Depression – time to look for alternatives

A couple of studies revealed lately may give you new reasons to look for alternatives to antidepressants. The first showed that in most studies, the placebo did just as well as the drug in relieving depression. In the second, there was a 68 times greater chance of suicide if you were taking these drugs. Read on for some alternatives.

Address your Mind

The first study should give you heart. It basically means that you can alter your depression with your mind – your belief that you will get better is more important than what medication you take.

To take charge of your own placebo response, we teach our patients various mind/body techniques. An easy and very powerful one is EFT – emotional freedom technique.

EFT is performed by tapping on various acupuncture points while repeating a phrase. The phrase refers to the issue you are working on and what you hope to replace it with. As you tap, issues can just melt away. It is a very impressive technique. So powerful and so effective – it is revolutionizing the mental health industry.Here is a description for doing it on Dr. Mercola’s site.

Address your Body

Most depression is due to your liver – a problem called liver qi stagnation or liver congestion. When your liver is unhappy, you don’t necessarily feel our liver. The pain in your liver is usually project outward and you feel that the world is a miserable place.

From a more western perspective, the liver has the job of detoxifying the blood. Toxins come in through our diet – much of our junk food we eat needs to be cleaned out by the liver. Also, the liver is the organ that removes hormones from the body. When the liver is overloaded, it cannot do its job – becomes congested. Now your hormones are imbalanced, there are excessive toxins in your blood and you feel irritable, angered or depressed.

Even if you change to a perfect diet, the liver often remains congested for quite a time. Thankfully, there are some wonderful herbs to help your liver. Some are Xiao Yao Wan, Livitrit, Beta TCP, milk thistle. To learn more about your liver go here. To order some herbs for your liver, go here.

Warning

If you go off your antidepressants, work with your doctor and come off them gradually. These are dangerous drugs and you can get into serious problems with the withdrawal process. For more info go to drugawareness.org.