The Natural Way to Heal Anxiety and Depression
David Fox
Mental Health Resource
Cape Town, South Africa
❝Overview of a range of natural approaches to elevating serotonin levels to alleviate anxiety and depression.❞
When I first wrote “Change your Life! Hope and Healing for Anxiety and Depression” and before I published my article about my story and my struggles with anti-depressant medications, I knew very little about some of the more natural ways of improving mental well-being. What I am referring to is not the natural tools of counselling, exercise, meditation and getting good sleep at night. I am referring to a whole world of possibilities that have opened up to me through suggestions from readers or my own ceaseless research and experimentation since that article went online in October 2013.
As of this writing, that article has now had over 100K views (although after a refresh of the Mad in America site it shows only those views since 2016) and due to this and providing my contact details to readers, I have received hundreds of emails from people from all over the world for the past four years asking for guidance for either themselves or for a loved one whether it is a parent, child, sibling or friend. These people are often at a loss, confused, afraid and wondering where to turn for help. A consistent theme that comes up is their frustration with the medical professional who is either treating them or their loved one as when the issue of the drug being the problem or a tapering off is suggested, these medical professionals respond with anything from indifference to outright hostility towards their patients or suggest that they need to try another medication or take an additional one to stop the side effects of the first one! This is not a couple of people folks, this is a percentage of the world’s population who are being put onto anti-depressant medications for very different reasons without any thought as to whether medications are the right path to take or what the potential impact could be if the patient did have to take them. The World Health Organisation predicts that by the year 2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disability throughout the world, and its researchers estimate that 178 million people were suffering from depression in 2011.1
It is disturbing to note that in his book “Your Drug May be Your Problem”, Dr Peter Breggin mentions that it was way back in March of 2004 that the FDA finally decided to acknowledge after years and years of professionals such as himself, Dr David Healy, Dr Joseph Glenmullen had been warning about the dangers of the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) that anti-depressants have some major concerning side effects. They finally had to agree that anti-depressants were now “known” to not only cause agitation, anger and suicidality in teenagers but that in adult populations they were also now linked to: “anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia (my words: a big one I see with my clients and have experienced myself with SNRI’s when once being mistakenly placed onto a tricyclic anti-depressant by a senior chief psychiatrist who swore that he would give this to his own brother based on his 20-minute discussion with me), irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania and mania”.2 Stunningly, the very things that the anti-depressants are often prescribed to help with!
I am certainly not saying that what I will discuss here is definitive in any way. Healing comes in many forms and there are a whole raft of healing methodologies that I am aware of but have not tried or researched in any detail including naturopathy, reiki, sound healing, Chinese medicine etc. What I am primarily focusing on here is what is believed to be the key issue when it comes to anxiety and depression and that is lowered levels of serotonin and the brain and body’s ability to communicate effectively using the neurotransmitters we need to help us cope and feel good in life. These lowered levels may come about for a variety of reasons as will be discussed and what I propose is a dietary approach and vitamin and supplement approach that is targeted at both increasing the actual levels of serotonin in the body and brain as well as increasing and facilitating the brains capacity to communicate effectively within itself.
Part of the reason that I have kept researching and learning more and more about psychiatry, anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications is my strong desire to get off anti-depressants completely but really a much larger reason is my drive to raise awareness not only within the general public but within our government health agencies and within the medical professions themselves – especially doctors and psychiatrists.
The natural health professions already know a lot (but certainly not all) of what I now know but I am consistently and very alarmingly shown how very little the medical profession really knows about the balance of pros versus cons of taking anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications. In addition, they know little or nothing about some of the things I am going to talk about in this chapter with regards to exactly what produces serotonin and dopamine in our bodies and brains, how our bodies convert certain foods and amino acids into other forms which then become our happy and joyful neurotransmitters – dopamine, serotonin and noradrenalin (noradrenalin has more of an energising/activating effect on us and is supposed to help remove the lethargy that comes with deep depression).
There are always consequences when it comes to taking psychiatric medications and I am referring to starting them, staying on them or trying to come off them when people feel they are ready. As an example, just one of so many, I had a client who recently came to see me after having had a breakdown due to his marriage being on the rocks and his wife being a functional but getting worse alcoholic. He had never been on anti-depressants in his life before and was now in his mid-forties. When I asked him how his sleep was he said it was very bad. I asked which drug he was on and he told me he was put on 75mg of Effexor XR (slow-release). Having had my own exposure to this wonderful drug (note the sarcasm), I asked him at what time of the day he took the drug. He said he had originally been taking it in the morning but had felt queasy and so had tried taking it at night. I went on to explain to him that Effexor is an SNRI (serotonin and NORADRENALIN reuptake inhibitor) meaning that it will artificially increase both of these vital neurotransmitters in your brain. I said you are basically doing the equivalent of lying down to go to sleep and then giving yourself a shot of adrenalin! The look of surprise on his face showed me that his doctor had not even explained to him exactly what it was he was taking or how it would help – or not help in his case. Effexor is also known to be one of the most difficult drugs to come off because it only comes in capsule format and dosages of 37.5mg, 75mg and 150mg. These are incredibly hard if not impossible to break down into lower doses as you can with the tablet and water-soluble medications. I have had one client who successfully weaned off Effexor over two whole years by opening and counting the beads in each capsule and removing a couple each time! And she still endured some heavy withdrawal reactions.
