Depression affects every one of its prisoners in a completely different, isolating way. It affects your thoughts, moods, feelings, behavior and physical health. People used to think it was “all in your head” and that if you tried hard enough, you could “pull yourself out of it.”

Dr. Kathleen Jade – Beating Depression Naturally

Doctors now know that depression is not a weakness – rather, it is a medical disorder with biological and chemical underlying causes.

If you want to truly overcome depression, you need to discover what some of these underlying causes may be for you individually and then provide your body with the raw material it needs to heal itself.

Using medication to “cure” depression often results in serious side effects, some even doubling your risks for the worst consequence of the problem they’re being used to treat: suicide.

They’re notoriously known for making you gain weight, despite all your best efforts to stay off the fast food. Medications for depression also often decrease your libido, and in men can even affect performance in the bedroom. They can make you nauseous and nervous; give you insomnia, nightmares, constant fatigue, headache, tremors, anxiety, drowsiness, dry mouth, excessive sweating, and diarrhea.

Do any of these side effects sound like things that will make you feel better?

A person who is experiencing depression wants first and foremost to start feeling better and may not care to delve into all the possible contributing factors.

If getting ten minutes of sunlight every day would cure your depression, would you sit outside to get it? Depression’s underlying causes are most often basic nutrient deficiencies or sub-functioning glands in your body.

Overcoming depression with natural health options

Depression is a widespread disorder that affects 16% of the population and almost one out of every ten workers in the workplace at any given time.

Unfortunately, the underlying factors that can cause a person’s depression are numerous and often difficult to ascertain even for a trained medical professional.

As a result, the typical conventional physician will often go immediately to their easiest solution – one of the pharmaceutical antidepressant drugs.

However, the good news is that there are numerous effective natural health options for treating depression that do not require the use of the dangerous antidepressant drugs.

In our Natural Remedies for Depression: Beating Depression Without Drugs health guide, you’ll discover everything you need to know to get you started in your recovery process. We’ll cover how to know for sure if you have clinical depression and why it is so important to take this condition with serious resolve for recovery.

Are Antidepressants safe?

Contrary to the impression promoted by the psychiatric and drug industries, psychiatric drugs do not work by correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain. Instead, such drugs merely put people into “drug-induced states” that make it harder for them to experience the symptoms of their illness.

One patient said “SSRI antidepressants did return me to life, but it was a joyless and minimal existence.” Another patient said, “The medications numbed me. I did not feel sad. I stopped crying. But I did not feel any joy or pleasure either.”

This zombie like state is often the most common complaint integrative physicians hear from patients who come to them who have been taking these drugs.

The two most influential brain chemicals related to depression

Is it possible that your depression is the “canary in the mineshaft”? That is, is it an indicator of other health problems that you don’t even know about that will cause major problems in time if they are not corrected?

If so, this bout of depression could be a benefit in disguise – prompting you to take some action now that will prevent much bigger problems later on.

Virtually all scientists and physicians agree that clinical depression has as one of its major underlying causes the imbalance of brain neurotransmitters. These are the chemical messengers that act as communication agents between different brain cells. This is the area most of the antidepressant drugs attempt to manipulate.

You won’t resolve your depression issues until you are able to restore brain levels of these key neurotransmitters and you don’t need drugs to do it.

• Serotonin – the “happy” brain chemical – With adequate serotonin levels in the brain and its proper functioning, you will be positive, happy, confident, flexible, and easy-going.
• Dopamine – the “focus” and “motivation” brain chemical- This neurotransmitter is primarily involved in regulation of attention, motivation, pleasure, and reward.

In Natural Remedies for Depression: Beating Depression Without Drugs, you’ll discover natural strategies and even supplements you can take to naturally boost your serotonin and dopamine levels.

How your hormones affect depression – and how to balance them

The glands of the endocrine system produce and release hormones which influence almost every cell, organ, and function of our body, and they are very closely linked to proper neurotransmitter (brain chemical) function.

