Brains misbehaving...or are they?

Big Pharma would certainly have us believe that many human emotions, depression the most notable amongst them, are completely amenable to pharmaceutical manipulation. End result - potential for a lifetime of drugs that do more harm than good!

I’m now quoting verbatim from Dr. Kelly Brogan - board certified in the US in Psychiatry/Psychosomatic Medicine/Reproductive Psychiatry and Integrative Holistic Medicine. I recommend Dr. Brogan’s article in full.

“What are these medications actually doing?!  The truth is, we have very little idea. We like to cling to simple explanations, but even the name of the various antidepressants, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and norepinephrine re-uptake inhibitors is misleading. They are far from selective.  An important analysis by the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) claimed that antidepressants "create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions" causing the body to compensate through a series of compensatory adaptations which occur after "chronic administration" leading to brains that function, after a few weeks, in a way that is "qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state."

So forget anti-depressant medication, instead try the following

• restful sleep: get rid of EMR from your bedroom
• exposure to sunshine:10-15 minutes daily between 10am-2pm (expose 40 percent of your skin area) 
• whole foods: healthy food grown on healthy soil, fresh and in season
• avoid: stimulants, alcohol, refined foods, sugar-laden foods, chemical-laden foods
• hydrate: plenty of high quality purified water (2 litres daily)
• exercise: muscle building and aerobic (at least 40 minutes daily)
• meditate: studies show it is every bit as good as those dubious drugs!

The above initiatives, undertaken together, seriously and regularly will lift your spirits, but in the event that "the blues" linger or the "black dog" still bites, look to Thomas Moore “Care of the Soul”. Then ask yourself if maybe, just maybe, a period of less than joyful enthusiasm for life might actually be part of the mysterious, remarkable journey that for all of us will have its ups and downs, its highs and lows and was most certainly never designed to be a never-ending pleasure cruise.