Antidepressants and your intuition.

[Satori]

There are lots of things one can do as an alternative to drugs. And, there are times when people really need the meds to be sane and get thru the day.

That said, really really good nutritional studies are the first line of defense. You won't find these tests at a traditional doctors office. You will need a naturopath or an allopathic doctor who is also an environmental medicine specialist and who treats patients with chemical sensitivities. Quite often the environmental med specialists are pediatricians.

Relieving the diet of caffeine, refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, white flour, and salt is the first step. Replace these with whole grains (and if you want to be a purist eliminate wheat, corn and citrus), organic whole grains, fresh organic fruit and veggies. Also, no wine or alcoholic beverages. Especially beer! Some people will also take out dairy for the first three weeks as well. So no cheese, no milk....Limiting starch and nightshade vegetables at first is also helpful. Doing this for three weeks is a good start for detoxifying the system.

Once the body is at baseline you can from there begin to address causes for various conditions. Sounds like work? Yes and this is why you don't hear of this program often. Wouldn't you rather take a pill than stop the diet coke, candy bars, wine and cheese and the chocolate cake?

Miraculously, after cleaning up the diet many conditions disappear. Headaches disappear for many people, as do ringing in the ears, mood swings, and so many other conditions. Including IBS and in some cases Crohn's disease. Many people will then try introducing back into the diet various foods and seeing where it is that problems recur. But this program is work, it is not easy and it is interestingly mostly used by allergists. So if you get the book or recognize the program and say, "OH, but I don't have any allergies." You have right there closed your mind and decided this isn't for you. Because it can really work amazingly well for people with depression and anxiety.


This diet can be found in more detail in a book called The Yeast Connection, by a Dr. Crook. Can't remember his first name.

 

[Grizabella]

My late father-in-law was a doctor, two of my sisters-in-law are doctors and one brother-in-law is a doctor/medical researcher. My neice and one sister-in-law are nurses. (My husband was in a medical field and so was I.) They're all Seventh Day Adventist and into natural remedies whenever possible. They're certainly and absolutely not part of any conspiracy with drug companies. What I said was based on the fact that natural remedies and listening to yourself aren't always the answer. And not all doctors are part of a big conspiracy to fill patients full of drugs. I've been fortunate to have always had wonderful doctors who used drugs as a last resort.

Mental health is a serious and complex problem. Telling someone who suffers from serious depression, bi-polar illness, schizophrenia-----you can't seriously mean that these people should discard their meds, listen to their own intuition and go for herbal remedies. That's very dangerous. For people with some of those illnesses, listening to their own instincts about it is the very worst thing they can do but in their altered states, it's what they want to do and shouldn't. Not taking the first diagnosis and getting a second or third opinion is fine, but encouraging them to wing it is dangerous to themselves and others.

 

[tabi]

From my experience

I agree entirely with what Solitaire*, do know a bi-polar person and another with schizophrenia. The meds are not to help you with intuition they are to help you with living a functional life. True if you creative by nature that is dampened a great deal but then the question becomes would you want to have this stunning creation that you did with your own two hands, that only hides in the closet because you still don't think it is good enough?

Personally I was on Lexapro for depression, it is a mild one and I was on it because of my living situation at the time. This is also the time that I really started to get deeply involved with tarot. I liked the ritual of it but I was hoping that it would help me in some way. When it got worse I had my dr give me something for it, and only at his insistence that it was the best option for me at that time. I was more then willing to talk to someone and try a therapist first. While he agreed that it would help, it wouldn't help me quick enough....When I was full on the meds, my readings made a great deal more sense to me. Mostly because I was thinking clearer then before. I could look at something and not get frustrated with myself or get bored and walk away from it.

Does it affect your intuition? Who knows for sure. However what if it is simply you choosing to believe that it affect it?

 

[TenOfSwords]

Food for thought for anyone using anti-depressants:

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/06/09.php

Don't put too much significance on it, it's not the final verdict on anything, but it's an important piece in the 'what's the reality of this?' puzzle everybody has to solve for themselves when depression becomes a part of their lives.

Not sure of the editors personal standing on the issue, but the results come from JAMA and they're as credible as one can get regarding scientific research.

 

[ilweran]

I don't think there is any one great cure or treatment for any form of mental illness. Medication can have intolerable side-effects and all forms of counselling tend to only help about a third of patients.

I do think diet is extremely important and people are becoming more aware of this and I've read a number of articles and opinions in newsletters produced by service user-led organisations.

There are also self-help groups that help with self-management for people who are bi-polar, theories about how to live with voices instead of medicating them away. It's not a black & white issue- drugs bad, alternative therapies good.

I was lucky, when I started heading downwards into depression again I was able to leave the job that was at that time the main cause rather than take drugs. Lots of people can't just make a change like that, or can't make it soon enough.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories about the pharmaceutical industry. I do believe they want to make money and will look for treatments for reletively minor western ailments rather than more serious illnesses in, say, Africa. But that's not a conspiracy, that's Capitalism. I remember reading an article about West Nile Fever (I think), and somebody saying that they were thanking god for it being found in New York as it meant there would be more research for treatments.

