Natural Depression cures revisited....
Today's Post: Tuesday, 1-25-2011
The best track record for helping people stop being depressed and that works more reliably and faster than drugs is available to you in book form. It was found to have a real cure rate of 75%.
It uses no drugs and only two supplements. And, no drug ever tested works as fast or comes anywhere near that track record in effectiveness.
It’s The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs - Paperback (June 1, 2010) by Stephen S. Ilardi PhD
You can go to Amazon.com today & buy the paperback for a bit less than $10 before shipping and/or fast delivery charges.
If depression is an issue for you, read this post AND buy his book! His method is effective enough that you’ll be glad you did.
This post has two parts, my quick revisit of his 6 steps and the second part has some information on how to upgrade one of them that I just discovered.
I. Dr Ilardi noted that Paleolithic peoples and those with similar life styles in modern times did NOT get depressed. He decided to simulate some key parts of their lifestyle with depressed people to see if it might help.
He did and it works.
1. They got lots of sunshine. For people who don’t get lots of sunshine or spend much time outdoors, taking 2,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 did help depressed people, particularly those with SAD which many people get in the winter when there is less sun. Most people today get less sun all year, so they likely will do better taking the supplements all year. (People who get lots of sunshine outside routinely get well over 20,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day from doing so. 5,000 iu sounds like a lot. But this comparison shows it is far closer to a minimum daily amount than a high amount!)
2. As we noted yesterday, people then took in about the same amount of omega 3 and omega 6 oils instead of a quarter that much omega 3 and four times that much omega 6 producing 16 times as much omega 6 as omega 3 as the average person does now who does not know how to avoid it. (We covered that in our post yesterday in part noting that you will have better health in many ways if you sharply limit your omega 6 intake and boost your omega 3 intake.)
Dr Ilardi had people take omega 3 supplements to see if they did get less depressed and it helped. He also found some omega 3 supplements worked better than others.
Having people eat in a way that also dramatically limits omega 6 oils also fits his model. But I don’t recall or know if he also did that.
The new information at the end of this post, has some strong evidence that this does help and helps very, very effectively.
3. People also exercised dramatically more in those times. They got more moderate activity every day as they walked everywhere they went. And, they got more varied and vigorous exercise every week as well.
Other people have found that those who exercise become less depressed and that this works faster and as well as one of the more effective antidepressant drugs.
In fact, we did a post on that. With anything that reduces your quality of life, it’s a LOT easier to deal with if you can cut yourself a break from it from time to time. If you do vigorous exercise to the level that you have to pay attention and focus on doing it, you no longer are focused on being depressed and for that time, you literally are not. It is temporary. But it provides a way to almost instantly give yourself a break from being depressed.
4. One of the ways that this happens is that it stops you from ruminating about your problems instead of ignoring them or doing something that might solve them.
Dr Ilardi found that using exercise and talk therapy to both stop this kind of ruminating and replace it with more productive ways of thinking also helped to stop depression.
(Dr Martin Seligman’s work on the fact that his mentally healthy and “optimistic” people used a very scientific and analytical way of thinking about things that go wrong is a superb model for the kind of thinking that replaces this kind of stuck in bad times rumination produces.
People who learn the style of Dr Seligman’s optimistic people become less depressed. And people who get used to always using that thinking style rarely get or stay depressed after that.
For example, if something goes wrong, even if you made a mistake to produce it or it had very bad effects, there were specific reasons it went wrong. Some of these won’t happen at other times and, having learned from this experience, some you can prevent next time. This is accurate, reality based thinking. And, it allows you to understand that next time CAN be better or the problem can be prevented.
Depressed people don’t do that. They decide without looking at the evidence that it will always happen in the future. No wonder they tend to get and stay depressed.
5. People then and now who socialize often in small groups tend not to get depressed. But many people who are depressed are isolated to begin with or stay away from other people after they get depressed.
Dr Ilardi found that reversing that also tended to reverse the depression. So he had people volunteer in ways they cared about or using skills they were already good at or take an in person class they were interested in at a community college or spend just a bit more time more often with friends and with family they got along with. The people who did this got less depressed.
6. Get more and better sleep is his sixth step.
This one is harder for many people to do because of the demands on their time.
But there are some fixes that do work that may work for you.
Getting regular exercise on most days even if only for a few minutes produces better sleep and taking a much shorter time to fall asleep than is true for totally sedentary people.
During the workweek, from Sunday night to Friday morning, try to get up each day at the exact same time and do the best you can to be in bed by at least 6 hours before that time.
Do what you can to keep light out of your bedroom when you are sleeping. The darker it is, the better your sleep quality will be and the easier it will be to fall asleep.
