Depression

According to researchers at Ohio State University, continuous exposure to light can cause depression - at least, in mice.

Mice kept in a room 24 hours a day had more depressive symptoms than mice who were exposed to a more normal light/dark day cycle. 

Assuming that “depressive symptoms” observed in mice accurately translate into human behavior, this study does make sense.  After all, most people will say that it is much more difficult to sleep with the lights on or even in a room that is not totally dark.  When you cannot sleep for an extened period, the sleep deprivation can easily lead to depression.

A physiological theory as to why someone (or mice) cannot sleep in a lighted environment is that the hormone melatonin is nearly completely ineffective unless that person is in a completely dark environment. 

Melatonin is nature’s “sleep hormone”.  It is one of the few hormones (growth hormone is the other one) that peaks at night rather than the morning.  Almost all hormones are at their maximum in the morning.

Melatonin is also known for its anti-cancer properties.  People with low melatonin levels are sleep deprived, depressed and have higher cancer rates.  Melatonin is sold as a dietary supplement as a sleep aid and to minimize “jet lag” symptoms.

I few years ago, the recommend nightime dose of melatonin was a few hundred micrograms.  Two years ago, it became 1 milligram.  Now it is 3 milligrams to 6 milligrams.  Just like Vitamin D, the recommended amounts keep climbing.  I personally take 3 grams but am contemplating doubling it to the 6 mg dose.

One of the interesting things about melatonin is that it has zero effect in the presence of light.  You must be in a dark room for it to work - naturally or with a supplement.

One of the side effects is suppposed to be vivid dreams - not necessarily bad dreams, but just vivid dreams.  I have never experienced this nor know of anyone else who has.

So the two learning points from this article are to keep your room dark at night and take melatonin supplements.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

I love chocolate.  I will do most anything for chocolate.  Many of you are the same way.

It sure is nice when a “vice” like eating chocolate actually turns into a benefit. In next month’s issue of the Journal of Internal Medicine, there will be an article describing heart attack survivors who eat chocolate can cut their risk of dying from heart disease by threefold.  This benefit comes only with as little as inbibing two or three chocolates per week.

Earlier research had already inferred a positive relationship between cocoa and heart related conditions like lowering blood pressure.  Now we get to throw in increased survivor rates after heart attacks.

Since this is a depression oriented blog, we like to think of chocolate as a “happy” pill.  Depressed people love chocolate.  Sometimes it is one of the few enjoyable items in depression.  Of course, most people enjoy chocolate.  In fact, how many people on the planet don‘t like chocolate?

So go out there and eat more chocolate!  It will lower your blood pressure and save your heart from dying from a heart attack.  Plus you make friends with chocolate and get through depression much happier.

Read my book, take my recommended items, add a dose of chocolate and think about all the wonderful things you are giving your body.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

Beginning with the Bush Administration and accelerated by the Obama Administration, the US Federal Government (along with prominent backers with a huge financial interest) have been pushing a standardized mandate for doctors across the country to use electronic medical records (EMR).  Not just any EMR, but one that is established by a government panel.

In the recent “stimulus” bill, the government is pouring tens of billions of dollars into “health information technology (HIT)”, which is another way of saying mandated EMR.  There is an entire industry of policy wonks and data miners that are ecstatic and salivating at the prospect of combing through YOUR medical records once these records meet “their” standards that they will impose upon your US doctor.

“Finally we’re going to have access to millions and millions of patient records online,” said Blackford Middleton of the Harvard Center for Information Technology Leadership (Washington Post 5/16/09).

Electronic Medical Records sounds like a good idea, right?  Maybe not.
In private hands, doctors have been using EMR for many years.  Many of you have already noticed that your doctor never looks at you anymore.  He is too busy using a computer stylus while you are telling him your problems.  (Of course, many doctors never looked at you when they were using an old-fashioned ink pen).  But laptops and keyboards just make it even worse.

Oh, yes, EMR are very readable.  But they are templates and EVERYBODY can read them.

And I thought patient privacy was dead years ago.  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  Wait until Uncle Sam gets a hold of your medical records.  Part of the deal is that your records will be accessible online by any government agency for “official” purposes.  Heh, heh, heh…

Even if Big Brother only snoops “officially”, do you really want your very personal and private information available for anyone other than your doctor?  It was bad enough with the administrative people with insurance companies voyeuring your records, now you get policy wonks from Harvard and Washington perusing them, too.

