Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

The Treacherous Mouth, Continued

Pat Hartman April 11, 2023 No Comments

If any single body part is most responsible for obesity, surely it is the mouth. Could an ear or an elbow absorb even a single nutrient? Not likely. Could feeding through a nasogastric tube or an IV make someone morbidly obese? Maybe, but it would be quite a project. Whereas, mouths do it all the time.

The aperture of our face is all too ready to betray us, and Big Food knows it. “Make mouths happy,” they say, and “It’s like a mouth full of joy,” and, of course, the world’s most favorite advertising slogan, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”

The previous post mentioned tastebuds, and as it turns out, other things are in the mouth too. This is Dr. Sarah J. Carnahan Craig, Ph.D., of Penn State University, who took part in a broad study that sought to understand “social/behavioral contributors to childhood obesity, how a responsive parenting intervention can prevent childhood overweight/obesity, and the biological factors that contribute to the disease.” She wrote,

The main finding from this paper is that the oral microbiota (the collection of bacteria that live in the mouth) are significantly related to young child growth patterns. The surprising part of this finding was that we observed this result with the oral microbiota and not the gut microbiota. The oral microbiota (in comparison to the gut microbiota, which has been associated with obesity in many previous studies) are largely understudied, especially in young children.

As Dr. Pretlow has noted, in food or eating addiction there are taste-centered components like flavor, mouth feel, aroma, texture, sliminess, inclusion of particles, temperature, and other traits belonging to the food itself.

Specific foods, like cheese, also are definitely a problem for the vast majority of obese individuals. Nevertheless, bliss point research still may be optimizing just the sensory effect — taste and texture (mouth feel) — rather than food ingredients that act directly on the brain.

The various agreeable sensations and the flavor molecules and all the other factors rarely work alone, but gang up to achieve the greatest possible impact. For instance, to the pleasures of eating, it would be fair to also add contrast. What could be more delightful than a half hour spent savoring the alternate sensations of salty, crunchy potato chips, with swallows of a chilled, fizzy drink? Or switching from cold ice cream to delicious, crumbly bites of cake, over and over again? Or playing off spicy, chewy mouthfuls of fried chicken against swigs of cold beer?

When the mouth likes something, it automatically summons up the tendency to develop other bad habits. So, there will also be the motor addiction factor, which involves physical actions including biting, chewing, sucking, gnawing, crunching, licking, swallowing, and hand-to-mouth motion. These are more involved in the category of “nervous eating.” But beyond that, these ways of acting slide over into the territory of Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors, which are recognized as behavioral addictions.

Dr. Pretlow says, “Any overeaten food represents a mixture of the sensory and behavioral addiction components, although the ratio varies. The combination comprises eating addiction.”

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Mouth Microbiome Linked to Childhood Obesity,” MedicalResearch.com, 09/19/18
Image by ToeneX/CC BY 2.0

Go Amuse Your Bouche

Pat Hartman April 10, 2023 No Comments

The lovely French term amuse-bouche signifies a bite-size appetizer, or hors d’œuvre, and literally translates as “mouth amuser.” And there is a place for such things, among people who enjoy dining with sophistication and restraint.

The trouble is, a very large segment of society has devolved into a bunch of chronic mouth-amusers. We seem to constantly be stuffing food into our mouths, washed down with sugar-sweetened, beverages, which are very mouth-amusing because of the fizz. Eating is a sensual experience that, like any other, can be taken too far.

How to amuse a bouche

The tastes we know as sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (savory) are detected by several different kinds of taste buds located on various areas of the tongue. A human has between 2,000 and 10,000 of them. They disappear with age, so babies have more taste buds, which may help explain picky eating.

An article titled “Human Biology of Taste” says,

[A]s the food is placed in the mouth, taste, temperature, and touch receptors screen for quality and intensity, stimulating the appropriate saliva in preparation for chewing, bolus formation, and swallowing… Sandy, sharp, or painful sensations tell of the presence of potentially harmful materials that may damage the digestive system, while creamy sensations tell of consistency, physical safety, and the presence of highly desirable fats.

