Category: Emotions, Anxiety and Mood

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

At Women to Women, we talk a lot about supporting your core foundation of health. This foundation, much like a building’s, must be rooted to four mainstays, or corners. Most of the time, it is easier to describe (and to understand) the first three: optimal nutrition, hormonal balance, and healthy lifestyle choices. But the fourth — emotional well-being — is equally important, or perhaps more so because it is so often overlooked.

Since first beginning my practice, I have tried to help my patients deal with all aspects of their health, including how their physiology relates to their emotional patterning. But up until ten years ago I couldn’t provide them with any easily accessible tools of their own — only referrals. Then my father introduced me to an innovative therapy known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). I have been recommending it to my patients ever since. The wonderful thing about EFT is that it can be done anywhere: on your own or — even better — with a trained practitioner. For some women, EFT may be all they need to get a handle on how deeply their emotions are affecting their health. For others, it may be just the first step on a more intense journey that needs the guiding hand of a skilled professional.

Stress, anxiety and emotional ruts all manifest in the body in some way — that’s why we always tell our patients that their biography becomes their biology. EFT is simple, affordable, practical self-help that targets this reality. So let’s discuss why you should try it.

Stress and your health: the science of psychoneuroimmunology

Stress is a given in our culture – but what’s not so accepted is the idea that stress and emotional trauma have a physical manifestation.

While many people are familiar with the mind-body concept of Eastern and alternative medicine paradigms, psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is applying Western scientific methodology to the study of how the central nervous system and the immune system interact. Specifically, how these two systems are influenced by non-biological factors: conditioning and stress. What these and other areas of documented study prove is that emotional experience is, in a figurative sense, embedded in our tissues and has clear physical manifestations that are unique to each woman and man, including anxiety, weight gain, depression, fatigue, diffuse pain and GI upset.

For more information, read our article, “How Emotional Experience Determines Your Health.”

What this means for a vast majority of people is that to truly shift your physiology, you have to unlock your emotional baggage.

And this is often not easy to do — in the vast orchestra of your body, understanding your emotional patterning is like trying to identify one discordant instrument and tune it. Most people simply can’t do this on their own without training — and unfortunately end up on antidepressant or anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) medication that turns down the noise. While this can be somewhat beneficial in the short term, you can only press the mute button for so long.

In order to truly feel well, you have to listen and you have to do the work. And that’s where EFT comes in.

What is Emotional Freedom Technique?

The philosophy behind EFT, according to its founder Gary Craig, is: “The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.”

Eastern medicine has long recognized the importance of understanding and maintaining health by maintaining the proper and free flow of bodily energies. In the Ayurvedic medical community, life force (prana) flows through channels called the chakras. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) these channels are known as energy meridians, and these are the pathways used in the practice of acupuncture and acupressure. They also serve as the basis of other energy healing modalities, including EFT.

Emotional Freedom Technique came into being in the 1990’s after Gary Craig completed extensive training with Dr. Roger Callahan, a cognitive psychologist. Dr. Callahan devised — almost by accident — a therapy system known as Thought Field Therapy (TFT), which is based in part on theories of energy kinesiology. He discovered TFT in the course of standard treatments for a patient with a severe phobia of water. Seeking more ways to offer help, he drew on his background in energy psychology and physical energy flow and successfully cured the patient’s phobia. Gary Craig has taken Thought Field Therapy one step further.

I became familiar with Craig and EFT through my father’s therapeutic work with victims of deep trauma and PTSD. Since then, EFT has become one of several popular initial therapies at Women to Women. I have seen many cases where EFT has worked for anxiety, phobias, pain management, weight loss, insomnia, and a range of other conditions. Many of my patients had no idea their emotions were contributing to their symptoms until they began EFT.

For more information about how emotions affect our health, read our many revealing articles in our Emotions, Anxiety and Mood section.

