Rebuild from Depression Blog

I have a secret formula for getting through the holidays. I can maintain my energy with all of the seasonal pressures on me and I come out of the season feeling good rather than feeling deeply exhausted. The secret is dried beef liver tablets (desiccated liver) or Brewer’s Yeast.

My first pick is the dried beef liver because it is loaded with vitamins and minerals, notably vitamins in the B vitamin family. It apparently has an “anti-stress factor” that helps your body deal with stress. My friend Joanne at Nourished Magazine wrote about the anti-stress factor a couple of months ago. But the idea was popularized by Adelle Davis, the nutritional icon that my own mother read back in the late 60s when mom was busy having my sister and me. Mother Adelle recommended that in very busy times we load up on desiccated liver or brewer’s yeast to give us additional energy to make it through.

Brewer’s Yeast has the anti-stress factor as well and provides a vegetarian option. I used it to get through my dissertation defense. (I actually used beta blocker as well for the defense itself but that’s really not a top-notch health story.)

So what I have started this season is consuming the equivalent of about two ounces of liver a day. (Look for a desiccated liver product from cattle on grass. There are many products made from cattle from Argentina or New Zealand which should fit the bill.) My mom is taking a scoop of “de-bittered” brewer’s yeast three times a day (whatever “a scoop” is). We are both spreading our doses throughout the morning and early afternoon. Neither of us are taking our supplements after about 2 p.m. because they can interfere with sleep. And my mom warns that if you find yourself making sugar cookies at 1 a.m. on this regimen, you are taking too much.

Adelle Davis warned against taking very large doses for extended periods of time because you can wear yourself out. There is a fine line apparently between taking enough to get a bit of a boost and taking enough to give you superwoman powers. The superwoman thing would have been somewhat appealing to me had I not already “been there, done that” this fall and am in a long recovery state as a result.

So how much should you take to get a boost but not be left with a bit too much energy? It just depends. Some of us are probably so deficient in B-vitamins that high doses will only shave the edges off of our depression and fatigue. Some of us may get a huge energy boost on a small amount of these supplements. So you’ll have to experiment and use your judgment.

Stress takes nutrients out of us. Be proactive and put some back into your body. Early January could look a lot better.

If you are in the New York area and into eating one of nature's most powerful depression-fighting foods, check out the chopped liver taste-off at The Fork in the Road blog at the Village Voice (via Marisa at Slash Foods)

We should have a liver taste-off right here on this blog or perhaps a liver blog carnival. I wonder if such a carnival already exists. I wonder if anyone would join the carnival besides my mother and I.

More on liver:

• Mom's flash-cooked liver recipe
  
• Liver and essential fatty acids
  
• Vitamins and minerals in liver

It's high in iron and B vitamins, but that is a small consideration if you find yourself in the ICU after eating an E. coli burger. I have deprived myself this summer of burgers from my favorite cowboy restaurant in the High Sierra's Ponderosa. Granted, the restaurant is stronger on the cowboys than on the burgers, but the burgers are a key part of the package. Lamenting my deprivation the other night, the topic of the Nebraska Beef recall came up.

My son Frederick was incensed that not only would pathogens find its way into beef and deprive me of burgers, but that the company providing the beef would actually blame others for resulting illnesses. Back in June, Nebraska Beef sued members of the Salem Lutheran Church for not preparing their meatballs properly for a church dinner. Had those ladies used better food safety measures, the pathogen that was illegally present in the food in the first place would have made no one sick.

The dinnertime discussion was made more interesting by Frederick's recent fascination with Old Testament stories. Could God be punishing Nebraska Beef for its behavior earlier this summer with even more recalls? Would locusts swarm Omaha? Would the Missouri River turn to blood? Probably not, but perhaps some figurative lightning was striking the Omaha area nonetheless. Our dinnertime discussion inspired a painting (below) in the spirit of Frederick's series of "Pollan Paintings." At the same time, apparently a friend of food injury attorney Bill Marler has been counting the pounds of beef recalled and pointed out that 6.66 million pounds have been recalled so far. The Mark of the Beast embedded in a hamburger recall along with all of the other signs of the looming Apocalypse may send me to the Ponderosa for one final comfort burger.

In case I don't return, I leave you with a final message from Frederick (6 years) called "Nebraska Beef's Final Days," poster paint on construction paper.

My life has been filled with wildly productive work cycles. I look back on a few with pride even though they required months of recovery. I don't bill my clients by the hour, but by the job, because I only work when I have the energy. When I do work, I do the work of about five people. Memorable work times are when I carry this level of work on for weeks at a time, but I can usually count on a few days of the madness every few weeks. It's simply been how I get work done.

A cycle was in the works last week: I could feel the energy, my blood pressure was up, my senses were more alert. Any other time in my life I would have said, "Hot diggity, let's get something done!" For the very first time in my life I realized that my body didn't have the energy for what was about the happen even though I had a good bit to do on this WASC project. I shut down the computer and went outside to weed. I deliberately took a week away from my for-pay work to break the cycle. I am three months postpartum and have enough energy to get by day after day, no more. I am quite sure a manic period could send me straight into the pit.

Saying "no" to mania now tops my list of postpartum survival. Other favorites:

(1) Sleep. When I have a bad night, I take an over-the-counter sleep aid the next night. I know that's cheating but it's better than Zoloft and it's better than three years of hell.