Various nerves are involved too, and surprisingly the descriptions of the taste buds’ functions include such equivocal phrases as “appear to” and “are thought to,” which implies that mysteries still abound. Food scientists are in the business of unraveling these puzzles, in hopes of selling more of their products to more people.

In his book Overweight: What Kids Say, Dr. Pretlow refers to a documentary film called “Snack Food Tech,” which in 2007 described how a corn chip has a thin layer of flavoring applied to only one side because the whole point is to deliver a sensation that peaks fast and fades fast. Then, the consumer applies a notorious behavior known as the hand-to-mouth motion, and gobbles down more chips.

In another passage from the book, an 18-year-old girl who communicated with Dr. Pretlow’s interactive website W8Loss2Go is quoted as saying,

I would constantly eat so much even though i was full. it was like my mouth wanted it, just to taste it and my stomach didn’t. I got tired of saying i would lose weight…

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Human Biology of Taste,” NIH.gov, May 2013
Image by WordRidden/CC BY 2.0

Everything You Know About Eating Is Wrong

Pat Hartman April 7, 2023 No Comments

Or maybe everything you know about eating is not wrong, but it’s a great title for a series that explores myths and truths about what we eat, how and when we eat it, who does the eating, and even where we eat; and especially, why we eat.

This headline implies that childhood obesity is not connected with what or why or how: “Lack of an association between dietary patterns and adiposity among primary school children in Kilimanjaro Tanzania.” It appeared a year ago, and does not exactly fit with mainstream thinking:

After adjusting for potential confounders (factors previously associated with overweight and obesity) for both models, we found no associations between the extracted dietary patterns and adiposity measures. There was no association between BMI z — scores categories, normal weight, thinness, and overweight/ obesity, with dietary patterns terciles.

The report mentions that other studies had also “reported a lack of association between dietary patterns and adiposity.” The Conclusion explains that while two dietary patterns (mixed and healthy) were identified, neither was more associated with adiposity. The authors admit that their Food Frequency Questionnaire might have been inadequate because it did not ask about portion sizes. All in all, it was kind of a non-story, but it does indicate the existence of a school of thought that says diet is not the answer.

An interesting incidental point about this paper is that, right up front, the authors mention a painful paradox: In general, worldwide, overweight and obesity have increased right along with undernutrition. That is definitely a subject worthy of attention.

Not enough hours in the day

In an interview, Dr. Rhonda Patrick talked about how difficult it is for a full-time clinician to keep up with advances even in one field, let alone stay current with what is happening in other specialties. Add to that, many medical professionals never received any training in the first place in such areas as genetics or nutrition, and so might have blind spots when it comes to assessing their own patients.

Furthermore, even an advanced degree in anything is no guarantee of expertise, because of narrow, selective focus and continuing advances in knowledge. Dr. Patrick herself had successively concentrated on chemistry, aging, cancer, nutrition, and the brain, because this is the sort of continuing education that helps a professional to gain new perspectives that people who specialize may not be aware of.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Lack of an association between dietary patterns and adiposity among primary school children in Kilimanjaro Tanzania,” BioMedCentral.com, 04/21/22
Source: “The Joe Rogan Experience: Dr. Rhonda Patrick,” PodcastNotes.org, 09/08/15
Images from Twitter by @JakeVig, @therealjoeybel, @tesajayy

The Treacherous Mouth

Pat Hartman April 6, 2023 No Comments

Here are some additional excerpts from and observations about Kathryn Phelan’s memoir of a 165-pound teen who wanted to be on the basketball team. After she had experienced several months of self-induced anorexia and a 60-pound weight loss, the dam broke.

It’s not as if this youngster had no warning. When she was at the 139-pound point, a doctor said, “Your body is designed to make you eat, and your body usually wins.” But she persisted, and the inevitable undoing occurred at 105 pounds, in the form of a pan of homemade brownies her mother left out to cool. Phelan wrote,

[S]omething snaps, and you think: I will have one bite. The thick fudge coats your tongue, rolls around in your mouth, sets off sense receptors you didn’t know you still had. The chocolate tastes alive. You moan with the indulgence of it. One more bite. One more. Soon you are cramming entire brownies into your mouth, chomping so hard your jaw hurts and bits of them crumble and fall, and you pick those up off the floor and shove them in, too.