Remarkably, unlike many more conventional emotional and psychological therapies, EFT is entirely accessible, private, and quite inexpensive — free, if you can do it yourself. Even working with a trained EFT practitioner is typically less costly than similar visits to a traditional psychotherapist or counselor. Plus, the number of visits required is usually few — sometimes just one will accomplish what is needed, and occasionally a simple conversation with a trained practitioner can get you started. Unlike drugs, EFT has no side effects. It can be done almost anywhere (even by phone or tele-video sessions), and can be easily learned at home. EFT is genuine self-help and can be a springboard to profound emotional — and ultimately physical — change.

Craig calls EFT “a unique version of acupuncture, except you don’t use needles. Instead, you stimulate well established energy meridian points on your body by tapping on them with your fingertips.” EFT is grounded in thousands of years of therapeutic history. Energy meridians relate directly not only to TCM and acupuncture, but to other healing paradigms like shiatsu, t’ai chi, yoga, and so on. In all these practices — EFT included — a balance of body energies is fundamental to all other aspects of health.

Acupuncture, acupressure and EFT

Over 5000 years ago, the Chinese discovered a primary energetic substance in the body that can’t be seen. This energy, or Qi, is thought to be the essence and sustenance of all life in the universe. There can be no movement without this life force, which runs through the human body along twelve channels, or meridians. Like a circuit board, these energetic meridians map the body and are named for the life functions associated with them.

Meridians serve as pathways of positive and negative energies and communicate deep within the vital systems and organs of the body. The meeting points of positive and negative energies along meridians are acupuncture points. Acupuncture points are also where Qi from the outside environment enters the body. Five hundred acupuncture points have been measured and mapped by modern technological methods: electronically, thematically, and radioactively. By applying pressure or needles to these acupuncture points, trained doctors are able to diagnose disease, control pain, optimize health, and facilitate healing by restoring or maintaining the flow of Qi.

Although many Western practitioners don’t officially recognize acupuncture and the concept of energetic meridians, it has proven to be so effective (and cost-effective) for pain management that many health insurance companies now cover the procedure. Even the skeptics are beginning to admit that there is something to this 5000-year-old practice. It’s about time! And while you may not want or be able to access an acupuncturist, when you practice EFT you are working with the same principals.

So just what is the technique? I’ll do my best to explain.

The EFT process

In my experience, EFT is a wonderful first step in understanding the emotional roots of a health condition — but it is often just the beginning. In order to get the most out of EFT, it is best to work with a licensed psychologist or counselor trained in EFT. With that being said, I can’t think of any harm that could result trying EFT on your own.

Gary Craig has devised what he calls “The Basic Recipe,” a sequence that can be used in just about any situation with minimal adaptation, as suits the patient or practitioner.

With this you are first guided (or will guide yourself) through identifying a specific pain, anxiety, or problem. This is an important part of the process and can make all the difference in some cases. It is my belief that EFT is generally only as effective as the practitioner asking you questions. The good news is that this can be done over the phone or in one or two brief sessions.

From that work, you’ll develop a guiding phrase (Craig likes to refer to this as the “affirmation”) that relates to an issue, sensation, concern, and emotion, based on this adaptable phrasing:

Even though I have this _____, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.

Practitioners urge that the guiding phrase be said with conviction, but even if you don’t really feel it, just repeating the phrase with emphasis appears to be quite effective. This is one of the reasons why EFT works even when the person involved is a bit skeptical of the therapy.

Once you have established a phrase, you begin a series of tappings on specific points on the body that correlate to the various energy meridians. As you repeat your guiding phrase, you tap rhythmically about seven times in each place, though the exact number of taps isn’t crucial.

The tapping sequence is as follows:

• H – top of the head
• EB – inner edge of the eyebrow
• SE – side of the eye
• UE – under the eye
• UN – under the nose
• CH – center of chin
• CB – collarbone
• UA – under the arm

This simple sequence of guided phrases and tapping is often enough to provide relief, but for those who want more, an extension to the procedure and patterns for repetition can be used, and all the pieces can be layered together for greater effectiveness.

