Audrey Sunnyboy noticed a troubling trend when she entered the drug and alcohol treatment field in 1990.
Posted on 10/28/2003 2:25:49 PM PST by Nov3
Rehab plan focuses on diet
Audrey Sunnyboy noticed a troubling trend when she entered the drug and alcohol treatment field in 1990.
"I was watching people and was realizing that most of the Alaska Native people did not recover from alcoholism," she said. "And as I was going along, I would ask, 'Did you ever go to AA?' Then they would say, 'No, because I didn't want to talk.'"
Sunnyboy said the realization that AA's 12-step program does not work for everyone, especially people who are reluctant to talk about themselves, is what led to her interest in providing an alternative form of treatment.
Last month, Sunnyboy, a 57-year-old certified traditional counselor originally from Nenana, opened the Sunny Denyaave Center, an office where she hopes to help alcoholics and drug users quit their habits by repairing their bodies through nutrient replacement and proper diet.
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Her strategy is based on the work of Joan Matthews Larson, a Minnesota doctor who operates nutrition-based recovery centers and has authored books about her technique.
Sunnyboy spent a year working at Larson's Health Recovery Center in Minnesota in 1999 and has been trying to start her own center in Alaska ever since. The technique is based on the theory that drugs and alcoholism are treatable physical diseases, not moral flaws.
"The way AA looks at it and the way most people look at it is as weak-willed, psychological behavior," Sunnyboy said. "What (Larson) and the other doctors say is that that is not so. An alcoholic or person who is addicted to drugs is not nutritionally sound."
With her rented office in Regency Court Mall, Sunnyboy said she plans to coach clients through a six-week program aimed at repairing the body through introducing a host of vitamins and nutrients and improving the diet.
Curbing drug and alcohol cravings can be as simple as changing what people eat, she said.
The main culprit for promoting alcoholism is sugar, she said.
"Sugar and alcohol cause the same reaction in the body," said Sunnyboy, whose computer desk is stacked with books including a sugar-free cookbook and William Duffy's "Sugar Blues."
Sunnyboy explained that sugar and alcohol consumption both result in the pancreas increasing blood sugar and releasing insulin. Continued sugar consumption, she said, causes the pancreas to become "trigger happy," producing an imbalance that leads to feelings of irritability and cravings for alcohol and drugs.
She said that reducing a person's carbohydrate intake and adding high-protein foods to their diet will stabilize the body. Combined with the introduction of vitamins, everything from magnesium to vitamin B, the goal of the improved diet is to replenish nutrients needed to restore balance in the body and brain.
"That's what this treatment program does is to explain why the body does this," Sunnyboy said. "You control the cravings with nutrition, you learn to eat smaller, protein-packed meals, you learn how to maintain your body."
Sunnyboy, who quit drinking and doing drugs at age 40, said she first became interested in nutrition-based recovery after reading Larson's "Seven Weeks to Sobriety." In the book, Larson wrote that her son committed suicide after a short bout of alcoholism, leading to her search for a better treatment method. She hypothesized that every alcoholic fits into one of four categories based largely on their body's composition--most are hypoglecimic--and that dietary changes can improve someone's condition in almost every case.
"Alcoholism is not a character defect. It is not the sign of a weak will. It is not a bad habit that needs to be broken. It is a devastating physical disease that damages both mind and body," Larson wrote.
Larson's book and other nutrition-based recovery methods are gaining popularity throughout the drug and alcohol treatment field, said Ann Dapice, vice-president of T.K. Wolf, Inc., a Tulsa, Okla.-based recovery and research center that formed as an alternative to traditional methods.
Dapice said the main factor preventing nutrition-based recovery and other programs that treat alcoholism as a physical defect from gaining widespread acceptance is that AA is still considered to be the only treatment option.
"You've got a very old guard of alcoholism and drug treatment people," she said. "They say it's a disease, but they treat it like it's a moral issue. It's very hard to convince old 12-step people to change."
Dapice has a personal reason to be frustrated by what she said is a lack of progressiveness in the alcoholism-treatment field. She said her son survived cancer with treatment only to later die due to symptoms of alcoholism.