Watch less than 15 hours of TV a week; & if something you want to watch enough to include in what you do watch is on after your bed time, unless it is breaking news of considerable importance, record it and watch it earlier in the day. Some people lose sleep to watch TV, these two strategies will minimize that.
II. Last week the emails I get from the Natural Health Dossier had some information from a researcher at Harvard showing that dramatically limiting omega 6 oils and supplementing with omega 3 did help depression.
This researcher also found that people who did not become less depressed at first from doing so quite often did when they simply added more omega 3 oils.
Here is some of the information from their article.:
A Harvard four-month study headed by Dr. Andrew Stoll found big gains in mood without drugs or medication by using omega 3 supplements with omega 6 cut-backs.
One Boston man who was in one of these studies is so happy with his results that he ditched his antidepressants and is sticking with omega 3 instead.
He said, "I'm fine today. Not only do I not feel blue, but [if depressed feelings] come, I am able to handle them."
Modern diets have become increasingly deficient in omega 3 which likely at least partly explains the huge increase in depression rates during the last 50 years.
Dr. Stoll has continued working with people who took the omega 3 supplements.
"I still see these people," says Dr. Stoll. "All continue to take omega-3 supplements. In my practice, I am in favor of it, so I advise people to take it."
The article goes on to say that plenty of research and medical experts support Dr. Stoll's work.
Joseph Hibbeln, MD, is the Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Studies for the National Institutes of Health in Maryland said there's a direct link between omega 3 deficiency and depression.
"One hundred years ago we were eating much closer to our paleolithic diet," says Dr, Hibbeln. "We didn't have mass production of corn and soybeans or hydrogenation. But in the past 100 years, the balance of omega 6s to omega 3s has changed,"
The article adds:
“Our grandparents ate a diet that was high in omega 3 and low in omega 6. Dozens of studies show this ratio is vital to good health.
We grow seed oils, such as corn and soybeans," says Dr. Hibbeln. "And they have much higher ratios of omega 6s to omega 3s. Corn oil, for example, has a ratio of about 74 or 75 omega 6s to one omega 3."
Over the 100 years that our diets have reversed this ratio, depression rates have skyrocketed.
As further proof that omega 3 is critical to our mental health, countries that have high fish consumption have much lower rates of depression.
Dr. Myrna Weissman - an epidemiologist at Yale University - published related data in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Dr. Weissman is recognized as the world's [leading] expert in psychiatric epidemiology," says Dr. Hibbeln. "The quality of the data is the gold standard."
Dr. Weissman's research showed that people in countries with low depression rates ate much more fish than those in countries with high depression rates.
So how much omega 3 should you be getting?
"I start patients on one gram of EPA per day," says Dr. Stoll. "I go up on the dosage until an effect is seen on mood. I usually do not have to exceed six grams of EPA per day."
X * X* X* X*
My strong belief is that people who use all six of Dr Ilardi’s steps particularly including closer to 5,000 iu of D3 a day or more instead of less; learn Dr Seligman’s thinking style of optimistic people for when things go wrong; do the best they can on sleep and socializing; and who get abundant moderate and vigorous exercise each week will be far less depressed.
If they also completely avoid the oils high in omega 6 such as corn and soy and safflower and canola; eat less meat and far less fat from animals fed grains like corn and soy; and who take omega 3 supplements such as purified fish oil and DHA from algae, and eat wild caught fish high in omega 3 but low in mercury, virtually all depressed people other than those who have physical brain damage or Post Traumatic Stress disorder will stop being depressed.
Since taking more than a gram of omega 3 supplements a day can cause extra bleeding, working harder to cut omega 6 if you need more of an effect likely is a superior first step if you need more effect than taking a gram a day. But it’s nice to know that taking more omega 3 has been shown to help if you need it.
Today's Post: Tuesday, 1-25-2011
The best track record for helping people stop being depressed and that works more reliably and faster than drugs is available to you in book form. It was found to have a real cure rate of 75%.
It uses no drugs and only two supplements. And, no drug ever tested works as fast or comes anywhere near that track record in effectiveness.
It’s The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs - Paperback (June 1, 2010) by Stephen S. Ilardi PhD
You can go to Amazon.com today & buy the paperback for a bit less than $10 before shipping and/or fast delivery charges.
If depression is an issue for you, read this post AND buy his book! His method is effective enough that you’ll be glad you did.
This post has two parts, my quick revisit of his 6 steps and the second part has some information on how to upgrade one of them that I just discovered.
I. Dr Ilardi noted that Paleolithic peoples and those with similar life styles in modern times did NOT get depressed. He decided to simulate some key parts of their lifestyle with depressed people to see if it might help.
He did and it works.
