We all know that we will eat for emotional reasons when we are not hungry.  Eating is a common stress response.  Most of the psychological community is well aware of this situation.  The general explanation is that the feelings we get from food serve as replacements for other feeling needs that are not being met. 

One famous book on this subject is titled "When Food is Love" by Geneen Roth.  She teaches encounter type seminars all over the country helping people explore how they have made food a replacement for the love the felt they didn't or are not getting in their lives.  The focus of these seminars is on how to let go of false and unrealistic expectations of mates and parents and open up to more authentic intimacy with them.

Geneen's work is valuable, but there is more to it than that.  People eat when they get bored.  People eat when they get excited.  People eat for just about any and every reason you can think of.  Eating has become the drug of choice in this culture for modifying our feelings in any direction.  This suggests to me that there is an epidemic of feelings we just don't want to feel.  Perhaps this has always been the case, but we didn't have the amazing variety and availability of "food drugs" with which to modify our feelings.

I say "food drugs"  because when you look at the foods people eat when they find themselves snacking when not legitimately hungry, it is invariably foods that never occur in nature.  You just don't see people snacking on Brussels sprouts or fresh salmon or even raw sweet potato.  Food drugs contain unnatural amounts of sugar, salt, polyunsaturated oils, and artificial flavors and colors.  Even when we think we are snacking on something healthy like fresh fruit, it is another artificial food.  Modern fruit has been hybridized and genetically altered to have 2 to 5 times more sugar than the same fruits had a couple hundred years ago.

I am not saying that lots of people are not eating very healthy meals, many are.  But when you get a craving for a special between meal treat, it does not come in the form of a desire for some nice homemade beef stew.

I have already written about how the addiction to convenience is killing us.  Convenient and healthy just do not go together in the same sentence.  Real fresh food takes preparation time.  So unless you have a personal chef or eat all your meals out at super healthy restaurants, to get healthy food you have to spend the time doing the preparation.

Back to emotional eating: I have been researching the underlying emotional causes of human behavior for the last 24 years.  Many of you have experienced some of my research in the form of the Heartflow unfoldment process Ellen uses in the office, or the Gracework process I used a few years back to unlock emotional causes of physical symptoms.  These are quite successful techniques and my research continues.

A couple weeks ago I came across a perspective about how our physiology evolved over the last couple hundred thousand years.  Specifically the perspective had to do with human eating patterns and why we gain or lose weight.  This information was one of those connecting-the-dots moments for me. 

Forever in the medical community the accepted view has been that our weight is under our conscious control.  The belief is that if we just eat the right amount of calories of the right foods that we can control weight.  If this were true then we would not have thousands of weight loss books telling us how to do things the "right way" in order to lose weight.  Yet physiologically, anatomically, and neurologically this is utter nonsense.  We have no more control over our weight than we have over our heartbeat.  Yes we can consciously influence our heart and our weight briefly, but 99% of the time it is controlled by the unconscious processes in the base of our brain.

In reality our weight is controlled very similarly to how our blood pressure is controlled.  When you get excited or afraid your blood pressure goes up to pump more blood into your muscles so that you will be ready to fight or run.  Well it turns out that our weight responds to similar stresses.  The base of our brain has two basic responses to the kinds of environmental stress our ancestors faced.  If we were in an environment where we would be faced with being chased by predators, our body would lose weight to keep us light and fast.  Being slow and heavy was a bad choice for the body in that situation so it learned how to get lean to survive.

On the other hand the second most common survival stressor our ancestors faced was periods of starvation.  To deal with this stress our bodies learned how to save fuel for surviving these times of scarcity as excess fat.  Carrying extra fat around was the safest way to have food available for times of food lack.  Stored fat does not go bad, does not get stolen by varmints, and is twice as concentrated as most of the food you find when you forage.

Most places in the ancient world had times of the year where food is in short supply.  So the physiology of weight gain was a huge survival advantage.  But most places of the world also have predators (human or animal) where being lean and fast are also a high survival advantage.  Well Mother Nature works on a big scale.  She is concerned for the survival of the species and is not much concerned for the individual.  So her answer is to make some people wired to react more to the stresses of deprivation and lack and others react more to fear of being attacked.  That way, whatever type of stress came along some members of the human tribe would survive.

So far so good - I had all this already on board in my brain.  Now for the "aha" moment.  Gaining or losing weight are the only adaptations the body ever developed for dealing with the expectation of stress in the future.  But starvation or being eaten are not the only physical stresses we encounter.  We have many physical needs.  I have counted up 14 of them so far.  Any one of them will trigger a stress response in the body.  We are all familiar with the immediate ways the body responds to stress physically - adrenal activation, blood pressure, and so on.  But stressors that challenge future physical needs also trigger the fat gain or loss programs in the base of the brain... even when the stress has nothing to do with weight. 