I explained some of this to my client and mentioned that getting no sleep was only compounding his difficulty in staying calm and focused and that although people generally do have sleep disturbances during anxiety and/or depression, he was doing himself a huge disservice by taking it at night. I saw him two weeks later and he informed me that his sleep had improved. He could now get 4-5 hours of sleep without waking. And that was an improvement! I know how it goes because I have been there, except when I was taking Effexor XR, which served a purpose for me but only for a very limited period, I had huge issues with not being able to fall asleep or falling asleep and waking two or three hours later and being “wired” and unable to fall asleep again. I transitioned myself away from Effexor and have never looked back.
In this article, I will discuss exactly how anti-depressant medications work (supposedly) because even what we think we know as facts about the chemistry of the brain is being turned on its head more and more as time goes by. We used to think that it was a FACT that neurotransmitters are created and remain within our brains. We now know, that a large proportion of these neurotransmitters are created and can be found in the stomach and this has implications for a range of things to do with what we eat and drink as well as other medications we take such as anti-biotics. So, let us begin there shall we?
Antibiotics
It came as quite a surprise to me only recently whilst reading Dr.David Perlmutter’s brilliant books “Grain Brain” and “Brain Maker” to learn that anyone who has had to take antibiotics for a period of time may have lowered levels of serotonin due to the fact that antibiotics, as we all know, destroy good and bad bacteria in the gut, however, as it turns out, anti-biotics are also destroying and preventing the creation of serotonin in our stomachs as well.
As I was pondering this it suddenly occurred to me that when I turned 15 years old I got a really bad attack of acne. I tried all the soaps and just about anything I could to stop them but it just went from bad to worse. It didn’t help that I had recently got braces and glasses as well and so my poor self-esteem suffered something horrible during my teen years. But, more than that, I remembered that rather than being put onto Roaccutane the skin specialist recommended another acne medication called Minocycline. As an aside, the brand name Accutane (Roaccutane) was discontinued by its manufacturer in 2009 – Roche. A 2001 article in the New England Journal of Medicine linked Accutane to depression. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study examined 110 people who took Accutane and were hospitalized for depression or attempted
suicide
. Their ages ranged from 12 to 47. By the time Roche stopped making the drug, people who experienced Accutane’s side effects – as well as their families – had filed nearly 1,000 lawsuits against the company
I took Minomycin (Minocycline) as a teenager religiously for approximately four years. And so, I decided to look it up online and was surprised to learn that it is a broad-spectrum antibiotic! Every day, for four years…as a teenager. If what Dr Perlmutter says is true, and I have no reason to doubt his credentials or over thirty years of research into the food brain connection – then my brain was being starved of essential neurotransmitters during a crucial time in my adult development. Now, I am not saying that it was exclusively the reason that I struggled with anxiety in my young adult life (although on thinking about it I do not remember being an anxious child or anxious prepubescent). In fact, I was quite a naughty risk taker and would often land myself in hot water at home for jumping off roofs, throwing fruits over the fences at friend’s neighbour’s windows or smoking behind an old oak tree at the age of 10 or so.
I digress, however, it is part of the story of me never really having any major anxiety issues as a child. I was as scared as your average kid of clowns or what have you and when I reflected on taking antibiotics for all those years and then seeing in black and white that they can either destroy or prevent serotonin from being produced in the stomach, it really gave me pause to rethink just exactly where my anxiety in my late teens and early twenties came from. Nature or nurture or something worse – medical science in the form of drugs supposed to help us but unwittingly doing more damage than they are worth. This is just the tip of the iceberg. It really makes me wonder how many teenagers are suffering needlessly from anxiety and/or depression due to this issue. Going through puberty is hard enough without antibiotics screwing up your neurobiology!
The end result is just to be aware that if you are taking antibiotics, you MAY have a problem with lowered levels of serotonin and dopamine and as such, it is just good practice to take a high potency probiotic. One strain in particular that Dr Perlmutter recommends is that you ensure that the bacteria Bifidobacterium infantis is present in your probiotic.
Foods that can help and foods that can harm.
Important: TherapyRoute does not provide medical advice. All content is for informational purposes and cannot replace consulting a healthcare professional. If you face an emergency, please contact a local emergency service. For immediate emotional support, consider contacting a local helpline.
Creating Space for Growth: How Boundaries Strengthen Relationships
Setting boundaries in relationships is one of the most important yet often overlooked aspects of maintaining healthy connections with others. Boundaries are personal limi...
International Mutual Recognition Agreements for Mental Health Professionals
Table of Contents | Jump Ahead Executive Summary Part I: Bilateral Agreements Part II: Multilateral Frameworks Part III: Profession-Specific Frameworks Part IV: Assessmen...
Jumping to Conclusions
Table of Contents Definition Key Characteristics Theoretical Background Clinical Applications Treatment Approaches Research and Evidence Examples and Applications Conclus...
About The Author
TherapyRoute
Mental Health Resource
Cape Town, South Africa
“Our mission is to help people access mental healthcare when they need it most.”
TherapyRoute is a mental health resource platform connecting individuals with qualified therapists. Our team curates valuable mental health information and provides resources to help you find the right professional support for your needs.