EFT may sound strange, but until you try it you will never know what it can do for you. In fact, Craig declares that the whole procedure looks “weird” to the casual observer. But he stresses that he has seen it work for over 100,000 people, with almost no failure and virtually no complaints. He advocates trying it even if you don’t think you need it. As for myself, I’ve seen patients successfully use it for anxiety, PTSD, insomnia, anger, menopause symptoms, and many other physical problems that you might not suspect had even the slightest emotional component.

But keep in mind that EFT may be only the gateway to discovering how your physical symptoms relate to your emotions, and that it can be very powerful. Some of us have buried so much, so deeply, that even scraping the surface triggers a geyser blow of emotion. For this reason, I recommend that my patients who want to do deeper work seek a licensed psychologist or counselor also trained in EFT. I also recommend more intensive programs like the Quadrinity Process and HeartMath to patients who truly want to change their physiology with emotional work. EFT may cause certain biological shifts, and has tremendous healing potential, but lasting work depends on the quality of your questions and the experience of your practitioner.

Finding an EFT practitioner

The EFT website has a listing of trained EFT practitioners. Many of these therapists are available for a phone consultation. If you are presently seeing a psychologist or other therapist, ask them about EFT.

One note of caution: If you do decide to work with an EFT practitioner, make sure you feel comfortable with him or her and gauge the chemistry between the two of you (or lack thereof). This can be of tremendous importance in your relationship with any healthcare professional and is crucial when it comes to your most private feelings. Interview a few practitioners, even if you only do this by phone. Ask about his or her success rate and the type of problems with which he or she has the most expertise. With someone you trust you can then choose to work superficially or delve more deeply.

A good EFT practitioner will help you get to the heart of your emotional issues — and believe me, we all have them. But you should also know that even trying EFT a few times or practicing it regularly on your own is a very positive step. Facing up to the idea that you are a complex, interconnected creature can be intimidating; embracing EFT in the privacy of your own home is a great way to start.

EFT and hormonal balance

In our practice, EFT works extremely well as part of a combination approach in alleviating some of the physical symptoms of menopause. Physical symptoms at menopause and perimenopause often have deep-seated emotional roots. One of my patients in the midwest was literally housebound with chronic anxiety related to menopause. She had bowel difficulties and was taking several medications. I referred her to the EFT website, where she learned the technique herself, and was soon able to eliminate all of her anxiety medications.

The time during perimenopause is perfect for consideration of therapies like EFT. As with any transition, but specifically in menopause, this is a period of emotional reassessment. Use EFT to help take stock of the things you want to free yourself of, so you will have room to become all that you want to be. And while you’re busy doing this work, don’t forget to support the other cornerstones — the secret to a strong health foundation is to give equal attention to them all.

 

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

This is probably the single most important article on our website. Please make time to read this.

The conventional theory of medicine says that your health is a matter of your genetics, exposure to infection and lifestyle. But with rare exceptions, your emotional experience is a greater factor than any of those. That’s not just our assertion — there’s now solid science behind the correlation of emotional experience and a host of diseases and health conditions, from heart disease and depression to obesity and chronic pain.

At Women to Women, we learned long ago that no one can really be well without dealing with their emotional health. This may seem like a radical idea, but for so many women with intractable health problems, there won’t be any progress on a physical level — no matter what therapy is used — until there is progress at the emotional level. As Alice Miller expresses it in the title of her book, The Body Never Lies — even if the emotional problem developed 50 years ago.

The good news is that you can do so much to heal your emotional self. And if you are at mid-life, you should know that in menopause your body is asking you to deal with unresolved emotional issues. This is the time to work on your emotional and physical health — together. So let’s explore the role of your emotional experience and how to use it to reclaim your self.

Proof of the link between emotions and health

While there are hundreds of studies that explore the emotional roots of disease, the most insightful place to start may be the breakthrough ACE Study.

In the 1990’s over 17,000 patients of a large health plan were enrolled in a study to assess the link between emotional experience and adult health. The Federal Centers for Disease Control co-designed the study. The results were stunning; as the authors wrote,  “…they have given us reason to reconsider the very structure of primary care medical practice in America.”