Sunnyboy's first test subject was her fiancee, Harry Littlefield.
A disabled Vietnam veteran, Littlefield said he started drinking and doing light drugs almost every day during the 1990s after his deteriorating physical condition ended his ability to work as an electrician.
Littlefield said he gradually built up his body through taking nutrients such as cod liver oil and calcium. Once he added an improved diet, Littlefield said he started feeling better, first physically then mentally.
"After she built me back me up from all the vitamins and everything, I could think a lot better," he said, adding that he quit drinking and drugs about two weeks after starting the program.
Sunnboy said that she put up her own money to rent her new office. She said that after spending a year working with Larson, she made it her personal goal to bring the program north. Sunnyboy acknowledged that she faces plenty of challenges in trying to operate a center based on a technique that is not widely accepted. However, she said many effective practices, such as Dr. Robert Atkins' low-carbohydrate diet, were not popular at first.
"They laughed at him until he passed away," she said.
Reporter Dan Rice can be reached at drice@newsminer.com or 459-7503
Dr. Atkins also commented on the lifted depression and it has literally cured eating disorders for many (not all) overnight. It is tragic to see a beautiful girl destroy her health and beauty and be basically powerless.
Perhaps I should re-introduce good ol' Snake Oil...
I'll have to give it a phancy doctor-lingo sounding name like: "Herpetoleoic Therapy".
People are pretty gullible.
Yuppers... Dunkin' Donuts Boston Creme filled.
Yeah, I am pretty convinced that alot of anti social behavior in modern society would disappear if we all cooled it with the sweets, sodas and starches.
Yeah, that's the best flavor. My wife thinks so too.
The microbrew rage had not hit until after I quit drinking. It bugs me sometimes to see my friends quaffing an obviously fine beer and talking about other fine beers. About the most exotic available in Memphis was Becks Dark and various Lagers. I have never drank Sam Adams!
You know I had heard that before but I had forgotten totally about it. I want to get a copy of his second communication to Alcoholics but it is no longer in print and the only ones on the internet I can find go for 30 dollars. Bill was definitely ahead of the curve on many issues. BTW Bill named niacin Vitamin B-3.
Perhaps I should re-introduce good ol' Snake Oil...
I'll have to give it a phancy doctor-lingo sounding name like: "Herpetoleoic Therapy".
People are pretty gullible.
I am sure that seemed a well thought out post after you had washed down your pain pills and prosac with a couple of cold ones
Way to go Sam!
I'm still happy at 139, down from 163. We've just passed our 4 year anniversary on low-carb.
Hmmm... we were planning on celebrating 4 years on low-carb at the local steakhouse. But there's this Krispy Kreme only 20 miles away, and we haven't been there since last Christmas...
Seven years ago my wife brought home a copy of Protein Power and announced that we were going on this diet. I said "WE" were not going on any diet but she said read the book. I did and realised that was how I ate when I was single and not out at dinner. We went on it and have been on it ever since except for 2 pregnancies with my wife Katie_Colic. It is common sense. Thank God for Atkins and his ability to persist even when he was demonized.
LARSON IS A GRADUATE OF DONSBACH MAIL-ORDER "UNIVERSITY"
Notes on Kurt Donsbach In 1979, Donsbach began operating Donsbach University, a nonaccredited correspondence school that awarded bachelor, master, and doctoral "degrees" in nutrition.
The fact that his "university" was not accredited did not deter Donsbach from stating that it was-by the National Accreditation Association (N.A.A.) of Riverdale, Maryland. An investigation by the National Council Against Health Fraud revealed that this "agency" was formed in 1980 by a California chiropractor and had "accredited" Donsbach University a few months later. In 1981,
Dr. William Jarvis, President of the National Council Against Health Fraud, visited N.A.A. in Maryland and found that its "office" was a telephone in the living room of its executive director, who said he received $100-a-month salary. Although N.A.A. correspondence had designated the man as holding a "Ph.D." from the Sussex College of Technology in England, the British Embassy informed Jarvis that it did not consider the "school" or its diplomas valid.
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