Heather Lounsbury - Fix your mood with food: the live natural, live well approach to whole body health

Fix Your Mood with Food takes the mystery out of Traditional Chinese Medicine and makes it understandable and accessible. It shows how many people have used it to recover from serious conditions and how you can, too. In our research at the Physicians Committee, we have seen the power of dietary changes. With this engaging and practical book, you will have the tools you need for the best of health.

Neal D. Barnard, MD; president, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Fix Your Mood with Food is my new go-to guide for help with my depression and anxiety. It is an informative, clinical, yet easy-to-follow book to guide you into natural healing. I will be buying this book by the boatload for my friends, and I recommend you do the same.

Kim Barnouin, coauthor of Skinny Bitch

This smart, interesting, easy-to-read guide will have you healthier and happier than youve ever been. A great synthesis of East meets West, Fix Your Mood with Food covers it all.

Rory Freedman, coauthor of Skinny Bitch

Healthy eating has been a big part of my life since 1970, and I can promise you, it leads to healthy living. Fix Your Mood with Food is a great resource for those who want to enjoy a healthy and happy life.

Ed Begley Jr., actor and environmentalist

As a health and wellness advocate and a believer that food is thy medicine and medicine is thy food, Fix Your Mood with Food is a great start.

John Salley, former NBA player and sports commentator

You are what you eat! So take out the unknowns and start feeling great by digesting the awesome information, facts, and stories that Heather has served up.

David de Rothschild, environmentalist

All of my life Ive struggled with my eating habits. Eating was a way of forgetting about problems. I grew up trying all diets available, from Atkins to South Beach. It wasnt until I changed to a plant-based diet and learned about greens and super foods and read Fix Your Mood with Food that I was finally able to feel healthy, stronger, and younger than ever. I lost forty pounds within my first year of going vegan, and now I have plenty of energy to practice yoga, train at the gym, and ride more than one hundred miles a week on my bike. A plant-based diet has helped me overcome my food addictions, and I highly recommended to everyone an expert like Heather.

Marco A. Regil, Mexicos number-one television game host

With 70 percent or more of Americans sentenced to prescription medications and their side effects, we desperately need resources like Fix Your Mood with Food, which offers an approach to heal our ailments, rather than bandage them. This is true health care!

Ruby Roth, author of Thats Why We Dont Eat Animals and Vegan Is Love

Fix Your Mood with Food is an amazing guide to viewing our food choices as the key to better health. Heather Lounsbury is a magician when it comes to healing the body, and her approachable demeanor and vast knowledge come across seamlessly in this incredible book. Everyone should pick up a copy and start eating smarter!

Jenny Engel and Heather Goldberg, Spork Foods

If you only have one book on health on your bookshelf, it should be Fix Your Mood with Food. Heather lays out a wealth of valuable information in a way that is not only easy to digest (pun intended!) but simple to put into practice. Heather clearly illustrates that food is our medicine while also showing readers exactly how, why, and what to get on that happy path to wellness.

Carolyn Scott-Hamilton, The Healthy Voyager

Heather Lounsbury, L.Ac.

Guilford, Connecticut

An imprint of Globe Pequot Press

skirt! is an attitude... spirited, independent, outspoken, serious, playful and irreverent, sometimes controversial, always passionate.

Copyright 2014 by Heather Lounsbury

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

skirt! is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.

skirt! is a registered trademark of Morris Publishing Group, LLC, and is used with express permission.

Illustrations on pp. 13, 22, 39, and 41 courtesy of Shutterstock.com.

Project Editor: Lauren Brancato

Layout Artist: Mary Ballachino

Text Design: Sheryl Kober

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

eISBN 978-1-4930-0913-8

The health information expressed in this book is based solely on the personal experience of the author and is not intended as a medical manual. The information should not be used for diagnosis or treatment, or as a substitute for professional medical care.

CONTENTS

The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.

Plato

INTRODUCTION

When I was in the tenth grade, I began to question whether doctors were really the authority on the human body. Thanks to a severe case of mononucleosis, I had missed months of school and slept up to twenty hours a day, but the only advice my doctor could give me and my family was to ride it out. No prescription, dietary advice, or supplement to alleviate symptoms or recover fasterI just had to sit and wait to get healthy. My doctor didnt even recommend vitamin C. Even at fifteen, that didnt sound right. I had also recently given up meat, but I had no clue about how to be a vegetarian, and there werent many resources back then to guide me. Like most teenagers, I was still eating junk food, just without any meat. I had no idea how to do it right. Again, my doctor seemed to be no help. I decided to be proactive and learn about health and wellness on my own, which eventually led me to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

Ive always been open to different cultures and ways of thinking, thanks to learning other languages and the foreign exchange students my family hosted in our home while I was growing up. The world came to us in the form of guests from Germany, France, Belgium, and El Salvador. A girl from Iran stayed with us for an entire year. The student who made the biggest and most lasting impression on me was a graduate student from China named Shen. One day my younger sister had a cut that just wouldnt stop bleeding. Shen went to his room, returned with a mysterious powder in a jar, and applied it. Instantly, the flow of blood stopped without toxic chemicals or even a Band-Aid. That was the first timebut certainly not the lastI saw an herbal mixture heal an injury. The memory of how Shen used a natural cure stayed with me and ultimately led me down the path to my career as an herbalist and practitioner of TCM.

TCM uses a combination of acupuncture, herbs, and nutrition to heal patients both inside and out. I began my TCM journey by learning massage and acupuncture before attending medical school at the Emperors College of Traditional Oriental Medicine in Santa Monica, California, which teaches a mix of Western and Chinese medicine. Today I have my own private practice as a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist in California. Many of the principles I employ date back thousands of years; others are more recent techniques created by the people who taught me. Ive also created a few techniques of my own, which Ive developed both by treating patients and by doing my own research.