The information on this website is not a substitute for diagnosis and treatment by a qualified, licensed professional.
ANXIETY AND AFFECTIVE DISORDERS
Anxiety Disorders, Phobias, and Depression
DR. ALAN SPREEN
There are natural substances that anxiety disorders, phobias, and depression respond to that save people from taking medication, and from medication's side effects and extra expense. Some amino acids, when given individually, in some cases can be very effective in calming down anxiety disorders and panic attacks. For example, tryptophane, which is no longer available, was used as a sleeping agent, until there was a problem with it being contaminated, which caused a syndrome that wasn't related to the tryptophane but to the contaminant. Some doctors use tyrosine for depression and anxiety. The "DL" form of phenylalanine is often used on a short-term basis for depression and can be very effective if given correctly. It can lessen anxiety and depression in people by giving them more of an "up" mood. Phenylalanine is also an appetite suppressant for many people. If they're given correctly there seems to be no toxicity associated with amino acids and they're much cheaper than antidepressants or anti-anxiety prescription medications.
DR. WALT STOLL
In my clinical experience, I have found that emotional disorders are often linked to the inability to completely break down proteins, during the digestive process in the gut, into their amino acids. Just three or four amino acids still hooked together (peptides), if they get through the intestinal lining, can stimulate the immune system to make antibodies against them. Since our body is also made up of peptides, hooked together to make proteins, these antibodies can attack us. To an antibody, a peptide is a peptide. It frequently doesn't matter whether the peptide came from outside the body or is a part of the body. Many of the chronic diseases, which presently are so baffling to the allopathic disease philosophy, are now being found to be related to auto-immune processes.
In addition, some of these peptides have been found to be identical to certain brain hormones (endorphins) that are associated with panic attacks, depression, manic depression, schizophrenia, and other conditions. In these cases (with more certainly to be discovered) there is no need for the immune system to be involved; the effect is direct. The two first examples to be discovered were peptides from imperfectly digested casein (milk protein) and gluten (wheat protein). Of course, these are the two most commonly eaten foods in our culture!
All of the mental states listed above are at least partially caused by brain chemistry abnormalities. Generally, I see patients who have already tried many different therapies. These patients come with stacks and stacks of records documenting that nothing seems to have worked in spite of every imaginable test having been done and every imaginable treatment having been tried. Psychoactive drugs have either worked poorly or have even caused the problem to worsen due to the side effects exceeding the benefits.
Since every other conceivable cause has been ruled out by the time I get to see them, I am free to look for the things that have not been evaluated. One of the first things I look for is how well the lining of their intestinal tract protects them from their environment. I frequently find that either they don't have the normal bacterial balance in the colon or that they have gone beyond that stage to having candidiasis. Candida can only escape from our control if the normal bacteria are not in control. If candida has converted from the normal yeast form into the disease-causing fungal form, it further damages the lining so that the leakage of peptides is much greater.
The greater the amount of peptide leakage, the more likely it is that the brain will interpret these protein particles as being identical to the endorphins it produces during panic attacks, depression, etc. This same leakage is responsible for the increasing sensitivities we see in patients who are sensitive to environmental substances other than foods. It is much simpler, in most cases, to correct the leakage than it is to eliminate the substance. But why not do both?
If the reason for the leakage is corrected, the patient is dramatically improved in a very short time. The antibodies involved only last for 72 hours. Once the leakage is stopped completely, symptoms are dramatically improved in just a few days; just reduction of the leakage helps. There are many patients today that have had that kind of experience. Not everyone's mental symptoms are caused by poorly digested food playing tricks on the brain. However, in my experience, it is the most commonly missed diagnosis and one that is relatively easy to resolve.
DR. MICHAEL GALANTE
I treated someone for agoraphobia with panic attacks and multiple allergies. She responded, originally, to complex homeopathy, where I was using more than one remedy. Then, recently, for the panic attacks I gave her one remedy called Arsenic Amalbum. She was traveling, and it was hard for her to even leave her own home, let alone get on the plane. She was also claustrophobic. She returned to Florida and called me and she is doing very well, with just this one remedy.
DR. MICHAEL SCHACTER
If you suffer from an anxiety disorder, you really need to clean up your diet. Getting off sugar and taking calcium and magnesium works. Also, balancing the stresses in your life, through meditation and other anxiety-reducing disciplines, is important.
Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior
DR. JOSE TOBIAS
Obsessive compulsive disorders affect about 6 million Americans. This type of condition is characterized by repetitive thinking and the inability to repel this thinking process, which is very forceful, practically taking over the mind. It doesn't allow you to think about anything else. Compulsions are urges that are extremely demanding and have to be carried out. Some of the main compulsions are double-checking and hand washing. If the compulsion isn't carried out, there is anxiety that will cease or diminish if it is. This sickness has been medically described for at least 200 years.
It takes about seven years or so for a patient to come for consultation, which tells us that the condition is gradual and fits into our system in a very, very slow manner. It occurs with equal frequency in males and females. Fifty percent of obsessive compulsive patients manifest their sickness during childhood or adolescence. Later on--primarily after the age of 40--it fades away, and it becomes very rare after the age of 50.
As to why this condition exists, a learning process that takes place during childhood may be involved. There is a theory that is now slowly being accepted about a biochemical process at work related to changes in neurotransmitters in the brain, primarily serotonin. Neurotransmitters are chemical substances that build bridges between neurons in the nervous cell so that they can transmit signals from the outside into our system or, in the reverse direction, have us act to affect the outside world.
To treat obsessive compulsive disorders, behavioral therapy, and an amino acid approach, such as use of L-tryptophane, would be the treatment of choice, along with some medications.
We basically treat with behavioral therapy. We try to use thought-stopping, to prevent the brain from repeating the same thought. That is difficult, so we also use cognitive therapy to explain the reasons we think the things we do, and try to modify the thought.
Compulsions are the area where behavioral therapy is most effective. We expose the patient, either in reality or in his or her imagination, to face what he is afraid of. If you have fears of AIDS or of blood, you are exposed to blood or taken to the hospital where there might be patients with AIDS. Or you will read articles on the condition if it is just an imaginary technique.
If it is contamination from dirt the patient is afraid of, we teach the person how to touch objects and not to be afraid of them. Then we prevent the patient from washing their hands; in other words, they must remain unclean for awhile. I'm talking about patients who, when they are seriously ill, might use one or two bars of soap per day. They might engage in rituals of washing for many hours. They may wash their hands sometimes a hundred or more times a day. Some of these patients, in addition, will clean their hands with alcohol or other substances. Sometimes their skin becomes extremely raw. I've seen cases where patients require plastic surgery.
Overall, the treatment takes about six months. With medication there is improvement up to 60 or 70 percent of the time.
We were the first to use tryptophane and with it we were able to reduce and almost eliminate completely the use of drugs for this condition, and we obtained very good results. Unfortunately, tryptophane has been banned so we can no longer use it. We were using between 3000 and 9000 mg per day.
Then we used vitamin B6, 100 mg, three times a day. Vitamin B6, pyridoxine phosphate, is a vitamin that is very important for the breakdown of tryptophane into serotonin. The idea behind this was that either we didn't have enough serotonin in our brain or we were very dependent on serotonin, or tryptophane was not being converted into serotonin.
When we found by measuring that there was a lack of serotonin, this could be reversed by the administration of L-tryptophane with niacin and vitamin B6. Some medications do this, but with medications we face many types of side effects.
About 30 percent of patients do not respond to any form of therapy. But it is not a closed chapter. An investigation has to be conducted. Now that we have brain imaging, we are able to visualize the brain. We can measure, for instance, the metabolism of sugar in the brain. We find, for instance, the frontal and temporal lobes and the basal ganglia, that are related to Parkinson's disease, disrupted. We see the metabolism of the breakdown of sugar and also images of an abnormal brain. The same can be seen with some electrophysiological measurements of brain wave tests and so forth.
Interestingly, work has been going on using pure behavioral therapy before and after measuring serotonin. With just behavioral therapy, we were able to modify the levels of serotonin in the body. In other words, we may not need medication to change or challenge the presence of a neurotransmitter such as serotonin. Simply the mere interaction of behavioral technique may have an effect.
DR. ROBERT ATKINS
Both orthodox medicine and complementary medicine, which is the nutrition-based alternative to orthodox medicine, recognize that if a certain neurotransmitter is in short supply, certain syndromes will result. A classic example is that the serotonin-deficient person will often be an obsessive-compulsive. These are the people who can't get out of the house because they've got to make sure the light switches are off or the gas jet isn't on--the people that have to wash their hands 20 times a day, and whose desks have to be perfectly neat. These same people are serotonin-deficient. Now there are drugs that block the degradation of serotonin and allow the serotonin level to lift, but these drugs do a lot of other things: They poison a lot of enzyme systems and that's why so many people got into trouble with Prozac and drugs like that. However, you can increase serotonin with the nutrition precursor, tryptophane, which, unfortunately, the FDA took off the market because of a bad batch.
