Depression
An enormous quantity of drugs are dispensed to treat depression. and it is difficult to say in how many cases such treatment is justified.
What you may think is depression may be nothing more than bad case of boredom or the blahs. In other cases, depression is a feeling of “what’s the use?” that seems to hit people at a certain time in the- lives, typically the forties. Executives and professional people may fall into this kind of depression not long after they have entered the very peak of their careers and become overwhelmed with the feeling that al their efforts have somehow not been personally rewarding. A person whose interests are home centered may become depressed after the children are grown. What I am trying to get at is that depression is. a certain sense, sometimes “natural,” and a few sessions with a psychologist may be more appropriate than drug therapy.
We should also add that depression can be a kind of nonspecific result of generally bad nutrition and may respond to a more sensible diet that cuts out junk food, drastically cuts down on sugar and Mil imizes foods with honest nourishment. Multivitamin and multimineral 1 supplementation (including magnesium) should be used as a rou=te dietary measure.
The naturally occurring mineral lithium is widely used to treat certain types of depression. But although lithium is natural and is present to some extent in everyone’s diet, it is far from being nontoxic. In fact the effective dose of lithium is at the same level where toxic side effect begin to appear.
The amino acid tryptophan has been used with success to treat certain forms of depression. It acts by increasing the brain’s uptake serotonin, a neurochemical transmitter that seems to be a natural antidepressant. Natural sources of tryptophan include soybeans, nots, turkey and tuna.
Treatment with another amino acid, tyrosine, has also proved he:
in cases in which the stimulating neurotransmitter norepinephrine was deficient (American Journal of Psychiatry, May, 1980).
Along with tryptophan, vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) and niacinamide been used to lift depression. In fact, vitamin B6 is required for body to properly metabolize tryptophan.
Women who become depressed after taking oral contraceptive over a period of time may have an easy answer for their problems in vitamin B6. But not all women who take the Pill become depressed, and not all women who do become depressed while taking the Pill are necessarily suffering from a B6 deficiency. On the other hand, from see eral trials already carried out, it’s estimated that many thousands of women taking the Pill have become needlessly depressed because the hormones are depleting their bodies of vitamin B6. Naturally, most women don’t associate the depression with the Pill. A reasonable approach here would be to take 50 milligrams a day of B6 for several weeks, and then go to a maintenance schedule of 10 to 20 milligrams a day, increasing the dosage around the time of menstruation to avoid premenstrual depression.
Another B vitamin, folate, seems to be connected with depression when levels fall too low. A study at McGill University, Montreal, examined the folate levels of three different groups of patients: those who were depressed, those who were psychiatrically ill but not depressed and those who were medically ill. Six of the patients were men, 42 were w omen, and their ages ranged from 20 to 91 years.
The researchers discovered that “serum folic acid [folate] levels w ere significantly lower in the depressed patients than in the psychiatric Lad medical patients. . . . On the basis of our results, we believe that folic acid deficiency depression may exist” (Psychosomatics, November, 1980), A. Missagh Ghadirian, M.D., of the department of psychiatry, McGill University, and the head researcher in the study, says, “Based m my clinical observations, it seems that people whose depressions are purely due to folate deficiency do get better with folate therapy.”
To perk out of the blues, herbalists value a hot cup of rosemary tea perhaps with a pinch of valerian.
Tags: a few sessions with a psychologist, become depressed after the children are grown, drug therapy, kind of depression, treat depression