September 7, 2009


Hi {!firstname_fix}

It has been a quiet weekend. I think a lot of you must have gone away to play.

I have been continuing my clean and clear out project. Today was the last of it. Everything is clean and settled. I even set up a new work space in the back to use for a writing space. Can't hear the phone back there, and it is very quiet. I cleared off the table, got a new file cabinet and started sorting pages and pages into categories. I love love it feels.

I will be starting a new blog to share what is happening in the community. It will be a place to talk more in depth about what we are doing, what we are planning and what is happening is different places of the community. Come here and bookmark it: If you lose the link you can look under *Make Connections* and click on BLOG.

We have 2 slots for Euroranch left if you are interested. And I did post the dates for the 2010 Ranch here in Albuquerque if you want to check that.

When I went to find the C57 story to repost it this week, I also found the Pooh quote...it is my favorite.


"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.

From The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff, Ernest H. Shepard (Illustrator). Viking Press, 1983.


These classes will begin Wednesday, September 9, 2009. Please click on the name of the class you wish to join and it will take you to the registration page:

Brain Chemistry: Beta Endorphin (2 weeks) is one of our most popular classes. It will teach you the core of the science behind the program. This is the outline for a critical part of sugar sensitivity, why you act the way you do and what you can do to change it. I love this class and so do all the people who have taken it. Somehow BE rocks!

Magical Introversion (2 weeks)is one of those unusual classes we do. If you would like to understand more about the joys and special needs of being an introvert , this is a good class for you. Everyone always loves it. And even if you are not an introvert, but live with one, you will find this information very helpful. I wish I'd had it when my daughter was growing up.

These classes will begin Wednesday, September 16, 2009. Please click on the name of the class you wish to join and it will take you to the registration page:

Using the Resources of the Community (1 week) is for those of you who are brand new and would like to find your way around town. Come sit on the top of our double-decker bus for a guided tour. And even if you are not brand new, this is a really fun class to reconnect with all the treats of the community.

Radiant Step 2: Introduction (1 week) will teach you the basics of journaling. The class will give you step-by-step instructions in how to record your food and feelings in a way that gets you excited.

If you are on disability or low income (your household income is less that $1000 a month), you may take classes for free if you get certified. I have put the guidelines for certification on the class schedule page.

The class schedule is online. Click here to see what is planned. Please do not sign up for classes that are not yet scheduled.

A number of you have asked me how the classes work. Check the class list page for more information on this. And please go read the questions and answers before you write to me. If you have trouble getting through the process, write the tech forum.

Be sure to visit our Radiant Recovery website and Community Forum regularly.

Warmly,
Kathleen

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** Quote From Kathleen **


Make changes at a pace that works for you. Look for solid, long-term success, not dramatic, short-term results.

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** Testimonial of the Week **


Ok, so I lay down and had a think about it and tried to figure out why I like plants and this is what I got...

The world that I live in is so fake. People around me are only interested in how a person looks, they buy clothes that they know are made in horrific conditions and they say, 'But i NEED another skirt/top/dress'. We are so far removed from reality by tv, ads and the constant need to fill some imagined void in our lives with THINGS, that I find plants, trees in particular, to be a remedy for me. Trees don't lie to you, or pretend to be something they're not (well this is not true actually because the cabbage gum tree pretends to be a silver birch tree, lol). When they do it's more amusing and interesting than galling. Trees don't starve themselves to look good or harm themselves so that other trees will know they are in pain. Plants taste poison and die, try to avoid it, build defenses over time..they don't search out that which is killing them.

Plants and trees don't expect me to be anything, I'm sure they would prefer if I killed less of them, or if I stopped knocking them over when they are young, but they don't shout at me. I can't resent a plant, but I can watch it grow. Plants give me food that has a taste and teach me things like sometimes it's worth waiting and asking somebody instead of cutting off the tops of beans, or that you can put a seed in the wrong soil, forget to water it and eventually put it in the ground late, then weed it by mistake and try and put it back in...and it will still grow.