The author describes how she persisted until every brownie was consumed, despite feeling as if her stomach would burst open and disgorge all the ingested baked goods in a puddle on the floor. (Buckle up now for a wild ride.) To hide the evidence of her crime, she decided that the wise course would be to whip up another batch and substitute it for the first one. Next,

You pull the tray out. Before the brownies are even cool, you’ve started eating again. You don’t even cut them, just dive in with a fork and demolish the apology you spent an hour creating.

She goes on to describe the next era in the life of a distressed young woman who makes an extreme turn and becomes capable of devouring a loaf of bread or a tub of ice cream in one sitting:

When you go away to college, you will find yourself stealing your roommates’ food, sneaking away with strangers’ leftovers in restaurants, eating until it hurts to breathe… Years will pass this way. Even after you can finally pull yourself together, your 105-pound self will berate you for every bite you take… She will pace around in your head, agitated, banging on the walls.

That’s how much trouble a person can get into for having a mouth. A story like this also demonstrates that mental health issues seriously need to be addressed, and children need to be taught the mental and emotional skills to care for their bodies appropriately, so later they won’t line up for dicey weight-loss medications, or to have their stomachs removed.

Hunger, or what?

Young people communicate with Dr. Pretlow’s Weigh2Rock website to reveal the issues they wrestle with. While most kids refer to their eating urges as hunger, others, like a certain 15-year-old girl, will say insightful things like, “Hungry… but not like the regular hungry, I’m hungry and I’m not sure why…”

This is the challenge. To help kids (and grownups!) figure out what kind of erroneous scripts they are running in their heads that render them incapable even of recognizing a common and universal sensation like hunger well enough to distinguish it from some mind game the brain is playing with itself.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Lost,” TheSunMagazine.org, June 2017
Image by Internet, unattributed

Everything You Know About Fussy Eating Is Wrong

Pat Hartman April 5, 2023 No Comments

What is a fussy eater? One who consumes only a limited range of foods, and has a tendency to avoid newly introduced ones. This might also be called picky, faddy, choosy, or selective eating. Spoiler alert:

It is largely a phenomenon of developed countries and involves a complex set of interactions between parents/carers and children… There is no agreement on a formal definition of picky eating…

To add further complication, there are a variety of tools used for the assessment of picky eating and consequently there is a wide range of prevalence reported. The ’causes’ and ‘consequences’ of picky eating are not well understood because of these inconsistencies and because of heterogeneity in study designs.

There is evidence that the child’s diet helps to form its microbiome, and also evidence that the microbiome helps to form the diet — in other words, that the gut bugs are telling the child to consume what they prefer and to reject what they don’t want:

Sugar/carb obsession and going alarmingly long periods between meals are two big clues picky eating is gut-related.

There are theories about how when a baby is delivered by C-section, rather than being covered with its mother’s native micro-organisms, it picks up bugs from random hospital personnel, which colonize its gut and which may express different food preferences than the parents — hence, “picky eater.”

In Australia, as in the U.S., fussy eating is seen as a problem, and with good reason. Parents who are on board with the idea of feeding their kids vegetables and whatever else they deem healthy are frustrated by babies who refuse to eat the good stuff. According to Dr. Georgie Russell of the Centre for Advanced Sensory Science, between 13% and 50% of children are fussy eaters at some point. Mostly the problem affects kids of preschool age, but some continue until around age 10.

Of course, when the teen years are reached, young people can get away with being fussy eaters because they are not so closely monitored, and for the rest of their lives, adults can be as picky as they please and even, like James Bond, demand that their martinis be shaken, not stirred. Dr. Russell is quoted as saying,

Fussier children also tend not to enjoy eating, they eat slowly and tend to get full up quickly.

