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"For example, the newer antidepressant drugs, like Prozac, have never been shown to work any better than the older tricyclic antidepressant drugs. Sometimes new drugs are found to have side effects that are far more dangerous than those of the older alternatives, but typically when this happens, companies resist admitting it for as long as possible. For instance, the painkiller Vioxx was a second-generation drug that was never shown to be a more effective pain reliever than the old painkiller, Advil, which could be purchased for a fraction of what Vioxx cost and over the counter." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"In March 2006, the agency published its findings and concluded, "Use of antidepressant drugs in pediatric patients is associated with a modestly increased risk of suicidality."15 This is simply false. For the signal to show up in clinical trials, it had to be much more than modest. The report itself acknowledged that the signal from the clinical trials was "robust."16 In addition, the risk the FDA assessed took place in closely monitored, highly selective, short-term clinical trials, and therefore will be much higher in routine clinical use." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.) "The early 1990s were in some ways a period of enlightenment in regard to the dangers of antidepressant drugs to brain, mind, and behavior. Shortly after Prozac was released on the market, a flurry of clinical reports warned about compulsive suicidality induced by it. Innumerable press reports came out linking Prozac to violence. Hundreds of lawsuits were being brought against Eli Lilly and Company, the manufacturer of Prozac, and I would become the one medical and scientific expert responsible for doing the background scientific research for all of the combined cases." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.) "Up to 10 percent of the population have a genetic lack of liver enzymes necessary for the effective breakdown of many medications, including the newer antidepressant drugs such as Prozac.17 These people are called "poor metabolizers." They are more likely to suffer adverse drug reactions because the drug concentration builds up in the bloodstream when it cannot be destroyed or eliminated efficiently. If medicine were conducted on a more rational basis, all patients would be tested when possible in advance of taking psychiatric drugs—or any drugs?" - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.)

"In controlled studies, it was found consistently to be as effective as the antidepressant drugs that were available. Five hydroxytrypto-phan (5-HTP) is another natural compound, which is a little bit closer to serotonin. It seems to be even more effective than tryptophan. The late Dr. Robert Atkins distinguishes between two types of depression, each with its respective type of therapeutic approach. " - Gary Null and Amy McDonald, The Food-Mood Connection: Nutrition-based and Environmental Approaches to Mental Health and Physical Wellbeing (Get the book.) "Sexual side-effects of antidepressant drugs cause distress, strain relationships, impair quality of life and reduce compliance with treatment. Enquiring routinely about side-effects, especially sexual side-effects of antidepressants, would help to improve compliance with treatment. REFERENCES Ellison, J. M. & DeLuca, p. (1998) Fluoxetine-induced genital anaesthesia relieved by Ginkgo biloba extract. Journal ofClinical Psychiatry, 59, 199-200. King, V. L. & Horowitz, I. R. (1993) Vaginal anesthesia associated with fluoxetine use. American Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 984-985. Measom, M. O." - Gary Null and Amy McDonald, The Food-Mood Connection: Nutrition-based and Environmental Approaches to Mental Health and Physical Wellbeing (Get the book.)

"It is estimated that seven million Americans suffer from depression each year and more than eight million Americans take antidepressant drugs. Recommendations include determining what factor(s) are contributing to the depression, eliminating allergens, adding regular physical exercise to a daily routine, and seeking psychological support or counseling." - Tom Bohager, Everything You Need to Know About Enzymes to Treat Everything from Digestive Problems and Allergies to Migraines and Arthritis (Get the book.)

"Black had not simply demanded one of the expensive new antidepressant drugs or sleeping pills, neither of which would have unburdened him of his real-world problems. Mostly he needed to be heard and understood—and he needed more sleep and exercise and time to work through his business difficulties. I was glad that he trusted me enough to let me help. The difference between this visit and his earlier one illustrated the difference between commercially distorted medical care and old-fashioned (yet up-to-date) primary care." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"Some of these antidepressant drugs have been shown to induce weight loss and are prescribed specifically for this purpose. However, the effects of these drugs on weight are highly variable from drug to drug and from person to person: A drug that may induce weight loss in one person may cause weight gain in another. One of the antidepressants that has been most studied for weight loss is the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluoxetine, or Prozac." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"A University of Georgia study found that three-quarters of people prescribed antidepressant drugs receive the medications for a reason not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.19 This practice is legal and intended to give physicians the flexibility to prescribe the drugs that are best suited to their patients' needs. The problem is that "most off-label drug mentions have little or no scientific support," said study co-author Jack Fincham, of the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy. "And when I say most, it's like 70 to 75 percent." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"In this country we're spending upward of $12 billion a year (2004) on antidepressant drugs, and the current thought is that 2 5 percent of people are misdiagnosed or overdiag-nosed as depressed. Imagine what could be done with a little vitamin like B6. Vitamin B12 for Aging Complications IN HIS BOOK Your Nutrition Prescription, H.L. Newbold, M.D., tells the story of a seventy-six-year-old German woman who came to see him. She had been crying uncontrollably for six months and was unable to function fully because of her state." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.) "For some people, 5-HTP may perform equally to or better than standard antidepressant drugs and in most cases, without side effects. One study compared 5-HTP to fluvoxamine, an SSRI like Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. In the study, subjects received either 5-HTP (100 mg) or fluvoxamine (50 mg) three times daily for six weeks. More patients felt better after using 5-HTP than fluvoxamine, and 5-HTP was quicker acting than the fluvoxamine. And in one other study, patients who were unresponsive to other antidepressant therapy showed significant improvement when using 5-HTP. Then there are headaches." - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