Participants were asked whether they had experienced any of eight forms of personal abuse or dysfunctional family behavior before the age of 18 (each called an “adverse childhood experience,” or ACE). More than half of the patients had one ACE or more.

Even more surprising was the correlation to health outcomes: those who had experienced an ACE were between 4 and 50 times more likely to have an adverse health condition or disease as an adult. The adverse health outcomes covered a surprisingly wide range, including heart disease, fractures, diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, and more.

The authors concluded that the ACE Study “…documents the conversion of traumatic emotional experiences in childhood into organic disease later in life.” How does that conversion occur? Before we explore that central question, let’s dwell a moment on just what we mean by adverse emotional experience.

We’re all affected by adverse emotional experience

The ACE Study focused on a relatively narrow set of easily-measured adverse emotional experiences from childhood and found that half of the adults in the study had suffered one. But if we include all dysfunctional family behaviors, plus other emotional traumas (such as death of a loved one) and adult experience, it’s obvious that virtually everyone has suffered an adverse experience by the ACE standard.

So if the ACE Study found that adverse emotional experience was the biggest single factor in predicting adult health, and virtually all of us have had such experiences, what does that say about our approach to preventative health?

The truth is that all emotional experience affects our health, whether positive or negative, and whether it occurs in the past or the present. But negative experiences appear to have more lasting health effects, perhaps because we don’t deal with them.

Let’s back up a step. A feeling is the body and mind’s response to any given situation. Some psychologists and scientists believe we have five basic feelings: joy, fear, anger, grief and love, with other feelings being variations on these five states. An emotion is what your body does with one of these feeling states.

What we all learn from our families, abusive or dysfunctional or loving, is how to take action with our feelings. If our mothers responded to grief or loss by withdrawing, or dealt with suppressed anger by becoming hypercritical of those they loved, chances are our own responses will be similar. We tend to model our own emotional habits after our parents’ or family’s emotional habits.

What’s the health significance of this emotional modeling? Consider the subject of stress. That’s something we all have, right? The Center for Disease Control estimates that 90% of all visits to the doctor are stress-related, and there are hundreds of medical studies linking stress to a host of diseases. But what exactly is stress?

Most women think of stress as the demands on them that they can’t do anything about, like an unreasonable boss or taking care of an aging parent. But why do some women find those factors stressful and others don’t?

I believe it’s because stress is personal — I find something stressful because of my personal emotional history. So do you. Moreover, each of us tends to recreate stressful emotional situations in our lives — at least until we resolve the old emotional issues that give the stress its power over us.

There’s a commonplace idea that women have greater emotional health than men because women surface and talk about their feelings so much more. That’s true, but it doesn’t mean women’s emotional patterns are healthy. My patients (all women!) have almost all been conditioned to put others ahead of themselves, to “stuff” their emotions (especially anger), to feel unworthy of love, to feel responsible for making others happy, to demand perfection of themselves, and so on. None of those patterns are good for our emotional well-being or our physical health.

Let’s return to how adverse emotional experience translates into health problems. Then we’ll talk about how to turn things around.

Your biography becomes your biology

Our language is filled with expressions of how emotion affects the body: tension and stress gives me a knot in my stomach, overwhelming sadness makes me feel all choked up, a difficult person is a pain in the neck.

More seriously, a recent study showed that sudden emotional shock can cause heart attacks even in healthy people. Called “broken heart syndrome,” these heart attacks were related to the loss of a loved one, fear of an event or activity, or sudden accidents. Notably, most of the sufferers were women.

How does a fleeting feeling have lasting health effects? Research on this is still in its infancy, but there are at least four paths we already know about.

First is the general effect of stress, which triggers the adrenals to produce cortisol and adrenaline. Cortisol is very helpful in small doses (as part of the fight or flight response) but sustained high cortisol levels (the result of unremitting stress) have very destructive effects on the body, including weight gain, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, suppression of immune function and acceleration of aging. For more on cortisol, read our articles in our Adrenal Health section.

Second is the effect of unresolved emotional issues on systemic inflammation. Medical research has recently implicated inflammation as a contributing factor in a host of diseases, including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. For more on systemic inflammation, refer to our informative articles.