One might wonder why these two traits are considered problematic. After all, when people look into ideas about how to lose weight, they are specifically instructed to eat slowly and to consciously savor their food with every bite. Many people do find that when they really take the time and focus their attention, they tend to eat less overall. And feeling full quickly, isn’t that a good outcome? The hottest weight-loss drugs are effective because they help create a sensation of fullness.

So, this is confusing.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Picky eating in children: causes and consequences,” NIH.gov, 11/05/18
Source: “Quick Change Tastebuds, Slow Biology, & Why Gut Health May Impact Picky Eating,” KidsCookRealFood.com, 02/01/22
Source: “Deakin research to determine if fussy kids are touch sensitive,” MirageNews.com, 01/16/20
Image by Aaron Vowels/CC BY 2.0

Our Own Mouths Betray Us

Pat Hartman April 4, 2023 No Comments

In the previous post, we saw how babies arrive with an innate love of sweetness, which generally does not fade with age, but all too often grows more extreme. As the author Michael Moss points out, along with sweetness we also crave variety, so it is no surprise that a grocery store’s cereal aisle contains a couple of hundred permutations of grain-based, air-expanded, hyper-sweetened products with which to start our days.

The thing is, sugar is packed with calories, and evolution has taught us to associate calories with staving off death — even if, in truth, the individual already weighs 300 pounds. Our oldest impulses are based on very simple principles, like “fuel equals life.” Moss says,

We have sensors in the gut and possibly in the mouth that tell us how many calories we’re eating, and the more calories there are, the more excited the brain gets, which makes us vulnerable to the processed-food industry’s snacks, jam-packed as they are with a day’s worth of calories we can eat in one sitting.

We previously mentioned another work by Moss, The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, wherein the author revealed that one fast-food company alone employed 500 chemists, technicians, and psychologists devoted to studying the crunchiness, mouth feel, and the perfect snapping point of a chip in order to get us to consume more of their hyper-processed pseudo-foods.

More dark magic

Moss also explained how we are hypnotized by a factor called vanishing caloric density, where if something melts quickly in the mouth, the brain does not register that it is actually fuel. Since, like the body, the brain needs fuel, it gives the okay to just keep eating that stuff all day long.

The book Salt Sugar Fat, which Moss published in 2013, spilled all the secrets about how clever chemists conspire to render us helpless before their products. The public became familiar with such erudite terms as “mouth feel” and “bliss point.” In another context, Moss wrote about the sneaky allure of a fat/sugar combination, saying,

I couldn’t resist drawing an analogy to the realm of narcotics. If sugar is the amphetamine of processed food ingredients, with its high-speed blunt assault on our brains, then fat is the opiate, a smooth operator whose effects are less obvious but no less powerful.

Fat, sugar, and salt all can influence the brain’s chemistry in the direction of overeating, says epidemiologist Dr. Adam Drewnowski, who directs the University of Washington’s Center for Obesity Research. To a recent textbook, Dr. Drewnowski contributed a chapter titled “Human Perceptions and Preferences for Fat-Rich Foods.” Jed Diamond says,

He found that eating foods that are high in fat content, particularly those that also were sweet and salty, stimulated the same brain centers as drugs like heroin. In fact, the same drugs that block the desire for heroin block the desire for fatty foods.

As Dr. Drewnowski noted, the generic drug naloxone, typically used to reverse an opiate overdose, can also suppress a person’s desire for opiates. In the same way, it can even reverse or suppress a person’s taste preference for sugar/fat mixtures.

This is interesting in light of the fact that just this week, the Food and Drug Administration okayed its sale (brand name Narcan) without a prescription. Will we now see droves of overweight people crowding the pharmacies in search of naloxone in hopes of squelching their food cravings?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Op-Ed: Big Food wants us addicted to junk food,” LATimes.com, 06/06/21
Source: “Are Fat, Sugar, and Salt the New Heroin, Meth, and Cocaine?” Medium.com, 09/22/20
Image by mroach/CC BY-SA 2.0

Babies With Bad Taste

Pat Hartman April 3, 2023 No Comments

That’s a pun of course — because can anyone who refuses to eat perfectly good vegetables be said to have good taste? Unfortunately, taste (in the oral sense) is entirely subjective. When it comes to addiction to food, or addiction to the act of eating, in many cases taste has a lot to do with it, and a certain amount of the problem is simply inborn.

