Horizon Treatment Services
Welcome to the Horizon Treatment Services Podcast, where we delve into the forefront of alcohol, drug, and mental health services. As industry pioneers located in the Beloved Bay Area, CA - HSI is committed to empowering adults and adolescents through evidence-based programs, fostering a secure space for tackling substance use disorder and mental health challenges.
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Horizon Treatment Services
Ep 05 - Transformative Nutrition for Addiction Recovery
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The episode dives deep into the transformative role nutrition plays in addiction recovery. Christina Veselak emphasizes the necessity of nourishing the brain with real food, addressing emotional regulation, cravings, and the importance of nutritional literacy in treatment programs.
• Discussing the role of nutrition in recovery
• Describing real food vs. processed food
• Emphasizing the biochemical needs of the brain
• Addressing health literacy challenges affecting food choices
• Highlighting the importance of cooking education
• Promoting community initiatives to enhance nutritional knowledge
• Advocating for the integration of nutrition in treatment plans
• Announcing the Feeding the Recovery Brain Summit
Academy for Addiction and Mental Health Nutrition
Home - Eating Protein Saves Lives - Eating Protein Saves Lives
Feed The Recovering Brain Summit 2025
Feeding the Recovery Brain Summit
Speaker 2Horizon Treatment Services serving California's Bay.
Speaker 1Area communities, inspiring hope and healing since 1976. Feeding and being fed is foundational to us as human beings. There has been so much trauma around food and being fed or not fed and there's been so much break in in care and self care. Us feeding our clients and teaching them how to feed themselves appropriately, making that part of the therapy is profoundly healing, because what is the best way we can show love to ourselves but feeding ourselves real food consistently and lovingly?
Speaker 2Christina Veselak has over 40 years of experience as a counselor and nutritionist in the addiction field and over 30 years as a licensed psychotherapist. She holds a Master of Science, is a certified nutrition lead instructor and she founded the Academy for Addiction and Mental Health Nutrition. She tirelessly advocates for feeding the brain as a foundational aspect of recovery. She does this as a public speaker, radio and podcast guest and as the founder of the nonprofit Eating Protein Saves Lives. And is the founder of the nonprofit Eating Protein Saves Lives. She offers online training as well as mental health nutritional coaching to a variety of clients, among them Horizon Services. In April 2025, her academy will host the first of its kind Feeding the Recovery Brain Summit in Columbus Ohio.
Speaker 2Hi, christina, I know that you aren't new to the addiction field. You've worked as a counselor and a nutritionist for like 40 years I think 40 plus years and I also don't think that the correlation between good food and nutrition and physical health has been a mystery right for a very long time. We've had some knowledge of this, but your work speaks specifically to feeding the brain and how that can sort of help folks who are experiencing addiction or mental health issues to recover. How did you get into this work. How did you get into that focus?
Speaker 1Jen, I got into this focus because I started noticing in my practice a long time ago because I've been doing this for 40 years that what my clients ate or didn't eat seemed to impact their ability to really engage in the healing process.
Speaker 1Or, for women, what time of month it was, you know, in terms of their cycle, impacted what was going on in their life and the number of cravings they had. And then, just about 25 years ago, I developed a specialty in Denver working with the chronic relapser highly motivated people, people who really cared about their sobriety and their recovery process. People who were going to three 12-step meetings a day by bus. People who'd gone through five treatment programs but something wasn't clicking and they couldn't figure out why, and their treatment providers couldn't figure out why. And so they got sent to me because I said bring them on. And these were people who felt enormous shame for failing over and over and over again, and my heart just broke for these people. And different people had different stories and different issues, but what I began to discover over time is that they all had one thing in common and that was they couldn't be bothered to eat real food on a regular basis.
Speaker 2Can you tell me what you mean by real food?
Speaker 1So a lot of people. This one client, this is the client that really got me on this road. She came into the outpatient detox program amino acid IV detox program where I was the relapse prevention counselor. She sat down and she started to cry and she said I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why I'm spending the money, it's a waste of time. I'm constitutionally incapable of staying sober. This is my third treatment program and it's just I'm going to fail.
Speaker 1So I asked for her story and it turns out that she had managed, by hook and by crook, to put together an entire 60 days of sobriety from alcohol and she'd been so proud of herself. And she went to this seminar by Wayne Dyer. That was motivational and it was all about recovery. And in the middle of it she had this wonderful spiritual awakening. She recommitted with everything she had to sobriety and she was drunk within two hours of leaving that seminar. So she couldn't trust herself anymore. She hated herself and she said the craving just came out of the blue at 10 o'clock at night.