 

[TheOld]

so should we say, don't be responsible for yourself, you are too sick, let the DR have this responsabilities ?

that's just against all we know in shamanism!!!

Antidepressor just don't solve the problem, oh yeah you will be less dangerous for yourself and for other as anybody is when he is stone, these drugs make zombies....

one of the sentence i say often is "look, i'm sure she took prozak this morning"

peoples are lazy, it's so much easier to take the littles pills than it is to confront a bad relations, bad diet and bad spiritual view...

wake up, that's DRUGS and bad one.

Life is verry beautifull when it is balanced and the price to pay is a lot of work, years and years of work to acheive it but when you can smell a flower or see a children and feel the universe you understand how it's worth it; when everyday is like a kingdom when you are in perpetual bliss you really know why you accepted all this suffering and why you have done it even when peoples was telling you to take the littles pills.....

i have done it so everybody can!
Omeada Lusvam

 

[ilweran]

peoples are lazy, it's so much easier to take the littles pills than it is to confront a bad relations, bad diet and bad spiritual view...

Sometimes depression doesn't let you confront these things, and then you may need some extra help- whether thats medication, counselling, self help and support groups etc or a combination doesn't really matter, as long as people ask for help.

I work with mental health service users- and not as part of any conspiracy, quite the opposite in fact, we help service users get involved in how mental health services are developed- and I can say there are concerns about drug treatments.

However from what I've seen I don't think any of them would support the idea of not getting professional medical help or saying that all medication is bad, and they did cover this with a small play for World Mental Health Day in 2006.

 

[Anyankah]

Did you know that all treatments for depression, including therapy, temporarily increase the suicide risk? I'm afraid I forget where I read this so I can't give you a reference, but it was a proper peer reviewed study.

Please don't take this as saying that treatment is a bad idea. Over the longer term it's much better. But it's something to keep in mind when making negative statements about one kind of treatment or another.

 

[rcb30872]

Good for you TheOld, well done. At the same time, I don't agree with you. The most important thing here, is that we are all different, just because something works for one person, there is no way that you can tell, because there are no guarantees that it is going to work with another person. I have come across people say, oh I have done this and this, and it worked wonders, and then another one would say that they tried the same thing, either didn't make a difference or made them worse.

How dare you say that taking medication is for lazy people????? Incidently I agree with ilweran, if it wasn't for the medication that I took there is no way that I would have been able to access those parts of my mind that had caused the depression in the first place. I mean as in the experiences and my reactions to stuff that has happened in the past.

Another thing, when you have depression, your senses are dulled, that even though normally you would enjoy a walk in the field full of flowers, or whatever, when you have depression you don't, you have great difficulty in getting enthusiasm for most things. You do things, because you HAVE to, not because you want to!!!

It is like when people who don't have depression tells someone who does to pull yourself together. For one, they can't, otherwise they wouldn't have depression. For two, that is the biggest insult ever for someone who has depression!!

 

[TheOld]

How dare you say that taking medication is for lazy people?????

i dare because it's true, that's a lazy solution for lazy peoples or they would have make a big review of their life, they would have check at their diet, their relations, their world view, their past trauma, their situation and they would have make the change they need to.

i'm sure not a lot of people on anti-depressor have done that...

i'm sure not a lot have even try natural solution (and not only a little try but really try to find something that would work, trying one things after another like they try a pills after another to adjust)

and that's not true that we are not alike, everybody have the same body on the same planet, different reaction are only due to different past with different life but we are alike, verry much alike (why do you think that everybody would die if they take aresenic !!!!)

that's really funny how people can refuse what is to have reason to do what they do, like the answers i see often on the thread (i wouldn't be able to work whitout theses pills or i would be dead)

wake up, that's programations that have been done on you and you think it's true because it's in your causal body and it will be there until you reprogram it yourself (with some help sometimes hehe)

it's easy to not accept the pain but pain is there for a reason !!

people think that theirs body have a problem but it's not true, body are perfect and the sick part in you is the part who are in better shape.

the society is sick and that's doing sick peoples, i got a lot of compassion, i really understand why it's more easy to choose pills and even why peoples on pills have to say they woulnd't be able to function whitout them but i will not let things like that untouched...

in shamanism we say that liberty can be mesure by the lenght of the rope that somone have and when you take a pills everyday, the rope is verry short....

what peoples where doing just a couple of hundred years ago whitout pills ? they weren't more sad, they where coping with theirs problem with natural solution (in fact it was more easy because society wasn't so sick)

nobody need pills, nobody need anythings else than a good diet with some great water.

that's as easy as that and anythings else is just ego justification because they can't accept the pain.

btw pain and suffering is not the sames, i love my pain, i love to be counscious and i wouldn't trade my pain for anything in the world...

Power
Omeada Lusvam