Here are some words from Lisa Bodnar of the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences:

I remember a decade ago sitting in front of my 9-month-old daughter […] trying to spoon-feed her a pureed green vegetable. It didn’t matter if it was peas, green beans or something else, because the outcome was the same: I spooned it into her mouth, and it came right back out.

Compare this with feeding her applesauce, for which she would open her mouth after each bite and almost bounce in her chair with pleasure. I nearly danced along with her. This was easier! Let’s just keep doing this!

But of course, for the conscientious adult, “Let’s just keep doing this” is not an option. While the sentiment is counterintuitive to us totally logical elders, some babies just don’t like the taste of fresh, pure, health-giving foods. No matter how devotedly a grownup mashes peas into a pulp, they are still peas.

And you can’t fool a kid by making a clownie face and going, “Mmmmmmmm, yum yum!” They know you are lying, and are insulted by your insistence that they deny the evidence of their own senses. After this, how can they ever trust you again?

A mystery

Unfortunately, some mean things are done to newborn babies in hospitals. A baby gets stuck in the heel to obtain blood for testing, and long ago a staff member noticed that the baby would cry less if some sugar water was dribbled into its mouth at the same time. Twenty years ago, Dr. Neal D. Barnard wrote,

As sugar touches the tongue, the taste buds send a nerve impulse to the brain, causing opiates to be released. In turn, these opiates trigger the release of dopamine, the brain’s ultimate pleasure chemical.

One might logically wonder, why does the child not then associate the sweet taste with being needle-pierced, and proceed into infancy adamantly opposed to sweetness? Why doesn’t the child hate sugar, instead of peas? And that is the insidious power of the substance. Desire for sugar can even overcome its association with the trauma of being stabbed. Or, later in life, can defeat sugar’s connection with weighing 300 pounds.

Knowledge has two faces

In Melbourne, the Deakin’s Center for Advanced Sensory Science did research to discover why about 50% of babies are so darn picky. Lead researcher Dr. Georgie Russell told the press about oral sensitivity, that “food texture, mouthfeel and fussiness are still quite unexplored.” Dr. Russell went on to say,

Depending on how a food is prepared, this can affect the texture. Children might like raw crunchy carrots, but not like them if they’re cooked until they’re soggy… We can also see this with preferences for processed foods with simple textures, compared with whole foods with more complex textures…

The sense of touch is an important one. It is our oldest, most primitive and pervasive sense yet we know little about the sense of touch in the mouth — as opposed to other parts of the body — and how this relates to our food choices and intakes.

The team’s mission was to help the frustrated parents of fussy eaters and to figure out how to raise kids who like healthful foods — but of course, anything learned in this field will inevitably also benefit the evil geniuses who invent junk food.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why kids shouldn’t eat added sugar before they turn 2,” TheConversation.com, 01/07/22
Source: “The Food Fix Is In,” OrlandoSentinel.com, 07/13/03
Source: “Deakin research to determine if fussy kids are touch sensitive,” MirageNews.com, 01/16/20
Image by James Willcox/CC BY-SA 2.0

Where Serenity Is Found

Pat Hartman March 31, 2023 No Comments

Is there a basic drive for serenity? There must be, because so many people look for it in drugs, including food, which if not technically a drug, sure knows how to act like one. Fortunately, serenity can be found in a lot of other places.

Several theoreticians in the behavioral field have compiled lists of basic drives, some of which could easily be interpreted as identical to a drive for serenity. If there are only three drives, one of them is for achievement, and what is achievement really, but the serenity that comes from knowing that one has done one’s best, and succeeded?

What is serenity but the absence of stress? Serenity is the opposite of stress, which is the feeling that people who overdrink, overdrug, overeat, or do anything else past the threshold of addiction, are trying to escape. If there are only four basic drives — fight, flight, feeding, and sex — the satisfaction of any one of them brings the peace of mind that comes from knowing that the enemy has been routed or defeated; the enemy has been escaped from; the stomach has been fed; the body has been satisfied. Serenity all the way around.

