Exercise and Depression

Article by the Mayo Clinic: "Depression and anxiety: Exercise eases symptoms"

Here is an excerpt from the article: "Exercise can improve symptoms of depression and anxiety. Even a little exercise helps. Use these realistic tips and goals to get started and stick with it.

"When you have depression or anxiety, exercising may be the last thing you think you can do. But you can overcome the inertia. See how exercise can ease depression symptoms and anxiety symptoms. Plus, get realistic tips to get started and stick with exercising.

"Exercise has long been touted as a way to maintain physical fitness and help prevent high blood pressure, diabetes and other diseases. A growing volume of research shows that exercise can also help improve symptoms of certain mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety. Exercise may also help prevent a relapse after treatment for depression or anxiety.

"Research suggests that it may take at least 30 minutes of exercise a day for at least three to five days a week to significantly improve depression symptoms. But smaller amounts of activity — as little as 10 to 15 minutes at a time — can improve mood in the short term. 'Small bouts of exercise may be a great way to get started if it's initially too hard to do more,' Dr. Vickers-Douglas says." Link to full article.

The Myth of Mental Illness

Here is an excerpt from a groundbreaking paper entitled The Myth of Mental Illness by renown psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Szasz (Dr. Szasz' website):

"My aim in this essay is to raise the question "Is there such a thing as mental illness?" and to argue that there is not. Since the notion of mental illness is extremely widely used nowadays, inquiry into the ways in which this term is employed would seem to be especially indicated. Mental illness, of course, is not literally a "thing" -- or physical object -- and hence it can "exist" only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist. Yet, familiar theories are in the habit of posing, sooner or later -- at least to those who come to believe in them -- as "objective truths" (or "facts"). During certain historical periods, explanatory conceptions such as deities, witches, and microorganisms appeared not only as theories but as self-evident causes of a vast number of events. I submit that today mental illness is widely regarded in a somewhat similar fashion, that is, as the cause of innumerable diverse happenings. As an antidote to the complacent use of the notion of mental illness -- whether as a self-evident phenomenon, theory, or cause--let us ask this question: What is meant when it is asserted that someone is mentally ill?

"In what follows I shall describe briefly the main uses to which the concept of mental illness has been put. I shall argue that this notion has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had and that it now functions merely as a convenient myth." Link to the full paper by Dr. Szasz.

Depression and Gluten Sensitivity

Depression and Gluten Sensitivity
Many researchers have now demonstrated that gluten exposure in gluten sensitive individuals can cause depression. One good study evaluated 16 newly diagnosed gluten sensitive people and performed assessments to determine if depression was present. Compared to normal individuals, the patients with gluten sensitivity scored much higher for having depression. What is important also is that the depression was unrelated to abdominal complaints or other symptoms. This supports that the depression was not a secondary phenomenon from simply having an illness.
Another study out of Sweden assessed 42 people with known gluten sensitivity, and of this group, 8 had depression and/or anxiety. Even though the sample was small, the percent affected was 19 percent which is significantly higher than a normal population which averages 4 to 5 percent 4. The authors’ opinion based on the study was that depression may be severe in individuals with gluten sensitivity.

This is an excerpt from an upcoming book by Dr Vikki Petersen and Dr Rick Petersen on the subject of gluten intolerance. This is copyrighted material used with the authors' permission.

Help for Your Depression

L. Ron Hubbard said, "When the mind fixates wholly upon the body we have that extreme degree of introversion visible in psychotics or neurotics. No exterior world remains - there is only the body. The dwindling spiral toward oblivion is this road of greater and greater fixation upon the body."
If you are feeling depressed or just cranky, try doing the following program for two weeks and see if you don't feel better.
1. Clean up your things and get done the various little jobs you've been putting off.
2. Get into communication with friends, relatives or people you've neglected. Talk about some happy times. Avoid those people who make you feel less or who always have bad news to share.
3. Take a one hour walk every day - outside, not in a gym. Start walking away from home or wherever as early as you can. Leave your cell phone and your ipod at home. Just walk and look around and get extroverted.
4. Get a physical examination and if anything is physically wrong with you, get it fixed up. Get tested for food allergies and vitamin deficiencies.
5. Eat a good healthy diet and take some good vitamins, like B1 and C.

Blame

Here is some food for thought:
"If you blame somebody hard enough and long enough, you have kept on electing them as cause until they are much more powerful than yourself."
L. Ron Hubbard

Medication for Depression

If you are considering taking psychiatric medication for depression, please visit these links and watch these videos first. Get the facts.

Information on the dangers of psychiatric practices and medications:
http://www.psychiatry.info
http://www.cchr.org/

And here are two videos you should see:
Psychiatric Video One
Psychiatric Video Two

"The world is a dangerous place to live;
not because of the people who are evil, but
because of the people who won't do anything about it."
- Albert Einstein

Can you count on luck?

"Luck is the hope that some uncontrolled chance will get one through. Counting on luck is an abandonment of control. That's apathy."
This is an excerpt from the book, The Problems of Work by L. Ron Hubbard. I strongly advice you to purchase this book and apply the information in it. It's available on line at the Scientology Bookstore.