Third is the effect of emotions on particular organs. Many alternative practitioners attribute illness in a specific organ to a specific cause. While this is controversial in Western medicine, it has been well documented in medical literature that “Type A” personalities have much higher rates of heart disease, and that women who suffered childhood sexual abuse have higher rates of dysmenorrhea and pelvic pain. The mechanism of action may be peptide chains formed as part of the biochemistry of emotion that bind to receptor sites in specific organs, a concept pioneered by the renowned biochemist Dr. Candace Pert. We believe many more links will be discovered as research in this area continues.

Fourth is the effect of emotions on behavior. The ACE Study revealed a cause and effect link between adverse childhood experience and negative health habits like drinking, smoking, overeating, and sexual promiscuity. The authors recognized these negative habits as self-medication for unresolved emotional pain. But over time the suppression of all that pain through these self-destructive habits has terrible consequences.

The myopia of Western medicine regarding emotions

Despite research like the ACE Study and hundreds of others, conventional medicine is blind to the causal role that emotional experience plays in the development of illness and disease. Instead of looking at root causes, it only treats symptoms. No wonder so many patients find themselves going steadily downhill despite the best conventional treatment.

I was once asked in what percentage of my patients were the problems purely physical, that is, lacking any emotional component. After a moment’s thought, I answered “about one percent.” That’s not a statistic, but it conveys the truth: very, very few women’s health problems are just about a physical problem.

Western medicine insists on dealing with each disease or condition as a separate and distinct issue. But that is just not how the body works. That’s why at Women to Women it takes two hours for your first appointment — we need to know your full history — including a full hour with your practitioner.

Western medicine used to emphasize the full history. But specialization has pushed us to dissociate each aspect of the body from the whole, and managed care has pushed the average appointment time down toward six minutes — and too many people don’t get even that.

Like conventional doctors, many of my patients are so conditioned to think of health as a purely physical issue that they are floored when I suggest their symptoms may have an emotional component. I hope this article helps you connect the dots. Like so many other parts of your life, you are going to have to take responsibility for your emotional health. And if you are at mid-life, this is the perfect time to deal with it.

Menopause and emotional health

It has been said that menopause is largely about “the reclaiming of self.” After a lifetime of taking care of others, “stuffing” our emotions, finding fault with ourselves, and ignoring our feelings of hurt and anger, our biology requires us in menopause to straighten things out, to find our voices, and to reclaim our lives. That’s one reason why so many women are motivated to take control of their health at this time.

Let me give you an example. A patient came in to see me describing constant heavy bleeding (menorrhagia). We tried dietary changes, supplements and other purely physical approaches, with only minimal improvement. I began to probe for the emotional basis of her condition. She shared a description of her marriage to a man who did not support her emotionally and was often verbally abusive. I helped her see the connection between her relationship and her symptoms. One day a few months later, she came into my office and told me she had finally found the courage to leave the relationship. Her heavy bleeding stopped the next day, and has not returned. It was tough to face — but she took control of her life and reclaimed her self.

Menopause provides a natural venue for this work of exploring your emotional environment and your history. It’s like adolescence in reverse: your body asks you to question who you are, what you’re passionate about, and what’s working or not working in your life. All the pieces that haven’t been resolved come up now for healing and transformation. Depression, mood swings, hot flashes, and other symptoms of menopause have a physical origin but also an emotional root — and you need to deal with both at the same time.

The intractable medical condition — no such thing?

The role of the emotions is a big reason for two problems we see every day: the woman who goes to a conventional doctor for her symptoms and is given antidepressants; and the woman with a condition that resists conventional treatment. Many of these women are not going to feel better until they begin to deal with the emotional root of their illness.

In a monograph on the long-term medical consequences of childhood trauma, Stephanie Dallum, FNP talked about the connection between emotional experience and unexplained physical symptoms. The medical term is somatization — physical symptoms with no medical diagnosis. But the insomnia, headaches, obesity, gastrointestinal distress, palpitations, chronic pain and fatigue caused by adverse emotional experience in her study are very real.

