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Dreamwalker.

The science behind many antidepressants appears to be backwards, researchers say

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Saffron is incredible
Anti cancer, anti alzheimers etc. Shown in journals with all that good sweet sciency proof

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Gotta admit a cup of saffron (and maybe turmeric?) tea sounds a whole lot better than the old happy pills.

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Would be a pricey cup of tea unless you grew your own plants
Luckily growing saffron and tumeric and even tea itself is not too hard to do :P

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Would be a pricey cup of tea unless you grew your own plants

Luckily growing saffron and tumeric and even tea itself is not too hard to do :P

Not really compared to meds. Saffron at 15 mg a dose, say 66 doses a gram. 2 doses a day. So make that roughly 1 g a month @ $5/g.

Maybe double that price to include turmeric. So $10 a month.

In Australia you'd be paying around $30 a month for SSRI's at a standard pharmacy, around $8 at a chemist warehouse type pharmacy, $6.10 on a health care card/concession.

So at best you could save $20/month, and at worst pay a couple dollars a month more for a safer natural product.

Does that maths sound about right????

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Not surprising.

The process over here is quite standardized: doctors cycle patients through different antidepressants until they coincidentally start feeling better, the doctor takes the credit and insists the patient stay on the drug, the patient gets heavily addicted, the patient gets the stress of being chained to the drug for years or decades until they die or have the strength to spend months in drug withdrawals.

I've seen it in many people, even young children (its not rare for 5-8 year olds to be on antidepressants here and some infants are put on them)

Edited by Auxin
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Can someone please help me get my head around this?

"It's time we rethink what we are doing," Andrews says. "We are taking people who are suffering from the most common forms of depression, and instead of helping them, it appears we are putting an obstacle in their path to recovery."

When depressed patients on SSRI medication do show improvement, it appears that their brains are actually overcoming the effects of antidepressant medications, rather than being assisted directly by them. Instead of helping, the medications appear to be interfering with the brain's own mechanisms of recovery.

"We've seen that people report feeling worse, not better, for their first two weeks on antidepressants," Andrews says. "This could explain why."

Andrews, an evolutionary psychologist, has argued in previous research that antidepressants leave patients in worse shape after they stop using them, and that most forms of depression, though painful, are natural and beneficial adaptations to stress.

So.. does this necessarily mean that SSRIs are counterproductive, or could providing this "obstacle" actually work as a trigger to help their brain's "mechanism of recovery"? Because my understanding of current theories of chronic depression included the idea that yes, acute depression is a natural response to stress, but sometimes the brain gets stuck in that mode, that its "recovery mechanism" just doesn't work for whatever reason. I'm just wondering if (assuming the rest of his theory is right) short-term AD use for chronic depression could still be a good thing, providing that trigger, but not continuing for long enough to become dependant and suffer withdrawals when they stop.

It would be interesting to see if anyone had done studies using some kind of "challenge" regime of SSRIs, where they were only prescribed for <2wk periods with long breaks in between... Would the patients be doing better or worse than those who had daily doses?

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Can someone please help me get my head around this?

So.. does this necessarily mean that SSRIs are counterproductive, or could providing this "obstacle" actually work as a trigger to help their brain's "mechanism of recovery"? Because my understanding of current theories of chronic depression included the idea that yes, acute depression is a natural response to stress, but sometimes the brain gets stuck in that mode, that its "recovery mechanism" just doesn't work for whatever reason. I'm just wondering if (assuming the rest of his theory is right) short-term AD use for chronic depression could still be a good thing, providing that trigger, but not continuing for long enough to become dependant and suffer withdrawals when they stop.

It would be interesting to see if anyone had done studies using some kind of "challenge" regime of SSRIs, where they were only prescribed for <2wk periods with long breaks in between... Would the patients be doing better or worse than those who had daily doses?