Inadequate hormone levels from the adrenal gland and the thyroid gland, as well as inadequate testosterone (for men) and estrogen (for women) will cause neurotransmitters in the brain to not be able to function properly.

You can try all day long to increase sagging neurotransmitter levels but if your glands that produce the hormones that make those neurotransmitters work are malfunctioning, the potential for complete relief from depression for the long haul will not be achieved.

In Natural Remedies for Depression: Beating Depression Without Drugs, we’ll show you how to treat the following hormone imbalances:

• Adrenal hormone deficiency – If your adrenal glands (makers of the “stress” hormones) don’t produce the right amounts of adrenaline, cortisol, and DHEA, your body’s ability to fight stressful situations will be seriously compromised.
• Thyroid hormone deficiency – Thyroid hormones and depression are intricately connected. One medical expert believes that up to one-half of depression cases are due to unrecognized hypothyroidism (low thyroid function).
• Sex hormones – The reproductive hormones—primarily estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone—act on the brain to directly affect mood and cognition.

20 life-saving techniques for beating the “blues”

There are a multitude of potential causes for every type of depression; because the human brain is still very much a mystery, even to doctors and scientists. Thankfully, we’re well on our way to discovering the root causes of the many shades of depression.

In Natural Remedies for Depression: Beating Depression Without Drugs, we will describe the most significant remedies available for absolving depression. You’ll discover more about:

1. Correcting neurotransmitter imbalances

These are those brain chemicals such as serotonin or dopamine that act as messengers between the trillions of nerve cells in your body. Some, like serotonin, keep your mood happy and content while others, like dopamine help you concentrate, and give you motivation and drive. When these neurotransmitters become deficient, your mood, memory, and other brain functions begin to go haywire.

2. Re-discovering talk therapy

Talk therapy, also known as psychotherapy, is based on the core idea that talking about the things that are bothering you can help clarify them and put them in perspective. Talk therapy and antidepressant drugs are the two front line therapies recommended by conventional doctors for their depressive patients.

3. Identifying food allergies

One patient had been anxious and depressed most of her life and spent her childhood and adolescence on various cocktails of antidepressants. After some testing by her integrative physician, it was discovered she suffered from food allergies and that was a major contributor to her depression.

4. Realizing heavy metal contamination

Do you have a mouth full of dental amalgams or do you eat a lot of fish or sushi? If so you may have an excessive level of mercury in your body. Heavy metal toxicity has been correlated with depression and other mood and neurological problems.

5. Relieving sleep apnea and insomnia

Here’s an interesting statistic – approximately one in five people who suffer from depression also suffer from sleep apnea, and people with sleep apnea are five times more likely to become depressed.

6. Learning more about low cholesterol

You thought low cholesterol was a good thing, but excessively low levels have been associated with depression.

7. Having better sex

American psychologist Gordon Gallup did a survey of 293 women and discovered a fascinating difference between couples who used condoms and those who did not.

8. Eating more blueberries

Researchers gave elderly subjects a daily dose of wild blueberry juice and measured cognitive performance. What was particularly interesting was the effect the blueberry juice had in lowering both depressive symptoms and glucose levels in the blood.

9. Trying cold shower therapy

This one may seem pretty far out but some people have found cold showers to be very therapeutic in relieving depression symptoms.

10. Quitting cigarettes

A recent government study revealed that almost one-half of adults under age 55 with current depression were current smokers.

11. Discovering your vulnerability factors

You can be more likely to develop depression in certain situations. These factors, such as genetics, increase your risk but do not cause the depression.

12. Paying attention to pharmaceutical drug side effects

Tragically, many drugs commonly used today by thousands of people have as one of their side effects an increased risk of causing depression.

13. Optimizing Vitamin D

Vitamin D, or “the sunshine vitamin,” is a critically important nutrient that affects many aspects of human physiology. For thyroid function, it is absolutely critical.

