This video is about 3 years old. Unfortunately nothing has changed and things perhaps have gotten worse. Do you know that atypical neuroleptics have killed many many more people than Vioxx ever did? He starts this video talking about Vioxx.
We need to ask why the most vulnerable people in society are so disrespected that they are considered expendable and the common risk of death with their “treatment” is considered worth it.
This in spite of there being truly viable alternatives.
Why does no one want to hear about the alternatives?
I didn’t say herbs were drugs…I said they could be dangerous.
Jurrian,
I do agree that your theories have place in the treatment of mental distress, but I cannot share your view that all mental distress is at root only a physiological/physical problem. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
this simply does not hold up if you look at all the people who recover through numerous ways.
I do, indeed, use your methods for myself, but I do not impose them as the only way to recovery on anyone.
I have a collection of recovery stories on my site. you might want to visit the pages where the stories are collected—(tabs at the top of the page)
there is a spectrum of recovery. some people do only psychological/spiritual work and recover and the spectrum goes all the way to those who only do diet and nutrition and the stuff you are endorsing to recover.
many of us do a collection of all sorts of stuff…
but the bottom line is that the roads to recovery are as many as there are humans…
and for me what is more important than pushing a single dogma is enabling people in distress to make their own decisions about how they choose to heal.
it is not our job to determine what that path is. we can help people by giving them information…otherwise we replicate force and coercion just like the traditional psychiatric system.
I cannot agree that herbs are “medicinal” meaning they are drugs. Herbs are natural products found in nature and most of the time in harmony with our bodies. They are not man-made and cannot be patented like drugs.
The idea that single remedies like drugs or herbs can cure mental illness may derive from the idea that single remedies like drugs or herbs can cure illnesses akin to the medical model. In fact, we have now reached a position in medicine that a disease is not a disease if it cannot be treated by drugs. But for the body to produce say serotonin – our feel good neurotransmitters – it needs a whole orchestra of various nutrients from food to manufacture serotonin from tryptophan. The body requires a whole array of other nutrients such as vitamin B6, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin B12, folic acid and so on and on. Each person will require different nutrients, because of individual biochemistry. Furthermore, for the body to convert one set of molecules into another set of molecules – as in the conversion of tryptophan into serotonin – it needs biological energy, called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Without that energy the body is like a car without petrol. It cannot produce the required hormones, brain chemicals. It happens to be he case that ATP is the end product of sugar so abundant in modern Western diet. But unfortunately, excess refined sugar consumption causes the body be assaulted with free radicals – highly damaging chemical that attack our DNA, and which is responsible for many “degenerative” diseases, prevalent in modern society.
As a defence against excess sugar, the body sets up a defence mechanism called Insulin Resistance. It means that receptor for insulin – produced in the pancreas – blocks the transfer of glucose (and other nutrients) into cells. Hence the mitochondria – the engines of cells – are deprived of fuel for its biochemical machinery. But insulin resistance can also lead to diabetes. With insulin resistance the body and especially the brain is starved of biological energy and serotonin cannot be produced. The person become depressed, without understanding why. Without serotonin, the body cannot produce melatonin, the sleeping hormone. And so we see an association between depression and insomnia.
The brain starved of proper levels of energy will trigger the adrenal gland to pour adrenaline into the system. Adrenaline is the fear hormone that prepares the body for strenuous action in case of danger. Adrenaline functions to convert molecules of glycogen(stored glucose) into glucose, so as to feed the brain with all-important glucose, as its only source of energy.
Thus a brain starved of glucose (due to insulin resistance) will trigger the release of of adrenaline, which is translated into “anxiety attacks” by the person. When the adrenals become exhausted, depression sets in.
Because most doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists are not trained in nutritional biochemistry they are at a loss to understand the causes of mood mood disorders. Psychiatrists (that is representatives of the pharmaceutical companies) will have you believe that they can treat (cure) depression by prescribing SSRIs – AD medications. They usually don’t work, because they are mere palliatives. Psychiatrists will refer you to “psychologists” for talk-therapy. Thus here we have two professions that keep each other in business. If drugs work why use psychotherapy and if psychotherapy works why use drugs?
See:
Hit or Miss Supplements for Depression
http://www.hypoglycemia.asn.au/articles/hit_miss_supplements.html
Gianna,
Well, we’re still on the same page (maybe), maybe not…not sure?
Herbs are medicinal – they can reverse disease process….and in my mind, whether it’s depression, or alzheimers….dying brain is behind symtpoms….
Herbs may still not get to the root of the reason the brain is dying, but I don’t know that many would induce death per say….But, it would depend on the herb, and a person’s reaction to it….Again, listening to the body….
They have in my mind, true side effects for some, versus true falllout from meds – by their very design….
Also, supplement/herb blends often work better than supplement alone…
Duane
“traded their soul for nothing” is too harsh.
This implies a voluntary act on the part of the patient. The voluntary doesn’t exist, people have been forced to lose their souls, if one can perminantly lose the soul.
herbs are powerful Duane and sometimes just as dangerous as a pharmaceutical…
but yeah, otherwise we’re on the same page as usual.
Actually, I stold that joke from a comedian on Comedy Central this past weekend……describing a couple…thought it might work pretty good with a friend.
Problem with jokes online….no facial expressions….some of these comedians could make me laugh with the television on mute.
Duane
Gianna,
I read recently about a Chinese herb that will shut down psychosis….Taken for a brief period…..
So, even the idea that the drugs can be helpful for very, very short periods is in question in my mind….Could these brief periods be dealt with with an herb? Wouldn’t surprise me….
All these drugs are in many cases are (almost) duplicates of nature….A doc on SH said he knew someone with a major pharma company who had proof that valium was a slight variation of niacin with a patent….They alter nature slighty, and along come the ‘side effects’…..
When do we stop using that word, huh? I thought injury and death were injury and death, and not ‘side effects’….I’m convinced there is a natural cure for anything pharma could ever put out….No patent, no money though….
The thing is that all of it can be treated alternatively….and I think you and I agree that nutrition may be the problem for some, but for others….trauma….Trauma could be handled with a little more understanding than locking someone up and strapping them down…How ingenious is that…..
And, how ingenious are the drugs? Psychiatry keeps doing the same thing, and expecting different results….the classic definition of insanity…..
I know you’ve heard this all before from me, so go ahead and say it: “Duane, you keep using the same words – over, and over, and over again”.
Talk to you later,
Duane
I am mentally ill. I have a biological brain disease. I need to take meds for the rest of my life
Oh, Marian,
It’s a rhetorical question, unfortunately I know the answer and I address it here often…
but I ask the question again and again, hoping that some of those drones repeating the mantra might be shaken out of their stupor…
because those “drones” which sounds so disrespectful is who I was at one time and it is because I love them as my brothers and sisters that I wish to spare them what has happened to me.
Geez, one and a half hour. It’ll have to wait till later today.
“Why does no one want to hear about the alternatives?”
Well, as mentioned before, because the alternatives aren’t as lucrative as pills, and because the alternatives tend to increase people’s consciousness, thus helping them to transform into independent and independently thinking human beings, instead of making them dumb, stupid and helpless, and thus easy to manage. Money and social control.
And then you have consumers (and I mean consumers here, not survivors) – those, who walk around, incessantly repeating “I am mentally ill. I have a biological brain disease. I need to take meds for the rest of my life” like a mantra – who have fought an often long and bitter fight against themselves, because they couldn’t fight and win over the system, and they couldn’t just stop fighting, neither. Renegades, who gave in to the system’s superiority, and turned against their true self. To these people acknowledging alternatives equals to admitting that they traded their soul for nothing.