There was a brilliant paper written by Dr. Jaffe, saying that the best treatment for the bad tryptophane syndrome was the good tryptophane. In fact, people with obsessive-compulsive and anxiety disorders did remarkably well on tryptophane. Since the FDA ban on tryptophane, we have had to do the following: A pharmacy in Colorado will fill a prescription, if we write it, for 5-hydroxy-tryptophane, which is an intermediary between tryptophane and 5-hydroxy-tryptamine, which is serotonin, the neurotransmitter you are trying to build up. The whole idea of building up the neurotransmitter that is in short supply is very good medicine and a major improvement over orthodox medicine.
DR. MICHAEL SCHACTER
A large number of patients suffer from very mild to very severe depression. I had one patient who recently suffered from a bipolar disorder--in which one has manic episodes as well as depressions--and the depression was totally resistant to all of the antidepressant drugs that another psychiatrist had tried on her. I began working with her, using some nutrients and giving her some vitamin C drips. It turned out that she had probably had the bipolar disorder and chronic fatigue syndrome on top of that. And the two conditions together resulted in her not being able to get out of the depression at all, because of the severe, overwhelming chronic fatigue. When we dealt with the chronic-fatigue aspect of it, by giving her some vitamin C drips and some nutrients, including a hormone called DHEA that was low in her system, she improved.
DR. GARY VICKER
I treated a patient who had, for 40 years, exhibited a history that was very clearly that of a manic depressive: He was erratic, impulsive, had marital problems, and was in and out of jobs. His response came when I added lithium to the vitamins, and nothing else. In over 40 years of his marriage, nobody had ever taken a look at the possibility that he had a biochemical abnormality. They just thought he was immature, or impulsive, or perhaps a bit antisocial. I see him once a year, and he takes lithium and vitamins and nothing else. Lithium is a naturally occurring substance that manic-depressives need in higher doses than the rest of us. So here is a case of somebody who wasn't diagnosed at all.
DR. WILLIAM GOLDWAG
Depression is an extremely common problem in America; it affects people of all backgrounds. There are different degrees of depression, and its treatment has varied considerably over periods of time and with the severity of the condition.
Some of us call it depression when somebody has just a little bit of mild sadness. Commonly, when we lose someone close to us, if someone dies, or if we lose a job or have some disappointment, there's apt to be a mild reaction in almost everybody. There will be some sadness, perhaps some grief. Usually there's a set period of time that that lasts. When it goes on much longer, or when it becomes much more profound, then we refer to it as depression.
Causes of Depression
Genetic factors may be involved in depression, factors related to changes in the brain metabolism and the nervous system. It's common for depressed people to have a family history of depression. This may be due to environmental factors, experiences in depressed families, or poor eating habits that are passed on from one generation to another.
Environmental Factors. Environmental factors can include being brought up in a family in which one or more people are depressed. Just being exposed to depressed people can be an influence, since children learn how to behave by imitation. Also, family members are eating the same food, so that, for instance, if the mother is depressed and cooking and serving her family, that food is apt to be sparse in nutrients since she is interested in just getting the meal over with. She has difficulty finding enough energy to prepare it.
Being abused physically or verbally can be another factor that inhibits children. As a way of handling abuse the child may withdraw and become depressed and inactive as a defense against very harsh treatment from the parent.
Genetic Factors. We know about genetic factors through the action of certain drugs. We see what chemical changes take place. Obviously our chemistry is to a great extent determined by our genes. There are genes presently under investigation that are believed to be responsible for manic-depression-type illnesses, in which one fluctuates from hyperactivity to depression or limited activity. Every day another gene is being found that is responsible for some of these illnesses. The gene expresses itself through a change in chemistry.
Treating Depression
In the past, before drug therapy became popular, severe depression was treated with hospitalization and electroshock therapy, sometimes even insulin shock therapy, the idea being that somehow or other when you shock the brain it shakes things up. A lot of the disturbed thought processes seemed to almost get blanked out, and you could sort of start all over again with an individual.
Psychotherapy, of course, has always been popular. That can range from just the presence of a close, supportive friend or relative to more in-depth treatment with a psychiatrist or psychologist.
There are many, many things that individuals can do to help themselves. What we want to ask is, what can we do nutritionally and in other ways? What lifestyle factors are under our own control that we can manipulate in order to alleviate symptoms of depression or prevent them?
