treepatrol
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 4117
posted
Iam craving things and I dont know why chocolate.
I dont really crave the sugar I want chocolate ?
Any input???
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
treepatrol
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 4117
posted
Found something
Referring to an American Journal of Medicine September 1998 article he briefly mentioned that in many cases of CFS and Seasonally Affected Disorder, there was a connection between chocolate cravings and mood swings that indicated a lack of serotonin in the brain. In Seasonally Affected Disorder, people become depressed and lethargic when there are lower light levels and they stay indoors during winter. People with a lack of serotonin only craved brown chocolate, not white. Research into the medically important elements of chocolate is continuing. Next Great Duke
When researchers tested the subjects prior to stress testing, none of them showed an increase in cytokine activity, regardless of their serotonin levels. However, when subjects were asked to describe a sad or angry event, men with low serotonin responded by producing higher levels of two cytokines -- interleukin 1 alpha and tumor necrosis factor alpha. Suarez said both cytokines are well recognized as contributing to atherosclerosis, or a buildup of plaque in the arteries, which can lead to a heart attack.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
posted
Well, how come I crave chocolate year round? Maybe the stress of lyme disease makes my serotonin low all the time?
I like these studies that find the scientific explanation for apparent connections between physical and emotional. Something that people know intuitively has got to be explored to find the basis for it. If the environment did not cause pressure on physical characteristics, we are left with no explanation at all, and doctors who throw around terms like hypochondriasis.
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treepatrol
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 4117
posted
quote:Originally posted by lou: Well, how come I crave chocolate year round? Maybe the stress of lyme disease makes my serotonin low all the time?
I like these studies that find the scientific explanation for apparent connections between physical and emotional. Something that people know intuitively has got to be explored to find the basis for it. If the environment did not cause pressure on physical characteristics, we are left with no explanation at all, and doctors who throw around terms like hypochondriasis.
In the fall of 1989, the FDA recalled L-Tryptophan, an amino acid nutritional supplement, stating that it caused a rare and deadly flu-like condition (Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome -- EMS). On March 22, 1990, the FDA banned the public sale dietary of L-Tryptophan completely. This ban continues today. On March 26, 1990, Newsweek featured a lead article praising the virtues of the anti-depressant drug Prozac. Its multi-color cover displayed a floating, gigantic green and white capsule of Prozac with the caption: ``Prozac: A Breakthrough Drug for Depression.''
The fact that the FDA ban of L-Tryptophan and the Newsweek Prozac cover story occurred within four days of each other went unnoticed by both the media and the public. Yet, to those who understand the effective properties of L-Tryptophan and Prozac, the concurrence seems ``unbelievably coincidental.'' The link here is the brain neurotransmitter serotonin -- a biochemical nerve signal conductor. The action of Prozac and L-Tryptophan are both involved with serotonin, but in totally different ways.
Elevated levels of serotonin in the body often result in the relief of depression, as well as substantial reduction in pain sensitivity, anxiety and stress. Prozac, as well as other new anti-depressant drugs such as Paxil and Zoloft, attempt to enhance levels of serotonin by working on whatever amounts of it already exist in the body (these drugs are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). None of these drugs, however, produce serotonin. In contrast, ingested L-Tryptophan acts to produce serotonin, even in individuals who generate little serotonin of their own. The most effective way to elevate levels of serotonin would be to use a serotonin producer rather than a serotonin enhancer.
The continuing FDA public ban of L-Tryptophan prevents popular access to this most effective serotonin producer. The millions of Americans who for decades safely had relied upon L-Tryptophan to relieve depression, anxiety and PMS, as well as to control pain and induce natural sleep, have been forced elsewhere for solutions. Routinely, such solutions are pharmaceutical in nature: people are forced to use either often highly addictive, expensive, and sometimes dangerous drugs like Xanax, Valium, Halcion, Dalmane, Codeine, Anafranil, Prozac, and others, or, simply suffer.
Present FDA public policy maintains that L-Tryptophan is an untested, unapproved and hazardous drug. The analytical work done a few years ago by the Centers for Disease Control and the Mayo Clinic, research which traced the fall 1989 outbreak of the serious flu-like condition to contaminants found in batches of L-Tryptophan made by the Japanese company Showa Denko, has not convinced the FDA to allow L-Tryptophan back on the market. This decision is based primarily on the research of FDA and NIMH scientists who state that L-Tryptophan itself, irrespective of contaminants, is a dangerous substance. Other university-based research scientists disagree with these findings.
