Depression not a chemical imbalance in your brain - here's proof!

[Guest guest]

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/06/frightening-story-behind-the-drug-companies-creation-of-medical-lobotomies.aspx

This is an

excellent documentary detailing how the psychiatric drug industry was born and

its powerful and profitable partnership with the drug industry, which has

turned psychiatry into an $80 billion drug profit center.

·

But

is any of it based on real medical science?

·

How

valid are the psychiatric diagnoses being handed out?

·

And

are the drugs safe?

Unfortunately,

the evidence is overwhelmingly stacked against psychiatric drugs. It's becoming

ever clearer that most of today's psychiatric diagnoses and subsequent drug

treatment is a sham, successfully promoted to make you believe it's based on

some scientific truth.

But it's not...

What Causes Psychological Distress?

Answering this

question is the holy grail of psychiatry. Even before there were psychiatrists,

such troubles were blamed on things like evil spirits, or an imbalance of

" humors. "

The latter was

treated by bloodletting, which is perhaps the longest running tradition in

medicine, originating in the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Greece,

persisting for some 2,500 years through the Industrial Revolution. It was the

" aspirin " of the day, used for just about every conceivable condition

from pneumonia to depression. Yet, there was never any evidence that it did any

good, and many times the patients died. Of course, it was always assumed it was

the disease that

killed them, rather than the

treatment.

Interestingly, we

now know that there was good reason why this may have helped men or

postmenopausal women. If they had high iron levels this would have been able to

reduce their load and thus improve their overall health.

Finally, 19th

century scientists began to question its value and medical statisticians who

tracked case histories discovered that it wasn't helping much of anything.

The blanket

prescription of drugs for every conceivable psychological hiccup has become the

bloodletting theory of the 21st century… Of course, in the

case of psychiatric drugs, there's tremendous profits to be made by maintaining

the status quo and not admitting the error of their ways.

The fact is,

psychiatry STILL doesn't understand what causes psychological distress, and the

primary theory proposed; the idea that unwanted behavior and depression are due

to an imbalance of serotonin and dopamine in your brain, has NEVER been proven.

On the contrary,

research has proven the theory is WRONG, yet this evidence has been swept under

the proverbial rug.

Despite what the

slick advertisements say, psychotropic drugs have no measurable biological

imbalances to correct—unlike other drugs that can measurably alter levels

of blood sugar, cholesterol and so on.

" How can you

medicate something that is not physically there? " they ask in this

documentary.

The answer is, of

course, you can't!

Doing so anyway

is a dangerous game.

The

Physical Dangers of Medicalizing a Non-Physical Condition

One significant

danger of psychotropic drugs is that they can upset the delicate processes

within your brain needed to maintain your biological functions. This risk

simply cannot be overstated… The documentary cites some staggering

statistics attributed to psychiatric drugs:

·

700,000

adverse reactions per year

·

42,000

deaths per year

How in the world

can drugs that cause over 40,000 deaths a year be permitted, let alone handed

out like candy?

Even if you DO

have a serious psychiatric issue, such as PTSD for example, drugging it away is

risky—especially

if you're taking multiple drugs. Since the average American takes 13 drugs per

year, this is a serious issue.. A number of military personnel have died in

their sleep, for example, after taking a prescribed combination of Paxil,

Seroquel, and Klonopin. These deaths were NOT due to overdosing, but rather

" each case involved a sudden cardiac incident and resulting death, " Jed

Shlackman wrote in an article for the Examiner last year, adding:

" This

adds to growing concern about serious adverse effects of psychiatric

medications commonly prescribed to emotionally disturbed or traumatized

soldiers. "

Several studies have

demonstrated the potential for lethal cardiac side effects. For example:

·

A

literature review of studies from 2000-2007, published

in Expert Opinion on Drug Safety in 2008, found that " Antipsychotics

can increase cardiac risk even at low doses, whereas antidepressants do it

generally at high doses or in the setting of drug combinations. "

·

A

study published in January 2009 in the New England Journal of Medicine found

that antipsychotic drugs doubled the risk of sudden cardiac death. Mortality

was also found to be dose-dependent, so those taking higher doses were at

increased risk of a lethal cardiac event.

·

Another

study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that same

year also found that antidepressants increase the rate of sudden cardiac death.