Exercise. Exercise is one of the most profound aids in the treatment of depression. One of the major errors in the thinking of patients and therapists is the notion that in order to be active you have to feel better. This is exactly contrary to what we are recommending.
We recommend that you do first, and then the feeling comes later. In other words, you must do what you have to do regardless of how you feel. This aids in feeling better. You can't wait until you feel good and then do something, because in depression that may take days, weeks, months, or even years. You want to accelerate the process.
Those of us who exercise regularly have had days when we just didn't feel like it. That's the way depressed people feel about everything. They just don't feel like it. They don't have the energy, the motivation, the stimulation to go and do even the ordinary things. When it's severe, the person may not even have the will or desire to get out of bed in the morning.
The exercise may consist of very, very simple things, like just getting out and walking, getting up and doing some simple movements, some mild calisthenics, any kind of physical movement that gets the body in action. For some people just getting out of bed and getting dressed is a big accomplishment. That may be the first step.
It is important for depressed people to get up and get dressed. They should not walk around in the pajamas or nightgowns because this maintains that connection to the bed and the bed means inactivity. That's the thing you're trying to overcome. It may be walking, walking the dog perhaps, or going outside to do some simple gardening. These are all very important for overcoming that feeling of lassitude that is so characteristic of depression.
Another benefit of exercise is a feeling of accomplishment. Even doing a little bit of exercise will make you feel more energized later on. Finishing an exercise routine, even one that's fatiguing, after a brief period of rest, will give you a feeling of revitalization, of energy, and a psychological feeling of accomplishment. It gives a feeling of, "I've done it." "It's completed." For the depressed individual, some kind of feeling of worthiness or self-esteem is important.
Helping Others. The next step may involve doing some volunteer work, getting out and doing things for other people. This is very important in trying to get the depressed person's mind off himself or herself. Depressed people are continually negative. They have dark thoughts, guilt, sad feelings, grief, regrets. This is characteristic of depression. You can't talk them out of it or try to convince them otherwise, but you can distract them. Physical activity is one distraction. Doing things for other people is another. So getting the person involved in someone else's problems is a very effective way of dealing with depressed individuals.
Nutrition. Nutrition is important in preventing depression and treating it. Often the nutrition suffers in depressed people. If the depression is profound, the individual doesn't even feel like eating. Depressed people who live alone or who are major providers or cooks in the house may not feel like preparing meals or even shopping. They're apt to restrict their nutrition to fast foods or empty calories or just anything to get eating over with. In many cases, weight loss is a symptom of severe depression.
Of course, when this occurs, there is going to be marked deprivation of essential nutrients, of sufficient amino acids to manufacture the proper proteins, a deficiency in many of the vitamins and minerals. That in itself can then aggravate the depression.
There are some simple ways to prepare food in advance so that the food has to be prepared less often. I recommend preparing a raw salad once a week. Certain fresh vegetables can be stored for quite a period in a refrigerator and will keep quite well. There are a whole variety to choose from: carrots, celery, radishes, cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, red cabbage, green onions, snow peas, string beans. These can all be cut up and mixed together. They can be stored in a plastic bag or sealed container. When mealtime comes, a person can take a handful of these vegetables and then perhaps add some other ones that don't keep as well, such as tomatoes or sprouts. You then have a fresh salad that is already prepared with a lot of important nutrients. This is just one way of having food prepared in advance. It's good for people who are depressed and don't have the energy to make a whole meal.
B Complex Vitamins. One of the major groups of vitamins to incorporate are from the B complex family. Years and years ago, when people suffered from severe vitamin deficiencies, some of the resultant diseases like pellagra and so forth were characterized by psychotic reactions. That is, the thinking process was the most obvious one to be affected. Simply providing the proper vitamin, in this case vitamin B3 or niacin, was the treatment. It cleared up the psychosis.
There's no question that brain function is very dependent upon nutrients like niacin and others, because when they're absent there is apt to be some very disturbed thinking. Depression is one of the symptoms that can occur with this.
It is important to get all the B complex vitamins, since they work together. Thiamine, B1, is important, as is riboflavin to a lesser extent. Another important one is B6, pyridoxine. B12 is still another one that can affect the mental processes.
Niacin is often used in much higher doses than the others in order to accomplish some of these changes. Niacin is a ubiquitous vitamin. It is being used greatly to help reduce cholesterol levels, to improve the good cholesterol and reduce the bad. The dosages are much greater than those used to simply overcome a deficiency.