Speaker 1I said cravings feel like they come out of the blue, but they don't. There's always a reason for it. Tell me what happened earlier in the day. Did you have breakfast? And yes, she was Irish. She had a wonderful Irish breakfast Eggs, ham, mushrooms, the whole thing and about seven o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1So then I said, well, did you eat lunch? She said, oh no, I never eat lunch. Said well, afternoon snack, never eat afternoon snacks. Okay, well, what about dinner? And she said, well, we were going to have dinner. But so it turns out that she had not eaten or drunk anything but water and coffee all day since seven o'clock in the morning. And, as you'll hear from me in a minute, when that happens, blood sugar drops, adrenaline kicks in and under the influence of adrenaline, first of all we get a craving and second of all, we lose access to our recovery skills. And then she had this emotional experience in the middle of the seminar, which was also dysregulating, even though wonderful, and for people in early recovery, emotional dysregulation triggers a craving and she had no access to her recovery skills and she was hungry. So she left the seminar and ended up driving, really without any conscious awareness, to the nearest bar.
Speaker 2I have to tell you, christy, and first of all, let's just pause there for a minute, because what you've done is you've done a wonderful illustration of the challenge of being somebody experiencing addiction, right, the desire to stop, the absolute clarity that I'm done, that this is it, I'm never going to do this again.
Speaker 2You described that she was in the midst of a Wayne Dyer inspirational seminar and she was very clear that she was going to do it this time and within two hours, there she went right, and this is not uncommon, and we've got record after record after record after case study of this being the case and the plight of somebody who is addicted to substances. Now we know that relapse is a profound reality of all chronic illnesses, right, including like diabetes and some of these others which we could probably also address with what you do soon. But I know that in the addiction treatment sphere and also you mentioned the 12-step mutual support sphere it tends to be about biopsychosocial, spiritual learning, how to move through these things with a different way of thinking. But I don't hear about nutrition being a critical component of this and I haven't heard prior to meeting you about nutrition being critical to preventing cravings and relapse. Can you tell us more about that?
Speaker 1Well, absolutely. But here's the thing, Jen Traditional treatment programs and the 12-step programs do a great job when they do, addressing the psychosocial and spiritual aspects of things. I call it two legs of the three-legged stool, but the only option we're ever given to address the biochemistry of addiction, the brain part of addiction is medication, and then, when that medication doesn't work, more medication. Nobody ever stops and thinks about what is it that the brain as an organ in our body and thinks about. What is it that the brain as an organ in our body needs to function optimally?
Speaker 1Well, it turns out that science has been in for decades. We know exactly what nutrients the brain requires to function optimally, that the brain uses to make our mood-mediating neurotransmitters, from that the brain uses to repair itself with. Yes, the brain can repair itself, but this has never, ever been part of the conversation. So all I'm doing is saying, hey, people, it's a three-legged stool, it's a biopsychosocial, spiritual disorder and let's address the biochemistry by feeding the brain first. Then we can bring in medication as needed. But very often, once the brain gets what it needs, you don't need medication because it's working.
Speaker 2Is it so simple? It seems so simple it is that simple? Yes, what about mental health issues and co-occurring disorder? And don't some things need disorder and don't some things need medication? We?
Speaker 1don't know. We don't know. And what I mean by this, jen, is that most people don't start by feeding the brain first. I see, okay, right, most people are eating what's called an ultra highly processed food diet, and there's been a lot of research over the past five to 10 years about how these diets create depression and anxiety and cognitive issues in children, teenagers and adults. That research has been done. That research has been done.
Speaker 1And when these people start eating okay, I'm going to use the word real again, real food those symptoms start decreasing because and by real what I'm really referring to is nutrient-dense food that has not been highly processed, so high protein to give the brain the amino acids it needs to make the neurotransmitters fruits and vegetables and whole grains to get those vitamins and minerals in. This is what the brain requires Good fats, the brain requires enough cholesterol. It requires the omega-3 fatty acids from a variety of sources. It requires phospholipids from our legumes and our egg yolks. Egg yolks turn out to be really good for us. So by real food, I mean food that we make ourselves, food that are from the outside of the grocery store, not outside the grocery store. From the outside of the grocery store, not outside the grocery store but the outside, no, no, no, I know what you mean.
Speaker 2The exterior, right when the perimeter, the perimeter of the store, that's the word.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know where the meat is, where the fish is, where the fresh fruits and vegetables are right, right, these are the foods that our brain needs to function optimally. So we start with food, but sometimes we may have digestive issues or sometimes we may be really, really depleted. It turns out that I had undiagnosed, or my celiac disease diagnosis got lost when I was growing up and I grew up very ill. I grew up eating gluten and by the time I hit 30 and was barely functioning, I was very nutrient deprived because my gut just wasn't absorbing nutrients. Well, I gave up gluten, started feeling better immediately, but I still had a long way to go and I was eating really, really good, but my gut needed a long time to heal. So I needed to be on supplements for about 10 years.