1. They got lots of sunshine. For people who don’t get lots of sunshine or spend much time outdoors, taking 2,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 did help depressed people, particularly those with SAD which many people get in the winter when there is less sun. Most people today get less sun all year, so they likely will do better taking the supplements all year. (People who get lots of sunshine outside routinely get well over 20,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day from doing so. 5,000 iu sounds like a lot. But this comparison shows it is far closer to a minimum daily amount than a high amount!)
2. As we noted yesterday, people then took in about the same amount of omega 3 and omega 6 oils instead of a quarter that much omega 3 and four times that much omega 6 producing 16 times as much omega 6 as omega 3 as the average person does now who does not know how to avoid it. (We covered that in our post yesterday in part noting that you will have better health in many ways if you sharply limit your omega 6 intake and boost your omega 3 intake.)
Dr Ilardi had people take omega 3 supplements to see if they did get less depressed and it helped. He also found some omega 3 supplements worked better than others.
Having people eat in a way that also dramatically limits omega 6 oils also fits his model. But I don’t recall or know if he also did that.
The new information at the end of this post, has some strong evidence that this does help and helps very, very effectively.
3. People also exercised dramatically more in those times. They got more moderate activity every day as they walked everywhere they went. And, they got more varied and vigorous exercise every week as well.
Other people have found that those who exercise become less depressed and that this works faster and as well as one of the more effective antidepressant drugs.
In fact, we did a post on that. With anything that reduces your quality of life, it’s a LOT easier to deal with if you can cut yourself a break from it from time to time. If you do vigorous exercise to the level that you have to pay attention and focus on doing it, you no longer are focused on being depressed and for that time, you literally are not. It is temporary. But it provides a way to almost instantly give yourself a break from being depressed.
4. One of the ways that this happens is that it stops you from ruminating about your problems instead of ignoring them or doing something that might solve them.
Dr Ilardi found that using exercise and talk therapy to both stop this kind of ruminating and replace it with more productive ways of thinking also helped to stop depression.
(Dr Martin Seligman’s work on the fact that his mentally healthy and “optimistic” people used a very scientific and analytical way of thinking about things that go wrong is a superb model for the kind of thinking that replaces this kind of stuck in bad times rumination produces.
People who learn the style of Dr Seligman’s optimistic people become less depressed. And people who get used to always using that thinking style rarely get or stay depressed after that.
For example, if something goes wrong, even if you made a mistake to produce it or it had very bad effects, there were specific reasons it went wrong. Some of these won’t happen at other times and, having learned from this experience, some you can prevent next time. This is accurate, reality based thinking. And, it allows you to understand that next time CAN be better or the problem can be prevented.
Depressed people don’t do that. They decide without looking at the evidence that it will always happen in the future. No wonder they tend to get and stay depressed.
5. People then and now who socialize often in small groups tend not to get depressed. But many people who are depressed are isolated to begin with or stay away from other people after they get depressed.
Dr Ilardi found that reversing that also tended to reverse the depression. So he had people volunteer in ways they cared about or using skills they were already good at or take an in person class they were interested in at a community college or spend just a bit more time more often with friends and with family they got along with. The people who did this got less depressed.
6. Get more and better sleep is his sixth step.
This one is harder for many people to do because of the demands on their time.
But there are some fixes that do work that may work for you.
Getting regular exercise on most days even if only for a few minutes produces better sleep and taking a much shorter time to fall asleep than is true for totally sedentary people.
During the workweek, from Sunday night to Friday morning, try to get up each day at the exact same time and do the best you can to be in bed by at least 6 hours before that time.
Do what you can to keep light out of your bedroom when you are sleeping. The darker it is, the better your sleep quality will be and the easier it will be to fall asleep.
Watch less than 15 hours of TV a week; & if something you want to watch enough to include in what you do watch is on after your bed time, unless it is breaking news of considerable importance, record it and watch it earlier in the day. Some people lose sleep to watch TV, these two strategies will minimize that.
II. Last week the emails I get from the Natural Health Dossier had some information from a researcher at Harvard showing that dramatically limiting omega 6 oils and supplementing with omega 3 did help depression.
This researcher also found that people who did not become less depressed at first from doing so quite often did when they simply added more omega 3 oils.
Here is some of the information from their article.:
A Harvard four-month study headed by Dr. Andrew Stoll found big gains in mood without drugs or medication by using omega 3 supplements with omega 6 cut-backs.
One Boston man who was in one of these studies is so happy with his results that he ditched his antidepressants and is sticking with omega 3 instead.
He said, "I'm fine today. Not only do I not feel blue, but [if depressed feelings] come, I am able to handle them."