Tryptophane. One of the chemicals in the brain that seems to be deficient or low in depressed people is serotonin. We know this from experiments in which certain drugs that preserve serotonin from being destroyed by the system seem to work as antidepressants. The theory is that whatever can supply or aid the serotonin factor will help depression.
Tryptophane is an amino acid that helps to increase brain serotonin. Some foods contain tryptophane and can act as antidepressants. It is found most abundantly in milk and turkey. Tryptophane used to be an amino acid that was obtainable until the FDA took it off the market several years ago because there were some serious blood problems in people who took it. This was later tracked down to a contaminant; the problem was not due to the tryptophane itself. Unfortunately the FDA has been rather lax in not allowing it back on the market again. Increasing the intake of milk and turkey are at least two ways of getting tryptophane.
What to Avoid
Eating fast foods can affect mental symptoms by causing blood sugar abnormalities. People who tend to hypoglycemia or low blood sugar patterns should avoid eating too many simple carbohydrates, the ones that are converted very rapidly to sugar in the blood. They may temporarily raise the blood sugar, but then they drop it to a very low level several hours later, resulting in depression. Then people are apt to repeat the cycle of taking sugar or some simple carbohydrate that's converted to sugar in order to feel that high again. They're constantly going from high to low. This can account for many episodes of depression in individuals.
People who overindulge in alcohol are apt to have periods of depression quite often. Some individuals think alcohol stimulates. It does help one lose some inhibitions and feel more at ease and relaxed, but it is a depressant and in higher doses it can obviously knock somebody out. It should be avoided.
People on very strict weight-loss diets may go for long periods of time either fasting or eating very few B-complex-containing foods. They may suffer from depressive symptoms. Again, we're talking about not just a little bit of a let-down feeling, but about more severe depression.
Characteristics of a Severe Depression
There are about eight or nine characteristic signs of depression. Generally these should be present for at least two weeks and represent a change from a previous state: They are reduction in appetite, reduction in sleep ability, fatigue, lack of energy, agitation or retardation in motor activity, loss of interest in usual activities, loss of interest in sex, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, slowed thinking, inability to concentrate to a severe degree, and recurring thoughts of suicide, or suicide attempts.
Everybody from time to time has some of these symptoms. Only when about four or five of these are present for a long period of time, and when they are different than a person's usual personality, is depression something to be considered.
Changes in Recent Years
The first drugs ever used for treating depression were the amphetamines. In their time, before they got such a bad reputation, they were considered helpful. In the old days--20, 30, or 40 years ago--amphetamines were used for weight control. They did diminish the appetite, and they also made a person feel good, alert, and more energetic. People who went on diets and took amphetamines felt great.
Of course, a problem came when you stopped the amphetamines. People would go into a depression. For that reason amphetamines became very habit-forming. In order to feel good a person had to keep on taking them. For many people that was okay. For a fair percentage, though, the dose became inadequate or the person started feeling like they needed more and more of the drug. This created all kinds of problems with the body's chemistry.
There are still some medications on the market that act a little bit like the amphetamines, although they are not anywhere near as powerful. These are mild sympathetic nervous system stimulants that are sold over the counter, such as those people use to keep awake when they have to drive. In some instances I'm sure there are people who take them as a way of counteracting depression.
The next group of drugs to come along were the tricyclic antidepressants. They're called tricyclic because of their chemical structure, which is a triple cycle. There are a whole bunch of them now on the market. The newer group are those that inhibit the enzymes that break down serotonin. They are designed to try to raise the serotonin level in the brain. In that way they counteract depression.
They are all to varying degrees effective, but they all have side effects. Some of the side effects are severe; some are mild. They usually take days or weeks before they are effective, and in this way they are different than the amphetamines used to be, because those would work in a matter of minutes or hours. Of course, in the long run the present-day antidepressants may be more effective.
As far as nutritional protocols, the ones I know of that are of practical use are the ones that use high doses of B complex, specifically niacin. Those have been used for some time now. You have to be a little bit careful of niacin because over long periods of time, in high doses, there can be some effects on the liver.
The doses of niacin that have been used, mostly by Dr. Hoffer, have been in the ranges of 4, 5, or more grams a day. That's thousands of milligrams a day, whereas the requirements for avoiding a deficiency are measured in just 10 or 20 mg.
DR. ROBERT ATKINS
Tryptophane is extremely valuable in cases of agitated depression. Clinically, you can divide depressions into two different categories: the apathetic depression where you just can't get interested in or enjoy anything, and the agitated or anxious depression, where basically you are depressed and nervous. The latter is responsive to increasing serotonin levels and is best treated with tryptophane. Apathetic depression is best treated with tyrosine or what we now call acetyltyrosine, and a product called Noraval.