Speaker 1Now other people don't have as wrecked a gut as I did and they don't need to be on supplements that long, but I did. I needed to be on a multivitamin and fish oil and other fatty acids. I needed to be on targeted amino acids to rebuild this. When I was 30, jen, I had 10 different biochemical reasons for nutritional reasons for my depression 10 of them. I had food allergies. I had low thyroid function. I had depleted neurotransmitters. On and on and on. It took me till I was 45 to uncover the last reason for my lifetime depression. And then it was fine, and I've been fine ever since.
Speaker 2I have to tell you you're not going to get any argument out of me about the value of real food and mental and physical health and clarity. I am learning from you about the actual repair of the brain. I am familiar with neuroplasticity and how it sort of plays into our thinking in ways that we can sort of rewire our brain around behavior and those types of things. But I recall you mentioned about shopping at the perimeter of the grocery store where all the real food is, and I recall in 2011, I used to teach a nutrition lesson in my class and I used the documentary Forks Over Knives. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's all about moving to whole foods versus processed foods, and they had in there something that never left me and I think I heard you sort of just say it as well. But back in 2011, I learned about the standard American diet which, interestingly, if you take the first letters of each, is sad and it makes us all sad. Yeah for sure. Absolutely Depression. No pun intended, right, but they talked about that. It's composed of give or take the following percentages so, like 63% of America's calories tend to come from refined and processed foods, approximately 25% of our calories come from animal-based foods, right? Anything from milk to meat, and 12% of America's calories come from plant-based whole foods. Now, when you watch that movie, you start realizing, wow, I don't eat food. I eat. You know, I'm not feeding my body or my brain, I'm feeding my taste buds. Right?
Speaker 2But they said that a way that you can start to make a tremendous improvement on your health is if you can just switch the two percentages. Switch the 63% of refined and processed foods and the 12% of America's calories from whole foods and you flip it. You can even leave the animal foods as they are, at about 25%. If you increase your intake of plant-based foods to 63% and decrease your process to 12%, then you would notice remarkable changes. And so my next question to you is you laid out some of the nutrients that we know that we need, that science has demonstrated that we need for healthy repair and rebuilding of the brain.
Speaker 2We have so many of our clients at Horizon Services are Medicare clients, right? We've got folks living in zip codes that have food deserts and they don't have access necessarily to stores that have perimeters of whole foods. Right, that's right. So I guess I wanted to ask you about in general, and then also maybe about this population. What is the health literacy or the nutritional literacy necessary to care for oneself this way? How are we learning about this, or how are we not?
Addressing Addiction Through Nutrition
Speaker 1Well, you see, we're not learning about this. Nutrition classes are no longer being taught in school, Kids are no longer being taught how to cook. Many parents don't know how to cook right and especially if we've got generational poverty going on, we've got generational addiction going on. I live in rural Appalachia. We have generational poverty and addiction going on and one of the highest obesity rates in the country.
Speaker 2Oh, wow.
Speaker 1Okay, and grandma or great-grandma used to cook, used to have a garden. Hunting is still a thing here, but if you're so depressed or still using or in significant post-acute withdrawal, you literally don't have the wherewithal to garden anymore, to really hunt, to do all these things that can feed yourself and your children, and nobody thinks about it anymore. So I go to these addiction conferences and I start telling people from Appalachia this information who come to my table and they say that makes so much sense. But I've never heard it before. Nobody's ever told me. So this is why I do what I do, jen is to get the information out, and so I actually started a nonprofit organization called Eating Protein Saves Lives because it does to start educating people that this matters, why it matters and some ways of how to do it. Now on that website we actually have a video about how to use your food stamp dollars wisely.
Speaker 2I saw that how to eat this way.
Speaker 1On Snap it turns out that the bag of organic apples costs exactly the same as a bag of potato chips, of organic apples costs exactly the same as a bag of potato chips. But if you're used to buying the potato chips and you do it unconsciously as unconsciously as people will smoke weed or pick up a cigarette or a vape, it's not going to occur to you to go looking for the organic apples and you're going to think, oh, they're way too expensive. Well, they cost the same as your potato chips.
Speaker 2Well, and to be fair, I don't want an apple, I want the salt and the fat and the crunch of a potato chip. So how do you retrain that? Well?
Speaker 1apples are pretty crunchy and they're sweet, okay. So some people go for salt and some people go for sweet. Well, the apple is going to take care of the sweet crunch for you, sure, okay, sure. Now your carrots and your celery, dipped into all sorts of fun things, are going to take care of your salty crunch, okay, okay, and I'm not saying don't throw in a few potato chips, okay, sure. But I had a woman who had an eating disorder. Really, she was a compulsive overeater for 30 years, and what she ate for 30 years OA could stop her compulsion for eating potato chips. Until she came to me and I said OK, look, I'm not going to tell you to stop eating your potato chips. What I want you to do is bring some stuff in. Are you OK with just adding some things to your potato chips?