14. Ingesting more Omega-3 fats

These essential fatty acids found in cold water fish as well as certain nuts and seeds are critically important in the production of thyroid hormones that regulate depression. In fact, a variety of studies and physiological principles suggest that omega-3 fat in doses of 3-5 grams per day would be helpful in restoring thyroid function.

15. Experimenting with a gluten-free diet

Gluten sensitivity is one of the more common causes of thyroid dysfunction, which contributes to depression. Gluten is a common protein found in wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt, and kamut that can cause autoimmune responses in the body, including Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, a common autoimmune thyroid condition.

16. Detoxing from Mercury

Mercury poisoning is a possible cause of disorders ranging from chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, to depression, anxiety, fatigue, irritability, mood disorders, autism, heart disease, autoimmune diseases and others.

17. Optimizing your body’s iodine level

Iodine at adequate levels is absolutely essential to a healthy thyroid and efficient metabolism.

18. Identifying adrenal dysfunction

Conventional medicine often fails to recognize the affects of adrenal fatigue. This final stage, called adrenal exhaustion, and the intermediate stages leading up to it are obviously a serious state of health to find yourself in. Depression is just one of the physical outcomes that can result from this state.

19. Finding a good integrative physician

Finding the right doctor is a critical step in your quest to develop robust health free from depression – or any other kind of good health for that matter.

20. Combating stress

The experts say that stress is the most common and most important factor in developing depression. Depression would logically be when our body has not been able to effectively deal with the chronic stress that we have encountered.

In Natural Remedies for Depression: Beating Depression Without Drugs, we’ll show you how to look for and implement the daily use of “stress safeguards”.

These are tools to release the pressure valve of your life and allow your body to “rest” for long enough to recover from the chronic stressful events that come into your life. We list and describe the top “stress busters” based on research and practical experience. You don’t have to do all of these, but you do have to find several that work for you that you can do each day.

Four things you need to know about depression right now

Depression is serious business – Depression is a debilitating disorder that needs to be taken seriously – it incapacitates its victim and increases the risk of many other diseases or disorders. Begin now to take steps to overcome its grip.

If you have suicidal thoughts, get help immediately. Your life is valuable to many people, and you’ve got a contribution of significance you can make right now. Call your best friend, a clergy member, your doctor, 911, or the suicide hot line National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – 800-273-TALK(8255) or on the internet at http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

There are always underlying causes – You need to work on correcting the underlying causes of your depression if you ever want lasting freedom from its grip. Your goal should be to correct the underlying imbalances and thus not become hooked on long-term pharmaceutical dependency.

Find a supporter/advocate – Your chance of success in overcoming depression will be greatly improved if you can identify and engage a “supporter” to assist you in this recovery process. This could be your spouse or friend or a family member. Their role will be to encourage you, to help you determine priorities, and to help you stick with your recovery plan. Who is that supporter for you?

Your next steps for beating depression

The key here is to not get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the material or the variety of options available. If you do, you may end up not taking any action at all, and that defeats the whole purpose of this information.

If you are only able to implement one or two strategies in Natural Remedies for Depression: Beating Depression Without Drugs at this time, then do just that! After a while, you’ll begin to see enough improvement in the way you feel that you will be able to add one or two more of the strategies. Your doctor or your significant support person can encourage you to stay with it.

The goal is to ultimately reach the point where you are completely well and you know what to do to keep that pesky depression at bay. That may take one month or nine months, but whatever time it takes will be worth it. If it’s really that bad, then things can only get better, right?

Ideally you should read all the depression healing options in Natural Remedies for Depression: Beating Depression Without Drugs from beginning to end and decide which ones make sense to you and then begin a program that includes those.

Depression is a disorder that has the possibility of multiple underlying causes and you will have to address all of those to get complete relief. Don’t despair. That’s not impossible to do. This health guide will help you.

But the point is that it is very unlikely that popping one little pill like St. John’s Wort will be the complete answer you’re looking for. That’s why we wrote Natural Remedies for Depression: Beating Depression Without Drugs.