DR. DORIS RAPP
There is no doubt that certain people become sad when they eat certain foods. One youngster became depressed and nearly suicidal when she was on fluoride tablets. Then she was put on imipramine and she could barely walk. All we did was make an allergy extract of the fluoride and we could change her drawings from happy faces to tear-stained faces and she would start to cry. For two years, the fluoride had been causing her trouble, but none of the doctors would believe that a fluoride tablet could cause this problem. Now fluoride isn't necessarily bad for everybody, but it is certainly not a good preparation for certain individuals.
I see patients who don't have asthma and hay fever during the pollen season, but they become suicidal and depressed every year at the same time when a certain tree pollinates, when the grass pollinates, on moldy days, and when the ragweed pollinates. So if you can see a pattern to your depression, it is worth trying to figure out the reason for that pattern.
DR. MICHAEL SCHACTER
Many people who are depressed are often simply deficient in nutrients or thyroid, and by giving them these nutrients, their depression frequently is alleviated, sometimes in just one or two visits. Often you don't need to go to drugs, although sometimes you will. Often depression is caused by a deficiency in the neurotransmitters for adrenaline and norepinephrine. I will frequently use the amino acid L-tyrosine, or the amino acid DL-phenylalanine. Actually, DL-phenylalanine is natural to the body in making proteins and is a precursor for D-phenylethylamine, which is frequently deficient in people who are suffering from depression. I also recommend the mineral magnesium, and vitamin B1 (thiamine) for depression. But the course of treatment really has to be individualized.
You also want to clean up the diet, to eliminate sugar. Candida is often a very important factor in people who are depressed. Most patients who have candida problems also have depression. People using oral antibiotics, oral contraceptives, and steroids often have problems with imbalances and an overgrowth of candida, or yeast, plus gas, and chronic vaginitis in women, as well as depression. Frequently I will treat it with an anti-candida diet, eliminating sugar and using a variety of anti-candida nutrients and sometimes even some anti-candida medications. This regimen will usually clear up the depression and a whole bunch of other symptoms as well. And if you can help the candida problems with antifungal agents, a person's moods, as well as many other symptoms, may improve.
DR. LENDEN SMITH
I would like to discuss depression in children and adults and the nutritional approach to the problem. Apparently it's getting more frequent as we hear about the rising tide of suicides in adolescents and even in children as young as eight, nine, and ten. It just seems ridiculous that such a thing should overwhelm a child in what is supposed to be the happiest time of life.
I evaluate children and adults who are depressed. For some of them there is no apparent reason for their overwhelming sadness. They've got good relationships with other people. Their social organization is intact. They've had a good upbringing. They have a good self-image. They have good school or work performance and they're getting nice accolades from relatives and friends. Why are they depressed? It just doesn't seem right.
When we do blood tests on these people we find, in general, that there are two things wrong. One is that they're nutrient deficient. In the particular program I'm doing, we go by the deviation from the mean. If, for instance, calcium's range is 8.5 to 10.5, then 9.5 is the mean. If they're down to 9 or 8.6, the doctor will say, everything is okay. Still, if there are enough of those scores below the mean, these people don't have enough wherewithal, enough nutrients to satisfy all their enzyme requirements.
Fifteen years ago, for example, a 20-year-old woman came to see me who was depressed for no apparent reason. She came from a good family, and had a nice boyfriend and a good job. Everything seemed fine but she would still get depressed every once in a while.
At that time I was experimenting with vitamins. I thought it would be quite safe to give her a shot of the mixed B complex vitamins. I included a cc of everything from B1 to folic acid and B12. I would give about 50 mg of each one of these vitamins and 50 mcgm of the B12 intramuscularly every day.
After two or three of these shots this patient told me that it wasn't working very well for her. She asked, "Couldn't you give them as separate vitamins?" I started giving her injections of isolated vitamins. I gave her a shot of 100 mg of B1 on Monday and B2 on Tuesday. I gave her separate shots of B3, B6, B12, and folic acid.
She reported feeling terrible after receiving B1, thiamine. She asked me never to do that again. I thought that seemed odd. After the B2 she came back and said that it was okay but nothing special. She said the same thing after receiving the B3. But after B6 she came back and said, "I think you're on to something." She also really liked the B12 and the folic acid.
These three vitamins were the important ones for her. I mixed them up and gave them to her every week or two. With that combination, she was apparently satisfied.