Speaker 1There you go, that's right. And she was so desperate, she said anything. I said, ok, I want you eating 20 grams of protein every four hours. And she was so desperate, she said anything. I said, okay, I want you eating 20 grams of protein every four hours. And here's how you do it. I want you eating nine servings Servings are tiny, by the way Nine servings of fruits and veggies every day. So basically, three with breakfast, three with lunch, three with dinner. Can you do that? And we brainstormed and we figured out how she was going to make that happen.
Speaker 1And she came back that next week, radiant. She didn't eat one potato chip the entire week because she didn't need to. She didn't want to. Her brain was getting what it needed and it was happy. It didn't need the potato chips. Then she came back the next week and said oh my God, a craving came out of the blue last night and I ate two bags of potato chips. I said again cravings don't come out of the blue. What happened? Turns out she had skipped her mid-afternoon snack and she'd skipped dinner. She had took a nap and then worked straight through. She was hungry, she was hungry and that was the last potato chip in she ever went on.
Speaker 2I got to tell you, and that's a relapse, right, whatever it is.
Speaker 2You mentioned OA, which is Overeaters Anonymous, and I don't know if everybody in the audience would know what that is, but the thing is is that that's a relapse, right, and whatever the substance is potato chips or marijuana or heroin the relapse is the relapse, and it's often due to things like hungry, right. We have a very simple tool that we use in our programs and that we use in the recovery community, and it is when we are feeling craving or when we are feeling hostile we have to ask ourselves, we have to halt, and that stands for am I hungry, am I angry, am I lonely or just feeling like I don't fit in or am I tired? And if I'm any of those things, I am required to take care of them before I make any decisions about using care of them, before I make any decisions about using, about hurting myself or someone else, there has to be a mindfulness about my body needs certain things that I am not accustomed to providing it, be that food, be that emotional regulation, be that rest.
Nutrition and Amino Acids for Recovery
Speaker 1But it turns out, Jen, it turns out. I don't know about lonely, but at least angry and tired is directly related to low blood sugar is directly related to hungry. The problem is is they went down the sugar side of things and because, yeah, sugar can quickly turn off a craving, Sugar can quickly make us feel better for a while. Problem is, sugar is also an addictive drug and sugar raises our blood sugar and what goes up has to come down. And then it comes down, and then that adrenaline kicks in and then we're angry, and then right, and then we're craving. So it turns out that eating protein rather than a candy bar is a much more effective way of making a craving go away. I can literally make a full-blown craving go away, Jen, using either protein food or the right amino acid. So can you, and so can all of your listeners.
Speaker 2Tell us a few things. One about amino acids. Explain that to the audience, please, if you would. And then also, what if I'm a vegetarian? Or what if I'm vegan and I don't want to eat fish or I don't want to eat meat? What kind of protein options do we have there?
Speaker 1Okay. So it's easier to get the protein you need because think about it we use protein for all sorts of things. Protein breaks down into something called amino acids when we eat protein, whether it be from tofu or from a steak. When we digest it, it turns into a whole bunch of little chemicals called amino acids. They go everywhere in our body. They make our muscle, they make our skin, they make our red blood cells, they make our enzymes and even our DNA. Some of them get into the brain and make our mood-mediating neurotransmitter systems.
Speaker 1People have heard of bilkamine and serotonin. These are made from amino acids, from protein. So are our endorphins and GABA. We have to have all of those in order to have emotional happiness, right? So we needed to be eating enough protein to get enough aminos for our brain, not just to keep our heart beating and our blood pumping. So minimum, it looks like 60 to 80 grams of protein a day is what most people need. It's easier to get that from your animal protein, but you can get it from soy. You can get it from your nuts and your beans and your legumes your beans, right. It's just harder. You have to pay more attention and you do have to supplement with things like biotin or vitamin B12, which you really can't get on a vegan diet. But you can do it and there's lots of good like pea protein-based protein shakes out there. Some of them are actually really good for you. Some of them are pretty crappy, so you need to read the label.
Speaker 2Well, that's what I was going to say is learning to read the label, because a lot of times, if you're not eating whole food and you're going to tofu or protein drinks or something like that, you've really got to be able to understand what the sugar tradeoff is, or the saturated fat or some of those other things. Sodium, right, but I hear you, there's a lot of options. You can get creative with it, right?
Speaker 1You really can, and so some of this is processed food, but it's not ultra highly processed food. The nutrients are still in there. And I've just discovered a new protein drink I really like from Kate's Farm and it's 16 grams of protein for a little thing. It's got good fats in it, it's not very sweet, it tastes good, it has some fruit and vegetable powder in it, so I've got at least a serving of fruits and veggies in there. I like it. There's other brands out there too, so that's what you're looking for. But then you can buy these amino acids over the counter and they actually get into the brain and can change your mood or turn off a craving within 20 minutes. They're anti-addictive because they're rebuilding your neurotransmitters rather than depleting them the way mood-altering drugs and behaviors do. So how?
