Review: When Your Body Gets the Blues

WHEN YOUR BODY GETS THE BLUES:
THE CLINICALLY PROVEN PROGRAM FOR WOMEN
WHO FEEL TIRED, STRESSED, AND EAT TOO MUCH

Marie-Annette Brown, PhD, RN, and Jo Robinson

Emmaus, PA: Rodale Press, 2002
215 pages, Hardcover, $22.95
ISBN: 1-57954-486-X

Reviewed by Lynne Lamberg

Many women complain of being "tired all the time." Some report other nagging problems: poor sleep, difficulty concentrating, trouble remembering the right words or names, stress and irritability, overeating and weight gain. Despite busy and successful work and family lives, many say they often feel glum.

Marie-Annette Brown, PhD, RN, a professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Washington, Seattle, and medical writer Jo Robinson call this constellation of symptoms "body blues."

Their book focuses on an 8-week drug-free program they developed to combat this problem. It's called LEVITY, an acronym derived from its chief components, Light, Exercise, and Vitamin Intervention TherapY.

Brown credits Robinson with proposing this program, which she and her nursing colleagues evaluated in women with mild and moderate depression. As the researchers describe in the journal Women and Health in 2001 (Vol. 34, pages 93-112), they divided 112 women aged 19-78 into two groups. Those in one group received instruction in a prescribed routine, while the others served as the comparison group.

The researchers asked women in group 1 to take a brisk 20-minute outdoor walk five or more times a week, striving to achieve a target heart rate of 60% of their maximum heart rate. They also encouraged the women to increase their light exposure throughout the day and to take specific vitamins and minerals. Women in group 2 took a daily placebo pill.

The researchers assessed the women's mood before the study and after it. They concluded that the LEVITY plan improved the women's overall mood, self-esteem, and general sense of well-being, and reduced symptoms on two measures of depression. Women who stayed on the program after the study ended maintained these benefits.

This book translates the researchers' findings into a workable plan that women can undertake on their own. To start, you'll take a quiz to determine if you truly suffer from a low grade sub-clinical depression. You'll also track symptoms for a month, using a body blues symptom chart.

Brown and Robinson describe the science behind the program, drawing on numerous studies that show exposure to daylight intensity light—even on a cloudy day—benefits mood. Women need more light to stabilize mood than men do, the authors say, but they typically get less. They are more apt to work indoors and less likely to participate in outdoor sports. By regularizing body clocks, bright light exposure also aids sleep and appetite control.

The authors also cite studies showing that exercise benefits moods, as do specific doses of vitamins and minerals that serve as building blocks for making serotonin in the brain. The doses they suggest do not exceed tolerable upper limits that nutritionists recommend.

The book includes progress journal forms, and a list of references from reputable scientific publications. Overall, the authors make a credible case for a simple program to ease a host of ills that diminish the quality of many women's lives.