The public availability of L-Tryptophan is too important an issue only to be argued and shrouded within a scientific debate that remains, ultimately, mystifying to the vast majority of Americans. There are many obvious facts worthy of public attention, and public concern. For example, consider the following:
On February 9, 1993, a United States government patent (#5185157) was issued to use L-Tryptophan to treat, and cure EMS, the very same deadly flu-like condition which prompted the FDA to take L-Tryptophan off the market in 1989. Notwithstanding its public ban and import alert on L-Tryptophan, the FDA today allows Ajinomoto U.S.A. the right to import from Japan human-use L-Tryptophan. Distributed from the Ajinomoto plant in Raleigh, North Carolina, the L-Tryptophan is then sold to, and through, a network of compounding pharmacies across the United States. Purchased by individuals only under a physician's order, L-Tryptophan emerges as a new prescription drug in the serotonin marketplace; one hundred 500 mg capsules cost about $75 -- approximately five times more than if they were sold as a dietary supplement. Since the FDA holds the political mandate and power of a public regulatory agency established, ostensibly, to protect people from raw corporate interests in drug production and distribution, the actions of the FDA in concert with Ajinomoto U.S.A. are illuminating. By publicly banning L-Tryptophan from its dietary supplement status and price, while allowing L-Tryptophan to be sold as a high-priced prescription drug, the naked duplicity of FDA L-Tryptophan policy is revealed. During and after the 1989 EMS outbreak, the FDA did not totally ban the use of L-Tryptophan in humans -- then, as today, the FDA has granted the pharmaceutical industry the protected right to use L-Tryptophan in hospital settings. Manufactured by Abbott Laboratories, the amino acid injectable solutions Aminosyn and Aminosyn II contain as much as 200 mg of L-Tryptophan. (Moreover, L-Tryptophan has never been removed from baby food produced and sold within the United States.) While the FDA has banned the public sale and use of safe, non-contaminated, dietary supplement L-Tryptophan for people, the United States Department of Agriculture still sanctions the legal sale and use of non-contaminated L-Tryptophan for animals. Today, as in the past, feed grade L-Tryptophan continues to be used as a nutritional and bulk feed additive by the commercial hog and chicken farming industry. Additionally, L-Tryptophan is now available for use by veterinarians in caring for horses and pets. Outside of the United States, in countries such as Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and others, L-Tryptophan is widely used. Nowhere, have any serious or widespread health problems occurred.
At bottom, the FDA public ban of safe, non-contaminated L-Tryptophan is uneven, expensive, and biased in favor of the pharmaceutical industry. The FDA proscription effectively awards billions of dollars in profits to pharmaceutical companies and their suppliers in the same proportion as it adds billions of unnecessary dollars to the nation's already bloated health care expenditures.
On June 15, 1993, the FDA Dietary Supplement Task Force published a report on the work it had been doing in the area of developing FDA policy around nutritional supplements. On page two, the report admits, ``The Task Force considered various issues in its deliberations, including... what steps are necessary to ensure that the existence of dietary supplements on the market does not act as a disincentive for drug development.''
In this case, the FDA has succeeded in carrying out its stated policy goal. With competition from publicly available L-Tryptophan removed, the rapidly expanding market in prescription serotonin drugs -- now among them L-Tryptophan itself -- contains no major ``disincentives'' for the massive accumulation of pharmaceutical industry profits.
It is now time for appropriate congressional committees to review openly and aggressively the entire matter of L-Tryptophan. This will provide a needed forum where political, corporate, and scientific issues of FDA L-Tryptophan regulatory policy may be addressed. There exists ample precedent for such hearings: in the 1980's and early 1990's, for example, such investigations uncovered FDA favoritism in the approval of generic drugs and the bribery of FDA officials.
The story of L-Tryptophan illustrates a sad and perverse picture of the politics and priorities of public health in America: A safe, dietary-supplement serotonin producer is publicly unavailable to people, while daily fed to animals by corporate agribusiness. A drug patent is approved to use L-Tryptophan to cure the very condition the FDA claims it caused. And, while publicly exclaiming that L-Tryptophan is a dangerous and untested drug, the FDA, more quietly, allows human-use L-Tryptophan to be imported, and then marketed and sold by the pharmaceutical industry.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
posted
Sure raises some good questions. Makes me wonder, once again, whether this kind of thing could possibly be ignorance instead deliberate deception. What makes me lean toward deception as the explanation is that other dietary supplements are probably not pure either. Think there is a difference among brands. But no one is checking these things systematically.
