Depression: The Sixth Sense

[Guest guest]

I'm an Army veteran, and I was taught the importance of " knowing your

enemy " and turning a weakness into a strength with strategy, if at

all possible.

I identified my intense reactivity to mold and asked doctors to help

me study the problem and deal with it - All refused.

So I took a sample of the offending irritant to a " safe place " and

tried sleeping in gradually increasing proximity to determine the

most subtle signs of a respons that I could discern.

Much to my amazement, the initial and earliest sign of any shift in

my symptoms was a relative shift in " depression " , the sensation that

I am constantly assured is " the product of an undisciplined mind to

emotional stimulus " .

This response occurred as a precursor to headaches, rash or any of

the neurological symptoms that people normally associate with a " mold

hit " . This was such a consistent response that I came to the

conclusion that depression is not what psychiatrists think it is; It

is a warning.

When I thought about it for a while, it seemed logical that if Nature

wanted to devise a mental response that would induce a creature to

change its habits or location to avoid an immunological irritant by

leaving an area, what " emotional " stimulus would serve better

than " anxiety " and " depression " ?

Our senses that interface with our tactile environment are

exquisitely designed to correlate with our need to interpret damage

and act accordingly, but what about toxic exposures? It seemed

logical to me that an immunological message of dysfunction caused by

toxins would create a commensurate impulse to " run like Hell " or at

least try to change an animals circumstances in some manner to alter

the exposure.

It seemed to me that if my proximity to a toxic irritant

consistently resulted in an " anxiety/depresion " response, that this

was actually a useful warning instead of the " emotional response of a

disordered mental state " .

So I set out to devise a strategy of extreme mycotoxin avoidance

based on my perception of exposure.

I have many clues for overt responses and " mold slams " .

But the primary sense that I am using to detect the lowest level of

exposure is the " depression response " .

Several years ago I was describing my strategy to a doctor who

offered me antidepressents. I was stunned and amazed that despite my

description of the rationale for my strategy, that I was still so

misunderstood. " What? Take antidepressents and and blunt my most

useful tool for detection of immunological upregulation? I don't

want to deprive myself of the depression response - I rely on it and

have learned to turn this so called " weakness " into a strength " .

Despite the demonstrable immunological effects of mycotoxins, my

descriptions of this strategy to doctors and psychiatrists results in

a proposal of " Obsessive Avoidance Behaviors " to account for my

actions.

This " psychologizing " of a demonstrable, reproducible and provable

response to known neurotoxins says more about the obsessions of

psychiatrists than it does about my " behaviors " and I sincerely hope

that someday these psychiatric-obsessive theorists will get the

counseling they so desperately need.

The evidence is building that " depression " is sickness behavior and

represents " The Sixth Sense " , a perception of immunological response

which, if correlated with infections or toxic irritants, can be an

extremely useful indicator of a cytokine induced inflammatory

condition.

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/329/7457/112-b#69034

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