Speaker 2much do you suppose can you tell us about the adoption of this sort of lens in the behavioral health treatment community? How many agencies do you know of that are using this information in their treatment recovery programs? And then let's talk a little bit after that about how we're doing this at Horizon with you, and why isn't it more embraced, or is it? It's not very well embraced.
Speaker 1Somewhere around the early part of the 19th century, nutrition got thrown out by the American Medical Association. Nutrition got thrown out by the American Medical Association Maybe because there were some crackpots running around and there were, but that wasn't the reason for throwing out the baby with the bathwater. But medical science got all excited about one pill for one ill and we can fix everything with medication, and ain't it wonderful. And they completely forgot about the fact that the body is a machine that runs on raw material and the raw material the body and brain runs on comes from food. They completely forgot that.
Speaker 2Well, I don't know if they forgot it or if there wasn't enough business profit in it. The food supply took a dive.
Speaker 1There's no business profit in it and the pharmaceutical companies are making an enormous amount of money out of all of these, out of all of their psychotropic medications, and it's gotten into the addiction treatment world, as you well know. It's gotten into the addiction treatment world, as you well know, and most people come out of treatment on way more medication and on way more substances than they were on before they went into treatment. And to me that's tragic and that's criminal. And nobody's teaching people how to eat or how to cook Nobody, except for a few isolated programs here and there. Who?
Nutrition in Addiction Treatment
Speaker 2get it. Well, I can certainly hear your passion and I know that's why you're the one to talk to about this, because you've committed so many years to getting this information put together in an evidence-based way, and looking at all of these research documents that you have thank you very much gone through yourself so I don't have to. But I also think I agree with you. I don't think that anywhere, much less behavioral health and addiction treatment is teaching our children or teaching our families or teaching our communities about the necessity of feeding our bodies and feeding our brains over feeding our taste buds.
Speaker 2I think that we just aren't eating nutrient-dense foods in large part. But I will say that, yes, sometimes people are leaving treatment with more medication than they or drugs or whatever that they may have been using when they came in, but that's not always the case and sometimes, if we were able to as you did with the woman eating potato chips, if we were able to, as you did with the woman eating potato chips, if we were able to insert some health literacy around nutrition, if we were able to insert some tools in some locations and some farmer's markets or some delivery services or whatever, that somebody could leave the program and take on a new way of eating. Even then, we may minimize the medications necessary, but they still may need some. As you described earlier with some of your challenges, they may need it. I think the trick is to insert this knowledge and this practice into our behavioral health services. That's right and our community.
Speaker 1This is not about eliminating medication. This is about feeding the brain first Right, first Right. Teaching people how to feed their own brains first and then seeing what other support their brains may need. Right, there's a lot going on that can throw brains off balance.
Speaker 2Sure.
Speaker 1This is why, when in my school I have a two-level certification program, level one teaches people about diet and supplements and amino acids. Level two talks about all the other things that can throw a brain off balance and what to do about it.
Speaker 2So what is this academy? What does one get from going through it? Just the knowledge, the knowledge and hands-on skills.
Speaker 1At the end of level one, my goal is to make you an expert at amino and nutrient therapy and using diet for mental health and addictive recovery. Level two I teach you how to recognize the signs of some of these physiological issues that cause symptoms, whether it be poor digestion or Lyme disease or hormonal imbalances. Right, we know most women when we relapse, we relapse premenstrually. Well, there's things you can do nutritionally to prevent that. So that's what I teach in my level two.
Speaker 2Well, you've been a nutritionist for decades and so I imagine it was pretty frustrating to learn all of this and know all of this and see it embraced so infrequently. What kind of a partnership needs to take place between treatment providers and mental health care professionals and nutritionists? How can we sort of build this out?
Speaker 1I think the foundation is really simple. First of all, start feeding your clients nutrient-dense food consistently. Okay, that's as part of treatment. It's just something they have to do because people have to eat, and let's do it as cheaply as possible because let's care about the bottom line. Right, it's shoved over there in most programs Now. There are a few higher-end programs where it really matters, but most program administrators don't see it as part of treatment. The fact is, it is a crucial part of treatment and the better the food is I think you can see in treatment statistics the more likely it is that people are not going to leave the first week because their cravings have gotten out of control. They're beginning to feed their brains pretty quickly.
Speaker 1We want to restrict sugar because we don't want people switching addiction to sugar, and so many people do and some don't stay on it. But I've met people who have been now on sugar for 20 years. They've been sober, clean for 30 years and eating sugar and obese and type 30 years and eating sugar and obese and type 2 diabetes and and and right, they're not very well. So they want to get off their sugar and don't know how. We don't want that.