I'm not sure if I can really help, I tend to be a real sceptic where big money is concerned, Big pham is like oil corp & all the others - all about profit, A CEO would soon be ejected or a corp. soon disposed if profit wasn't 1st & foremost. Hence billions spent by these interest lobbying Govt, (mostly usa, as they dictate to the rest of us) = a messed up world. Its kinda sad when peeps buy into status quo, there is always so much manipulation going on to serve some agenda, that's generally not in your interest. Quick fix pills for example.

Personally I agree with you re stress. So maybe its the stress that should be addressed, if possible remove stress from the life of the depressed person. Stress can be all kinds of things...self stress from self disappointment, Stress from over commitment, like family & work obligations. Stress from a weaken physical body due to health or natural ageing.

The problem is we can have a hard time escaping from stress. Like from work, we are obliged to work 40+ hours per week, but maybe we can only handle 14 hr's, not much opportunity there, who's paying all the debts etc?So the pop is drugged up with anti-depressants...that generally will get you back to work for better or worse.

So sometimes perhaps more often than not there is no real cure for depression, because your life's environment entraps you in a stress cycle. Therefore accept your disability & manage the stress, not always easy.

I feel there are those who get depressed & then there are those in denial. I think the best treatment may be to stop what ever your doing...take some time out & self indulge. Of course if its because your lover just left you, thats another story.

Edited by Dreamwalker.

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I think the problem is that sometimes it just doesn't help - you can remove the original stressor and the person will still be depressed - it's like once their brain switches into depressive thinking, it doesn't really matter what's going on outside it, they're depressed, and that'll be how they react to everything. If this theory is right, then this could be because underlying inflammation in their body is keeping them in "sickness behaviour". So this is like when you have the flu, you stop wanting to eat, sleep, interact with other people... you just don't have the energy, you lose interest, right? The idea is that in some people, this behaviour gets triggered by minor illness, or maybe no real illness at all, but some autoimmune reaction. And that's how we get this weird crossover with arthritis patients being helped by anti-depressants, and depressed patients being helped by anti-inflammatories.

From inflammation to sickness and depression: when the immune system subjugates the brain
Abstract

In response to a peripheral infection, innate immune cells produce pro-inflammatory cytokines that act on the brain to cause sickness behaviour. When activation of the peripheral immune system continues unabated, such as during systemic infections, cancer or autoimmune diseases, the ensuing immune signalling to the brain can lead to an exacerbation of sickness and the development of symptoms of depression in vulnerable individuals. These phenomena might account for the increased prevalence of clinical depression in physically ill people. Inflammation is therefore an important biological event that might increase the risk of major depressive episodes, much like the more traditional psychosocial factors.

Anyway, back to the stress thing - it's not always possible to change our conditions, but maybe we can learn to change how we react to them.

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Also, I was only asking about the SSRIs to try to work out the mechanism here - if turmeric and other anti-inflammatory foods are better at treating depression, then AWESOME! Another win for the healing power of curry! Ahem.

But the fact is that most doctors won't go with recommending an anti-inflammatory diet over "proven" anti-depressant drugs, so they'll keep on prescribing SSRIs... However, if a < 2 week regime were shown to be more effective than a permanent prescription, then at least people will be taking less of them, and not have to suffer all the long-term effects like dependence, weight gain, loss of libido... bleh.

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Just going with a feeling here...there are diseases or rather symptoms, in this case depression that may be due to various causes,

Stress likely promotes neural inflammation, an illness that causes neural inflammation may express symptoms such as depression.

Treating the inflammation or cause of (virus etc) might help in the latter but perhaps not for stress induce depression.

Actually just thinking about it , inflammation is a symptom. so treating it might relieve depression but not cure it. The cure would require understanding the origin/reason for the inflammation ie stress, virus or whatever.

A bit beyond a 3 minute gp visit.

Seems to be the theme of our age, not to address the root cause, but circumnavigate for a quick fix, like cutting the top of the weeds & leaving the roots.

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