With new patients at our medical practice, we generally begin with the physical issues and treat with dietary changes, nutritional supplements, exercise and other lifestyle changes. We tend to use prescription drugs as a bridge to a more balanced natural state, rarely as an ongoing solution. The more severe or intractable the symptoms, and the more receptive the patient, the sooner we introduce the connections to emotional issues. The good news is that those who are willing to tackle both the physical and emotional aspects of their health almost always see the improvement they want.

Mapping your emotional inheritance

At Women to Women we have a shorthand expression for this process of exploring your emotional inheritance and resolving issues — we call it “your work,” as in, “She’s just begun to do ‘her work’ but she’s already feeling so much better.”

There is a tool called a genogram that therapists use that may be helpful to you as well. A genogram is a specialized family tree that lets you explore the patterns and relationships running through your family history.

As you use the genogram to map out your emotional inheritance, ask yourself questions to find the parallels between you and your family members. For example, if certain interactions with your husband affect you badly, ask yourself who he is being like in your family — and who are you being like? What emotional patterns can you see from generation to generation? What family conflicts or secrets have never been resolved — and why not? What emotions have been “stuck” — like grief or anger or pain — and how might they be dealt with now?

How do you heal past emotional experience?

There’s plenty of evidence, both from our clinical experience and from medical research, that emotional healing creates positive physical changes in the body. So how to accomplish that?

In a perfect world we would all be able to afford a few years of therapy — and with the right therapist! We do ask women to view that cost as an investment in their health. We especially recommend therapies based on family of origin. But not all of us can make that investment.

There are group therapy options that are affordable and can be helpful. You may be able to make progress with a like-minded friend or family member. The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) has been helpful for many women; there is free on-line information about EFT as well as reasonably-priced EFT workshops.

Yoga, meditation, exercise and other stress-relieving techniques are helpful as part of your overall health plan, but unfortunately they are not a substitute for “your work.”

You may also benefit greatly from books. We recommend No One Is to Blame, by Robert Hoffman, creator of the Hoffman Process that underlies the therapeutic method now known as the Quadrinity Process. We also suggest using The Whole Person Fertility Process by Niravi Payne as a workbook for exploring your emotional inheritance.

Unfortunately reading is not a very emotional experience, and thinking about your emotional issues isn’t going to resolve them. That’s why therapy — one on one, in a group, or with a self-help method like EFT — is so important. We suggest you think of this as an ongoing process, just like the other parts of your health program.

Deal with the past and move on

It may take courage and faith to examine your own life, to face the past with kindness and gentleness for the person you have been and the people who have caused you pain, and to support the person you feel yourself becoming. Healing your past emotional experience helps create a joyful, healthy present moment and opens the doors to the life you want for yourself.

We love the study of centenarians (those who live to be 100+) done at Harvard Medical School a few years ago. The oldsters were found to be surprisingly healthy and active. Dr. Margery Silver, one of the authors, said in an interview, “…there is a particular characteristic that is typical of centenarians. And that is that they are able to manage stress very well. And this doesn’t mean that they’ve had stress-free lives -…some of them have had really very difficult, and even traumatic lives. There are holocaust survivors, there are women who were widowed at an early age and scrubbed floors to raise their children, and yet they seem to have the ability to roll with the punches…they seem to accept their losses, grieve them and then move on.”

This is a vision of emotional health we wish for all of us — to face our emotional pain with honesty and openness, and get on with our lives.

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

One of the first concerns that springs to mind when we lose focus is the specter of ADHD. Hardly anyone is unfamiliar with this term — the ADHD box grows bigger each year and more and more children fall into it — so why not their mothers? The diagnosis is so common now that many people joke about having it. But let’s get some perspective.

The diagnosis and treatment of ADHD (also known as ADD, AD/HD, or ADD/HD) are subject to a great deal of dispute. The condition is frequently suspected when there is an ongoing cluster of symptoms, most notably inattentiveness, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. But for a positive diagnosis of ADHD, these behavioral features must be present to a degree considered “inappropriate,” e.g., outside the norm, and the possibility that they are components of an underlying bodily illness or a separate mental disorder must also be ruled out.