Speaker 1And then you can bring in registered dietitians who are trained with addiction and my academy trains people how to use nutrition for addiction recovery they are not I'm, in fact, I think, probably the only school in the world that does this, but I do this and then functional nutritionists can come in and they can teach your clients how. Why it matters Very simply this is not rocket science Very simply why it matters. And then you can teach people how to cook. Most treatment programs do not teach their clients how to cook and so people by default go back and start feeding themselves the crappy way they used to, because nobody's taught them how to do it differently way they used to. Because nobody's taught them how to do it differently. You can partner with university extension nutritionists in your community to come in and teach cooking classes. Outpatient programs can have cooking classes. This is not that difficult.
Speaker 2That's a really neat idea. I like that. Well, I know that we I'm not sure how we came across you, christina, but I know that we did and at Horizon Services we've got the two. We've got a few residential programs, two that are long-term 30, 60, 90, 120 days, depending on medical necessity one for men and one for women female identifying and male identifying folks identifying folks. We also have some detoxes, which are short-term, residential, all of which tend to have the necessity of feeding our clients right.
Speaker 2So we've got a commercial-grade kitchen at Cronin House, our male-identifying, long-term residential program in Hayward, California, and we've got an incredible staff there that cook for our folks and we had a pretty decent menu before we came across you in terms of home cooking versus just we had a vending machine at one point which we got rid of not long ago, about probably four years ago, and realizing, starting to realize some of what you are saying is true, but I have to tell you we partnered with you and we've been doing some training of our program managers and our associate directors of those programs and our cooks in that kitchen about feeding for recovery, about the need for high protein, low sugar, restricted sugar, natural sugar, calorie dense all of these things that you're talking about the three-legged stool, the two-legged stool, all of the information that you have spent your life putting together.
Healing Through Nutrition Education
Speaker 2We've been able to take your training and start to educate our folks, and I have to tell you that we are in the process of doing all kinds of wonderful things at our program and changing and improving some of the services. So it's hard to find the causality, but I am positive that the food has been a part of our increased retention of our clients, right, because they're going to feel better. Well, sure, simply going to feel better, absolutely. And, as you said earlier, they have access to their tools, right, mentally, they have access to the tools that we're teaching them and that they're learning. They can access them when they are, when their brain is fed, right. So it's a curious storm, the human being, and it's a curious storm, the health of someone, mentally, socially, biochemically.
Speaker 1There's so many different factors. It is so complex.
Speaker 1If people come in and they haven't eaten all day, they cannot engage in the therapy very well. They're bouncing off the walls, they're labile, they can't problem solve. I will stop them. I will ask when was the last time they ate protein today? And if they haven't, or it's been a long, long time, I'll feed them a protein shake, a mozzarella cheese stick or two, maybe an entire meal if needed, and then you see people settle down within 10 minutes and they can function Well.
Speaker 1You only have to do this a couple of times before they come back a couple weeks later, so proud of themselves saying I ate before coming in. Aren't you proud of me clients, that we care about them? Because feeding and being fed is foundational to us as human beings and there has been so much trauma around food and being fed or not fed and there's been so much break in in care and self-care that us feeding our clients and teaching them how to feed themselves appropriately, making that part of the therapy, is profoundly healing, because what is the best way we can show love to ourselves but feeding ourselves real food consistently and lovingly?
Speaker 2I love that. I agree consistently and lovingly. I love that. I agree Beautifully said Traumatized clients that we have the beautiful opportunity of intervening. We're just very fortunate that we have the opportunity to bring that foundation of a relationship to food. Food is such a foundation of community as well, so it's really a bringing people together and showing them how to do it properly. It's just, it's a blessing.
Speaker 2I think we're going to be bringing Frances in again. Frances is the nutritionist, I think the what'd you call it Functional nutritionist. Is that what she is? Functional nutritionist? Yes, yeah. So I think we're going to start working with her again to come in and just sort of see where we're at and see how we can improve. We're beginning to, I guess, at Cronin they're going to have this full series of groups where they're teaching about well-being, within which the nutrition education is going to take a good piece of that, and so, little by little, what do you think is the greatest barrier to getting your information into facilities or into communities and getting them to actually make the effort to implement it? I mean, we're a nonprofit, right? We're Medicare-funded nonprofit and the majority of the food that we cook with comes from the food banks' donations, so it can be done.
Speaker 1It can be done. I think the biggest barrier is not enough. People know I'm trying to figure out how to educate the country. I have a dream for putting up billboards all over the country to educate people. That needs money. I don't have the money yet, but it's a dream. I do have a big banner up in a mall, so that's the first step. I'm putting on a conference in May.
