innovative stress reduction

Deepak Chopra, MD wrote a recent article about new research showing our faith in antidepressants is ill founded. He writes about a study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine that states, “More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief. “

These researchers found molecular evidence that counters the prevalent dogma that stress is generally a major cause of depression. Specifically, their research more than questioned two beliefs/lies:

Lie #1: Depression is directly linked to stress.
Stress is not causing depression because the genes related to stress are “totally different from those related to depression.”

Lie #2: Depressed people have chemical imbalances in their brains.

Depression doesn’t come from the imbalance of Neurotransmitters, but from the formation and functioning of neurons. These nerve cells adapt to express depression, meaning a depress person develops more sad and hopeless neural pathways than the happier ones we all would want.

How were sold the lies

In the study published in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers analyzed data from a national survey of antidepressant conducted in 1996 and again in 2005.From – Washington Post article:

Pharmaceutical companies nearly quadrupled their spending on consumer advertising for antidepressants during the period of the study. In 1999, drug-makers spent $32 million on direct-to-consumer advertising; by 2005, this figure had jumped to $122 million. Drug ads lead to increased prescriptions and often overstate the benefits of a drug while downplaying the risks.

Recently we celebrated the 20^th year anniversary of Prozac. For 20 years, we were lead to believe that depression was solely a “chemical imbalance.” It was as if our bodies was a high school chemistry lab experiment – if we add a little more of a certain chemical we would get a different reaction. Now we are finding out that may be the most powerful effect Prozac and other similar anti-depressants had was a placebo effect.

More research and clinical evidence is showing life style changes have a huge effect on preventing and healing depression. Being depress can be a normal part of life. Staying depressed is not normal. We don’t need to treat depression with drugs, we need to address what causes ongoing depression.

Mindfulness stress reduction has proven to be a powerful prevention and healing for depression, as well as nutrition, mild exercise, bodywork, acupuncture and other holistic techniques. It is about time we all start using common sense and start questioning the marketing hype of drug companies. I have seen people completely cure themselves of depression and related symptoms with never taking a drug. Let’s do research on that!

Let us know what you feel. What are your experiences with these drugs?

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