Of course, the FDA does not test pharmaceutical drugs either, just relies on the testing results submitted by the companies. This frequently is criticized by consumer advocates, but no one is appropriating the money for FDA to test.
It certainly is worrying that the FDA might have banned this product, based on one incident of contamination, so close to the time the pharma product was introduced.
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lymebrat
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 3208
posted
mmmmmm....
Interesting. I'm not big into sweets other than chocolate. It's a big joke with my friends and family that I consider chocolate as one of the food groups.
Very interesting thread
~Missy
Posts: 3154 | From NH , USA | Registered: Oct 2002
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lymeloco
Unregistered
posted
Good news. Research says you can have your cake and eat it, too. As long as that cake is chocolate.
For centuries, chocolate has been used to treat diseases and maladies such as depression. Civilizations from Mexico to Europe have hailed chocolate as an aphrodisiac. The U.S. government officially recognized its virtues in World War II, making the chocolate candy bar standard issue for the military.
Chocolate's scientific name, theobroma cacao, is literally translated as "food of the gods," and we chocolate cravers don't need any studies to tell us the power of chocolate in mood alteration. Its feel good chemicals have long been associated with feelings of love, safety, and comfort. Maybe that's why Americans eat an average of 12 pounds of chocolate per year.
Chocolate contains vitamins A, B1, C, D, and E, as well as potassium, sodium, iron, and fluorine. Now, researchers say those creamy chocolate confections may actually help us live longer, too.
Harvard researchers tracked nearly 8,000 males, with an average age of 65. Those men who enjoyed chocolate and candy lived almost a year longer than those who did not. Those who ate one to three candy bars per month had a 36 percent lower risk of death (compared to the people who ate no candy), while those who ate three or more candy bars per week had a 16 percent lower risk.
Why? The researchers say they don't know for sure, but that it might have something to do with antioxidants. Chocolate contains the same antioxidant chemicals as wine (phenols). In the chocolate bar, phenols help preserve the fat. In our bodies, phenol can help prevent atherosclerosis.
Like anything, chocolate is best enjoyed in moderation. Just one ounce of solid chocolate packs about 150 calories and can be as much as 50 percent fat. So, for your next chocolate fix, consider reduced fat alternatives, such as chocolate covered foods.
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lyme_suz
Unregistered
posted
Fellow chocolate cravers,
God made chocolate for a reason. He told me. Just kidding.
I make hot chocolate with milk, good expensive cocoa and stevia. A small thick cup (sometimes with half and half too satisfies.
Also chocolate bars with 7o% chocolate can have 12 grams of sugar with ten squares. I sometimes eat one or two squares and hide the rest from myself.
I fell of the wagon on Halloween. Climbing back on...
Chocolate Craving Chocolate contains significant amounts of magnesium and a chocolate craving may be your body's way of trying to get more. Bruxism Clenching/Grinding Teeth According to Ploceniak, prolonged magnesium administration nearly always provides a cure for bruxism. This confirms an earlier report which claimed remarkable reductions and sometimes disappearance in the frequency and duration of grinding episodes in six patients who took assorted vitamins and minerals which included 100mg of magnesium for at least five weeks. When the supplement intake stopped, the symptoms returned. Bruxism and Magnesium, My Clinical Experiences Since 1980, by C. Ploceniak Translated from the French by James Michels
ABSTRACT Epidemiological studies have reported that Western diets are often deficient in Mg. We investigated the ability of a cocoa-derived product, used in some European countries as a dietary complement added to milk, to aid recovery from chronic Mg deficiency in rats. The animals were divided into three groups, each of which received a different amount of dietary Mg. Rats in the Mg-deficient (D) group received an Mg-deficient diet (0.225 g Mg/kg food) during 8 weeks. In the cocoa-supplement group (D + CC), the rats consumed the Mg-deficient diet for 5 weeks, and were then switched for 3 further weeks to the same diet supplemented with 3% (wt/wt) cocoa product, so that the Mg content of the diet was 0.27 g/kg food. Rats in the control group (C) were given the same diet as in group D, except that the amount of Mg was 0.56 g Mg/kg food. We measured the concentration of Mg, Ca and P from ten rats in plasma, whole blood, skeletal muscle, heart, kidney and femur in rats that were fed the diets for 35, 42, 49 or 56 days. In animal fed the cocoa-supplemented diet (D + CC) significant improvements were found between days 35 and 56 in the alterations in Mg, Ca and P caused by Mg deficiency in all tissues studied. On day 56, kidney and bone concentrations of Mg and Ca had returned to normal. Our findings show that the habitual use of the cocoa product as a dietary supplement favors correction of the negative effects of long-term feeding with a diet moderately deficient in Mg.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
lpkayak
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 5230
posted
tree-that's incredible. not too much surprises me or gets my attention any more but that sure did.
