Another Home Run

Reviewed by William L. Wilson, M.D.

The Craving Cure: Identify Your Craving Type to Activate Your Natural Appetite Control By Julia Ross

Flatiron Books: https://us.macmillan.com/Flatiron-books

Hardback; c. 2017; 432 pp; $27.99

As a family physician with over 40 years of clinical experience in the trenches, I’ve always needed to look for ways to help my patients improve their brain function. Some of my patients have had significant psychiatric disorders such as major depression or bipolar disorder. Most, though, have had common mild to moderate depression, anxiety, food craving, fibromyalgia, PTSD, ADHD, and similar brain-generated conditions. By 1987, when Prozac was introduced, these problems had begun to mushroom, but mainline medicine had few arrows in its quiver. That’s why GPs quickly became such big SSRI prescribers.

Before that, I recall having read the work of neuroscientists Judith and Richard Wurtman at MIT who were studying the precursor amino acids l-tryptophan and l-tyrosine which were needed to make the brain’s appetite- and mood-regulating neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. I found their work interesting, but, at the time, I couldn’t see how their research could be applied to the patients in my practice. That suddenly changed when I read The Diet Cure by Julia Ross. In it I found practical recommendations for the use of the precursor aminos and others, such as GABA and D-phenylalanine, to correct the same set of brain-generated symptoms that I was so often unsuccessfully trying to manage. I soon started using the aminos in my practice – with remarkable results.

Since then, it’s become clear to me that our modern diet, loaded with highly processed sweets and starches, is playing the central role in the multiple pathologies, both mental and physical that most of my patients are experiencing. I’ve developed a disease concept to describe it which I call Carbohydrate Associated Reversible Brain syndrome or CARB syndrome. Of all the symptoms of CARB syndrome, it’s the cravings for highly-processed carbohydrates that are driving the bus. But amino acid therapy has made it possible for thousands of my patients to stop those cravings and comply with healthy diet recommendations. As a result, they not only lose their cravings, negative moods, and other brain-dysfunction symptoms; they also lose stored fat – with minimal or no loss of lean body mass. In addition, their blood pressure, liver function, blood glucose and insulin functions, and other now-common diet-related conditions markedly improve. Amino therapy is a miracle cure!

Over the past several decades, amino acids have become the core of treatment for at least 75 percent of my patients. That includes some very challenging patients for whom I initially combine low doses of medications like Prozac or lithium with the amino acids. After a month or two, when they’re consistently eating well and clearly heading down the road to optimal health, I taper many of them off the medications, but safely continue them on the amino acids.

The Craving Cure is Julia Ross’ third important book on the use of supplemental amino acids to re-establish normal brain function in individuals who have been severely compromised by highly processed food. In keeping with the now-epidemic and world-wide nature of today’s diet-associated problems, Julia’s book is much more detailed in its therapeutic suggestions, in its references, and in its scope than either of her prior books. For example, its section on the brain and amino acid therapy is almost two hundred pages long (The Diet Cure’s section was thirty pages long.)

The book’s first few chapters track the tortured trail of health destruction orchestrated by food science; the encroachment, since the 1970s, of new sugars, new starches, too little protein, and more harmful fats on our collective diet. Manufacturing damaging food is one thing. Getting us to eat it is the real accomplishment. With her extensive background directing addiction treatment programs, Julia is in an excellent position to help us understand how we’ve become so addicted to the new ultra-processed foods. She reveals how their carefully combined components, including sucrose, fructose, chocolate, caffeine, refined grains, and even a few nutrient-dense foods like milk products can light up the brain’s primary pleasure centers. Her section on cannabis as an addictive food additive is particularly enlightening.

The regular consumption of these products disrupts the function of our brain’s major appetite-regulating messengers, the neurotransmitters serotonin, endorphin, GABA, and dopamine, as well as its blood glucose supply. Depending on which functions are affected, individuals tend to develop very specific types of symptoms and craving patterns. The book’s five-part symptom questionnaire, which is the version currently being used at Ross’ clinic, has a simple 0-10 scoring system that allows patients to characterize their own unique types of craving. The resulting profiles clearly indicate which specific amino acids will be needed initially and allow us to track progress and adjust dosing as needed over time.

The amino acid therapy section starts with general guidelines for using the aminos as well as some general precautions to be aware of. It then goes into the details of actually treating each of the five specific Craving Types: choosing, trialing, dosing, adjusting, and terminating. This clearly addresses controversies raised by less experienced amino acid therapy promotors such as whether GABA works as a supplement or whether 5-HTP and tyrosine have to be taken together in a rigid ratio.

All clinicians can easily follow Ross’ guidelines. They can also recommend the book to patients for all the reasons I’ve just given as well as for its thoughtful suggestions on how to identify and tailor a diet that can support healthy brain and body function (no easy task amidst all the current competing theories).

Julia Ross has hit another home run with The Craving Cure. I believe that this book can lead to revolutionary improvements in our management of the many disorders that are now so resistant to the approaches of both conventional and functional medicine.