About five or six years ago, I started a new program where we have people smell vitamins to see what they need. If it's a good smell or no smell, they need it. If it's a bad smell, they don't.
I had her open up thiamine and smell it. She said, "Good lord. Somebody must have done something awful to this." I explained to her that nothing was wrong with the vitamin but that she didn't need it. She had some bacteria in her intestinal tract that make her own thiamine. Her body was therefore rejecting it. B3 had no smell; she needed that. B6 had a good smell; she needed that. B12 and folic acid had no smell so she needed that. Her body told her what she needed, and she could satisfy its requirements. Apparently this method of using the sense of smell and taste is highly accurate in determining people's needs. It should be used rather than just taking multivitamins willy-nilly.
Craving chocolate is also a sign of depression. It usually means that people need magnesium, because there's magnesium in chocolate. Women, the day before their menstrual period, often find themselves searching through the cupboards for chocolate. They find a big canister of Hershey's and drink it down to the syrup before feeling better from the magnesium.
I had the delightful experience of giving an intravenous mixture of vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, and B vitamins. Usually it has more magnesium than calcium. Afterwards if I ask patients whether they would like some chocolate they tell me they don't need it. It really is connected.
Women in the sixth month of pregnancy will often send their husbands out for ice cream because the baby is starting to grow fast. The woman has a conscious need for dairy products because she knows there is some calcium in that but she says, "Don't forget the pickles." She knows, somehow, that she needs to acidify that calcium source or the baby and she will not get much out of it and she will suffer from leg cramps.
The chemist I work with in Spokane discovered something about GGT, a liver and gallbladder enzyme called gamma glutamil transpeptidase. The range that the lab has is anywhere from 0 to 40. They find these values all over the place. The mean would be about 20.
What we've found is that if their level is below 20, they're more likely to have some of these magnesium deficiency symptoms-- short attention span, trouble relaxing or sleeping, little muscle cramps in the feet and legs, and a craving for chocolate. Most of these people don't like to be touched. They may be a little crabby. Those symptoms go with low magnesium.
Magnesium is one of the first minerals to disappear from food when it's been processed. Magnesium is also one of the first minerals to leave the body when there is stress, which accounts for how many women behave a day or so before their periods. They feel stressed because they're losing their magnesium.
We need to supply magnesium to these people. We can determine who needs it by the blood test and by the sense of smell. If people smell a bottle of pure magnesium salt--magnesium chloride is a good one--if it smells good or if there's no smell, then the person needs it. The blood test we usually use is the 24 chem screen, the standard blood test.
Many symptoms of depression, hyperactivity, headaches, loss of weight, and other conditions are related to genetic tendencies. If there is a tendency to be depressed in the family, a magnesium deficiency will allow that tendency to show up. If there's alcoholism, diabetes, obesity in the family, then low magnesium may allow those things to show up in a person. There are reasons to explain all these things and nutrition is basic to this. The patients don't have an antidepressant pill deficiency; they usually have a magnesium deficiency.
The first thing I do is ask people what they're eating. If I find that they're eating a lot of dairy products, and that as a child they had their tonsils taken out, and that they had a lot of strep throat and ear infections, then I know they're allergic to milk and they're looking for calcium. Sure enough, the blood tests will show this. That's the first thing they have to stop. Whatever they love is probably causing the trouble because food sensitivities can cause low blood sugar.
As we know--those of us who have worked with nutrition at all--low blood sugar, not just eating sugar, can do that, but also eating foods to which a person is sensitive, will make the blood sugar fall and that can lead to depression. So lack of magnesium and falling blood sugar, for whatever reason, are the two most significant things responsible for a susceptibility to depression.
DR. ABRAM HOFFER
Here is a classic case: A high school teacher and principal of about 45 developed a severe depression. In fact, I believe he was misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic. He exhibited what we call a straightforward, deep-seated, endogenous depression. He was in a mental hospital for about a year or two, and then discharged. He was so depressed that no one could live with him. His wife divorced him and eventually he was living with his aunt, who looked after him as if he were a child. As a last resort, he was referred to me.
When he came to see me, which was many years ago, I had just started looking into the question of allergies. At that time, I wasn't very familiar with food allergies, but I thought he was a very interesting case and I said to myself, "He is a classic case of a depression, maybe schizophrenic. He'd be the last person in the world who would respond to this anti-allergy approach." At that time I was using--and I still do--a four-day water fast. This is a way of determining whether or not these allergies are present. He agreed that he would do the fast and his aunt said she would help. That meant that he had to drink about eight glasses of water a day and nothing else. When he came back to see me two weeks later, he and his aunt explained that, at the end of the four-day fast, he was normal. All of the depression was gone.
