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February 21, 2011 Hi {!firstname_fix} Yesterday I went to see The King's Speech. It certainly was moving. Talk about complex and multilayered! Terri W and I have been having fun reworking the Step 2 classes. We will now have a continuum of classes just as we do in weight loss. They will include the Introduction Class, the Skilled Class, the Resistance Class and the Step Seven Journaling class. I always love seeing how our material evolves to match the growing maturing of the community members. I suspect we may do this in a number of other places. These classes will begin Wednesday, February 23, 2011. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page: Step 1 (2 weeks) is our foundation class to get you started. Learn all four parts of step 1 in a structured way. Learn how to progress through them with enjoyment. Let us support getting your program off to a fabulous start. Step 2: Introduction (2 weeks) 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. Play (2 weeks) This is the second section of the play class that we started last Fall. If you moved to this section, or you missed that opportunity, come join us. This class looks at the neurochemistry of play and why it is such a healing thing for those of us in recovery. There will be no classes beginning the week of Wednesday, March 2, 2011. These classes will begin Wednesday, March 9, 2011. Please click on the name of the class and it will take you to the registration page: Step 4 (2 weeks) is the potato class. Come learn everything you ever wanted to know about the timing, size, frequency of your potato. Learn about the best vitamins and talk all you want about them. This is a nice way to strengthen and refine your step 4. Step 6 (2 weeks) is a class for those of you getting ready to detox or having detoxed and wondering why it is so hard after. We talk about *the flat*. Brain Chemistry: Serotonin (2 weeks) is the other of our most popular classes. It helps you make sense of why the potato works, why you have a problem in the winter and how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can play into this. If you munch in your mind, if you are depressed or edgy or feel sad, this is the class for you. Using Radiant Resources (2 weeks) is a free orientation 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. The class schedule is online. Click here to see what is planned. Please wait to sign up for classes until a week or two before, and 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 **********************************************************************
** Quote From Kathleen ** One of the markers for your own progress is the respect you command from those around you about your food habits. **********************************************************************
** Testimonial of the Week ** Last night I had a moment with my kids where I thought, wow, this is what living in recovery is like. I wanted to share :-) Wednesday night is Conversations Chat, and this is an important time for me. But the chat happens right during my kids' bedtime routine. This timing has been an ongoing challenge for us. My husband has tried to take care of things with the kids on Wednesday nights so I can do chat, but he has less energy for helping them than I do, and they don't usually settle down so well. I often finish chat and find two overtired, cranky, or hyperactive children waiting up for me. Last night my husband needed to be away. So I told my kids the situation, "Tonight is chat, this is important to me." And I said, "I actually have no ideas for how to make this work with getting you guys to bed, do you have any ideas? " My 10 year old suggested that she take care of her little sister, saying she would help with bedtime, and then would put herself to bed. I had to laugh, well that would be great! (thinking to myself-why didn't I ask for their input and help with this situation before?!) So while I participated in chat, I heard from other parts of the house the sound of the kids fixing themselves bedtime snacks, brushing their teeth, then my 10 year old reading stories to her sister. She made up a story too, and sang like ten bedtime songs to her. I was just smiling and smiling. A few years ago I would have never believed this kind of gentleness and independence could happen in my family when my oldest had rages everyday, and even the most basic things like getting shoes on or brushing her hair seemed like impossible tasks to accomplish. Doing the food, this program has brought so much to our lives. I've learned healing is possible for our SS kids. Each of us can have this radiance. It seems to start with little glimmers, like a smile from our kids during breakfast. Or our children handling a challenging situation in a calmer way. I'm wondering, has anyone noticed a glimmer, a way in which doing the food with your kids has changed things? I think even the littlest shifts mean so much. Please share if you'd like, it's good to hear these stories! Angela **********************************************************************
** Radiant Ambassadors ** 
Blogging. It looks like everyone seems to have a blog nowadays!I'm noticing that more and more people are talking about Radiant Recovery and Potatoes not Prozac through their blogs. So I decided to have a go myself and see how easy it is to create one. Oh my goodness, it takes literally two minutes to set one up LOL! I'm actually enjoying the process of writing about my own recovery journey. And if it helps to make more people aware of sugar sensitivity then so much the better! Here is the link to my blog: http://sparklesofrecovery.blogspot.com/ Selena Come join us if you are excited about spreading the news. **********************************************************************
** How I Found Radiant Recovery ** Hello! I am Debbie, and live in Dallas, TX. I've been on Step One since the beginning of the year. I found Radiant Recovery through Your last Diet, and after beginning the book, I purchased Potatoes Not Prozac. And it describes me to a T...even down to loving office supplies! :) I started taking the Step One Class, and now need to go back to reading the book. I hope to learn more about the program and just what resources are out there to help me on this journey. Thanks! **********************************************************************
** Radiant Recovery® Store ** David manages the Radiant Recovery® Store. He is also Kathleen's oldest son. Beth told this wonderful joke in the play class: Jokes are fantastic, I think! A great way for a laugh. So Kathleen and I got all excited thinking about C57 squeakers. And I figured you would like to hear all about the OILS we have for you.
Please send questions and suggestions. I love hearing from you and truly want to help you do your program better. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Kitchen **  This recipe was contributed by Terri W
When ready to cook chicken put it in the Crockpot with the onion and do not add any liquid. As the cooking process goes on it will produce its own juices. Cook on low 8 to 10 hours and it will be falling off the bone tender. For more great program-friendly recipes, check out our cookbook in the store. **********************************************************************
** Radiant Conversations ** A couple things really stuck out for me at this week's chat. The first was regarding step 7 energy and "how one thing that changes a lot is learning to care about others. So someone might be on step one and really connect with how others are doing."I love how conversations is deepening each week. If you are not a YLD member, come and join us. Click here if you want to be a part of the latest and greatest or just have some plain ol' fun! **********************************************************************
** Our Online Groups ** Radiant Step Seven Skills. We have updated and revised our thinking about how best to support our new Step 7 people. We are now thinking about Step 7 as a developmental process starting with skill building, then moving to emotional healing and transforming the addiction amoeba and then learning the art of service and giving back to new people. If you would like to join us in the group please come. We will ask you to write about your journey and why you feel this would be a good fit for you. **********************************************************************
**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.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 C57's and the DBA have very different levels of beta-endorphin. The C57's 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. 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 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 heroine are opiate drugs, which mean 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 C57's 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 keeping 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.
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.
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. Jekyll/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, tolerate, 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. Tina tells us what's happening on Facebook. ©2010 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/ |
