Depression & Natural Medicine – Part Two

Back in 1965, some ‘scientist dude’, by the name of Joseph Schildkraut came up with the Monoamine THEORY.

The theory stated that depression is caused by depletion in the levels of monoamines (serotonin, norepinephrine, and/or dopamine) in the central nervous system. Based on this theory, drugs that increased the level of 1-2 monoamines were released into the marketplace — and they’ve been there ever since.

And all the unhappy people were cured!

The end.

Yeah, right.

This particular story unfortunately doesn’t have a ‘happy’ ending for the majority of its characters.

What actually happened is that when Joseph (and his mono-coloured lab-coat), presented his theory he specifically stipulated that his findings were inconclusive¹ But nobody bloody-well listened to that part, now did they! (It’s probably because they couldn’t hear him over the deafening ‘cha-ching’ sounds.)

The Monoamine theory was a valid  attempt by Joseph Schildkraut to explain the cause of depression.

I’ll discuss this more later, but first, a quick recap on part-one of this blog-post!

In my last blog-post I told you all about a ‘friend’ of mine who had really pissed.me.off. But, who also — on the bright-side — inspired me to write this series of blog-posts about this important topic.

What had happened was that I had informed this person that I suffer from depression (if I don’t manage it carefully through natural methods). And, this person basically slammed me for it. He clearly forgot that I write quite a popular blog about health, and that I also suffer from ‘bad-temper’ (if I don’t manage it carefully through limiting my contact with arrogant assholes 😇)

My ‘friend’ — you’re one of the reasons why some people are too scared to speak out about their suffering. The stigma associated with suffering from a mental illness is still very real — as is depression! Depression is a very real condition — it’s not something that you can simply talk us out of, or that we can talk ourselves out of. When you suffer from depression you physically can’t think more positively. No amount of talking or listening is therefore going to be very effective unless we address the underlying physical cause/s of this mental condition.

In part-one of this blog-post, I also told you that the worst thing about depression, for a lot of people, is not having anything to actually be depressed about — it’s the absolute pits. The thing that needs to be acknowledged about depression — is that you don’t actually need anything in particular to feel depressed about. That’s because depression is an inherent sadness/numbness that is a result of your brain being unhealthy; often due to long-term stress exposure.²

I also told you that the mainstream media won’t discuss depression in conjunction with natural medicine. This is because depression is a medical condition that only synthetic drugs can ‘fix’. (Or, that trained professionals such as Psychiatrists and Counsellors can support.)

This is a real problem because mainstream medication for depression has actually been proven scientifically ineffectual! (See the box below.)

Read part-one of this blog-post here.

Here in part-two, I will be discussing:

SO MUCH FOR EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE!
Conventional medicine does not practice what it preaches when it comes to treating depression.

FOCUSING JUST ON THE BRAIN (IN DEPRESSION) — IS OLD SCHOOL.
When you’re looking for the drivers that cause depression, the search shouldn’t be limited to just above the neck. The whole body needs to be addressed. (In this sense, the brain and the head is literally the ‘tip of the iceberg’.) Functional Psychiatry is where it’s at.

NATURAL MEDICINE is PROVEN TO build MENTAL & EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE
The antidote to depression (as well as anxiety, stress, OCD, insomnia, and addictive behaviours) is to develop your mental & emotional resilience² with the appropriate nutrition that your whole body requires.

In a nutshell, our most vulnerable people are being fobbed off with drugs that are based on bad science. This makes both my Naturopathic & my redheaded blood boil.¹⁷

Conventional medicine is relying on inconclusive scientific research (from 1965) for the treatment of depression.

This would explain why so many people suffer from Treatment Resistant Depression — where a person does not respond to anti-depressant medication.

I find it incredibly perplexing that for a medical fraternity who are super hung-up on supplying evidence-based medicine, that modern medicine still can’t agree (after some 50-odd years) about how the most commonly prescribed anti-depressant, the SSRI, actually works. (Please see below.)