Stressors that have to do with deprivation of physical needs trigger weight gain.  So deprivation of physical needs like sleep, movement, warmth, or clean air and water can trigger weight gain even though the extra weight does not help at all.  If you are wired to react to stress by gaining weight, then that is exactly what will happen.  If on the other hand you are wired to react to stress by freaking out and going into nervousness, then you will do the opposite and lose weight.

Think about people you know.  Some people when stressed in their relationship eat more and gain weight while others stop being hungry and lose weight.  This is a reflection of the two primal responses to threat - the fight or flight response or the hide and freeze response.  Although the fight or flight response has gotten more press the last 50 years, the hide and freeze response is just as common.

Now here is the big bonus piece - many, possibly all emotional issues can be traced back to the perception of an unmet physical need.  We have so many stories about our lives filled with emotions of trauma and unhappiness that years of therapy just don't seem to budge.  Addictive responses are excellent examples of coping mechanisms for these emotional stories that never resolve.  Well the research Ellen and I are conducting now is suggesting that the reason they are so hard to resolve is because underneath them is really an unmet physical need.  Emotional eating may really be not emotional at all.  The emotions may just be the red flag telling us that we have a very physical need that is not being met.

This is very exciting because we may have stumbled upon a key to unlocking the emotional causes of so many physical symptoms.  Ellen is finding with her clients that this new work is taking things to a whole new level of resolution and ease.  With some more work we may find that we can develop a weight loss program that actually works built on how our brain perceives our lives. 

So yes, we are all familiar with emotions triggering eating and weight gain.  But maybe the emotions are not the point.  Maybe the point is really about getting our physical needs met.

Take care,

David              
     

Tuesday afternoons and Fridays

WHO: Daily sugar intake 'should be halved'

After reviewing 9000 studies the World Health Organization has decided that sugar should comprise no more than 5% of the daily diet.  That amounts to 100 calories of sugar per day or about 6 teaspoons.  One can of soda has three times that amount of sugar and breakfast cereals are an impossible food under the new recommendations.  Just the hidden sugars used in prepared foods will equal the 5%, so added sugar and desserts are definitely out.  The goal of the guidelines is to reduce obesity and diabetes.  The average American child consumes 32 teaspoons of sugar daily.

 

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Curcumin in Cancer Treatment

Curcumin, the yellow pigment from turmeric is the most researched herb extract in existence.  It appears to be helpful in treating every kind of cancer.  It actually changes genetic expression of cells promoting healthy cells and destroying cancer cells.  Combining curcumin with conventional chemotherapy has been found to work even better than either one alone.  The one drawback to curcumin is that it is very hard to absorb in the gut.  Curcumin powder and capsules only get about 1% absorbed so very large doses are needed to be effective.  Fortunately we have Turmero-Active liquid which boosts the absorption by 1000%.  

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Top 4 ways to reduce muscle and joint pain

 

Our address is  9725 Fair Oaks Blvd.

Finding the new location is very easy.  Coming from highway 50 up Sunrise Blvd, you turn left and go up a block.  We are on the right hand side - the building just past the Subway Sandwich shop.  If you are coming down Sunrise from the Mall area then just turn right on Fair Oaks Blvd and up a block on the right.

 

If you are coming from the Roseville area you could come down Sunrise Blvd, but that is a long trek.  It is probably shorter time wise to come down Auburn Blvd - San Juan Ave like you have been for the Sunset office, but instead of turning left at Sunset, keep going straight 3 more lights to Fair Oaks Blvd and turn left.  Go down 2 lights to New York Ave, go through the intersection, and immediately turn into the turn lane once the center divider ends.  We are on the left.

 

About Dr. DeLapp

Dr. DeLapp has been a philosopher, non-force Chiropractor, medical intuitive, and health innovator for over 30 years.  He began experimenting with  medical intuition in 1972 while studying physics at UC Davis.  In addition to physics he designed and completed an individual major in the philosophy and psychology of education.  Shortly after he choose to pursue a career in the only truly health oriented profession available at that time, Chiropractic.  He graduated with honors in 1981 with his doctorate and opened a private practice. 
Since that time he has continued his research into the effects of consciousness and learning on health. 
He developed the Biomagnetic Retraining system for correcting movement abnormalities. 
Since 1991 he has focused on developing a powerful system for uncovering and assisting the mind-body connection in health and personal growth.  The in-depth coaching, guided by the subconscious direction from the body, is called Heartflow and the simpler mind-body retraining for health and unfoldment he has named Gracework.  Both are available at Fair Oaks Health.

Dr David DeLapp DC
Chiropractor

Ellen Flowers FGM
Spiritual Life Coach

 

 

 

Catherine Cummings

 

 

Jin Shin Jitsu

 

 

Lorena Morales

 

 

Massage Practitioner

 

 

 

 

 Is there a sweet that is not poisonous?  Yes!


 Dr Dave Supersweet Drops and 2X Sugar Substitute

 

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