which I had noticed also eliminated my hives. I figured I had already withdrawn once, doing it again wouldn’t be an issue. Or so I was told.

A few scary episodes led me down an alternative path. After an initial blood pressure crash, my heart rate would rise to 24o bpm and my throat would begin to constrict. Scary stuff, but all part of my bipolar diagnosis as far as the docs were concerned.  But it all started coming together in Cairo when I stumbled onto xanax’s properties as an H1, H2 and muscarinic receptor antagonist. This was one of the first clues that I was dealing with a histamine disorder rather than being headed for the loony bin. The incredible relief I experienced following a three day fast (as recommended by Dr Fuhrman) ended in a heartbeat when I ate a piece of zucchini. At that point, my body was so reactive and in such a heightened state of inflammation, that even one of the lowest histamine foods caused horrific itching and tinnitus.

And so began my journey on the low histamine diet. Within months I was able to bin the antidepressants, mood stabilisers and sleeping pills but I clung to my antihistamines and xanax till I finally dedicated myself 100% to my recovery, choosing to focus on an anti-inflammatory low histamine diet, with no cheats. In July 2012 I said goodbye to meds and have never looked back. If you suspect that your psychiatric symptoms are due to histamine’s effects on the brain/mood/neurotransmitters, you’re not alone. Finally some in the medical establishment are sitting up and taking notice, and some even also suffer from a histamine condition. If you’re lucky enough to live in Boston and are need of support in exploring how diet affects your mood/psych symptoms, please contact Judy Tsafir, M.D. I highly recommend reading her article on histamine intolerance.

Don’t forget to read my post on how histamine causes anxiety symptoms.