Loving relationships should provide you with positive states of mind, such as contentment and passion to experience the beauty of yourself and your life. It should give you a feeling of security and a resting place in your mind when life gets you down.
It should weave your life and that of the other person. This weaving requires you to surrender part of yourself, and they too must do this, so that the fabric of your relationship will last. To achieve this requires allowing regular times for head space (pausing to smell the roses in life) as well as doing things to maintain healthy brain chemistry (mindful eating, meditation etc). When we lose these we will have difficulty achieving and maintaining positive thoughts about ourselves, our partner and often our life.
Fructose is the one common chemical that is present in such large quantities in today’s diet that it can start to decay loving relationships. Fructose occurs in beer, wine, fruits, table sugar, soft drinks, fast foods, most bakery products, and most commercial foods. It has many names so often ‘sugar’ won’t be listed in the ingredients list, and may come under the guise of cane sugar, juice, syrup, agave, honey, fruit purees, dates, dried fruits – just to name a few.
Fructose does not occur in animal products such as eggs, dairy products (unflavoured) and fish/meats. Fructose is six times sweeter than glucose and when you eat fructose, it triggers the production of your brain’s natural opioid chemicals, which then switches off access to other parts of your brain.
You can test this yourself by removing all fructose (including fruits) for one week. At the beginning of the week rate how you think and feel about yourself and your world—rate out of 10 with 10 being positive and 1 being negative. Then rate yourself again at the end of the week. Has it changed? After that week, go back to your ‘normal’ diet, which for most people will include fructose. From my experience, almost every person who removes fructose from their diet notices a distinct difference in their emotional outlook, they experience greater clarity and connection with themselves. Some also may initially experience bouts of fugginess, mental tiredness, emotional stress, argumentativeness, restlessness and lack of mental peace when they reintroduce fructose foods back into their diet. Others can experience withdrawal symptoms when they remove fructose from what is a very real addiction.
These emotional symptoms can be worse in people who are experiencing, even slight liver dysfunction. You can also check this yourself, by pushing on your liver – under your right-side ribs, and comparing it to that of the spleen, under the left-side ribs. If you feel your liver is painful or hard to push, then your chances of having a problem with fructose will increase more than those people with good liver function.
If you are finding that life feels hard, that you fall into a victim mentality easily, or you feel like everything is an effort, it may be your brain chemistry that is ‘supporting’ this mood. You may also find that your relationships feel difficult, unfulfilling and that you have fallen out of love with your partner or spouse. I have found through working with individuals in my clinic that by removing fructose from their diet, emotional health can, and more often than not does, dramatically improve. It is very hard to make changes to your life if your brain chemistry is ‘out’ as you will always naturally default back to old habits under stress—which can mean having an argument unnecessarily.
If you feel your brain chemistry is bringing you and your relationship down, do not despair. We specialise in helping people balance their brain chemistry. We also have an upcoming Harmonious Relationships course in which you can learn techniques to maintain love and happiness in your relationship. Contact us today to find out how you can achieve clarity and confidence to reignite the passion in your partnership.