New, ninth way to stop depression without drugs....

Today's Post: Monday, 7-26-2010

Would you like something faster and safer and more reliable than the so far not very good drugs for depression?

A combination of 8 strategies already does that and has been tested to work.

Now there is a ninth way that can be done now with supplements and which also might lead to better drugs. This post is about that strategy. It may be that combining this ninth approach with the 8 strategies already known to work might increase their success rate to close to 100 % and make them work much faster.

1. But for those of you not familiar with the first 8, here’s a quick recap and how to find more about them.

Last month, on Tuesday, June, 22 & Thursday, June 24, we posted on 8 ways to stop depression without drugs.

That Tuesday, 6-22, we posted on the 6 methods in “The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs by Stephen S. Ilardi” which is now available in both paperback & on their Kindle platform at Amazon.com .

Some of these steps are cheap and easy to do. Some have powerful other health benefits in addition to making depression better or go away. And, one in particular is very fast and can give you some depression relief in minutes.

Dr Ilardi found that the people who did all six steps had a 75% success rate in overcoming depression.

Then on that Thursday, 6-24, we posted on the work of Dr Martin Seligman on learned optimism and its upgrades. There are two parts to his discovery. They take quite different methods to learn which is why we listed them as two strategies. They both work; but doing them both together has great power.

Already, by combining all eight of these strategies, it may be possible to get in the 85 to 95 % effective range in stopping depression.

2. That said, it would be nice if there was something that you could do that would work similar to an effective drug to get fast effects to stop depression.

There are several reasons for this.

a) Some depression can be caused by physical brain damage which may well cause a person to need something more than the 8 methods that otherwise work. The good news is that even with such damage, you can retrain your brain to function well with the undamaged part using the 8 strategies. But you might need some extra leverage to get there.

b) You may have conditions that have caused you great stress or that are causing you some legitimate anxieties now. Again, the 8 strategies do work; but you might well need some extra leverage to use them. (Floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, and job layoffs do happen sometimes. And even resilient people can be challenged to deal with them without getting depressed at least at first.)

c) There is a vicious circle effect to some degree. After you do the easy steps of the 8 strategies and those that are easy for you, some of the strategies may be more challenging. But when you don’t feel better yet, it can be hard to make yourself do them. But if you don’t do them you don’t feel better, etc.

In this case also, it would be nice to have some extra leverage.

Last week, there was a study done that may show the way to this leverage.

Someone had noticed that some depressed people reported that their world literally looked grey and out of focus and decided to see if this effect could be tested by an actual visual acuity test. This effect WAS found to exist when they did that. They then examined the retina of the people affected and discovered that there was evidence these depressed people were not getting enough dopamine to make their vision work properly.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that makes feelings of reward and enjoyment work.

So, if you aren’t getting enough or you temporarily or permanently need extra to get the proper effect, you won’t feel very good and since successful efforts don’t feel very rewarding, it can be hard to make the extra effort to gain them.

So, it does make sense that if you are either short on dopamine or need more than usual or than most people, you would be depressed.

Last week I saw a news article titled, “Depression really does turn the world grey, study shows.”

Earlier this month, this study was in the Biological Psychiatry Journal.

The lead author, Dr. Ludger Tebartz van Elst, and his team in Germany WERE able to show that depressed people did have impairment of their ability to see the contrast between black and white.

This is of particular interest since there are several supplements that you can take that will boost your dopamine level.

In addition, vigorous exercise one of the first six strategies to stop depression, tends to normalize your neurotransmitters, which would include increasing your dopamine levels if they are low.

It’s been found that men in the military who took 1,000 mg of the amino acid Tyrosine first thing in the morning tended to perform better under stress and be less affected by it than men who did not.

Tyrosine is a precursor to dopamine & is readily available at reasonable cost in 500 mg capsules. It may well be that taking 2,000 mg of Tyrosine first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, may be a way to jump start recovery from depression.

And, there are two ways to boost that effect.

The supplement macuna pruriens also boosts dopamine. It is less easily available and may cost more; but might also help.

Secondly, if you are over 45 or taking statin drugs, your blood levels of CoQ10 and the energy in your cells from their internal source, their mitochondria, may be draining your energy levels since both aging and statin drugs lower that level. But taking the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 can effectively reverse that. And, if you take ubiquinol now, taking more might help.

Taking both tyrosine once a day and ubiquinol early in the day and again just before lunch, might well do the job.

If not, adding the macuna pruriens also might work.

It certainly looks worth trying.