Plants just ARE, they aren't faffing about or worrying if their tomatoes are as big as the other guy's tomatoes...they just take what they are given and make what they can and try not to die in the process.

I also like trees just because, for no other reason than they are. I like sitting in them, I DO hug them. When I feel really bad, trees even listen to me. Hundreds of years old and just watching the human race make countless mistakes, trees just grow away as long as they can.

Karen


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** Radiant Ambassadors **


Every day I check my Google Alerts for anything new that has been posted online about Radiant Recovery. One in particular stood out recently - it's a wonderful article about the importance of breakfast which was posted in the Vancouver Sun.

You can read it here.

It not only mentions Radiant Recovery, but Little Sugar Addicts and Potatoes Not Prozac too - wahoooo! All this in addition to breakfast recipes and it looks as though RR will be better known in Canada now!

As you can see, we've already started to add our own comments to the story - feel free to add yours too - the more the press hears about RR, the more seriously they will take it!

From what I've seen, the article's been tweeted on Twitter and is all over Facebook right now LOL!

Oh, happy days :)

Selena

Come join us if you are excited about spreading the news.


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** Radiant Kitchen **


I have a picnic basket in the trunk of my car, with the standards of paper plates, utensils, napkins - the usual. It also has:

  • A blender bottle with pre-measured packets of protein powder with some powdered milk
  • Bottled water
  • A foil pack of each chicken and tuna
  • Turkey jerky
  • Single-serve cups of peanut butter
  • Almonds
  • A pack of roasted edamame.
  • Marys Gone Crackers
  • Oatcakes
  • Single-serving -sized cups of precooked brown rice
  • I think that's it! LOLOL I have been tossing in a thing or two as I think of it and it's really added up.
Diane

For more great program-friendly recipes, check out these great cookbooks in the store.



Radiant Recovery
Cookbook


Naomi's Nutritious and
Delicious Cookbook

Sheila's
Kitchen Recipes

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** Your Last Diet - More Than What You Think **


I will be writing a whole segment on YLD for the blog. I would like you to really understand how the whole *package* works and there really is not enough space to do it here. The most amazing thing is that it is so effective, but we forget to post the *results-are-typical* stories because as people do it, the pounds lost seem like such a tiny part of the process.

If you are not a YLD member, come and join us. Click here if you are ready to change your life or just have some plain ol' fun!


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** Radiant Recovery® Store **

David manages the Radiant Recovery® Store. He is also Kathleen's oldest son.


What about joining all the folks who are having yummy hot buckwheat cereal for breakfast

Everyone is raving about the new products to support those of you who have decided to do gluten-free browns. Here again are the products we are carrying.

The famous Creamy Buckwheat hot cereal. Kathleen is having this every morning along with some of the vanilla flavoring.
Brown Rice Farina, which is a another yummy hot cereal.
Millet Grits that you can have hot for breakfast or as your brown for dinner.
Almond Meal/Flour. Kathleen uses this to bread chicken cutlets and I can tell you they are fabulous.!




Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better.


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** Our Online Groups **


The Radiant Transitions group is a place to discuss something that many of us are dealing with, helping our aging parents to make a transition from their active, independent lives to something different. It may be parents who were proactive and searched for and found a retirement community that would be a safe place for them that also offered assisted living and nursing home care as needed. On the other side of the coin, it could be someone who has dementia that has progressed to the point where he/she cannot live alone.

This list will be for those of you who are dealing with these kinds of situations now. We want the list to feel very safe, so you will have to apply to join it. All members of the list will be expected to participate. No lurkers, please.


Or come to the group page to find the one that will best support your program: http://www.radiantrecovery.com/list_serves.htm


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** The C57 Story **
Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.



