Posts Tagged: Serotonin

Bloating, Inflammation and Humidity

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Sweat and Bloating

By Julia Gumm Boy, things are heating up here in the northern hemisphere. In my neck of the woods, we recently saw heat indexes in the high 100′s, accomplished in part by relative humidity hovering around 90%. In keeping with the theme of high numbers, my weight scaled up as well. Going with the flow, I guess. Does this happen to any of you? Heat and humidity set in and suddenly you’re retaining so much water you look like you’re seven months pregnant? Because it happens to me. Along with the belly, I experience swelling in my fingers, knees and any place in my back that was giving me mild trouble prior to the change in weather suddenly becomes a debilitating injury of dramatic proportions. It seems there’s an uptick… Read more »

Intestinal Bacteria and Obesity

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firmicutes

Before we jump into a very fascinating topic, I must first mention that my latest bestselling book (#1 of 22,000 listings in Nutrition on Amazon), Eat for Heat: The Metabolic Approach to Food and Drink, is currently available at a heavily-discounted price.  If you haven’t had the chance to read it yet, now’s the time to get it – and tell your friends about it too.  Buying it, pressing the “like” button, and writing a short 1-paragraph review while you’re there would be a big help in moving it ahead of all the constipation-inducing, sex-drive killing, and otherwise metabolically-suppressive diet books currently ranked above it.  If you’ve already purchased it, consider giving a 99-cent “donation” by scooping it up on Amazon, or buying it for a friend or family member perhaps. … Read more »

Postpartum Hormonal Changes

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postpartum

I decided to take on this topic today for several reasons.  One reason is that I am currently working with many women who are in the postpartum period, and I’m sure there are many more out there that will read this post – both now and in the future.  Another reason is that changes in hormones are often brushed aside like some kind of “excuse” in the minds of your typical average Joe.  But the postpartum period is a powerful reminder that the hormones are in charge of us, not the other way around.  We need more than a good “pep talk” to overcome the power of hormonal influences upon our bodies and brains.  Lastly, one postpartum mom I have been speaking with has lost 35 pounds in 12 weeks… Read more »

Reducing Serotonin Levels

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bim_sunrise

I’m not a fan of exhaustive lists that are meant to cover absolutely every possible way that some miscellaneous biochemical, of which there are a bajillion, are affected by our diet and lifestyle.  Trying to simply research one of them recently, serotonin, has nearly turned my brain into scrambled eggs.  Actually, that’s a terrible metaphor as my brains probably look, taste, and have some nutritional similarities to scrambled eggs regardless of my current research project (snoop du jour?).  But you know what I mean. In the last post I discussed some of the dangers of serotonin.  When looking at the big picture of aging, inflammation, mitochondrial respiration, metabolism – that stuff that is a recurring theme in almost all illnesses, serotonin is worthy of mention.  It’s not worthy of mention… Read more »

The Sadder Side of Serotonin

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SerotoninSun

Are you sad?  Depressed?  Tired?  Crave them evil #$%#ohydrates?  Well hell son you just need you some serotonin!  Serotonin makes you happy!  Whee!!! The research and cultural status quo on serotonin doesn’t make much sense, and is full of contradiction.  Strangely, everyone seems to be madly in love with serotonin (people even have tattoos celebrating it – I hope they don’t read this post!) and is fully satisfied with the label of “happy juice.”  Serotonin makes you happy, everyone seems to believe, and if you aren’t happy then well, let’s figure out how to get more serotonin in ya.  Buck up little camper, we’ll beat that slump, together. When everyone in the media, in the health field, and beyond start to collectively believe in a very simple and narrow story about… Read more »

Ending Emotional Eating

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First of all, man am I glad to be back home. New York City was awesome this trip, and I’ll be writing about my food adventures there at http://180kitchen.wordpress.com/ very soon. But all in all it felt like a competition to see how much caffeine, alcohol, sugar, nitrates, and vegetable oil I could get into my system. I’m more than ready for a breather from that. I’ve never been so glad to see ground beef, coconut oil, sweet potatoes, and spinach. In fact, the burger I ate for breakfast this morning was so large I started singing “Everybody Wants Some.” I actually filmed it below. Any resemblance to a young John Cusack is purely coincidental. Anyway, time to discuss what is a huge and extremely prevalent problem in the modern… Read more »

FUMP Day 24

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Business as usual over the past several days… The diet is going just fine and seems to be continuing to get better and better. I’ve even been able to exercise at fairly normal levels, going for several short jogs over the past three days, as well as do some brief resistance exercise. I must confess however, that I did consume something not of animal origin. Yes, I know, I’m an evil plant killer, what can I say. My excuse is that I’m moving from Hawaii back to the motherland of Carbondale, CO in just 9 short days. That means that everybody who knows me wants to hang out and watch me have a drink or two, and well, that’s exactly what I did on the evening of day 23. I… Read more »