This same man then began to get tested for food allergies and he found that not a single food made him sick. Now, at that time, he began to smoke again. I had told him not to smoke while he was fasting. Within a day after he resumed smoking, he was back in his deep depression. The ironic thing was that he had a brother who was a tobacco company executive, who kept sending him free cartons of cigarettes. Now when we made the connection to his cigarette smoking, he stopped smoking. Thirty days later, after he had been depressed for four years and hadn't been able to work, he was back in school teaching. And I remember this clearly because the insurance company that was then paying his monthly pension was so astounded at this dramatic response that they sent one of their agents to see me, to find out what the magic wand was that I had waved to get this patient off their rolls. This is a classic case of an allergy to tobacco that was causing this man's depression.
Effect of Exercise, Nutrition, and Proper Lifestyle on Depression
DR. WILLIAM GOLDWAG
When we have patients who are depressed and we can get them moving, the depression is greatly alleviated. Of course, drugs have changed the whole treatment of depression greatly, but the impact exercise can have on depression has often been overlooked, and it needs to be re-emphasized. People who are on antidepressants may improve, but the way for them to really get back to functioning well--back in touch with their environment, back to work, back in relationships with their family--is to get them moving. And there's no better way to get people moving than through exercise, which has no limits.
The individual is the important thing to take into account when I recommend exercise. There is no one exercise that is good for everybody. Some people can just do a little bit; some can push themselves much further. Ask anybody who has gone from a relatively sedentary life to an exercise program and they will all report the same thing: more energy, more interest in what is going on, a clearer mind, and less stress. Being active, therefore, is an integral part of any kind of medical program, particularly for people who are having mental disturbances.
I have a lot of patients who have had very stressful medical histories or emotional histories. Nowadays, when more and more people are revealing the difficulties they had as children--the abuse, both sexual and nonsexual--their history of stress based on these early childhood experiences continues to operate. Even though their lives may be relatively serene now, psychically they are still dealing with a lot of these issues.
At the same time, they have to be made to realize that their nutrition plays an integral role in feeling well. They have to supply their bodies with proper nutrients and eliminate the excesses or chronic addictions to alcohol, drugs, or food (including sweets and sugar). Inevitably, I find that if someone gets away from an addiction to sugar, they function much better. The old term hypoglycemia is very appropriate for their condition, particularly for people with chronic depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, and chronic immune system dysfunction. These people find that when they modify their diets and get off sugars, their mental functioning improves considerably.
This is the first step: switching to a healthy diet containing lots of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, and minimizing the amount of meat in the diet. Now some people will feel better once they modify their diet, and they'll be able to move right into more activity. Some people need to start off with some kind of moderate exercise program and almost automatically they will start to look for a more nutritious diet. The two seem to go hand in hand. Nowadays, so many athletes are paying a lot more attention to what they eat, in addition to their workouts. Similarly, many people who are paying attention to their diets now find that exercise almost becomes an inevitable consequence of paying attention to promoting good health.
After paying attention to exercise and nutrition, you need to be aware of the stresses of your own lifestyle: your own patterns of behavior and how they are manifested and how they may be altered by more healthy ways of thinking. For example, if you frequently get upset by dwelling on the past, then you need to try not to think so much about what took place in the past or what is going to happen in the future. Your emotional work is to learn how to focus on the present reality, what's going on now, by putting the body in a mode where it is accepting what's happening now, so you're ready for anything that may happen, instead of reliving crises over and over again.
DR. DORIS RAPP
Mood disorders often lead to battering of family members and intimates. Husbands batter wives, wives batter husbands, they both batter the children, and boyfriends batter their girlfriends. Mother battering, I might add, is very common. Many of the children I treat beat, kick, bruise, bite, and pinch their mothers. When some individuals have typical allergies and environmental illness, if they have a mood problem and they can become nasty and irritable and angry, all I ask is, what did they eat, touch, and smell? It might be a food, or dust, or mold, or chemicals, or pollens, which not only affect the brain, but discrete areas of the brain. So the allergen or food or chemical exposure might make you tired or, if it affects the frontal lobes, it might make you behave in an inappropriate way. It could affect the speech center of the brain so that you speak too rapidly, or unclearly, or you stutter, or don't speak intelligently. It's just potluck as to what area of the body will be affected when you are exposed to something to which you are allergic.