This blog has devoted so much attention to the efforts and successes of Reeling in Serenity because it is an excellent example of the efficacy of displacement activity. When a person has been brought low by addiction, in many cases displacement is about finding a thing to occupy the person’s mind, energies, time, and spirit in more healthful and satisfactory ways.

Fly fishing is a particular example, and the people who are into it testify that it matches up with recovery in a number of ways. (The magic here is that in other recovering addicts’ stories, something else, like music, cooking, engine repair, or a newly discovered devotion to family, can step in to satisfy whatever drive the drug was erroneously taken to serve.

How exactly does this help?

As it turns out, fly fishing is therapeutic in multiple ways that a recovering addict can benefit from. For instance, 12-step programs all say “Take it one day at a time.” That is all well and good, but what, exactly, is a person supposed to do on those days — other than abstain from their substance of choice?

For a fly fisher, there is plenty to do. Teach the newbies how to cast a line or tie flies or pick out the most useful clothing and gear. Work with an organization to keep the water clean. Help to bring in donations so free lessons and group retreats can continue to be offered. In their special field of interest, a person with a passion can change a sizable chunk of the world.

One anonymous woman in recovery wrote that because fly fishing required mental focus, it became a healthy escape. Rather than worry about things she could not control, she worked on developing fishing strategies, and realized how compatible that was with her 12-step program.

Various members of Reeling in Serenity and similar organizations testify to the peace of feeling like a part of nature, of feeling grounded. They speak of healing, community, the breaking of isolation barriers, escape from the mundane routine, safety, a reset of mind and soul, a recharging of energy, and a new sense of perspective.

They speak of better sleep, decreased anxiety, and improved physical well-being; of connection, and building other people up instead of tearing them down; of feeling the river wash away, bit by bit, the residual shame and guilt left over from their times of active addiction. According to the people who know, it works equally well for the newly sober and for those who have been on the path for many years.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Roxnstix/CC BY-ND 2.0

The Profound Healing of Serenity

Pat Hartman March 30, 2023 No Comments

Here is a brief and partial explanation of why fly fishing helps people get better:

When we are close to moving water it creates an abundance of negative ions that we can absorb into our systems by proximity. These natural stimulating environments automatically up your serotonin levels, you absorb more oxygen into the blood and our bodies can better filter toxins.

In a previous post, we learned the story of Reeling in Serenity founder Becca Sue Klein, and now let’s go a little further back to when she was Becca K. Powell, writing for DunMagazine.com. Spending time with moving water had already earned her “a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of a hectic city life and the strength to get through two cancer diagnoses.”

In that era of life, she was serving as a senior staff member for the nonprofit Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, learning the truth of the slogan #WaterIsLife, and also working with the global organization called Waterkeeper Alliance, and fly fishing. Learning this new skill was empowering and served as “free therapy,” and she wrote:

Wading out into the water with my fly rod in hand has shown me strength, peace, freedom, a way to give back, and a beautiful new family.

A related memoir

Moshe Kasher shares a truth about his youthful Comedy Store performances. Upset by bombing onstage, he would spend his half-hour trip home texting one girl after another, trying for a late date. As the veteran of several teenage rehab stints, Kasher understood that he was acting out the emotional state called “Somebody please fix me — get me out of this…” If he was almost home and nobody had answered yet, he would stop and buy a fancy doughnut. And there it is, displacement. You can’t have one thing, so you settle for another.

Nobody starts out wanting to be a junkie. Addiction is a condition that someone settles for when they don’t have what they really want. The concept of displacement can work either way; it can also be a power for good. A person can find something else in life that is better than addiction, and repurpose their drive to experience one kind of pleasure into a drive to experience another kind of pleasure.

