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Getting the blues every now and again is quite normal, particularly if there is an obvious reason for feeling down. But if sadness starts to take over for no apparent reason, and is interfering with your life or someone you know, something needs to be done. And much can be done to resolve mild depression.   Increasing omega 3s (fish oil) consumption while reducing consumption of vegetable oils (omega 6), sugar and flour products and can help, as can exercising regularly, and getting to bed and turning out the lights by 10h00 or 10h30pm. These interventions aid in rebalancing hormone and neurotransmitter levels over time.  Making the effort to go out and do something fun with others can help a lot.  Even putting a silly smile on one’s face and assuming the posture of someone that is on top of the world can actually change one’s mood, as emotions and our physical body are intimately related. 

For those of us that have never experienced the horror of severe depression, I don’t think we can even come close to imagining how bad it is.  Here is a description of what living with depression is like from someone who has been there.  When one is suffering from moderate to severe depression, it is very difficult to find the motivation to do what is necessary help oneself.  If I felt that bad, I would probably try anything to feel better. The current belief is that imbalances in the neurotransmitters serotonin and/or epinephrine play a role in depression, and many of the current drugs given for depression work by keeping serotonin around in the brain a little bit longer.  The problem is that frequently over time, the dosage of SSRIs (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) needs to be raised in order to get the same effect.  The rather severe side effect of suicide is well known with many of these drugs, as well.

If you are wanting to avoid or to gradually come off of antidepressants, an option may be to look into the services of Neurogistics, who examine  excretion levels of the various neurotransmitters and then provide amino acids  targeting specific neurotransmitters in order to rebalance them.  I cannot speak to the validity of their methods – anecdotal evidence suggests it may work.   Because neurotransmitters play such a fundamental communication role in our bodies, neurotransmitter imbalances are involved in a large number of health complaints in addition to depression, including anxiety, stress, insomnia,  lethargy, lack of motivation, lack of focus, poor memory, PMS, addictive disorders, and carbohydrate cravings.  I am in the process of trying out Neurogistics, and am looking forward to a great night’s sleep.

In the last couple of years, Dr. Helen Mayberg of the University of Toronto has done some very interesting research on depression, where she used PET scans to examine the difference in the brains of clinically depressed and normals.  What she found was that although the frontal and paralimbic sections were less active, an area just over the roof of the mouth, which was named Area 25, was overactive.  When healthy people asked to think sad thoughts were scanned, they too had depressed frontal lobe activity and hyperactivity in Area 25.  And those that had managed to cure their depression had less activity in Area 25.  Dr. Mayberg concluded that hyperactivity in Area 25 feeds depression, and lowering activity in this area resolves it.   When electrodes are inserted into Area 25 with leads attached to a pace maker emitting a continuous four-volt current, two-thirds of clinically depressed patients felt much better within months, and others felt profound relief as soon as the current was turned on.  This shows that one can almost consider Area 25 a "depression mood switch". 
Hopefully this will eventually lead to better treatments that don’t involve cutting holes through the skull for deep brain stimulation.

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Here is a topic I am intimately familiar with. I don’t think I realized that it was abnormal to feel so tired all the time until I started to feel better. I just figured that fatigue came with the insane pace of life.

I haven’t completely licked this problem, but I figure I’m 90% there, and I feel SO much better than I did. I used to DRAG myself out of bed in the morning (okay, I still do …), and I would wake up sometime between 10am and noon, no matter how early I physically got out of bed.

I would rely on a black tea to get me going in the morning and I would feel okay until about 3 or 4 pm, when suddenly fatigue would hit me like a ton of bricks. Unfortunately, my evening appointments would be starting around then, so I would get another tea and a sweet, and plow through my evening as best I could, trying to keep my eyes open.

I remember dragging myself down the hall to my condo after work. The thought of having to prepare ANY meal was overwhelming, let alone something that was somewhat healthy. But miraculously, after dinner I would feel like a million bucks. The best I’d felt all day. That was my power time, when I could focus well and get stuff done.

So, I took advantage and stayed up late, getting to bed at midnight at the very earliest. And so the cycle would start again the next day.  Sound familiar? And my symptoms were mild. Many are constantly sick and suffer from mild depression in addition to the overwhelming fatigue.

Our adrenals are tiny organs that sit on top of our kidneys that secrete steroid hormones including cortisol, the "stress hormone" that helps us cope with day-to-day stress. The adrenal hormones effect every system in the body, including how we metabolize our food, where we deposit our fat (that poochie belly we can’t get rid of no matter how much exercise we do), blood sugar regulation, sex hormone regulation, brain function, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and immune function.

When we don’t get an adequate break from all the stressors in our life, like poor quality diet, poor sleep patterns, too much work stress, mental and emotional stress, a lack of or too much exercise, being sick, catastrophic events etc., our adrenals become “fatigued”, and over time, have difficulty secreting adequate cortisol.

Addisons Disease is extreme adrenal exhaustion, but most people will be feeling pretty bad long before they are close to having Addisons. According to Dr. James L. Wilson, an Adrenal Fatigue specialist, the “normal” range used in blood cortisol testing is too broad, so many physicians miss the problem. Therefore symptoms like the ones I described above need to be considered. If you constantly feel dizzy upon rising, this is a sign that your adrenals are not functioning well.

According to Dr. Wilson, you can test yourself by shining a flashlight from the side of your head across your eyes. Your pupil should constrict and remain constricted (get smaller). If you have poor adrenal function, your eyes will not be able to maintain the contraction, and they will begin to dilate again within 2 minutes, and may remain dilated for 30 to 45 seconds before constricting again.

If fatigue is your constant companion, the first thing I would do is make sure you are eating unprocessed, high quality food in the right proportion of carbs, proteins and fats based on your metabolic type. That alone can be quite powerful in reducing symptoms of fatigue, along with a whole host of other issues.

If your cells are getting the nutrients in the ratio they require, your cells are healing from the inside out. Using a Metabolic Typing Advisor to help you learn about and implement your personalized eating plan is highly recommended. Because sugar, processed flour (another word for sugar) and caffeine are stimulants, they are about the worst things you can do to compromised adrenals.

Examine your life for energy thieves, and eliminate them. Stop doing things that don’t inspire you, and stay away from people that drain you. Force yourself to go to bed by 10pm, and if possible, sleep in a bit in the morning. Enjoy naps or lie down for at least 15 minutes in the day and imagine vividly that you are in your favourite place in the world. Enjoy some mild exercise daily, like yoga, qi gong or tai chi. Go for a walk in the woods.

If you think you might be suffering from adrenal fatigue, seek out the help of a medical professional or naturopath who can test your cortisol and DHEA rhythms through saliva testing.  If you can’t find anyone local, Biohealth Diagnostics can do this kind of testing for you, and assign a doctor to you. 

The test results would determine whether or not hormones like pregnenalone or adrenal cortical extracts may be helpful, and the doctor can guide you with regard to dosage and timing. It takes time for the adrenals to recover, so be as disciplined as you can with your food and sleep etc., and be patient with yourself.

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Conventional or factory-farmed meat and poultry are fed conventional food, usually grain (such as GMO corn), as starchy carbohydrates are just as effective at fattening animals up as they are humans.

The pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers in the grain are then stored as toxins in the fat of the animals.

Because conventionally raised animals and poultry are often kept in very confined quarters day and night, and are not given space to roam, they do not get the exercise needed to keep them healthy.

Between the poor quality food, the lack of exercise and the close quarters between animals, sickness is very common and spreads like wildfire through the barns.

Consequently, antibiotics and other drugs are used on an ongoing basis in an attempt to keep the animals healthy.

Antibiotic-use in factory-farmed animals is the largest reason we have such a serious problem with antibiotic resistance in our hospitals.

In the United States, recombinant bovine somatrotropin (rbst) under the drug name “Prosilac” is used in dairy cattle in order to increase milk production. This drug often results in very large, infected udders and consequently pus gets into the milk. Prosilac is banned in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the EU and in Japan.

In meat cattle, five growth promoting hormones are used in Canada and the US, three of which occur naturally (estradiol, testosterone and progesterone) and two of which are synthetic (zeranol and trenbolone acetate).

These hormones were banned in the Europe in 1989. For a fun look at the world of factory farming, see the short videos, The Meatrix, and The Meatrix Revolting.

Certified organic meat, poultry, dairy and eggs have been fed certified organic food, and are not medicated. This immediately eliminates the risk of consuming the consolidated toxins found in the fat of the animals, and ingesting the residues of the antibiotics and steroid hormones that become a part of conventional meats, poultry, dairy and eggs.

But “certified organic” does not mean that the animals were allowed to exercise, nor does it tell you what the animals were fed.

Ask any five-year old what a cow is supposed to eat, and they will reply “grass”, not grain. Ruminants get digestive distress on grain as their digestive systems are not meant to handle it, and they don’t get the nutrition they need from grain.

Feeding cows grain and expecting them to remain healthy is like expecting humans to stay healthy on a diet of exclusively candy. And if we eat sick animals, we cannot expect to stay healthy either, just as one would not expect a house made of rotten wood to be strong. Our food provides the raw material for our cells, and we can only be as healthy as the raw materials we choose to eat.

I have encountered the odd person in my practice that is sensitive to grain to the point that they react to grain-fed meat as if they were eating the grain itself. The gut is so unhappy that the stabilizer muscles of the spine shut down resulting in a distended belly and low-back/pelvic pain. (A severe food sensitivity or allergy can be the root cause of low back or pelvic pain via a viscerosomatic reflex. In these cases stabilization exercises don’t work well until the offending foods are removed from the diet.)

So, look for “free-range”, “grass-fed”, or “pastured” poultry, eggs, meat or dairy. Pastured poultry and ruminants are healthier, happier, and have far more omega 3 and less omega 6 in their meat, dairy and eggs, which improves our omega 3/6 balance as well.

Furthermore, by choosing pastured meat, dairy, poultry and eggs we are supporting happy, healthy animals and sustainable agriculture instead of the inhumane, environmentally-damaging, harmful bacteria and antibiotic-resistance incubators that factory farms are.

Pastured meat, poultry, eggs and dairy may cost more, but we have a choice to pay now for good quality food, or pay later for medications. Personally, I’d rather pay for the food! And you know what? Free-range food taste better too!

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