Are

Emotional Symptoms Really Signs of Mental Illness?

Clearly, there

are " real " mental illnesses that can destroy any semblance of

normalcy in a person's life. But are you mentally ill when you're sad for more

than a couple of weeks?

Is losing zest

for life a sign of mental illness?

Where does the

normal grieving process fit into our modern lives—is it something that

should be drugged, or is it a normal phase of life that everyone on the planet

has to move through? And when does an emotional phase go from being a natural

part of the changing emotional landscape that is life to a problem that needs

to be " fixed " ?

Many are quick to

defend their choice to take drugs. No one wants

to " feel bad. " But are these drugs destroying lives rather than

saving them?

I believe the

answer is a resounding YES at this point.

Rather than

helping people address the root cause of their suffering, psychiatry has now

simply resorted to a chemical form of lobotomy to " make the problem go

away. "

Drug therapy has

been the conventional therapy of choice in the psychiatric field since its

beginnings. Insane asylums during the early 19th century employed

drugs like morphine and opium to quiet patients' outbursts. By the turn of the

20th century, heroin was peddled as a cure for psychiatric problems,

and Sigmund Freud wrote articles promoting the use of cocaine for spiritual

distress and behavioral difficulties.

Today, these

drugs have become " illicit " and anyone resorting to cocaine to ease

their troubled mind is called a junkie… But in essence, all the industry

has done is replacing a few dangerous drugs with other dangerous drugs.

The

Truth about the " Chemical Imbalance " Theory

Most of you have

probably heard that depression is due to a " chemical imbalance in your

brain, " which these drugs are designed to correct. Unfortunately for

anyone who has ever swallowed this marketing ploy, this is NOT a scientific

statement.

So where did it

come from?

The low serotonin

theory arose because they understood how the drugs acted on the brain; it was a

hypothesis that tried to explain how the drug might be fixing something.

However, that hypothesis didn't hold up to further investigation.

Investigations were done to see whether or not depressed people actually had

lower serotonin levels, and in 1983

the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) concluded that

" There

is no evidence that there is anything wrong in the serotonergic system of

depressed patients. "

The serotonin

theory is simply not a scientific statement. It's a botched theory—a

hypothesis that was proven incorrect.

The fact that

this fallacy continues to thrive is destroying the health of millions, because

if you take an SSRI drug that blocks the normal reuptake of serotonin, you end

up with the very physiological problem the drug is designed to treat–low

serotonin levels. Which, ironically, is the state hypothesized to bring on

depression in the first place.

In 1996,

neuroscientist Hyman, who was head of the NIMH at the time, and is today

Provost of Harvard University, published the paper Initiation and Adaptation: A Paradigm for Understanding

Psychotropic Drugs, in which he explains this chain of events.

According to Dr. Hyman, once your brain has undergone a series of compensatory

adaptations to the drug, your brain operates in a manner that is " both

qualitatively and quantitatively different than normal. "

So, it's

important to understand that these drugs are NOT normalizing agents. They're abnormalizing agents, and

once you understand that,

you can understand how they might provoke a manic episode, or why they might be

associated with sexual dysfunction or violence

and suicide, for example.

How Did

it Ever Get this Bad?

Part of the

puzzle explaining why we now have a pill for every emotion and psychological

trait is that psychiatrists were originally not considered " real "

doctors—they couldn't actually " do " much to help their

patients, and they certainly couldn't cure them. They realized that to increase

their status, they had to make the field more scientific, and it was this

decision that gave birth to the medicalizing and drugging of every conceivable

behavioral tendency.

Medical

journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Whitaker explains the history of

the treatment of those with severe mental illness in his first book, Mad in America. His latest book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and

the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America focuses on

the disturbing fact that as psychiatry has gained ground, mental illness has

skyrocketed.

Part of the

problem is that the criteria for diagnosis has expanded exponentially—you

can now be diagnosed as being " ill " if you have trouble controlling

your shopping habits, and a child who often argues with adults can be labeled

according to the diagnostic code 313.81 -- Oppositional Defiant Disorder. A

staggering array of normal human experiences now masquerade as " disorders, "

for which there is a drug treatment available.

Another factor is

the fact that psychiatric drugs CREATE more serious forms of mental illness...