Science has a lot to learn about sugar sensitivity. We can't just go to Pub Med, put "sugar sensitivity" in the search field and find hundreds or thousands of citations telling us all about our unique bodies and behaviors. But the story is there in the science writings, encoded in unexpected places and in unexpected ways. If we listen and watch our own stories, we can go back to the literature and better understand the whys of what we are living.

The Power of the Beta-Endorphin Story

I thought it would be fun to share with you some of my recent exploration. I continue to be intrigued by beta-endorphin and its relationship to the story of sugar sensitivity. I began my relationship with beta-endorphin when I learned two intriguing themes. The first came from the work of Dr. Christine Gianoulakis at McGill University. She noticed that two different strains of mice responded to the effects of alcohol in very different ways. The C57GL/6 mice had a far more potent reaction than their "dry" brothers and sisters, the DBA/2 mice. Because of this intensity of the response, they really go for the booze. C57s are called alcohol-preferring mice and DBAs are called alcohol-avoiding mice.

As an aside, many other studies have shown that not only do the C57s have a high preference for alcohol, they also love sweet things. In fact, some scientists are working with the concept that a preference for sweet may be an indicator of a risk for alcoholism.

Dr. Gianoulakis and her colleagues have worked with these mice for a long time. They discovered that the C57s and the DBA have very different levels of beta-endorphin. The C57s are born with much lower levels of beta-endorphin in their brains, so their brains increase the number of receptor sites to try to catch more of the beta-endorphin molecules. This is called upregulation. Because they have more places to catch the beta-endorphin, they get a bigger response to things that evoke beta-endorphin.

At Risk For Alcoholism

Dr. Gianoulakis extended her study to people and examined a whole group of people who are known to be genetically predisposed to alcohol addiction, the children and grandchildren of alcoholics. Children and grandchildren of alcoholics seem to be the human equivalent of the C57 mice. They, like the mice, have lowered levels of beta-endorphin and a heightened response to things that evoke beta-endorphin like alcohol and sugars.

As Dr. Gianoulakis was publishing her work, a number of other scientists were noticing that sucrose quieted pain. They discovered that not only does sucrose quiet physical pain, but also it quiets the pain of loss or social isolation. When a group of baby chicks were taken from their mama, they peeped and peeped. When they were given sugar water, they stopped crying for mama chicken.

Sugar as a Drug

Dr. Elliott Blass, then at Cornell, wanted to understand how this happens. How could sugar act like a drug? He did some experiments and showed that sucrose cut physical and emotional pain by evoking the brain's own beta-endorphin. Beta-endorphin is the body's natural painkiller. It is called an endogenous opioid or internal painkiller. Morphine and heroin are opiate drugs, which means they go and sit in the brain's beta-endorphin receptor sites and get the brain to block pain signals. Sucrose acts like an opioid drug such as morphine or heroin. Not as intensely, but on the same beta-endorphin system.

And, if we return to our friends the C57 and the DBA mice, we discover that the C57s have a 35 times more powerful reaction to morphine than do the DBAs. Think of that. Insert sugar in the place of morphine, and we begin to see why some body and brain types seek it, love it and get addicted to it. Now the sugar story and the connection to C57s is well researched throughout the scientific literature. But no one in the science lab is yet making this leap from the C57 profile to the sugar sensitivity profile in people. But the "match" is extraordinary.

How We Are Like Those C57 Mice

If we start thinking of ourselves as little C57 mice, we can have LOTS of clues about why we act the way we do. And we can start understanding why our DBA friends cannot in any way understand why we keep going back when they are able to just say no.

As we continue this discussion, let's stop for a moment and take one cautionary note about our attitudes towards the different types of mice (or people). Scientists do not look down upon the little C57s. Nor do they laud the DBA. They simply know that they are two very distinct strains with different body chemistries. If they wish to look at the effect of a given intervention and want to see the differences in different body types, they order both kinds of mice.

