Joan Mathews Larson - Depression-Free, Naturally: 7 Weeks to Eliminating Anxiety, Despair, Fatigue, and Anger from Your Life

This book is a treasure trove of vital new information. Because my clients have been using similar strategies for many years, I can testify to their immediate and sustaining effectiveness in correcting even the most severe mood problems. And the elegant clarity of its writing and layout make the book a pleasure to read.

J ULIA R OSS
Author of The Diet Cure

Dr. Larsons book is a blessing to the many who suffer from mood and emotional disorders. Nutritional therapies can be extremely helpful in correcting such problems as depression, anxiety, insomnia, and panic. Healing can be found within the covers of Depression-Free, Naturally.

E LSON M. H AAS , M.D.
Author of The False Fat Diet

Larson provides the checklists of symptoms, possible disorders, and corrective formulas along with simple but thorough explanations of how the biochemistry works. She plausibly links biochemical emotional problems with the gradual shift in the American diet over the last sixty years toward sugary, carbohydrate-laden, and processed foods. Anyone who has suffered from mental lapses, mood swings, and stress will find plenty to mull over here.

Publishers Weekly

Seven Weeks to Sobriety:
The Proven Program to Fight Alcoholism
Through Nutrition

Seven Weeks to Emotional Healing:
Proven Natural Formulas for Eliminating Anxiety,
Depression, Anger, and Fatigue from Your Life

This book is intended to provide the reader with information only. As noted throughout the text, individuals should consult appropriate health care practitioners knowledgeable in the field orthomolecular medicine prior to pursuing any particular course of treatment.

Names and identifying facts have been changed for all case studies included within this book so that individuals who may be described in the case studies will not be recognizable. Any similarities between the case study descriptions and actual, living persons are purely coincidental.

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 1999 by Joan Mathews Larson, Ph.D.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1999 as 7 Weeks to Emotional Healing.

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

randomhousebooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-109509

Ebook ISBN: 9780307788450

v3.1_r3

This book is dedicated to my children,
Mark Mathews and Molly Mathews-Redden,
who work at my side and share my commitment
to a better future for us all.

Y ou are searching for answers to symptoms you have lived with all your life. You have gone into therapy hoping to talk these unstable moods away and you now have great insights into your behaviorbut the unwanted feelings are still there. You are beginning to doubt that there is any way to banish these goblins, yet coexisting with them is sapping the joy out of your life.

After all that youve been through, I expect you will feel skeptical when I assure you that you can free yourself from this state once and for all, that there is a way to banish these moods that have shadowed your life.

My promise is based on almost twenty years of work helping people overcome problems perceived as emotional that had previously gone unresolved. The principles in this book have been tested and fine-tuned at the Health Recovery Center since 1980. By using the same biochemical tools our clients have found so successful, you will effect the same positive results.

The research upon which each chapter is based is solid. I can say that because I have applied these methods to thousands of real people with real symptoms, and real lab work has confirmed, once and for all, what has gone wrong. Predictably, the anxiety or depression or paranoia or muddled moods or mind-racing or sullenness of clients have gradually faded away as their brains recovered a more optimal chemical balance.

These unstable feelings were not psychological in origin; they were the result of the unbalanced chemistry of their physical brains. A large number of studies conducted worldwide have shown us what happens to thoughts, feelings, and behavior when key brain chemicals are unavailable or too plentiful. As a result of these studies, scientists have been able to show how a specific program of biochemical repair can restore stable emotional health and that is the essence of this seven-week program.

I have been involved in this approach since 1980, when I opened the Health Recovery Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Originally, we were licensed to treat alcoholism and drug addictions. Because these addictions destroy or block so many of the brains important chemicals, our clients were also suffering from depression and anxiety when we first met. They seemed emotionally unstable, but conventional therapy did not turn them around. Looking back to our early days, I still shake my head when I remember how my traditionally trained counseling staff invariably felt that those clients had attitude problems, or just deliberately chose such negative behaviors. I had worked in traditional programs for six years before opening the Health Recovery Center, so I was aware of what the field considered state of the art treatment. I knew that four out of five treated alcoholics were expected to relapse within their first year out of treatment, and one out of four of the deaths of these troubled alcoholics would be suicide, also usually occurring within the first year after treatment.

My impetus to create a new treatment model came from a need to test a theory I had that treatment failure remained high because no one had addressed the physical damage that alcohol did to the human braindamage that showed itself as unstable emotions.

My theory proved to be a winner! My not-so-profound idea that a chemical imbalance in the brain results in flawed thinking and behavior has proved itself repeatedly throughout the years. At the Health Recovery Center, we have consistently sustained a recovery rate of 75 percent or higher, despite a growing trend of attracting some of the neediest clients in the United Statesmany of whom have approached us as a result of reading my first book, Seven Weeks to Sobriety.

Over the almost twenty years of our existence, we gradually began to treat nonaddicted individuals who shared some of the same unstable emotional traits. In fact, their lab results looked amazingly like those of our substance-abusing clients! Yet they had never been addicted to alcohol or drugs.

The findings from the huge body of research are applicable to anyone whose brain biochemistry is causing emotional discomfort. Whatever the cause, your brain may be unable to maintain a state of optimal balance. If so, it may be telling you in the only way it can: