HEALTH & WEALTH

Alternative Medicine for Depression

Trying Something Natural


Many of those who live with depression as part of their daily lives want to use something other than antidepressants to help them. Seeing the possibility of a lifetime of taking medication many sufferers of depression are turning to alternate methods. They are trying natural supplements to help lift the cloud of depression that they live with. One popular choice is St. John's Wort. Many studies have been conducted using this natural supplement. The results have been inconclusive, though there is agreement that this seems to have some positive results. Many of those who choose to use it swear by it often claiming that they get the same if not better results than using Prozac. They say that when they take St. John's Wort regularly they need nothing else.


The reason for its positive results is because it works on all three of the neurotransmitters that affect depression, serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, by slowing down the body's rate of absorption. This allows the body more time to use them to send messages to the brain. The only negative aspect of this supplement is that is may interact with other medications a person takes and so a person should confer with their health care provider before trying it.


There are also others that have some good results. For example, omega-3 fatty acids, which are found mainly in fish oils, are having some success of their own. This is also found in walnuts, canola oil or hemp but it seems to be only the omega-3 fatty acids that are found in the fish oils that act as an antidepressant. These fatty acids have in them DHE fatty acids that are used by the brain as nourishment. Depressives are known to be low in these acids and so by taking the omega-3 fatty acids they are able to replenish what the brain requires.


Several of the B vitamins are recommended for those who must deal with depression. Research has found that too many adult depressives are low in their levels of folic acid. Tests have shown that those whose levels are particularly low are in for a long depressive episode and may find that their bodies do not respond well to regular antidepressant medications because of this missed vitamin. It has been proven that when the folic acid levels are upped the person's mood improves. Thiamine, also know as Vitamin B1 has also been shown to affect mood. As a matter of fact, it even improves the mood of those who are not depressives. Menopause, a problem of women over fifty, that definitely affects mood, can be affected by Vitamin B12 levels. Once a woman reaches the age of fifty her levels of this vitamin have greatly diminished to the point where she often has only half what she should in her system. Vitamin B6 is also important and is known to help premenstrual depression, called PMS. Using any or all of the Vitamin Bs can greatly improve mood. It seems worth trying them all



Treatment Alternatives for Depression
There are many choices in therapies to pick from when treating depression. These start with those easier treatments that require only the use of medications and progress passed them to the use of augmentors, light therapies, pacemakers, and electroshock. Sometimes if all else fails going to a mental hospital for long term treatment is the only answer left. This is an extreme outcome and only rarely occurs when every other treatment has failed and the person suffering from depression is in a crisis situation. Most often medications are the answer. But if not there are many therapies worth trying.


The first step to treating someone with depression is to start the person using antidepressants. If these don't work, after trying a variety of different ones, the next step is using an augmentor drug. This means to use another medication that will hopefully heighten the ability of the first enough for it to work well. There are also several different kinds of these worth trying. Many health care providers will also suggest seeing a councilor to help to ease the depression.


If these don't work the best alternative is to choose one of the many therapies that are open to you. One possibility is electroconvulsive therapy. This is also known as shock treatment. They don't perform this treatment as often as they used to since it seemed to get a bad reputation. People associate this therapy with torture. Its not and this treatment can have some very positive results when it's necessary to quell a crisis situation. Electric shock treatments have an affect immediately whereas medication usually takes up to four weeks before any results are seen. This treatment is now preformed only when the patient has been put under anesthetic. Some claim that these treatments can have an affect on memory. But clinical studies have been unable to prove it.


The vagus nerve pacemaker has had some good results. It works by being inserted under the skin just under the back of the collarbone. The pacemaker gives little electrical jolts that stimulate the vagus nerve that then sends messages to the brain to alter mood.


Simple exercise has been traced to mood improvement. It is believed that in part this is because the body absorbs the medications better during exercises. But as well, it is felt that the exercise produces chemicals in the brain, like dopamine and serotonin, so that even going for a walk can be beneficial. Any type of exercise is good and has shown that it enhances the mood.


Another choice is light therapy. There is proof that people suffer depression when the days get shorter and so there is not as much sunlight. The answer to this is twofold. First, spend more time outside in the daylight hours and enjoy what sunshine there is. Leave windows uncovered to let in the sunlight that is there. Also the use of light therapy may be beneficial. One of these will help it just requires the patient not giving up.