The diagnosis of “depression” has implications outside of the medical office.  Mainstream doctors invariably prescribe anti-depressant drugs that cause numerous side effects.  Some of the side effects include sleepiness, lethargy, somnolence, lack of concentration and just slowing down mentation (can you say “zombie?”).

If you are takiing anti-depressants and kill someone while driving a vehicle is this tantamount to a DUI?  You bet it is. The DA will come after you and bring criminal charges.  If you get hurt on the job or hurt others, you may be included in a negligence claim.  Heaven forbid you are an airline pilot or police officer.  Imagine the implications.

I think that anti-depressant medications are all poisons.  Plus they don’t work.  If you read my book, you will find out that depression is not a deficiency of Paxil or Effexor, but rather a hormonal and nutritional deficiency problem that is rather easily solved oftentimes.

But in the scope of this article on EMR mandated and centralized by the US Federal Government, don’t even think of telling your doctor any condition that you might think could damage your career if these records fell into the wrong hands.  Now you must assume that dozens of people will scrutinize what you say.  What you say can and will be used against you.

In my practice, if a patient tells me some piece of information that I think is potentially volatile or politically a problem, then I just don’t write it down.  Many doctors are not so sympathetic nor do they realize the consequences of writing down information that a third party can use against you.

What makes EMR even worse is the fact that they force doctors to use their system even if they already have EMR that works just fine.  “Compliance” will be mandatory with the usual US fascist threats of fines and criminal charges for failure to comply that seem to follow almost all laws passed in the last 20 years.

The cost of “compliance” will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per practice. As the New York Times said on 5/28/09, “If the goal is to drive doctors out of independent practice, the steamroller that accomplishes it might to force them to use complex, costly electronic records.”
The USA has turned into a giant fascist regime. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t tell anyone what you really feel.  Don’t make eye contact.

It’s only going to get worse.

For those of you reading this who are not living in the US.  The other countries are following suit.  Your turn is coming.

My advice is to get your health advice outside mainstream medicine. Avoid prescription medications. Stay out of the hospital.  Stay away from surgeons, especially.  Laugh at the FDA.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.DepressionGoneForever.com 

Vitamin K is largely a “forgotten” vitamin.  Even in the natural health industry, I rarely hear any discussion of Vitaimin K. Just like my medical school days, Vitamin K was presumed to be good for clotting and had something to do with treatment of Hemophilia and a nice side story about the Russian Royal Family with Tsarevich Alexei maybe having some relevance with the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The other significance for Vitamin K is reversal of coumadin (rat poison) overdose, especially in surgical patients.
Other than that, Vitamin K is largely ignored.

Recent studies show that Vitamin K is composed of Vitamin K2 and K1.  Viitamin K2 is 6 times more potent than K!.  More importantly Vitamin K2 assists in the utililzation of calcium in bones and inhibiting calcium accumulation in the arteries.

A 2004 study showed that Vitamin K deficiency is associated with increased coronary artery calcification with (presumably cause and effect) increased heart disease related mortality.

Another study showed that Vitamin K2 supplementation may actually reverse hardening of the arteries.  This Dutch study showed a 50% reduction in atherosclerosis in rats after just 6 weeks of supplementation.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.DepressionGoneForever.com

Bottom Line Women’s Health is a magazine that bills itself as “The best of mainstream and natural medicine”.  My observation is that it is much more mainstream and very little natural.

The most recent February issue is a perfect example. Vincent Fortanasce, M.D. writes an article about “What You Can Do Today To Protect Your Brain Power”.  It mostly discusses Alzheimers Disease and various ways you might be able to avoid it.

His recommendations include getting more sleep, avoiding stress, cutting back on responsibilities, meditations, daily naps, using your left hand (if you are right handed), eating with chopsticks, learning new words, thinking pleasant thoughts, playing word games, walking 8000 steps, exercise and avoiding carbohydrates.

I think these are all fine ideas. Maybe it will help a little bit. But it doesn’t cut to the real problem - hormones (or the lack thereof).

Actually, he does mention hormones.  He says that by age 70, you are down 90% in all of your hormones. This is true. What does he recommend since you are on your last 10%? Exercise.

