What would Don Draper do?

So, what's your coping mechanism in life?
This sketch is just priceless - it is pure brilliant in portraying how many of us go about our daily life in some way or another, whether we are conscious about it or not, and whatever our "drug" of choice is.

As anyone who has watched an episode of Mad Men knows, Don Draper is the epitome of a civilized addict. His narcissistic behavior and need for control is a direct result of an unstable biochemistry, if he is not engaging in his drugs of choice (cigarettes, alcohol or sex), he is being emotionally abusive.

His inability to handle emotions is why he is succumbing to self-destructive coping mechanisms that temporarily numb him out.

Veteran actor Jon Hamm plays Don Draper in Mad Men.

First step in treating someone like Don Draper is to rebalance his biochemistry so that he no longer deals with those ongoing struggles that cause him to be a ticking time-bomb. He is constantly experiencing peaks and dips in his dopaminergic and seratonergic neurotransmitter system based on what he is doing (or temporarily abstaining from doing). And those drastic brain chemical fluctuations would drive anyone up the wall. You can have all the knowledge in the world on how to deal with emotions etc., but if you are fighting against your biology, you stand to lose.


Treating an imbalanced biochemistry should always come first - that enables people to feel comfortable in the skin they're in effortlessly and without needing to spend countless hours at the shrink's going over semi-invented or not childhood traumas that just are not relevant to keep dwelling on when focus should be on letting go of the past and moving forward.

Balance your brain and everything else in life suddenly seems a lot less dramatic.
Addicts create drama because they are about to crawl out of their skin - that is how uncomfortable it feels to be them, and thus creating some outside triggering dramatic event gives them a temporary relief from focusing on their own inner discomfort.

Once inner balance is restored there is no need to create outer chaos.

Get your brain chemistry evaluated here.

Eating breakfast shown to reduce brain signals that when active, lead to reward driven eating behavior.

New study explains the brain chemical science of what we already know: Eating breakfast in the morning reduced brain activity in the regions associated with motivation and reward, which is also where dopamine is released – a hormone that plays a role in emotional well-being and pleasure. Skipping the most important meal of the day is associated with more snacking and food cravings.

More protein in the morning reduces snacking

Functional MRI (fMRI) was used to look at brain activity related to food motivation and reward. The researchers also measured appetite perceived by the teens, hormonal markers and psychological motivation related to desire to eat.

The adolescents who ate breakfast reported greater satisfaction and less hunger throughout the morning, compared to those who skipped breakfast.

Check out the texture!
There is nothing better than starting off the day licking a bowl clean of ice cream...
 slightly naughty, but it really is good for you! Depending on what I crave, 
I'll top it with berries, shaved dark chocolate, chopped nuts 
or simply drizzle some raw honey over it. So. Unbelievably. Good.

The Nutrition Doctor in The Kitchen is right now making frozen yogurt with just 3 ingredients: Greek yogurt, raw honey and a tiny drop of Amaretto.
When making your own fro-yo, the secret to amazing rich creaminess that just wraps around your tongue like silk is to use 2% Greek yogurt and adding just a drop of liqueur to lower the freezing point and avoid ice crystals. Greek yogurt is a great breakfast choice as it has triple the protein contents of regular, so it satisfies you longer than regular plain yogurt. In the heat of the summer this is one of my breakfast favourites - yes ice cream for breakfast. Rich, creamy... so decadent yet oh-so-good-for you. Lick it, baby!

Reference: 

Heather J. Leidy et al. 

“Neural Responses to Visual Food Stimuli After a Normal vs. Higher Protein Breakfast in Breakfast-Skipping Teens: A Pilot fMRI Study”. 

Obesity (2011) doi:10.1038/oby.2011.108

Lick it! Nature's Viagra: This Valentine's get your SEXY on!

Do you know that your sex drive is an indicator of your overall health?
If your libido is diminishing, then this is simply a symptom of imbalanced hormones and a messed up brain chemistry! Factors that put you at risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes type-2, dementia and other inflammatory based diseases!


Before you resort to Botox in the quest of eternal youth do this...
Yes, your passion in the bedroom affects one of our greatest anti-aging hormones being HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE. This secret-to-eternal-youth hormone helps boost collagen production and keep cellulite at bay. Yes, you heard me... sex may very well be an underestimated cure for cellulite. Cellulite being a major issue for most women when they hit menopause - as their hormones drop, their libido vanishes and their mood fluctuates... just coinciding with those less-than-flattering derriere dimples appearing. It's NOT a coincidence. Hormonal imbalance sets off a major cascade of aging biochemistry reactions in your body!


And no, I am certainly not recommending Viagra here - the side effects are vast and many, and quite frankly, this is a disaster of a drug.


Lick it, baby!
What I am recommending is that you eat these two foods daily for a period of 6 weeks, and watch your sex-drive rise!
Apart from that you hereby have Rx to eat dark, decadent chocolate daily, the health impact of these two natural aphrodisiacs  go far beyond the bedroom, as they help to boost dopamine and serotonin levels, as well as balance your hormones NATURALLY and without any side-effects! 
So yes, lick every drop of that dark chocolate!


The scientific low-down on the two SEXY foods:

The Mayan Super food of the gods...
Dark chocolate contains a high concentration of phenethylamine. This chemical stimulates the nervous system and triggers the release of pleasurable opium-like compounds known as endorphins. It also potentiates the activity of dopamine, the neuro-chemical associated with sexual arousal.


The Incan secret to strong stamina... from the bedroom to the boardroom!
It's called MACA baby! And to be honest I have never seen anything quite as efficient with regard to boosting your sex drive! MACA is a Peruvian root that is one of the few foods that act like an adaptogen (balancing your hormones), support exhausted adrenal glands by lowering cortisol levels. However, dosage is crucial to notice any effect whatsoever; I have found that 1-2 tbsp. daily boosts libido for the majority of my clients dramatically within 6 weeks! Mix it in smoothies, yogurt or add it to flour in recipes when baking.


The taste of SEXY is dark, decadent and delicious...
You can get hold of RAW, high-potency and organic cocoa nibs and MACA here.


Reference: 

Dillinger TL, et al. Food of the gods: cure for humanity? A cultural history of the medicinal and ritual use of chocolate. J. Nutr. 2000 Aug:130(85 Suppl):2057S-72S

Breaking A Bad Habit

Habits are learned slowly but once they are in place they are by their very nature difficult to break. One defining feature of habits is that they are resistant to extinction. Habits are very inflexible; they're very unresponsive when a situation changes. The distinction between behavior driven by a goal and behavior driven by a habit is that goal driven behavior requires thinking. 

However, if you do the goal driven activity often enough, then it becomes an automated habit triggered by circumstances beyond your control.

Dopamine influences both types of behavior,  revving up  the motivational circuits of the brain and strengthening the power of habit. The circuitry operates in roughly parallel loops, with one loop acting as the processing center for motivational information and another focusing on the motor activity associated with habits.

The implications for someone trying to control food intake are obvious. As habits are learned, the brain comes to code whole sequences of behavior as performance units that can be triggered by specific contexts. Cues in the environment become the triggers of predictable and automatic actions.

When it comes to food, we are, in essence, following an eating script that has been written into the circuits of our brains. The more rewarding the food, the stronger the learning experience that creates the automatic behavior (i.e. high sugar/fat foods). That's the danger of habit. 

But habit formation has the potential for good as well. If we can learn to turn all of this around, we can eventually create new habits, ones that motivate us to pursue other, healthier sources of reward.

Contact us to get a brand NEW YOU this year!