Getting Rid of the Negative Spin

So, we can work on taking the negative judgment and shame off of the C57 way of life. Our first step is understanding. As we get how this works, we can start making choices for healing. And then TURN US LOOSE!

Let me list some of the C57 "facts" I have found with my own research. I can then reflect with you on what it might mean for our healing.

  • All C57s, regardless of their gender, like sweet stuff more than DBAs. A C57 male will prefer sweets more than a DBA female will.
  • In a situation called defeat-induced learned submission, the DBAs looked for an escape, while the C57s crouched, became immobile and defensive. Defeat-induced learned submission comes from a release of beta-endorphin.
  • The defeated mice developed tolerance to the beta-endorphin released in response to defeat.
  • C57s get hyperactive with morphine. DBAs do not.
  • Caffeine antagonized the hyperactivity in C57s caused by morphine, i.e. when the C57s were given caffeine and then morphine they did not become hyperactive.
  • When withdrawing from morphine, C57s become lethargic and passive.

Let's Apply the Science to Ourselves

Let's translate these and play a little. Replace the word C57 with a sugar sensitive person and replace the word morphine with sugars.

Let's go through the list again.

  1. We all know some people who act like DBAs. They are the ones who say to us, "Why don't you just......say no.." They are the ones who decide to diet and do and then lose ten pounds in a month. They are the ones who give up chocolate for Lent and never look back, the ones who carry a little orange pumpkin at Halloween. They are the ones who would eat the chocolate chip cookie only if they were hungry. We know immediately who they are. Since society tends to recognize and value DBA behavior, we will judge ourselves against their standard. We carry the message that "DBA behavior is good, C57 behavior is bad."

  2. And we also know that WE are the C57s. Intriguing to think why we can feel connected to the C57 mice so well. We are often children of alcoholics. We feel deeply, struggle with self-esteem issues, are sensitive, creative and impulsive. We may do rage or depression. And we all share the deep feeling language whether we are male or female.

  3. When we feel defeated and overwhelmed, we assume the fetal position, lie still and don't move, and tell everyone it is not our fault. Now, we may not do this on the outside. On the outside we may be doing big theater and having everyone believe that we are absolutely in control. But inside we are holding on by a thread and feeling horrible.

    • We may be "lying still" way inside our hearts but we absolutely know this pattern. And we see our DBA friends, who when faced with the same crises, get mobilized and energized. We take Prozac; they change jobs and get a promotion. We hate this "injustice" and have not a clue how biochemically mediated it is.

  4. Sweet foods give us "energy". That means they get us out of the lethargy of beta-endorphin withdrawal. Sweet foods can give us "motor mouth." We become engaging, funny and self-confident. Sometimes our friends wonder if we have been drinking.

    • More often, we choose other C57s as friends, so we go out for "coffee", have cake and REALLY enjoy our social times. And having coffee with the sweet roll feels like heaven. We get clear, focused and relaxed for about 30 minutes. We LOVE that feeling. And those cold frosty coffee, sugar drinks (you know which ones I mean) are the BEST because they make us feel so energized. Our DBA friends enjoy their coffee (they have the plain bagel), but they do not live for it.

  5. We see these same behaviors clearly in our children and grandchildren. Give a three-year-old C57 a piece of birthday cake and he will be the life of the party. Give a two-year-old a twelve-ounce can of Sprite on the plane and she will be bouncing over the top of the seat for two hours. The more work we do with our program, the more clearly we see this profound shift in behavior pre- and post-sugar.

  6. When we detox from sugar, we kinda sits around and waits till its over. We hunker down with our discomfort. Immobile. We literally feel as if our cells are made of lead and/or are all screaming. We feel the effect of withdrawal in our gut, our skin, our brain - wherever there are beta-endorphin receptor sites.

The Patterns Are Powerful

Pretty interesting isn't it. For many years we have struggled with learned helplessness, with self-esteem that fades in a moment. We vacillate between hyperactive clarity and lying on the couch in a stupor. The Dr. Jeykll/Ms.Hyde syndrome is very close to home.

