Dr. Kathleen DesMaisons, a nutrition expert, joined us to talk about how sugar addiction can affect your mood, causing you to be depressed as well as overweight. She also discusses ways to cure your addiction to sugar through a high carbohydrate diet.

David Roberts is the HealthyPlace.com moderator.

The people in blue are audience members.

online conference transcript

David: Good Evening. I'm David Roberts. I'm the moderator for tonight's conference. I want to welcome everyone to HealthyPlace.com. I'm glad you had the opportunity to join us and I hope your day went well. Our topic tonight is "Food and Your Moods." Our guest is Dr. Kathleen DesMaisons, an expert in addictive nutrition and the author of Potatoes Not Prozac.

Dr. DesMaisons maintains that the same brain chemicals that are altered by antidepressant drugs are also affected by the foods we eat. According to her, many people, including those who are depressed, are "sugar sensitive." Eating sweets gives them a temporary emotional boost, which leads to a craving for still more sweets. The best way to keep these brain chemicals in the right balance and keep blood-sugar levels steady, she says, is through the dietary plan she describes in Potatoes Not Prozac.

Good evening, Dr. DesMaisons and welcome to HealthyPlace.com. We appreciate you being our guest tonight. On your site, you describe yourself as a former sugarholic who was chronically overweight. Can you tell us a little more about yourself, please?

Dr. DesMaisons: I was the child of an alcoholic who was depressed, overweight, and moody. I was smart and committed to my health, but it seemed that no matter what I did, I still felt so bad. I had no idea that my eating was contributing to the problem - sometimes I felt crazy without an answer. Twelve years ago I started to explore working with food and diet in the alcoholism treatment center I was running. We got spectacular results! I applied the same ideas to myself and everything changed as the food changed!

David: Can you please define or explain what sugar sensitivity is?

Dr. DesMaisons: It is a theory I developed to explain a three part problem: reactive blood sugar, low serotonin, and low beta endorphin which can all be inherited from an alcoholic or sugar sensitive parent. Each of these can make us be depressed, have mood swings and low impulse control. I wanted to develop a solution using nutrition.

David: Obviously, sweets are one type of food with sugar. What other types of foods are you referring to?

Dr. DesMaisons: White things - refined flour products such as breads and pastas. Many people who are sugar sensitive use these foods addictively but don't realize that is what is going on. They have no idea that food can affect how they feel so profoundly.

David: When you say, "use these foods ADDICTIVELY," what do you mean by that?

Dr. DesMaisons: Well, just as if they are a drug - sugar actually affects the same part of the brain as heroin or morphine, so we use it to feel better and have withdrawal when we don't get our drug. We only notice that we feel really good when we have sweet stuff, but don't make the connection to when we feel bad as withdrawal.

David: Here's an audience question that relates to what we are talking about:

radiantmb: How does eating sugar make you depressed? I usually feel much better after eating sugary foods.

Dr. DesMaisons: Sugar evokes beta endorphin which absolutely makes you feel better - until it wears off and then you feel depressed, but you don't make the connection of the down being an aftereffect of the sugar. The problem comes in needing more and more and more often, or in thinking that the down feelings are signs of clinical depression rather than the sugar low. Sometimes people get them mixed up and think they are not getting better, when it is the food making them feel so bad.

David: We have many visitors to our site who have many different types of psychological disorders. Many take medications to ease their depression. Are you suggesting that they don't need Prozac or other antidepressants if they control their diets properly?

Dr. DesMaisons: Absolutely not, but I am suggesting that their symptoms can be made worse by what they eat or don't eat. For example, Prozac does not make new serotonin, it simply recycles the serotonin you already have. By changing the food, you can actually increase the production of serotonin in the brain without any side effects or any cost. I encourage people to change their diet and see how they feel - usually it significantly enhances the effectiveness of the medications.

David: I'm wondering, do you suggest eating 3 meals a day, or little meals throughout the day?

Dr. DesMaisons: Well, I always suggest that people start with having breakfast everyday with some sort of protein and a complex carbohydrate. That is the first step of seven and usually it takes weeks to master.

People who are sugar sensitive HATE to have breakfast, because when you don't eat, your body releases beta endorphin and it makes you feel confident and strong, until it wears off!!! Then you feel horrible.

After you master breakfast, then I suggest working on three meals because starting and stopping is very good for your brain. It help to reinforce impulse control or the ability to say no.