Yoga Can Help Fight Depression
There are a variety of relaxation techniques that are recommended for those who suffer from depression. They may not be a cure but they should, based on the type of exercises that they are, help to relax a person and so potentially lessen stress, which can then lessen the feeling of depression. Some people like to do these meditative exercises because they appear to help some feel more in control of their lives and this helps depressives feel more like they are not being left behind by the world. Some of the best of these meditative exercises are yoga. The teachers will tell you that it highly benefits a person's nervous system and their circulation while energizing the body and mind. It is this energy that gives the depressive the feeling that they are finally able to manage the demands in their lives, especially those things that they feel get the better of them all too often.


It is recommended that someone suffering depression spend up to twenty minutes twice a day meditating and at least the same amount of time doing the exercises. The extra energy generated may be the first feeling to get up and go the depressive has had in a long time. The hope is that meditation will help to calm and heal the depressive and so allow for the low mood to diminish or disappear. If a regular routine of exercise can improve the life of the depressive even to a small degree then perhaps hand in hand with some natural supplement this may be a route worth examining closer.


Like the ancient art of acupuncture, and its history with the Chinese, yoga stems from Hindu beliefs that began over five thousand years ago. It is a philosophy that aims to bring the person together within themselves into peace and happiness both on a physical and emotional level. These ancient forms of repairing yourself seem to be things that in recent years are getting a more serious appraisal from researchers and health care providers. The breathing exercises are said to be some of the best for those suffering from depression, as they are both calming and energizing. The feeling among those who use these techniques is that the breathing exercises cause the body to take in the oxygen better and to get rid of the carbon monoxide more completely. They believe that this improves the brain's activities including the releasing of natural feel good chemicals. These include oxytocin and endorphins.


If you want to learn more about these techniques start by talking to your health care provider. Then visit some websites on the Internet that is about both depression and yoga. Go to the library and find some of the books that have been written on using yoga to combat depression. Finally visit the local yoga teacher and explain your interest in taking classes. If you are satisfied with the reaction you get then begin classes with hopes for an improved outlook and better overall mood.


Trying Relaxation Therapy to help with Depression
Another method of fighting depression, though still somewhat controversial, is relaxation therapy. This does not eliminate depression but it has been noted to diminish some of the more difficult and confused feelings. Some health care providers worry about the use of this method while others will accept anything that brings even momentary relief to their patients. This is not a technique that replaces the depressive's medications but is used more to augment the feeling of strength and contentment that it is hoped come from lifting the veil of depression. Relaxation therapy can help if done properly.


First, let us look at the process. The person ready to begin their first entry into relaxation therapy must choose a quiet, semi dark place to begin. They do not want to be distracted by light or noise. Whatever they are dressed in should be very comfortable and loose fitting rather than body hugging. Then they must choose a position, which can be either sitting or lying down. Once all of this has been done they should close their eyes, put their hands on their ribcage and begin breathing slowly. As they are breathing they should feel the gentle movement of their ribcage beneath their hands. After practicing these breathing techniques for a few minutes it is time to move on. The hands should now be placed on the person's lap with their palms down. At no point should this deep relaxed breathing stop.


Next the person should begin to picture a place. This place can be anywhere. It can be a beach, a favorite room, and a view seen in a photo or by the creek once walked as a child. This place can be anywhere that will make the person feel relaxed. Once the place has been chosen the person should picture himself or herself there. They must then think about how good they feel in that place. They must continue to establish that thought in their minds. They then spend some time being in their special place, feeling good about it. Then they need to think about leaving this place knowing they can return anytime they want.


At this point the relaxation therapy session is over. It has given the person a place to go to relax and to feel renewed. Now all they need to do is find a place to sit quietly and close their eyes to return to this special place. That is the beauty of relaxation therapy you needn't have anyone tell you when or where to relax. You do it when you want.


Relaxation therapy is not for everyone. Some health care providers feel that those who are severely depressed will gain no benefits from it at all and may even find that not being able to physically get to their special place will depress the patient even more. On the other hand many depressives find the technique relaxes them giving them a hint of improved mood and any improvement is a welcome step to feeling better.

Treating Depression with Magnetic Therapies
As man learns more about medicine it becomes clearer that sometimes the treatments that we look at with a lack of understanding and so think they are too unusual are becoming some of the more successful medical treatments that we have to offer. Man is learning that drugs are not always the only answer and that in many cases it is not the answer for all of their patients. Especially since many people seem to be resistant to certain medications even if physicians do not as of yet fully understand why. When this is the case other methods of treatment must be tried. This is often the case with depression where thirty percent of sufferers seem to be resistant to standard treatments. The newest treatment to fall into this category is magnetic therapy and the leading method of this is transcranial magnetic stimulation.


Transcranial magnetic stimulation, also called TMS, is being used to treat depression with some fairly positive results. In this treatment the health care provider uses a device that is run over the head of the patient sending an electrical current into certain areas of the brain. It is able to transmit through the skin and bone of the skull right into the brain's nerve cells because of the type of magnetic pulses that are used. If the pulses were merely electrical they would be unable to pass through these surfaces. This has been heralded as a great new treatment because researchers are saying that it can target specific areas in the brain where it is believed the centers for depression sit. If this is the case and the electromagnet treatment can correctly stimulate these centers then it opens up many treatment possibilities.


After a treatment period of two weeks, where daily treatments are being given, an average patient is showing a thirty percent reduction in their symptoms. For someone who suffers from severe depression this can be an incredible relief. Although a relatively new treatment, and so still classified as experimental, there are many hospitals and outpatient clinics that are offering this treatment option to those who find nothing else works for them. Researchers today feel that in a decade this treatment has the possibility of being just as common as the use of antidepressants.


Magnetic therapy has actually been around since the times of the Tibetan monks. There are many stories of their use of this early magnetic therapy. They used a magnet hung over the head to help with depression. Interestingly studies on the use of a magnetic to help diminish depression met with unexpected results. Researchers believing they would easily prove this theory wrong decided to conduct small trial studies. It was found that men felt a lessening of their depression when north pointed up but for women it was the opposite. Many of those who feel strongly about the advantages of magnetic therapy assert that it can treat more than just the symptoms of depression that it treats the causes as well.


Combination Drug Therapies for Depression
The treatment of those suffering from depression has come along way over the years. At one time doctors resorted to whatever method, however barbaric, they thought might work. They might pull a person's teeth or surgically remove an organ they felt the patient could do without in their attempts to correct this problem. They did not look to see what caused the problem just what solutions they could come up with. A story is told of a doctor who, as recently as the late eighteen hundreds, had a patient who suffered from severe depression and only seemed to feel any better when he went on a train. The doctor assumed it was the bumps felt as the train journeyed and so any time the man complained of depression shook him erratically to try to battle the symptoms. Feeling that the man seemed to have a lot of these episodes he shook him with more force each time his patient came to see him. Of course, it was not a successful treatment. Isn't it lucky that we no longer do such foolish things to patients in need of treatment?


One of the ongoing problems of people who are depressive is that many of them do not react to standard treatments. They suffer with answers to why. These people are termed treatment resistant. Their depression does not improve with the use of pills, shock or therapy. At least thirty percent of all depressives fall into this difficult to treat category. Luckily new treatments are popping up all the time and some of them are helping those who were thought to be beyond help before.


At one time the standard treatment for a depressive was to put them on an antidepressant. If after a few weeks there were no improvement then the health care provider would switch them to another. Hopefully it would not take long to find one that worked. But it could take several months of trial and error before finding an antidepressant that worked. Sometimes what is done instead is to add a second medication to work along with the antidepressant or to try to boost it. One successful medication used to improve the other drugs is called Cytomel. This drug is normally used as a thyroid medication. Now it is believed to be able to help a depressive patient and so it is given even when thyroid levels are normal, though of course is more helpful when they are not. This combination works so well that studies show a fifty percent increased success rate with their use. Health care providers may also try lithium or Ritalin as the secondary medications for the same purpose.


Sometimes the health care provider will suggest that along with these medications regular therapy sessions can be helpful. This is often rejected as many depressives do not feel that their depression is an emotional problems but one of internal chemical imbalances that need to be regulated. When these combination drug therapies work this only confirms their reasoning.
Some Causes of Depression
The ability to understand what a person goes through when they are suffering from depression can be helped by first trying to understand what the causes of depression can be. First it is important to know that physicians and researchers have not yet been successful in identifying a specific cause of depression. They continue to research and study but the answers are coming slowly. What is known about depression is that those who suffer from it will have some common circumstances that they have to deal with. It may be in what they eat, how they were brought up, how they relate to certain things that go on around them.


First, heredity plays a big role in who will have to deal with depression. If one or both of a person's parents suffer from depression they are at a high risk to suffer from the same problem. It is believed that between forty and seventy percent of those who suffer from depression have it because to runs in the family. It is thereof not unlikely that they have siblings who also fight the problem.


Others are affected because of an imbalance of the chemicals in the brain. This is why antidepressants can work to help those who are depressed as it evens out the chemicals that should be there. These include serotonin and norepinephrine. The truth is that physicians and researchers are not clear on why this is a problem but they do agree that correcting the imbalance of chemicals can go a long way to dealing with eliminating the symptoms. Studies recently have pointed to a coincidental pattern in the hippocampus. This part of the brain deals specifically with memory and mood. Research has linked this area as a possible source of depression since when the chemical serotonin is low it certainly affects mood, but when it is increased with medications both mood and memory improve greatly. Therefore proving the researchers claim.