FUMP Day 8

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Today was definitely the most easy-breezy day. The system feels like it’s starting to normalize. Sleep was a little better. My eyes did not glow red when I asked for things like kegs of beer. I’m really having to remind myself to eat now because I just don’t think about food or have any hunger signals. Crazy I know. Back to the conversation on up and down regulation however before leaving that near and dear topic:When you get off of a beta-endorphin spiking substance for example, or even quit a beta-endorphin spiking activity like intense exercise, receptor sites for beta-endorphin begin to open up again. The lower the levels of endorphin, the more receptor sites are open. This is what sets a person up for relapse. Consider the simple scenario… Read more »

FUMP Day 6

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I’m noticing some really strange symptoms all of the sudden. The tips of my ears are slightly pointed. This seems really odd. Just came out of nowhere. In addition to that, I’m noticing a few hairs growing in on my forehead. It’s the weirdest thing. But strangest of all is that I saw a friend of mine today, and instead of giving him a normal greeting I just couldn’t resist the urge to sniff his hiney. I’m a, I’m a… OOOWWWWWolfman!!!!! Ha, ha. Okay I did have a little bit of headache today, but all else seems Jim Dandy. Even running up this big hill didn’t noticeably make my heart pound, which is a first since my FUMParoodling began. My skin is so awesome though. It makes a baby’s derriere… Read more »

Hypothyroidism

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It’s amazing to me how some of the most important realizations that I’ve come to over the past year have come from fragments of information obtained from some really misguided people. One of the biggest discoveries was differentiating between how complex starches and simple sugars affect the human body, shown to me by Terry Shintani, the author of a book touting an extremely low fat vegan diet. Through his work, he was able to show that complex starches leave sugar in the blood to be used as fuel, unlike simple sugars from fruit, cookies, breakfast cereals and the like, which causes insulin to rise higher than the level of blood sugar and induce hypoglycemia. This idea was further reinforced by Francine Kauffman of the American Diabetes Association, who discovered that… Read more »

180 Degree Metabolism Sneak Peek: "Fat and Hungry"

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…Basically yes, the calories you ingest is your income. Your insulin levels determine the percentage of that income that is diverted into savings. The higher the income, the higher the savings: the more you eat, the fatter you get, especially if those calories are in the form of simple sugars like sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup, which directly raise insulin levels higher when paired with a high-glycemic load and indirectly via their effect on cortisol and eicosanoids. Higher insulin levels mean a greater diversion of energy into storage, which means it takes an ever-increasing amount of food to satisfy your active tissues, and it is the demand of the active tissue that determines whether or not your are satiated. Therefore, instead of your metabolism rising with the surplus of food,… Read more »

Eat Better, Not Less

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To be published July 1st in Healthy Planet’s Aspen Edition: So you are feling a little softer than you’d like. Sugary treats have become part of your daily life, most of your solid food intake is crunchy and comes in a shiny bag (with either a Cheetah or a picture of Paul Newman on it), and you’re suspicious that the antioxidants in that dark chocolate may not be helping your cause. Exercise, once a habit, has fallen by the wayside. Even the thought of it sounds like torture. You bump along for a while in this mode, getting ever more disgusted with yourself, and then one day you shout, “that’s it! I’m not gonna take it anymore!” In a fit of self-loathing you decide that you hath sinned and it’s… Read more »

Malabsorption

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First off, apologies to my long-time followers for always being so preoccupied with Weston A. Price and others that witnessed the sudden dramatic decline of health at the dawn of modern food. But the shift of human health really dominates my thinking. From the beginning I’ve really been perplexed and driven to understand how and what, specifically, brought about this shift. As a very brief recap for all the newbies, Price directly observed a dramatic change in physical, mental, and even societal health amongst several independent groups of humans worldwide, as they were exposed to modern foods for the first time from a previously natural, nutritious, and untainted diet. Highlights include improper formation of facial structure resulting in crooked teeth, something we now just consider to be normal and “genetic”… Read more »

Heil Schwarzbein! (New Version)

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We are drowning in what I call ‘nutritional minutiae.’ There is an endless stream of breaking news about such and such phytonutrient’s cancer-preventing properties, the latest antioxidant ‘discovery’ and on and on and on. On top of all that, there is a relentless fuss over pesticides, GMO’s, soy estrogens, and more. And then mainstream nutritionists focus on vitamins and minerals as if that’s the only thing that matters when it comes to health. Oh and then there are enzymes in raw food. Gotta worry about getting my enzymes now. And what type of exercise and how much? And am I spending enough hours in the sun, or too much? And how much mercury is in my fish? And did that cow eat grass or grain, and was that grain GMO… Read more »

Addiction

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Addiction

Nearly everyone is addicted to something. Addictions aren’t always to drugs which alter the biochemical state of the body instantly and acutely. Addictions can also erupt from any activity that alters the body’s chemistry from strenuous exercise to vomiting (as in bulimia). I define addiction as being overly drawn to a substance or activity to varying degrees. Addictions emerge stealthily and without warning because the body, which is highly adjustable, alters itself to cope with the repetitive action or use of a substance. Essentially, all addictive patterns emerge because the oversecretion of certain biochemicals and hormones worsens the condition that it temporarily relieves (i.e. caffeine leading to chronic fatigue). The more you drink alcohol, for example, the more the body readjusts and the more dependent it becomes on receiving alcohol… Read more »