Some of the concerns that could complicate the picture when diagnosing ADHD that must also be addressed include bipolar issues, clinical depression or anxiety, conventional learning disabilities or behavioral problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, substance abuse — essentially any psychological/psychiatric disorder, especially since having ADHD increases the risk of other psychiatric and behavioral disorders.

But more often than not, you or your child may just think, learn, and/or behave differently than the average Jane — a trait that can be upsetting, isolating, challenging and, ultimately, extraordinary. Being different is not always a clinical disorder requiring drug-induced compliance, but if it is life-disrupting, it needs to be addressed.

What is adult-onset ADHD?

Technically, there is no such thing as adult–onset ADHD. If ADHD is part of your current personal health picture, it has likely been a factor all your life. If you are entering menopause and your mental health practitioner suspects a diagnosis of ADHD, you have probably had the condition since you were a child and it was either mild enough that no one noticed at the time or you developed coping mechanisms that kept it from registering on your teachers’ and parents’ radar screens.

It is now consistently agreed that ADHD will present itself symptomatically before the age of seven. Although the behavioral aspects were first described and attributed to neurological causes in 1902, ADHD was not formally recognized by title until the 1980’s. So unless you’re under 30, you probably missed a diagnosis — valid or errant — as a child.

Menopause is a time when previously undiagnosed conditions make themselves heard, but in the case of ADHD it is quite likely you experienced symptoms beforehand but learned to compensate for or possibly conceal them. The Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2005 that somewhere between 2% and 18% of children in the US are affected by ADHD in one form or another, and as many as two-thirds or more of these children will continue to have symptoms well into their adult years. Of note for women of menopausal age is that over time, two of the three core symptoms of ADHD (hyperactivity and impulsivity) tend to fade, but inattention is likely to have persisted.

Natural treatment for ADHD

It’s important, also, to explore a breadth of treatments when facing a diagnosis of ADHD, whether it is yours or your child’s diagnosis. In our culture, we are good at labeling others who color outside the lines. But just as we celebrate ethnic and religious diversity, we should also recognize neurodiversity.

One pioneer in the field of contemporary neuroscience whose work I highly recommend you read is Dr. Mel Levine, author of the book All Kinds of Minds and founder of the learning centers of the same name (www.allkindsofminds.org). It is his position (and one I wholeheartedly support) that every mind has its strengths and weaknesses and that each one learns differently. Once parents, teachers and medical professionals understand how a child (or an adult) processes information, many cognitive difficulties can be managed without drugs.

And while ADHD drugs can be helpful in certain scenarios, they are not the panacea they’ve been advertised to be. In fact ADHD drugs like Ritalin and Adderall are powerful stimulants that can be fatal if you or your child has an undiagnosed heart weakness. The FDA recently demanded that all ADHD medication come with a strict warning; one that narrowly escaped being a black-box warning like the one on tobacco products.

I am also extremely skeptical when it comes to putting children on long-term ADHD medication. Not only does it underline the message that something is “wrong” with their brain, ergo them, but evidence shows that ADHD drug treatment alone, devoid of additional instruction in behavioral and emotional strategies, can predispose kids for future drug use, petty crime, vandalism, and depression. Non-medical use of ADHD prescription drugs is the leading cause of emergency room visits in young adults age 18–25.

I think it is far more beneficial to use drugs as an absolute last resort when all other therapies — nutritional, behavioral, social and physical — have been exhausted. And it goes without saying that no mother should ever experiment with her child’s stimulant medication, no matter how tired or dull they feel!

There are many resources out there for women wanting to explore alternatives to conventional ADHD drug therapy. At our clinic, we refer patients struggling with ADHD symptoms to All Kinds of Minds and Integrative Manual Therapy (IMT) . We also recommend EEG biofeedback, craniosacral therapy, reflexology and homeopathy. Bach Flower remedies can also be helpful. Educational therapies, as well as exercise and sport routines, have also proven to be very effective for our patients and their children. Visit the on-line Healing Center for additional information on alternative therapies for ADHD.