Modern diets have become increasingly deficient in omega 3 which likely at least partly explains the huge increase in depression rates during the last 50 years.
Dr. Stoll has continued working with people who took the omega 3 supplements.
"I still see these people," says Dr. Stoll. "All continue to take omega-3 supplements. In my practice, I am in favor of it, so I advise people to take it."
The article goes on to say that plenty of research and medical experts support Dr. Stoll's work.
Joseph Hibbeln, MD, is the Chief of the Laboratory of Clinical Studies for the National Institutes of Health in Maryland said there's a direct link between omega 3 deficiency and depression.
"One hundred years ago we were eating much closer to our paleolithic diet," says Dr, Hibbeln. "We didn't have mass production of corn and soybeans or hydrogenation. But in the past 100 years, the balance of omega 6s to omega 3s has changed,"
The article adds:
“Our grandparents ate a diet that was high in omega 3 and low in omega 6. Dozens of studies show this ratio is vital to good health.
We grow seed oils, such as corn and soybeans," says Dr. Hibbeln. "And they have much higher ratios of omega 6s to omega 3s. Corn oil, for example, has a ratio of about 74 or 75 omega 6s to one omega 3."
Over the 100 years that our diets have reversed this ratio, depression rates have skyrocketed.
As further proof that omega 3 is critical to our mental health, countries that have high fish consumption have much lower rates of depression.
Dr. Myrna Weissman - an epidemiologist at Yale University - published related data in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Dr. Weissman is recognized as the world's [leading] expert in psychiatric epidemiology," says Dr. Hibbeln. "The quality of the data is the gold standard."
Dr. Weissman's research showed that people in countries with low depression rates ate much more fish than those in countries with high depression rates.
So how much omega 3 should you be getting?
"I start patients on one gram of EPA per day," says Dr. Stoll. "I go up on the dosage until an effect is seen on mood. I usually do not have to exceed six grams of EPA per day."
X * X* X* X*
My strong belief is that people who use all six of Dr Ilardi’s steps particularly including closer to 5,000 iu of D3 a day or more instead of less; learn Dr Seligman’s thinking style of optimistic people for when things go wrong; do the best they can on sleep and socializing; and who get abundant moderate and vigorous exercise each week will be far less depressed.
If they also completely avoid the oils high in omega 6 such as corn and soy and safflower and canola; eat less meat and far less fat from animals fed grains like corn and soy; and who take omega 3 supplements such as purified fish oil and DHA from algae, and eat wild caught fish high in omega 3 but low in mercury, virtually all depressed people other than those who have physical brain damage or Post Traumatic Stress disorder will stop being depressed.
Since taking more than a gram of omega 3 supplements a day can cause extra bleeding, working harder to cut omega 6 if you need more of an effect likely is a superior first step if you need more effect than taking a gram a day. But it’s nice to know that taking more omega 3 has been shown to help if you need it.
Labels: 6 proven ways to stop depression without drugs, instant depression relief, Natural Depression cures, Stephen S. Ilardi PhD, The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs
posted by David at 2:38 PM
3 Comments:
Yes! Finally someone writes about can i cure depression without drugs.
Here is my weblog: help me to resolve anxiety
This guy sounds worth going to or if he writes a book, well worth reading!
Dave Graham
Owner The Hypnotherapy works
Gloucester, United Kingdom
Health, Wellness and Fitness
Current Self-employed,
As the owner of The Hypnotherapy Works in Cheltenham, I am the primary therapist. My work entails helping people create the changes in their lives that they want. Whether it's overcoming a phobia, dealing with a cigarette addiction or confronting anxiety, the great thing about my work is it looks to the future for the solution (hence 'Solution Focused Therapy') rather than delving into peoples pasts.
Found two main things since I did this post.
A. The most effective therapists for stopping depression do three things: Their overall strategy is to help their clients build a worthwhile life. Sounds like Dave does this!
They help people be very specific and analytical when things go wrong. You can solve specific problems.
And, they help people look for solutions and be willing try things that might work and keep doing it!
Again, sounds like Dave does this.
B. They make sure their clients start and build up safely to doing vigorous exercises most days of every week AND take DHA and omega 3 supplements and either eat egg yolks from pasture fed chickens or take Non-GMO lecithin or choline supplements. (Brisk walks most days of every week can also help for those unwilling or unable to do other exercises.)
That combination has been shown to cause your body to release BDNF which repairs and rebuilds your nerves and brain cells. It preserves or restores the white matter that is the wiring from one part of the brain to another.
The combination of that kind of therapy with the Stephen Ilardi approach likely would have a 96% cure rate if tested.
It HAS been shown to stop PTSD!
This combination is proven to stop some kinds of depression which are caused by minimal brain damage
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