(2) Supplements. I take a liquid multi diligently and desiccated liver capsules when my stress level is high. I keep a B complex supplement in my bathroom and in my work area to take when I remember. I take about 2 grams of Omega 3 daily.

(3) Stay home. I have resisted a number of trips, both day-long and overnight. I don't need the wear and the uncertainty that comes with hauling a newborn around. The bad side of this rule is that I am feeling increasingly shut in. After nine months of pregnancy where I followed the same rule, it's about time to see things other than forest wildlife. (We live in the Sequoia National Forest away from pretty much all of civilization.) I do try to enjoy it though:

Technorati Tags: B vitamins, depression, foods that fight depression, liver, Omega 3

In our resolve to consume more liver I have been on the hunt for varying ways to prepare it. The traditional liver and onions is fine now and then (check out Mom's flash cooked liver). But if you will eat liver regularly, the old standby gets old pretty quickly. We like liver around here because it is packed with vitamins and minerals. It even has a good amount of Omega 3 fatty acids if that animal dined on grass.

Here is a liver rendition for the adventuring heart: it is tender and bursting with exotic flavor. You will find written instructions below the jump.

"There's something about liver" is my code phrase for: "We know it is packed with nutrients, but there is something else too. People can get a lift from it."

Adele Davis actually adored liver. She was the go-to person on nutritious home cooking back when my mother was raising me. Adele Davis claimed that liver has an "anti-stress factor." Perhaps the anti-stress factor is the "something," but who knows. We do know that liver is loaded with minerals and vitamins. Liver from animals grazing on grass is also high in the brain-building Omega 3 fatty acid [liver and Omega 3s].

The great thing about liver is that it really is pretty cheap. You can find organic liver for $2-3 per pound. As the center of your meal, a family of four could easily eat well on one pound of liver. Most of us are probably looking for cost-saving food strategies in these bad economic times. You will find more cost-saving ideas at The Nourishing Gourmet's Pennywise Platter.

Check out Mom's videos below with recipe ideas for liver.

If you would rather pass because of the strong flavor of liver, consider a desiccated liver tablet. The tablets do not have the fats but they are great sources of iron and are actually used in body-building to help build muscle mass. I take liver tablets when I'm dieting to curb my hunger and give me a bit of an energy boost. I take four liver tablets three times throughout the morning for a total of twelve a day. My preferred brand for quality and price is the tablet Terri just won in the last twice-weekly giveaway.

After writing that last post, I sure do need to laugh. I figure we should work it in this blog one way or another. With the new month coming up, I thought I would change up the supplement giveaway and find more opportunities to laugh.

There may be nothing that helps our brain health quite as much as laughter. For the next couple of weeks you can enter to win by making us laugh out loud or by simply amusing us. Leave a comment on this post with a funny story, a link to your own funny story, or a link to something really funny on the Internet. Alternatively, tell us about something you did that made you laugh.

It really should be family-friendly, though I would sure hate to exclude innuendo. :) If you have a blog and have a funny story there, feel free to link to that. Write a funny story if you have not already done so.

You can leave multiple funnies in multiple comments. I will select a winner at random from the comments on this post late next week (around August 7).

In the coming week we will have two winners, both of whom will receive the fizzy magnesium and a copy of the book.

I'll start by leaving some silly pictures we took this week. I use a Mac and have software called "Photo Booth" which can provide hours of entertainment, as you can see. I actually have a few here that can make children cry. Alastair really did cry after seeing one of them. I'll post the family friendly pictures. :)

Giveaway results
I'm headed to the Sacramento/Davis area tomorrow and so I am going to announce two winners now, the weekly allotment. Both will get the jumbo pack of Omega 3 fatty acids, magnesium, and B vitamins. They simply must contact me within the next ten days with a U.S. mailing address to claim them.

It's just as well I'm re-working the contest rules because Twitter has truly gotten out of control. I wondered if an Internet marketer or diet pill salesman would win the contest after following me on Twitter. But, in fact, no. We do have a winner from Twitter but she is a dyed-in-the-wool real food Tweeter who everyone should follow just to stay up on the news. Our second winner comes from posting a comment on this blog. The lucky winners:

SeasLife on Twitter (who had massive amounts of tickets in the colander)
Carrie who commented with the now-hilarious: "If you're too down and exhausted to read all through this properly, will you still be eligible for the drawing? I'd like to be in the drawing please." Supplementation on the way Carrie!

Congratulations ladies!

Technorati Tags: giveaway, laughter, magnesium, photo, Rebuild from Depression

Beef liver (and other animal livers) are extremely high in vitamin B12 and are great tools to fight a B12 deficiency.

Note below that 100 grams (about 3.5 ounces) of beef liver has 29 times the recommended intake of vitamin B12. It is also a great source of other nutrients. Try to eat liver two or three times a week until your B12 levels increase. You should begin to get your energy back and if you have suffered from depression you may find that, indeed, liver is a great food to fight depression.

If you are struggling with ways to eat it, liver and onions is absolutely the best way to eat it fresh. Check out Mom's recipe for flash fried beef liver for our favorite recipe.

What goes with liver and onions as a side dish? I asked Mom and she answered.

Read more on the fat content of beef liver and more about the nutritional value of beef liver.