OK. Exercise is good. But not enough to make your body regenerate those insufficient hormones.

Whatever happened to Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement?  Mainstream medicine seems to get close and just doesn’t get it.  It really is very simple - and safe.

My theory on Alzheimer’s Disease is that it stems from two problems: longstanding dietary deficiency (a lifetime of the Western diet and its repercussions) and across-the-board hormone deficiencies.

Fix those two problems and no more Alzheimer’s Disease.  I would also venture that chronic illnesses and aging patterns would improve dramatically.

What does this have to do with depression?  The same two problems.  My e-book discusses the hormones in great detail but the diets that most people in the last 150 years have consumed are just deplorable.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.DepressionGoneForever.com

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

Writing on New Year’s Eve, I reflect on 2008 and what 2009 may hold.

The holiday season is always a lousy time of year for people with depression.  Suicide rates always peak this time of year.

Everyone understands the reasons for the holiday blues: This is supposed to be a time of joy and cheer, to be with family and rejoice, etc.  In reality, for many people, it is a time of loneliness and no family.  Or for those with families, oftentimes those families are dysfunctional and people dread the obligatory family get-togethers.

Of course, I maintain one of the primary reasons for depression is a lack of hormones.  Throw in environmental conditions as described above and people break down during this time.

We can’t change the time of year.  We can’t change your parents or your family. But we certainly can replenish the missing hormones and make everything different.  It is amazing how your mindset and perception of reality changes once the proper hormone balance is reached.

Happy New Year.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.PMScure.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

It is no secret that I do not like the FDA. The very existence of that Leviathan organization suppresses innovation and promotes the cronyism so prevalent in the Big Pharma-Mainstream Medical Complex we have today.

The entire concept of the Mainstream Medical Model is defined by waiting for some disease to occur, then hit it with a toxic, foreign chemical called a prescription drug in the hopes that it will improved.  More often the rule, and not the exception, is that the prescription drug is worse than the disease it was intended to treat.  History if full of examples beginning with blood letting to arsenic administration in vain hopes of improving one’s sickened condition.

The latest version is the treatment of depression with a broad class of prescriptive drugs called anti-depressants.  There are multiple classes of anti-depressants.  The details of those classes are not important, whether they be “tricyclics” or “SSRI’s (Selective Serotonin  Reuptake Inhibitors).What is important is that they universally fail to improve depression and worse, turn the user into a zombie.

What we promote is that depression is a condition that is caused by a biological deficiency, namely of a combination of a deficiency of hormones and certain essential nutrients.  When those deficiencies are replenished, then the depression goes away.

This model is the basis of Naturopathic Medicine. I am not a naturopath, but a medical doctor.  However, in my career through trial and error and ultimate rejection of the failed mainstream prescription drug model, this is the approach that makes the most  sense and most often is successful.

This is no different from early theories about vitamins, without which some notorious diseases can occur.  These are well known to any first year biology student.

The same approach applies to depression. And migraine headaches.  And PMS.  And infertility.  And I will venture on and say also applies to inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s Disease, etc.

Going further, heart disease and cancers are largely preventable as well.

This whole concept is rejected outright by my mainstream physician colleagues. Of course, they have been brainwashed, like I used to be by the education we received from medical school to the present.  Our physician education is controlled by the research largely sponsored by the Big Drug companies.

Don’t let NIH grants fool you. Research is controlled for the benefit of big drug companies so they introduce the next blockbuster drug.  Trillions of dollars (and Euros and Pounds Sterling) are at stake.

The latest version is the treatment of depression with a broad class of prescriptive drugs called anti-depressants.  There are multiple classes of anti-depressants.  The details of those classes are not important, whether they be “tricyclics” or “SSRI’s (Selective Serotonin  Reuptake Inhibitors).What is important is that they universally fail to improve depression and worse, turn the user into a zombie.

What we promote is that depression is a condition that is caused by a biological deficiency, namely of a combination of a deficiency of hormones and certain essential nutrients.  When those deficiencies are replenished, then the depression goes away.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.PMScure.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

One of my new recommendations for 2008 is the supplementation with Vitamin D. Practically everyone on the planet is deficient in Vitamin D.

