St. John's Wort Again Proven Better than Antidepressant Drugs

Once again, the St. John's Wort herb has been clinically proven to be just as effective as antidepressant drugs for eliminating the symptoms of depression, yet without any negative side effects whatsoever. So why would anybody still use dangerous SSRI drugs if they could use safe, effective and affordable St. John's Wort instead? Because Big Pharma doesn't make money from herbs, of course...

Read the whole article.

Putting Pharma Profits before Public Safety

“...modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness...Patients [have] been diagnosed with 'chemical imbalances' despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and...there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.”
—1996, psychiatrist David Kaiser

Also see the article: Commentary: Against Biologic Psychiatry by David Kaiser, M.D.

Are you stressed and tired?

Friends of ours are nutrition specialists and published an article about stress. Here is an excerpt of an article by Dr. Vikki Petersen. For full text and more info, visit their website: www.healthnowmedical.com

"Fatigue is the #1 symptom bringing patients into doctors’ offices. Feeling “stressed” is perhaps a close second. However, stress and fatigue is so common that traditional medicine often ignores it or treats it in an offhand fashion. Patients are frequently told to “get more rest”, or “relax”, or “take this pill” - often a dangerous anti-depressant. What is not appreciated is how serious stress and fatigue can be or how relatively easy it is to solve.

The first key is to properly diagnose WHY you feel the way that you do. The root of the problem can be poor sleep, chronic pain, digestive problems or hidden infections, to name a few. Regardless of its cause, stress and fatigue can very much hinder your ability to enjoy life and be productive. A thorough physical exam must, of course, be performed. But perhaps you’ve already been through a battery of tests with your medical doctor, only to be told that you’re fine. In actual fact, what’s fine is the results of the tests. If you were truly “fine” you wouldn’t be so tired and stressed! The real problem is that your doctor hasn’t asked your body the right questions yet.

The facts are that there are some stressors in life which are unavoidable. Bills, deadlines, traffic, family problems are all things which appear in most people’s lives. It’s our ability to deal with these stressors which spells the difference between optimal health and malfunction. Sometimes the cause is simply poor adrenal gland function.

If you would like to know if your adrenals glands are functioning at less than optimum, take the quiz below. If you answer yes to 3 or more of the following questions, adrenal malfunction is having a negative effect on your health.

Do you suffer from:

1. Fatigue - this is one of the most common symptoms due to lack of adrenaline. Exhaustion may strike a person suddenly in the middle of the day or the person may make it through their workday only to feel completely exhausted when they get home at night.
2. Trouble sleeping – adrenaline imbalance can cause abnormal hormonal production at night resulting in difficulty going to sleep or difficulty staying asleep.
3. Hormonal imbalance - the adrenal gland produces the precursor hormones necessary to make estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Weak adrenal function can result in severe PMS and menopause symptoms as well as other hormone related difficulties such as lack of sex drive.
4. Ligament weakness – joints of the body become irritated easily because ligaments become weak. A person will complain of various joint pains throughout the body such as back pain, neck pain, and arm or leg pain.
5. Sugar cravings – a desire for sugar can occur throughout the day whenever the blood sugar drops. This is an attempt to balance the blood sugar artificially with the use of refined sugar.
6. Low blood sugar – feeling confused, upset, getting headaches or light-headed when a meal is delayed or you get hungry.
7. Difficult waking up – waking up in the morning can become very difficult and many times a person feels they “need” to have a stimulant such as coffee in order to really be alert.
8. Immune system weakness – bacterial, viral and fungal infections can easily occur and poor wound healing may occur.
9. Faint feeling (light-headed) when rapidly standing up.
10. Poor dilation of bronchioles – the bronchioles in the lungs do not dilate efficiently and asthma-like symptoms may results.
11. Allergies – respiratory allergic reactions occur easily and hay fever or sinus symptoms result. Food allergies very commonly occur with adrenal weakness and can result in not only digestive symptoms but also many other often unexplained symptoms.

Did you answer yes to several of the above? So what is the next step? You need to get your adrenal function evaluated such that you know to what degree that it’s malfunctioning."

You will be wise to seek out a doctor well-versed in holistic medicine or visit the doctors at HealthNow Medical.

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.