Chapter 23: Angry At The Disease

I am angry at the disease depression and I need to put the reasons why in writing.

I am tired of:

having withdrawal symptoms from every psychiatric medication I have stopped taking.

having side effects from every psychiatric medication I have started.

having to wait 4-8 weeks to see if a medication is going to be effective.

needing medications that are expensive.

having a psychiatrist who tried 15 different drug combinations in a year and a half with few results; and then didn't support me after I went to the Amen Clinic for help.

"traditional psychiatrists" using an educated guess in determining which medication would be effective for me.  They decided after hearing my list of symptoms.  Other medical fields look at the organ they are treating.

letting things I need to do just sit. 

having everything I do take so much effort.

having to put my life on hold because I don't feel like doing anything. 

having thoughts that come from a brain not functioning correctly, not from anything real.

having things that were important to me lose their value. 

not having any energy. 

not finding pleasure doing things I used to enjoy.

not feeling well enough to attend activities.

my body not creating enough neurotransmitters on its own.

people I love having to deal with this disease.

having a genetic predisposition for depression.

not having advanced medical care in the treatment of depression where I live.  I needed to go to another state.

families and friends losing someone they love because of suicide.

depression causing extreme misery.

available technology not being used with every patient it could help.  SPECT Brain Scans and the research that goes with them gives a psychiatrist more information to diagnose and treat psychiatric disorders.  The Amen Clinics have been using this technology for about 10 years.

Information from, The UltraMind Solution, by Mark Hyman, M.D.

Taken from pages 11 and 12; book published in 2009

• Psychiatric disorders affect 26 percent of our adult population or more than 60 million Americans.
• More than 20 percent of children have some type of psychiatric disorder.
• More than 40 million people have anxiety.
• More than 20 million people have depression.
• One in ten Americans takes an antidepressant.
• The use of antidepressants has tripled in the last decade.
• In 2006, expenditures on antidepressants soared to over $1.9 billion.
• Psychiatric disorders like depression and anxiety are expensive.  They are among the top five most costly medical conditions, including heart disease, cancer, trauma, and lung disorders.  The cost to our health-care system exceeds $200 billion a year, which is over 12 percent of total health-care spending.
• Alzheimer's disease will affect 30 percent (and some experts say 50 percent) of people over eighty-five years old, which is the fastest-growing segment of the population.  It will affect 16 million people by 2050.
• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a label we now give 8.7 percent of children between the ages of eight and fifteen.
• More than 8 million, or one in ten, children now take stimulant medications like methylphenidate (Ritalin).
• Autism rates have increased from 3 in 10,000 children to 1 in 166 children--an elevenfold  increase--over the last decade.
• Learning disabilities affect between 5 and 10 percent of school-age children.
• The indirect costs of all these broken brains to society are mammoth.  They include loss of productivity at school, home, or in the workplace, accounting for a loss of over $80 billion a year. 

Thanks for reading.  My heart goes out to everyone who is angry and tired of depression!

Chapter 21: Healing A "Broken Brain"

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen 

and thinking what nobody has thought."

                               

                                                            Albert Von Szent-Gyorgyi Nagyr

                                                               Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine

                                                                 The scientist who isolated vitamin C

Mark Hyman, M.D., author of, The UltraMind Solution, states on page 7, "Your brain is broken.  You know it.  You feel it.  You hide it.  You fear it.  You have been touched by an epidemic.  It deprives children of their future, the elderly of their past, and adults of their present.

No one is talking about this invisible epidemic.  Yet it's the leading cause of disability, affects 1.1 billion people worldwide---one in six children, one in two elderly---and will cripple one in four people during their lifetime.

I am talking about the epidemic of broken brains.

We refer to our "broken brains" by many names---depression, anxiety, memory loss, brain fog, attention deficit disorder or ADD, autism, and dementia to name a few.

This epidemic of brain breakdown shows up in radically different ways from person to person so that they all seem like separate problems.  But the truth is that they are all manifestations of a few common underlying root causes.

These seemingly different disorders are all really the same problem---imbalances in the seven keys to UltraWellness.

Dr. Mark Hyman on Good Morning America, January 16, 2009

Interviewed by Jeremy Hubbard, abc News

Dr. Hyman has seen many of his patients heal their broken brains by treating their bodies.  He believes brain problems are found in the biology of your whole body.  He has found brain disorders are almost always systemic disorders, and the cure will be found outside the brain and in your body.

Dr. Hyman also believes some people may have a genetic predisposition making it more difficult for their bodies to create neurotransmitters.  This is true even if these people are applying the changes suggested in The Seven Keys to UltraWellness.  I think I am probably one of these people.  The Seven Keys to UltraWellness made so much sense to me I wanted to implement them.  I believed they would contribute to helping me feel better, even if they didn't "heal" my depression.  

On page 387, Dr. Hyman says, "As a former emergency room physician, I recognize that extreme times call for extreme measures.  I use and support the intelligent, appropriate use of medication, including psychotropic medications when needed.  They can often be helpful as a bridge for recovery from all the stresses and toxins that affect our brain and mind.

It may take months or years to heal from damage that has occurred over a lifetime.  In extreme cases, the damage may be so deep that full recovery is not possible using the UltraMind Solution (although most see remarkable results in a few weeks).  In some cases, combining medication with the tools of the UltraMind Solution can give people their lives back."

When I first started reading, The UltraMind Solution, I wondered if Dr. Hyman believed every person could heal their "broken brain" by treating their body systems.  If you choose to read the book and read the first 75 pages you may wonder the same thing.  I included the information above because I didn't want that thought to detract from the brilliance of the book.

I love this book, and in the coming chapters of my blog I am going to share more information of The Seven Keys to UltraWellness and how they have made my life better.

On Monday morning I raised the dose of Effexor XR to 187.5 mg.  After lowering the dose of Luvox when I began 150 mg of Effexor XR, I had some depression symptoms return.  So I went back on 25 mg two times a day.  I am staying on that dosage until I feel Effexor XR improving the depression symptoms.  I did not feel any side effects from Effexor XR until several days into taking 150 mg.

"For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie---deliberate, contrived, and dishonest---but the myth---persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.  Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forbears.  We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.  We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

John F. Kennedy