Poetic justice

This is what makes the Reeling in Serenity experience so cherished by the participants. They are people who found something better than whatever they used to be hooked on. Anglers, more often than not, are just in it for sport, not to feed themselves, so they catch and release. They unhook the fish and let it go, similar to how their Higher Power unhooks them and frees them from addiction.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How Water’s Negative Ions Increase Your Positive Vibes,” TherapyHealthStudio.com, 02/25/19
Source: “One Life One River,” DunMagazine.com 07/20/18
Source: “Moshe Kasher — Episode 938,” GregFitzsimmons.com, 01/04/22
Image by Korda Team/CC BY 2.0

More About Reeling in Serenity

Pat Hartman March 29, 2023 No Comments

Why are the premises of and the results obtained by Reeling in Serenity so phenomenal? As we have seen, the organization’s mission is to support individuals who are in recovery from addiction, through the peace, healing, and community that are to be found through fly fishing in the rivers of the nation and the world. Yesterday we went over the backstory of Founder and Executive Director Becca Sue Klein. Let’s hear from some of the others responsible for this wonderful nonprofit group.

Board member Jason Causey, who has accumulated more than 10 years of sobriety, says,

When you’re out there in nature listening to the water run by and someone is teaching you how to cast a fly line and you hook that first fish, I mean there’s just nothing like it. You’ve forgotten about every bad thing that has happened to you that day or that week.

Program Director Jennifer Gilbert detailed for the group’s website how, when she entered rehab in 2017, fly fishing helped her connect to her higher power. It is her hope that every newcomer in recovery will find the same peace and joy. Outreach Director Sylvia Huron also asserts that recovery and fly fishing go hand in hand. She says she has learned that the dedication required to become a better angler and the commitment needed for leaving addiction behind are mutually intertwined, as are the support and companionship found in the group.

Communications Director Georgia Skuza confides that “the addiction gene runs deep in my family” and affirms that fly fishing has been a vital part of her life and her healing journey. William Henry, Education Program Coordinator, describes how important it is to be actively engaged with nature and writes,

That connection, that mindful presence has been essential to maintaining my sobriety since 2007. It drives me to be grateful and take care of myself, and the environment. Volunteering for Reeling in Serenity allows me to combine all my passions and give back to my sober community, without whom I would not have the life I do today.

Social Media Advisor Erik Clymore had spent his first five recovery years “bouncing around from hobby to hobby trying to find my passion in life” until he discovered fly fishing, after which “everything clicked and I dove straight in.” Since then, recovery and angling have been his dual passions. He says, “Both recovery and fly fishing provide me with a loving community, appreciation for the little things, and a profound sense of purpose.”

Marketing and PR Advisor Kim Ranalla was already into the angling lifestyle because multiple serious injuries had led her to river fishing as a way of healing. She had, coincidentally, also been affected by the ravages of addiction in loved ones, and found that Reeling in Serenity provided “a pathway for me to process my own complicated grief by helping others along their healing journey.” As a volunteer, she wrote,

The organization is significant to me after losing loved ones in my life to addiction. Addiction has touched the lives of nearly everyone, in one way or another, making it a cause that I want to be behind.

Not impressed with what the market offered, she started a thriving business called Miss Mayfly, which produces a line of fishing gear products for women of all shapes and sizes. She says,

Fly fishing is an ideal conduit for physical, mental and spiritual healing. It requires a focus that helps distract from physical pain and emotional stressors, helping us to experience a deeper level of peace and calmness.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How fly fishing in PA will help people recovering from substance abuse,” GoErie.com, 02/07/23
Source: “Meet Our Team,” ReelingInSerenity.org, undated
Source: “Women Who Make a Difference,” MissMayfly.com, 09/08/22
Image by US Embassy London/CC BY-ND 2.0

The Treacherous Mouth, Continued

Go Amuse Your Bouche

How to amuse a bouche

Everything You Know About Eating Is Wrong

Not enough hours in the day

The Treacherous Mouth

Hunger, or what?

Everything You Know About Fussy Eating Is Wrong

Our Own Mouths Betray Us

More dark magic

Babies With Bad Taste

A mystery

Knowledge has two faces

Where Serenity Is Found

How exactly does this help?

The Profound Healing of Serenity

A related memoir

Poetic justice

More About Reeling in Serenity

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources