How many causes of depression are there?

As a psychologist, I was regularly sent patients by physicians/psychiatrists who had prescribed anti-depressants - yet the issue was not psychological!!! I was forever sending people to other practitioners to identify the underlying issue. Eventually I went and studied phyiscal medicine myself.

When I studied Natural Medicines (nutrition, herbal/botanical, naturopathic, Ayurvedic, TCM, etc) I recognized that there are many conditions that provide similar profiles to depression: hypothyroid; liver issues; leaky gut syndrome; magnesium deficiency; glutathione deficiency; omega 3 deficiency, etc.

Yes, there are many causes for depression. Yet the common solutions, without effective assessment procedures, are anti-depressants. Dr. Mercola explores the issue of drugs, depression, effectiveness and money with medical journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Whitaker (for further information see: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/10/06/the-real-c...).

Malcolm Peet, a recognized British psychiatric researcher, conducted a provocative cross-cultural analysis of the relationship between diet and mental illness. His primary finding was a strong link between high sugar consumption and the risk of both depression and schizophrenia. Refined sugar is toxic to the brain and supresses a neural growth hormone called BDNF which is critically low in both depression and schizophrenia.

Additionally studies have shown that depression, bipolar and schizophrenia all have significantly low levels of glutathione in the brain and significantly high levels of oxidative stress.

Anti-depressants resolve none of these issues. If you want to get at the underlying issues causing depression http://www.choicesunlimited.ca

Additional sources:

•  www.breggin.com
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• http://www.ultrawellness.com/blog.
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• Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 2010 Jul 16;:1-8 20633320: Decreased levels of glutathione, the major brain antioxidant, in post-mortem prefrontal cortex from patients with psychiatric disorders. Jeremy W Gawryluk, Jun-Feng Wang, Ana C Andreazza, Li Shao, L Trevor Young. Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• For more information, contact: Dr Holly at holly [at] choicesunlimited [dot] ca (holly [at] choicesunlimited [dot] ca)

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