Building Community Through Recovery Cooking
Speaker 1Oh, that's right, Tell us about that Program directors and anybody else all about this approach. So I'm really excited about that, but we need more and more people out there talking about it, just like this podcast. The other idea that you and I had talked about that's a dream of mine is to start recovery cooking circles in different communities and different outpatient programs where, once a week, people get together and cook together. They're taught how to cook, they're given recipes, maybe they're even given food and they can cook enough. Then they eat together, which builds community, but they can cook enough to take home and freeze for their families. So they aren't limited to going to fast food restaurants and you can make healthy choices at fast food restaurants. It's just that most people don't right. But if the food is in your freezer already made, it's so much easier to feed yourself and your family. So my dream is to have these recovery cooking circles all over the country.
Speaker 2I love it. Yeah, I love it. We talked about that the other day and I think it's just a wonderful idea and I think it can go along with what you were saying. I liked your idea of connecting with extension programs at colleges and getting nutritionists to come in and be part of the program or part of the educating. I think that there's so many possibilities that you've brought up about ways people could sort of simply make these connections to their services.
Speaker 1This does not have to be expensive. This is not rocket science. Programs can start small. In fact they have a little booklet about the three tiers of nutritional intervention, about where you can start and then what you can build on. Have people who understand why it's important. Then you bring it into your program and you notice that people are feeling better. They're a little more awake in groups. I mean, I have story after story of people falling asleep in groups. You find out that they skipped their snack or they skipped breakfast. You feed them and all of a sudden they wake up and they can participate in group Sure.
Speaker 2So back to the program and foods rolling in. I have to tell you that we talked about this the other day and I'd love if you could go into it just a little bit here before we tie up. There's a very clear path that you have set forth about 20 grams of protein eating protein every four hours, using the targeted amino acids which you explained. You talked about acute withdrawal and post-acute withdrawal, and could you sort of just speak a little bit about what post-acute withdrawal is? First of all, we call it PAWS, p-a-w-s, but some people may not know what that is, and then how the diet or the food that you're suggesting can impact that.
Nutrition and Recovery Education
Speaker 1Okay, I'm going to start briefly by talking about acute withdrawal. Acute withdrawal is what happens in the brain when you withdraw the substance that the brain has become dependent upon to fire depleted brain chemicals, neurotransmitters. Okay, as addiction progresses through early, middle and late stage, these neurotransmitters as addiction progresses through early, middle and late stage, these neurotransmitters become more and more and more depleted. Well, we require them to stay alive and to function. That's why people in late stage alcohol use disorder. You can't cold turkey them off alcohol because they will seize and die because their GABA has been so tremendously depleted. So acute withdrawal is what happens in the brain when you remove the drug. The brain has literally physically become dependent on Bringing in these targeted amino acids to quickly rebuild these neurotransmitter systems actually makes acute withdrawal much, much less painful and much more bearable and much safer. So that's the first step. But then later on, people are through acute withdrawal. They're functioning but they're depressed and they're anxious and they can't sleep and they're irritable and they're craving. Why? Because these neurotransmitters are still depleted. It takes a long time, with the right food and the right food and maybe the right supplements, to really rebuild these systems. The other thing that happens is with people not eating or eating a lot of sugar. As blood sugar goes up, blood sugar comes down.
Speaker 1What we have found the two major causes of post-acute withdrawal is low blood sugar and what happens when blood sugar drops, which is adrenaline kicking in and destabilizing us and giving us cravings. That's the first thing. That's why we want the protein every four hours and, if you're premenstrual, every three hours. The other thing is bringing in the right amino acid to rebuild the neurotransmitters and the right food very, very quickly. So we use tyrosine to rebuild dopamine. If people are addicted to stimulants or have ADHD, got themselves addicted to meth or whatever, the tyrosine is extremely helpful in reducing those cravings and giving people energy. People in post-acute opioid withdrawal when they're so exhausted they can't get out of bed and function anymore and they're craving their whatever for energy. The tyrosine is really useful there too. We can use 5-HTP for people who have this anxious, agitated depression and they're worried and they can't sleep because their mind's going round and round and round. Can we have amino acids that can turn this off within 20 minutes?
Speaker 2I have to tell you I'm sold. I know that in my own recovery process over the years I have very much changed the way that I eat, but I do want to tell you that I am completely. You're going over my head with all these tyrosine and the HT5s or whatever you just said and is there. So you mentioned an academy which also sounded pretty sort of high up there. What, how do I? How do we implement this in a way that a person one day off the street could implement it in their lives? Or how do we do this in a way where the family can have a system? One?
