The Food-Mood-Body Connection : Nutrition-Based and Environmental Approaches to Mental Health

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Many conditions that are generally believed to be purely mental disorders are actually caused by vitamin deficiencies, food allergies, hormonal imbalances, and environmental factors. In this book, the best-selling health and fitness expert who has been called "Mr. Natural" by Time magazine presents nutrition-based treatments for the underlying biochemical imbalances that cause many of today's mental problems.

Reader Reviews:

In this book you can see that the solution for treating depression is not in a prescription. Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Effexor, Remeron, etc are all pills that any doctor will give you without considering what might be causing the depression and treating it. These pills have many side effects and I know because I've taken all of them, and many times they don't even work. I'm going to try and find a doctor here that practices what this book is all about. They say that you might get depression symptoms from some food, from things in the environment, deficiency of minerals, etc. That is what needs to be found out and treated and when it is, your depression will go away. The book makes a LOT of sense. PLEASE READ IT, you won't be sorry.In this book you can see that the solution for treating depression is not in a prescription... I'm going to try and find a doctor here that practices what this book is all about. They say that you might get depression symptoms from some food, from things in the environment, deficiency of minerals, etc. That is what needs to be found out and treated and when it is, your depression will go away. The book makes a LOT of sense. PLEASE READ IT, you won't be sorry.Although "The Food-Mood-Body Connection" teems with interesting information, its format robs it of instructive value. It takes the form of a long series of interviews with alternative-health practitioners, with occasional (and I mean occasional: more than half the book is paragraphs quoted verbatim) comments from the "author," Gary Null. If such a style appeals to you, you'll love this book; if you prefer knowledge in a usable context, however, turn elsewhere.

With real editing, this may become a valuable resource. Until then, most would be better served with Elizabeth Somer's "Food & Mood," a truly useful guide to this important subject.There is a lot of interesting information in this book, and it's in a field that could use some more interest than it generally gets. Unfortunately the information appears in the middle of a huge mish-mash of every kind of alternative therapies. Reflexology occurs right beside various vitamin therapies, lithium treatment of manic-depression, food allergies and sensitivities, and heavy metal poisoning.

The various causes, and therapies discussed have little or no evaluation of their effectiveness, or history discussed. A fair number of individual cases are discussed, but nothing that would allow a reader to distinguish the obviously helpful from the promising from the complete hookum.

Another problem is that while good nutrition is discussed, and various ways in which supplements (vitamin & other) can help people achieve better health, there is no way given to try to sort out what kinds of supplements might do you some good. There is an exception for a couple of disorders (like alcoholism), where there is a more general discussion of what supplements a heavy drinker should take, particularly if s/he is trying to quit, but in general, no.

Last but not least, the discussion of toxic environments goes beyond unhelpful and into downright alarmist. While maintaining a healthy environment is admitably difficult in this day and age (if not impossible), it does no one any good to be looking at everything they eat, breathe, or touch as a potential toxin. So doing only raises stress levels - which as this book points out, is an environmental/lifestyle problem all its own.

In short - there's some interesting information in here, but it's not worth the effort, and the resultant paranoia from reading the book, to extract it.Too often, health problems are treated with magic pills, and this is especially true of mental health problems. Now here is a book that pays proper attention to both the causes of much mental illness and helpful things people can do in place of or in addition to drugs to improve their mood and mental health. The authors are a nutritionist, Gary Null, and a respected writer, Louise Bernikow. I was really surprised by the some of the information here-and troubled that I hadn't heard about it already. For example, it turns out the drugs that are used to treat kids diagnosed with ADHD (attention-deficit) disorders are associated with risk of violent or suicidal behavoir, and that the diagnosis itself is very blurry. So kids are being treated with dangerous drugs for a condition they often don't even have! And there are alternatives, nontoxic nutritional approaches, that usually aren't even considered. As usual, a big part of the problem is that doctors aren't adequately informed about exciting nutritional approaches, and doctors can only employ treatments they know how to prescribe, so it's a bit of a catch 22-with patients the worse off. But this book can help. I hope people read it, and, especially, that doctors and other mental health practitioners read it.
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