Some people are affected by what has been called seasonal affective disorder, also known as SAD, which is a recently recognized ailment. It is caused by the reduced hours of sunlight once winter approaches and the days grow shorter, The thinking is that with less sun the body manufactures more melatonin and that this is the cause of the problem. There is actually a therapy that has been developed to help counter this problem called bright light therapy or phototherapy. Many people respond to this therapy with generally good results.


Childhood Depression a Serious Problem
There are still too many people who think that depression is an illness that is suffered either by adult premenstrual women or old men. These people have a lot to learn about this very difficult disorder. The scary thing is that with nearly sixteen percent of all Americas suffering from depression at some point in their lives the stereotypical picture of a depressive is far from true. A frighteningly large number of those who suffer from episodes of depression are under twenty. Researchers are beginning to understand that this is a serious problem amongst the youth of this country. Studies are telling them that one in every eight teenagers and one in every thirty-three children under the age of twelve are suffering from depression. This becomes a bigger problem because if a child has a depressive episode so young it means they are likely to have another within five years time.


Unfortunately an equally big problem is that depression is not always recognized in young people and so they do not get the medical care and family support that they need to get through this problem. This is particularly sad when you realize that just like adults children receiving the correct medication can improve just as well as adults do. This lack of understanding and medical intervention may account for the high suicide rate among young people. In fifteen to twenty four year olds suicide is the third leading cause of death. Frighteningly it is the sixth landing cause of death among those five to fifteen and worse still the overall rate of suicide for those under twenty four has tripled in the last forty years.


What can be done to help our children? First, watch for signs that they may be struggling with an episode of depression. Signs to watch for include an increase in irritability, poor school performance, radical changes in eating and sleeping routines, or seeming to feel sad, worthless or hopeless consistently. If the child seems to have a self-esteem problem, lacks enthusiasm or withdraws from things that previously were much enjoyed these are warning signs. If you hear your child talk of death or suicide this puts them at risk and you must get your health care provider involved immediately. Teenagers may slip into drug or alcohol abuse as they try to find any answer to the pain they are suffering.


The best thing to do if you suspect your child is suffering from an episode of depression is to talk to your health care provider. Research on your own as well, so you can better understand what your child is going through. Then see if you can persuade your child to get some help. This help can come through your health care provide in the form of medications such as antidepressants, therapy with your health care provider alone or in group therapy or both. But either way your child will need your support not your recriminations, as this will be a difficult time for them.

Shorter Hours of Sunlight Causes Depression
Amongst the many different causes of depression one that greatly affects the mood of an individual is called Seasonal Affective Disorder, also known as SAD. This is one that can be helped and when one looks at the difficulties that a depressive deals with this may be one of the easier ones to help a person get through. That does not mean it is any less debilitating, or less of a mood destabilizer, just that this is one that has some answers with it instead of just questions.


First of all to understand how to help someone who is suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder you need to known what it is caused by. It is a mood disorder that is directly related to the seasons and how much sunlight the person is exposed to. As the days get shorter they are less able to cope. The worse months for those suffering from SAD begin in September and should end by April, as the days are growing longer. Researchers claim that of those who suffer from some form of depression at least ten percent of them are dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder.


The symptoms of SAD are similar to most other mood disorders. The person will have no motivation to do anything. They will feel tired all the time but generally not sleep very well. They will have an increase in the amount of sweets that they want to eat frequently eating so much that they begin to put on weight. There will be a decrease in their interest in sex. The person will be irritable, sad, feel worthless, sufferer from low self-esteem and may withdraw from friends and family. This feeling of depression will last all through the shorter daylight time unless something is done.


The exact reason that this occurs is not clear and research continues to try to better understand this phenomena. It's believed to be related to the levels of serotonin and melatonin in the body that are imbalanced by the diminished hours of sunlight. There are a few ways to improve this imbalance. The best ways are naturally, for the person to spend more time outside during the day. Exercising outside is a great way to help out the depressive. The exercise releases endorphins, which naturally make the depressive feel better. Couple that with the exposure to more sunlight and you are on your way to an improvement in mood.


Phototherapy is another option. A mere two hours of exposure daily to phototherapy treatments can make a huge difference to a person's mood. There is a dawn simulators, for those who suffer more seriously, that will actually simulate a days worth of sunlight changing as the day goes on. Antidepressants are another method of helping those dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder along with the phototherapy sessions. Most people with this depressive disorder find that one treatment or a combination will help them get through this problem until the days are once again long with many hours of sunlight.