Speaker 1day off the streets. You're just going to have to work with food. People with a few more resources, money, some sobriety, some stability can work with one of my trained recovery coaches or other coaches out there who know how to do this and can really target what the brain needs. But we begin with food and we end with food and then we bring in supplements as needed. We have a six-hour introductory course where people can get introduced to this in bite-sized pieces, so it's not quite as overwhelming and confusing. And then there are people out there who really want to become expert at this protocol to help their clients, and that's what my academy is for. There's also a wonderful book. It's called the Mood Cure by Julia Ross, and it talks about how to use amino acids for mood repair. It's easy to read. It's written for the ordinary person.
Speaker 2So worth having a few of those around your treatment program for people to pick up and grab when they don't know what else to read.
Speaker 1Yep, and then by Easter, please God, I'm going to have my book published called Eat how to Use your Refrigerator to Stop your Craving you wrote a book, Christina.
Speaker 2Good for you.
Speaker 1I am writing a book. It is almost me.
Speaker 2You're writing a book. I got you. I got you. Well, good for you.
Speaker 2Well, you've put no shortage of effort into getting the word out of the critical importance of understanding how food feeds our brain and how it can. You've even got some videos on your website that eating protein saves lives. One you mentioned healthy eating on SNAP or like food stamps how you can do that on a very low budget. But you also talked about the power of eating protein and how it can impact alcohol detox and relapse prevention, but also domestic violence. Right, so so. So this is just all about emotional regulation. This is all about repairing the brain and getting it firing in the way that. It's our watchtower. It tells us what to do and if it's broken, we don't. We're not getting good instructions right, exactly, good way of putting it. Is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you'd like to bring up? You mentioned the upcoming food summit, the National Food Convention, that you're going to be having. We should know more about that soon. It's going to be, you said, april or May in Columbus, ohio. Is that right? It's Ohio and it's going to be.
Speaker 1You said April or May in Columbus, ohio. Is that right, it's Ohio. I also want to let you know that on our website we have posters for treatment programs to put up on their wall. We have little books that are really helpful. This is actually based on my webinar. The recording is on the website called Feeding Recovery. That breaks it down into very, very simple concepts and very simple pictures.
Speaker 2Very easy to understand. I do know that and I appreciate that reminder. We have your posters up already, but I did notice that you have that ebook now, and so I may be getting some of those printed out and placed about the programs as well. So very helpful. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you and the work that you do and your commitment to it, to the research and making this something that we lay folk can better understand to take good care of ourselves. We will be putting quite a few resources in the show notes, so I'm looking forward to that. Anything else you'd like to say before we go?
Speaker 1One last thing, and that is in terms of research. We do have a whole research article library on the website for the Academy for Addiction and Mental Health, nutrition, because everything I'm talking about is documented, and we have a research library that carries not all, because there's so much research that is being done, but at least some of the research is there.
Speaker 2That's wonderful. Well, I appreciate that. I'll certainly look into that a little bit more and peruse the documents that you refer to, Not like you have, but I will. Last thing is the webinar that you said is sort of simplified and available on your website and the academy courses. What are the cost of these and what is the audience? The academy is for providers and the webinar would be for anybody, and is there a cost to these things?
Speaker 1The webinar is free and the recording is on the Eating Protein Saves Lives website is free and the recording is on the Eating Protein Saves Lives website. I also give it live the second Friday of every month. Oh, okay, on Zoom that people can come to. Let's make sure we put that in your show notes. The six-hour course is $180 for six hours with CEs, but anybody can go to it. It's just a stick your toe in the water. We do offer scholarships.
Speaker 1The professional certification programs are basically $3,000 each. The entire double certification is an 18-month program, so it's well worth the money because you get me, you get coaching, you get to learn how to do it and you get this amazing, amazing information that you will have access to forever because everything is recorded. That's wonderful, so, and we have a number of different payment plans to make it doable for people. But I really, first of all, I want to invite all your listeners to just familiarize yourself with my YouTube videos, with all of the free information on the websites, and then, if you want to learn more and make this part of your practice so that you also. It's the ripple effect. I teach you and you teach a million clients and they teach their families.
Speaker 2No pressure, just a million, everybody. No, I think that's wonderful. I think that's wonderful and it's where it starts right. It's where it starts Exactly Well. Thank you, christina, for everything that you do and for taking the time out of your busy research and writing schedule to share what you do with us.
Speaker 1You're welcome and thank you, jen. What you guys are doing at Horizon is amazing. Thank you, jen. What you guys are doing at Horizon is amazing and by bringing food, better food and food awareness into your program warms the little cockles in my heart.
Speaker 2Well, good, good, we'll have you out again sometime. I would love to bring you out and just have you spend some time with our program and with our clients and have some of the meals that we're cooking for folks. I would love to. We'd love to. Okay, thank you so much, christina. Talk to you soon, okay, bye-bye.
Speaker 1Please visit our website to learn more and to connect with us on social media. Our website is wwwhorizonservicesorg. Horizon Treatment Services, inspiring hope and healing since 1976.