One thing we are finding out recently is just how important Vitamin D really is. I was taught in medical school that Vitamin D is just good for keeping your bones strong and that all you needed was just a few minutes of brisk sunshine to get a sufficient amount for the day.

WRONG.

We are in a new world and Vitamin D is much more important than we previously believed and EVERYONE IS DEFICIENT in Vitamin D.

The science of Vitamin D has exploded in the last few years. Only recently has the enormity of this crucial vitamin been revealed in one blockbuster study after another.

For one thing, we are finding out Vitamin D is critical for containing inflammation. Chronic inflammatory conditions can lead to lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic pain, muscle pain, heart disease, depression, dementia and especially cancers.

One of the major recent findings on inflammation was the discovery of NF-kappaB. This NF-kappaB lives in the cytosol of cells and appears to be a major promoter of the inflammatory pathway. It is activated by injury, radiation, stress, allergens, viral infections, certain prostaglandins, toxins (like pesticides), low levels of omega fatty acids and, you guessed it, low levels of Vitamin D.

Vitamin D appears to be critical in cancer suppression. I won’t go in any more detail here but Dr. Damien Downing presents graphic evidence on the role of Vitamin D and suppression of cancer.

In summary, whether you have depression or not, I am recommending that everyone on the planet take 5000 units of Vitamin D every day, forever.  You can get it here: www.vitaminD5000.com
Andrew Jones, M.D.

www.DepressionGoneForever.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

www.PMScure.com

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.1-Menopause.com

One of my new recommendations for 2008 is the supplementation with Vitamin D.  Practically everyone on the planet is deficient in Vitamin D.

One thing we are finding out recently is just how important Vitamin D really is. I was taught in medical school that Vitamin D is just good for keeping your bones strong and that all you needed was just a few minutes of brisk sunshine to get a sufficient amount for the day.

WRONG.

We are in a new world and Vitamin D is much more important than we previously believed and EVERYONE IS DEFICIENT  in  Vitamin D.

The science of Vitamin D has exploded in the last few years. Only recently has the enormity of this crucial vitamin been revealed in one blockbuster study after another.

For one thing, we are finding out Vitamin D is critical for containing inflammation.  Chronic inflammatory conditions can lead to lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic pain, muscle pain, heart disease, depression, dementia and especially cancers.

One of the major recent findings on inflammation was the discovery of NF-kappaB. This NF-kappaB lives in the cytosol of cells and appears to be a major promoter of the inflammatory pathway. It is activated by injury, radiation, stress, allergens, viral infections, certain prostaglandins, toxins (like pesticides), low levels of omega fatty acids and, you guessed it, low levels of Vitamin D.

Vitamin D appears to be critical in cancer suppression.  I won’t go in any more detail here but Dr. Damien Downing presents graphic evidence on the role of Vitamin D and suppression of cancer.

In summary, whether you have depression or not, I am recommending that everyone on the planet take 5000 units of Vitamin D every day, forever.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

www.DepressionGoneForever.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

www.PMScure.com

www.AndrewJonesMD.com

www.1-Menopause.com

There is a big difference between bipolar and unipolar depression. Depression is bipolar when it is characterized by alternating episodes of deep depression with mania. Hence the name, “Manic Depression”.

Unipolar depression is the more common, but equally stubborn steady depression without the binge episodes of mania.

In my experience, unipolar depression is much easier to treat and make people feel better, especially women where it there appears to be a significant hormonal component. There is probably some hormone component with bipolar but our success is far better with unipolar.

This is why we are concentrating strictly on women with unipolar depression on the accompanying website. A woman with unipolar depression stands a good chance of complete relief under our program. Bipolar depression is a totally different story.

There is a new study involving the use of the motion sickness patch, Transderm Scopolamine for those afflicted with bipolar depression. Researchers published a preliminary review of some limited successes of the depression component back in October of 2006 and are still continuing the study. It will not be the panacea but it may be better than nothing.

In the meantime, for those women who suffer from debilitating unipolar depression, follow our recommend treatment plan outlining a multi-step hormone and supplement addition and most of our women get complete relief.

Andrew Jones, M.D.

Medical Director, Women’s Health Institute of Texas

www.DepressionGoneForever.com

www.Migraine-Headaches-Information.com

www.PMScure.com