This month, Hilary, the in-house Health Detective does:

GUILT

Summer is upon us: the season of bronzed, cherub-faced harpies gazing from magazine covers, exhorting us to cleanse our bodies of all nastiness and detox for the season of beaches and barbeques. But I’m on the trail of a different, invisible but highly lethal toxin: guilt.

My reflexologist friend Jane Tilton is under no illusion as to the scale of the problem: ‘Guilt is a killer,’ she says. ‘People feel guilty over just about anything these days: guilt about having a TV dinner; guilt at going to bed early, guilt over eating food you love.’ How many times do we need to read surveys that tell us red wine, chocolate, even the occasional coffee, are all good for us in moderation before we stop buying into the idea that we need to purge these things from our lives and live on a daily diet of spinach and carrot juice? Although then we’d have to feel guilty at being a party pooper when our friends just want us to go out and get pissed with them.

Jane elaborates ‘I’ve seen it time and again: a little of what you fancy DOES do you good. I had a patient once who was having trouble getting pregnant. She’d tried all the vitamins, all the diets, and she was getting extremely anxious and unhappy about it. She was a high achieving career woman, and this was messing up her life plans. When she asked me what more she could do, I told her: “Why don’t you take a walk down the Old Kent Road. I can guarantee you’ll find an overweight mother of six pushing a double buggy home, without a care on her mind, with a husband who’ll get her pregnant again the next time he comes home late from the boozer.”

Jane was hardly advocating this woman adopt a diet of daily McDonald's and alcoholism, but it was the need she felt to live her life along very tightly controlled, proscribed lines that was messing up her hormones, and her chances of having a baby. If she could relax, enjoy life and live more in the moment, it’d boost her fertility infinitely more than double doses of zinc and magnesium.

So sod the soapbox rhetoric. Don’t listen to another wide-eyed celebrity exhorting you to follow the diet she’s plugging in her new book. You’re clever enough to know what does and doesn’t agree with you, physically and mentally. All things in moderation, as the saying goes. And guilt is a bigger danger to your wellbeing than the odd glass of wine.

If you want the science, here’s Dr Laurence Magne, writing on worldwidehealth.com: ‘Scientists have found that the areas of the brain that control emotion are particularly rich in receptors of neuropeptides. The brain also has receptor sites for molecules produced by the immune system alone. What we see is an intricate 2-way communication system linking the mind, the immune system and all the other systems, a pathway through which our emotions, hopes and fears, can affect the body's ability to defend itself.  The more you try to control life, the less control you have. Not knowing when to let go is a major cause of stress. Developing the discrimination to tell when to hold on and when to let go is the key to responding freshly to life's challenges.’

Guilt is simply a byproduct of trying to control peoples’ reactions to you – or, worse still, of trying to live by a set of rules you’ve absorbed, that are often not even serving you well. By acting in ‘the right way’ – ie a way you think others would approve of - you think you’ll be fine. But you can never predict how anyone will respond to your behaviour.  Give it up. By connecting with your instincts, calming your mind and operating from an open heart, you are far less likely to cause the negative reactions in others that you fear, and also more likely to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

Dr Laurence, again: ‘Happiness is inborn. It cannot be learned, but it can be forgotten. Authenticity is an attitude of awareness in which we are willing to experience our thoughts and feelings as they are.’ And if that feeling includes  ‘I’d love a piece of that cake’ then have a piece, and enjoy every mouthful. For the real die-hard guilt addicts, the experience of eating the cake is completely overridden by the guilt they feel in eating it. Hence the need for another piece! All they wanted was the pleasure in the first place.

So go on, give up the booze for a month if it makes you happy, but try giving up on guilt at the same time. Then you’ll have double the energy boost – physically and mentally.