What

Does the Science Really Say about the Effectiveness of Psychiatric Drugs?

First of all,

when looking at the research literature, short-term trials show that

antidepressants do NOT provide any clinically significant benefits for mild to

moderate depression, compared to a placebo. As you know, all drugs have

benefit-to-risk ratios, so if a drug is as effective as a placebo in relieving

symptoms, it really doesn't make sense to use them as a first line of defense.

And yet doctors

all over America prescribe them as if they were indeed sugar pills!

However, it gets

worse. Research into the long-term effects of antidepressants shows that

patients are no longer really recuperating from their depressive episodes as

was the general norm prior to the advent of modern antidepressants. The

depression appears to be lifting faster, but patients tend to relapse more

frequently, turning what ought to have been a passing phase into an

increasingly chronic state of depression.

Long-term studies

now indicate that of people with major depression, only about 15 percent that

are treated with an antidepressant go into remission and stay well for a long

period of time. The remaining 85 percent start having continuing relapses and

become chronically depressed.

According to

Whitaker's research, this tendency to sensitize your brain to long-term

depression appears to be the same both for the earlier tricyclic

antidepressants and the newer SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).

In addition,

SSRI's have been shown to increase your risk of developing bipolar depression, according

to Whitaker. Anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of children who take an

antidepressant for five years convert to bipolar illness. In adults, about 25

percent of long term users convert from a diagnosis of unipolar depression to

bipolar.

This is a serious

concern because once you're categorized as bipolar, you're often treated with a

potent cocktail of medications including an antipsychotic medication, and

long-term bipolar outcomes are grim in the United States. For starters, only

about 35 percent of bipolar patients are employed, so the risk of permanent

disability is great.

Another risk

inherent with long-term use is that of cognitive decline.

It's

Time to Stop the Insanity...

Every year, 230

million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled, making them one of the

most-prescribed drugs in the United States. Despite all of these prescription

drugs being taken, more than one in 20 Americans are depressed, according to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention (CDC). The statistics alone should be a strong

indication that what we're doing is simply not working, and that instead, these

drugs are contributing to other serious health problems.

Fortunately,

there are other, safer, more effective ways, and some countries are starting to

pay heed to the fact that research is actually showing it to be beneficial,

rather than bowing to the will of pharmaceutical companies.

Key

Factors to Overcoming Depression

Exercise

– If

you have depression, or even if you just feel down from time to time, exercise

is a MUST. The research

is overwhelmingly positive in this area, with studies confirming that

physical exercise is at least as good as antidepressants for helping people who

are depressed. One of the primary ways it does this is by increasing the level

of endorphins, the " feel good " hormones, in your brain.

Address

your stress

-- Depression is a very serious condition, however it is not a

" disease. " Rather, it's a sign that your body and your life are out

of balance.

This is so

important to remember, because as soon as you start to view depression as an

" illness, " you think you need to take a drug to fix it. In reality,

all you need to do is return balance to your life, and one of the key ways to

doing this is addressing stress.

Meditation or

yoga can help. Sometimes all you need to do is get outside for a walk. But in

addition to that, I also recommend using a system that can help you address

emotional issues that you may not even be consciously aware of. For this, my

favorite is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). However, if you have

depression or serious stress, I believe it would be best to consult with a

mental health professional who is also an EFT practitioner to guide you.

Eat a

healthy diet

-- Another factor that cannot be overlooked is your diet. Foods have an immense

impact on your mood and ability to cope and be happy, and eating whole foods as

described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental health. Avoiding

sugar and grains will help normalize your insulin and leptin levels, which

is another powerful tool in addressing depression.

Support

optimal brain functioning with essential fats -- I also strongly recommend supplementing

your diet with a high-quality,

animal-based omega-3 fat, like krill oil. This may be the

single most important nutrient to battle depression.

Get

plenty of sunshine

– Making sure you're getting enough sunlight exposure to have healthy

vitamin D levels is also a crucial factor in treating depression or keeping it

at bay. One previous study

found that people with the lowest levels of vitamin D were 11 times more prone

to be depressed than those who had normal levels. Vitamin D deficiency is

actually more the norm than the exception, and has previously been implicated

in both psychiatric and neurological disorders.