Note: These drugs are also ‘marketed’ to  sufferers of anxiety.

And, given this drug’s actual success rate, can we really say that it does even ‘work’? I mean, the research shows that only 2/10 people using antidepressants show clinical effects beyond those associated with placebo.³

Enormous numbers of randomised-controlled trials and studies show that SSRIs are only moderately superior when compared to placebo.⁴

Further to this, before you are prescribed this drug, you are not tested to establish whether you in fact have a serotonin deficiency. (This is probably because there is no test that can actually effectively establish this.)

Note: I like to refer to medication as ‘drugs’- like the Americans. This is because I think it more accurately describes these substances. A drug is a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body.

What happens if you don’t actually have a serotonin deficiency? Serotonin is only one of a number of other neurotransmitters that make up just 10% of brain chemicals (GABA and Glutamate make up the other 90% .)⁵

In fact, depression may not even be due to any type of brain chemical deficiency at all. In the field of Psychiatry, they have not been able to confirm a direct link between this mental condition and a brain chemical imbalance.^6,7

In defence of these scientific hypotheses, they have actually  revolutionised the mental health world. They have helped to reduce the stigma associated with mental conditions; that you weren’t actually inherently ‘mental’ — you just had a chemical imbalance.

However, it is the 21st century, and we now know that a person with depression may have experienced any number of factors that caused them to lose their mental and emotional resilience². Therefore, when treating a sufferer of this condition you don’t just look at the site of the problem — you look to see what is happening within the whole body. And then, how this is impacting the brain.

That’s where Functional medicine comes in. And, in the case of mental health, this type of medicine is specifically referred to as Functional Psychiatry.

Functional medicine addresses the underlying causes of disease. It doesn’t look at treating body systems in isolation, it considers the inter-relationship of these systems. It also engages both the patient and practitioner in a therapeutic partnership. The practice of Functional medicine has evolved out of necessity because it better addresses the healthcare needs of the 21st century.

Note: I can’t help but say that Functional Medicine is just an unnecessarily confusing new term that ‘doctory types’ have come up with. We already have a term for this type of medicine, it’s bloody-well called ‘Naturopathy’. Naturopathy has been adhering to these holistic principles for centuries. Sheesh. Can’t they just admit we were right? :-/

Functional Psychiatry can achieve profound and lasting outcomes because it’s not simply focused on resolving depression. This approach aims to restore general health & wellbeing by looking at the whole person, in order to provide a better indication of the overall cause of the person’s ill health.¹⁷ For example, is the person also experiencing learning or concentration difficulties, memory issues, fatigue, muscle tension, aches/pains, irritability, and/or feeling ‘under-pressure’.

Depression is a maladaptive alteration in the structure and function of the brain. This ultimately results from the over-activity of neurotoxic factors (these are bad) and the under-activity of neurotrophic factors (these are good).

Note: These ‘factors’ are outlined below.

Suffice to say, depression is not a simple matter of a single brain chemical deficiency — that is so 1960s. There are many reasons why you may be experiencing a mental depression. Depression is actually a symptom of a health condition — it’s not ‘the’ health condition.

Please be aware that you can also suffer from co-morbidities (more than one health problem presenting at one time). This is where seemingly unrelated health conditions can be the underlying cause or compounding the depressive state: Thyroid dysfunction, IBS, Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, pain syndromes, cardiovascular disease, high histamine levels, and pyrrole disorder.¹¹

Note: It is beyond the scope of this blog-post to go into the details for each of these health conditions. I’ll aim to address these in subsequent blog-posts.

Also, having a lack of life’s essentials can also lead to depression: A poor diet, lack of exercise, loneliness, feeling unsupported, having a lack of purpose or meaning in your life, and not having any coping skills like meditation or mindfulness to calm your brain².

Note: It is also beyond the scope of this blog-post to go into the details for each of these areas.