Paying strict attention to diet and nutrients is a vital part of any treatment. Your brain is powered by food. Eliminating excess sugar and chemicals (especially artificial food dyes) and identifying any hidden food sensitivities can make a huge difference. Nutritional deficiencies may manifest in cognitive symptoms, so don’t overlook this piece.

A proper balance of essential fatty acids is imperative when dealing with any ADHD or learning disorder issues. Make sure you and your children are receiving optimal nutrition with a liberal amount of omega-3’s by eating healthy, well-balanced, preferably organic meals and supplementing with a multivitamin and flax seed or an EFA supplement. For more information on how to make the most of your diet, please refer to our Nutritional and Lifestyle Guidelines.

 

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

Grace was in her 40’s when she first came to see me. She was juggling a career and a family, caring for her aging father, and helping her husband start his own business. Finances at home were tight since he’d quit his job, putting a strain on their marriage. She was feeling low and tired all the time, so she went to her doctor for help. She left the office with a prescription for an antidepressant. Four days later, she came to the clinic with her unfilled prescription in hand to ask me, “Do I really need this?”

It’s hard to believe antidepressant prescriptions have more than quadrupled in the past couple of decades, with twice as many women as men — by some estimates over 1 in 10 women in America — now taking one. Advertisements for Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Cymbalta, Effexor, and others bombard us everywhere we turn — there’s even a designer antidepressant for menopause symptoms called Pristiq, and another one for PMS symptoms called Serafem. But advertising doesn’t portray the full picture about these prescription drugs, just images of happy people relaxing in the sun. We all want that, right? So why not fill the prescription when your doctor offers it?

While antidepressants can help some women immensely, especially those with major depression, the sad truth is that they’re just not very effective for a lot of people. And they certainly aren’t free of side effects. Like many women I see, Grace was reluctant to take a prescription drug, and wanted to know if she had any alternatives. I always tell my patients that there are many ways to navigate these difficult periods in life, and numerous options that can help improve mood and outlook naturally. It may take some time to figure out which path is right for you, but I promise, you can feel better. And the fact is, antidepressants will still be there, should you decide you need them.

Let’s take a closer look at antidepressants and some natural alternatives.

How depressed are you?

Depression involves a range of normal negative emotions. But “clinical depression” differs significantly from minor situational depression or mood disorders, even though the symptoms can be similar or the same. The difference is that in mild depression, symptoms ebb and flow, and eventually do lift, while in major depression they tend to spiral downward toward a more entrenched mental health crisis. Most forms of depression are characterized by:

• Overwhelming feelings of grief, anxiety, guilt, or despair
• A sense of numbness or hollowness
• A loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were once enjoyed, including sex
• Dullness, decreased energy, difficulty concentrating or making decisions
• Disrupted sleep patterns
• Overeating, weight gain, loss of appetite, or weight loss

If you’ve noticed symptoms consistently for over a month, we urge you to see a medical professional, preferably a trained psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker. Suicidal thoughts or attempts and obsessing about death are serious warning signs that need to be addressed immediately.

 The depressing truth about antidepressants

Most healthcare practitioners have an average of seven minutes to spend with each patient. As you can understand, seven minutes isn’t nearly enough time to talk about a person’s emotional state. We can’t blame conventional doctors for how over-reliant on antidepressants our society has become — our medical system is broken, and antidepressants are a Band-Aid attempt to alleviate miserable symptoms. But in the end, any emotional concerns, including depression, anxiety or mood changes deserve more attention than seven minutes, and I encourage you to give yourself that attention.

There’s good reason to take some time with this decision. For one, antidepressants can cause several surprising side effects, such as restlessness, anxiety, sexual dysfunction, increased sweating, and more (refer to the following list). What’s more, there’s been ongoing debate for years about whether they are even effective for people with mild to moderate depression. A 2010 meta-analysis revealed minimal or nonexistent benefits as compared to placebo for mildly to moderately depressed people, although people suffering from severe depression showed more substantial benefit.

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