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LabRat
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
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posted
I have hot chocolate three to four times a week, about a pint, I mix it up in a fruit jar so I can make enough to satisfy.
Too much chocolate, (how much is too much) at one time can be a problem if your prone to bouts of tackacardia. I discovered this and it was confirmed by a friend in the same boat. No problem since Feb. of 05 though.
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riversinger
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Member # 4851
posted
Dagoba Organic Chocolate, the really dark one, has a very low amount of sugar. Just enough to make it eatable, without really wacking you out.
The dark chocolate has been found to have good antioxidents. Unfortunately, when you add milk, it binds the antioxidents, so you have to like the dark stuff. Fortunately, I do!
Sometimes I makechocolate drops by melting Scharffenberger bittersweet baking chocolate with stevia and some cream, but when I am in a hurry, I indulge in Dagoba Eclipse.
The one concern I have heard with non organic chocolate is that they are finding high levels of lead in it, so take that into account. But if you want to indulge in the good stuff, here are a few more excuses.
Starphoenix
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posted
I can't seem to go a day without chocolate. It's a vegetable, I say! It's from a cocoa plant, right?
Steph
-------------------- Learning to love, and loving to learn. Posts: 1318 | From Shohola, PA | Registered: Apr 2002
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Areneli
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posted
I crave chocolate because it is so goooood
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kgg
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Member # 5867
posted
You are right Treepatrol, atleast in my experience. When I start craving chocolate it is time for my magnesium injection. And afterwards the cravings go away. So for me, magnesium is the reason I crave chocolate.
Karen
Posts: 1844 | From Maine | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
To get the chocolate suger free, make hot chocolate like someone mentioned, with stevia or Xlytol. But, also there is good suger free chocolate. Trader Joes sells a bar that is ok and chocolate covered almonds which are better, both sweetened with maltitol, but Yamate brand is 70% cocoa and only sweetened with maltitol (carried online and in some health food stores). Avoid artificial sweeteners, but maltitol and xylitol are supposed to be fine.
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treepatrol
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 4117
posted
MALTISORB� maltitol is a sugar-free sweetener in the polyol family.
Polyols are carbohydrates occurring naturally in various fruits and vegetables. Roquette produces them directly from cereals.
MALTISORB� maltitol is an hydrogenated disaccharide, consisting of glucose and sorbitol; it is made by the hydrogenation of D-maltose, a sugar obtained from starch.
MALTISORB� maltitol is an anhydrous crystalline white powder. A unique Roquette process guarantees a purity higher than 99%.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
breathwork
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 567
posted
Simply put, chocolate is good for the soul! That is my experience... Espeically dark chocolate...the good stuff...It's just wonderful! I don't need to know why, I just love it... I don't smoke or drink or do drugs or wheat or high fat, etc...I've given up many things that I love, but chocolate will never be one of them! Carol Ann
Posts: 1062 | From CA USA | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
I looooovvveee chocolate!!! My favorite is Hershey Symphony with Almonds....
I get this crazy craving and will buy two bars and wolf one down and slowly eat the other, savoring each bite....
Not good for a diabetic.
But, I have found since using coconut oil and magnesium supplements the craving is fading.
Tj
Posts: 192 | From Phoenix, AZ | Registered: Apr 2005
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henson2
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Member # 463
posted
Yes, the first moment I read this post, I thought: magnesium!!
It has magnesium in it.
Here is something else to think about -- for the ladies, anyway. Chocolate contains estrogen. Yep! Have had long discussions about it w. a relative who is a doctor.
I can't stay on the computer to do a search now, but maybe someone else can find info. about that.
I have heard that's why women crave it at that time of month. LOL! (What if one always wants chocolate! LOL).
Anyway, just thought I'd throw that in. Posts: 1067 | From East Coast | Registered: Dec 2000
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