Beyond Mood Swings

But now, I am pushing us beyond the idea of mood swings. I am inviting you think of yourself as a big C57 and to connect with the enormity of what these mouse studies mean for us. Those things which we have considered "character flaws" for all this time are a function of your sugar sensitive biochemistry.

Our alcohol, sugar, fat, white things literally get us mobilized, make us brave, funny, self-confident for a little. But we only remember the feeling okay, feeling brave. It's why so many people who come to the forum lament that they cannot imagine giving up the sugar. It's the "only" thing that makes life worth living. This is addiction. This is being caught in a place that kills us. But we don't see it.

The Power and the Disappointment of Beta-Endorphin

The beta-endorphin hit wears off and we crash. Then it's horrible. And we become more immobile, hopeless, demoralized, overwhelmed and tearful. But we do not make the connection to withdrawal. What we remember is that when we "use" we feel okay. And so we are willing to trade 30 minutes, then ten minutes, of feeling okay for the rest being horrible because we are so desperate to feel okay. We will do ANYTHING not to experience the horror of the withdrawal.

Ironically, many sugar sensitive people are very intolerant of alcoholics and drug addicts. But alcoholism and drug addiction are only the more intense forms of what we ourselves experience - a life driven to feeling better, terror of the withdrawal, and a life centered around getting our "fix."

Putting the Story Together

And along comes the Potatoes Not Prozac food plan. Suddenly things start to make sense. The vague "knowing" we have had for a while (and we are intuitive people!) gets a name, It makes sense. We don't have to think of ourselves as hopeless, depressed and out of control. We are sugar sensitive. But Potatoes Not Prozac is only the beginning of the story.

We create stability. We heal the brain. We take out the foods like sugar and white things that prime us. Sometimes this spooks us because when we take out the stuff that has made us feel "good" in the past, we enter an uneasy space. We feel better overall, but hardly confident. After all, our core brain is a C57, not a DBA.

Raising Beta-Endorphin Naturally

This is the magic of all those things we affectionately refer to on the www.radiantrecovery.com forum as BE raising activities. Mozart, laughter, exercise, yoga, meditation, prayer, pups, babies, grandbabies, good sex, rollerblading, and great movies. What is not to like in the list? Do these things and create beta-endorphin. Slow and steady beta-endorphin. They wash us with feeling self-confident. And it grows on us. The more we feel it, the more we want to do these things.

Many of us have been listening to the voices on the forum. We can see these patterns as our friends in the sugar sensitive community make changes with the food. The voices of our "newbies" are very different from the voices of the "old-timers." When our food wobbles, we wobble. We whine, we munch, we get cranky. We go into beta-endorphin crash. We retreat, we isolate, and we crouch, get defensive and withdraw. Beta-endorphin crash.

Claiming Our Birthright

And miracle of miracles, when the food is steady, we are steady. We are funny, compassionate, tolerant, patient, resourceful and willing to hang in there and find solutions. Same bodies, same brains, same biochemistry. But under the influence of a different way of eating. Balance brings our birthright home.




Here are the folks who are helping put the newsletter together:

Gretel, our webmaster, puts it all together.
David runs the Radiant Recovery® Store.
Selena provides the weekly Ambassadors column.
The banner photograph is by Patti Holden.


©2009 Kathleen DesMaisons. All rights reserved. You are free to use or transmit this article to your ezine or website as long as you leave the content unaltered, use this attribution: "By Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D. of Radiant Recovery®", and notify kathleen@radiantrecovery.com of the location. Please visit the Radiant Recovery® website at http://www.radiantrecovery.com for additional resources on sugar sensitivity and healing addiction.

You are getting the weekly newsletter from Radiant Recovery® in response to your signup. A copy of this newsletter may also be found posted on the web at http://www. radiantrecovery.com/weeklynewsletter.htm.