"The recommendations conclude with a discussion of antidepressant drugs: 6. The recommendation for antidepressants is only when the depression persists after psychological and lifestyle interventions have been tried. "Antidepressants are not recommended for the initial treatment of mild depression, because the risk-benefit ratio is poor." With that last sentence, the era of cosmetic and frivolous psychophar-macology has started to come to an end, and the Serotonin Empire underwent an attack that shook it at its very foundation." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.) "Arif Khan, a psychiatrist and researcher in Washington state, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the FDA clinical trial database for antidepressant drugs, which included Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Serzone, Remeron, Wellbutrin, and Effexor. Khan examined 45 trials, involving about 9,000 patients, and found there was an average symptom reduction of 44 and 48 percent in patients treated with the drugs, and 36 percent with patients treated with placebo after eight weeks of treatment. At the end of the day, an unimpressive difference, unworthy of the hype." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"Currently the only FDA-approved indication for this preparation is depression, but this drug is much more expensive than other antidepressant drugs available. So your insurance company will balk at paying for this drug, but it may be possible if you have both depression and CFS or FM. If you fall into this group, you should discuss the possibility of this treatment with your doctor. We know your depression will improve; my hope is that your medical symptoms will too. Obviously the best way to learn this is via an appropriate clinical trial." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.) "Duloxetine is a twenty-first-century version of an older class of antidepressant drugs called tricyclics, but with substantially fewer side effects. Like the tricyclics, duloxetine interferes with the uptake of both serotonin and norepinephrine and is therefore known as a serotonin/nor-epinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI). Duloxetine is the first in that class of drugs shown by double-blind placebo-controlled trials to have two separate and independent actions: pain relief and depression relief." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"Unlike antidepressant drugs or manufactured synthetic hormones, bio-identical hormone therapies cannot be patented. Therefore, there are no company sales representatives going into physicians' offices to educate them about the causes and dangers of estrogen dominance. Because of this ignorance within the medical community many women and men continue to suffer needlessly. Worst of all, when a woman complains of even the slightest symptoms of estrogen dominance, most conventional medical doctors recommend a prescription of synthetic estrogen replacement." - C. W. Randolph, M.D., From Belly Fat to Belly FLAT: How Your Hormones Are Adding Inches to Your Waistline and Subtracting Years from Your Life (Get the book.)

"For years physicians thought that antidepressant drugs, such as Prozac, work primarily by improving cellular regulation of the neurotransmitter serotonin. But research increasingly points to another mode of action: that at least some antidepressant drugs actually stimulate the synthesis of new DNA, brain cells, and connections between brain cells, a process called neurogenesis. Prozac and other antidepressant drugs, as well as the herb St. John's wort, begin boosting serotonin levels almost immediately. By doing so, they should rapidly relieve depression." - Jack Challem, Feed Your Genes Right: Eat to Turn Off Disease-Causing Genes and Slow Down Aging (Get the book.)

"Many of the antidepressant drugs block the serotonin transporter, the norepinephrine transporter, or a combination of the two. The original drugs, the tricyclics, had a more general effect on blockage of neurotransmitter uptake. EARLY TREATMENT The first medication found to work for the treatment of depression was discovered by accident. A drug called imipramine (Tofranil), developed in the 1940s for the treatment of tuberculosis, helped a number of the depressed patients on the tuberculosis wards in terms of their depression (if not their tuberculosis)." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"The results of all the studies—published and unpublished—showed that of every 1000 people with depression treated with one of the new antidepressant drugs, 4.6 more committed suicide each year than would have if they had been treated with a placebo. Another, more specific example of bias in the research results available to doctors is the "evidence" showing that Paxil is safe and effective for depressed adolescents. A study published in 2001 showed that depressed adolescents were significantly more likely to improve when treated with Paxil than when treated with a placebo." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.) "When all the evidence is considered, it turns out that the new antidepressant drugs are no more effective than the older tricyclic antidepressants (the classic being amitriptyline, brand name Elavil). More important, the new antidepressants were found to be not even 10 percent more effective than the placebos: Symptoms of depression improved by 30.9 percent in the people who took the placebos; by 40.7 percent in the people who took the newer antidepressants; and by 41.7 percent in the people who took the older antidepressants." - John Abramson, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (P.S.) (Get the book.)

"The result is that the newer antidepressant drugs that do this—such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and Effexor—have been dispensed to well over six million people. Because of your inherited sugar sensitivity, you may find the symptoms of low serotonin familiar. Brain Chemicals: Beta-endorphin Beta-endorphin is the brain chemical that's gotten the least attention in the diet, depression and addiction books. That's very strange because it is immensely powerful and can drive you inexorably toward deeper addiction—or raise your spirits to a level of health that you may never have known before." - Kathleen DesMaisons, Potatoes Not Prozac: Solutions for Sugar Sensitivity (Get the book.)

"Mosholder discovered evidence that antidepressant drugs (serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)), including Paxil, Zoloft, and Effexor, could increase the risk of suicidal thoughts in children.135 FDA had assigned Mosholder the task of evaluating claims of an association between antidepressants and suicidal behavior in children in June of 20 03.136 Dr. Mosholder found evidence of increased risk of suicidal thoughts principally upon a review of twenty-two pediatric trials, involving 4,250 children." - Jonathan W. Emord, The Rise of Tyranny (Get the book.)

"Although Saint-John's-wort is generally well tolerated, it can conflict with standard antidepressant drugs, so the two should not be combined. Check with your MD or naturopath for dosage recommendations. Saint-John's-wort is widely available at health food stores and drugstores in the US. Mustard Elevates Mood I t is far too , simplistic to say that flower essences can cure depression or even severe episodes of the blues, but mustard essence has been shown to lift the moods of many people who feel inexplicably sad or overtaken by malaise." - Bottom Line Books, Uncommon Cures For Everyday Ailments (Get the book.)

"Even the best antidepressant drugs don't cure depression.9 And there is more evidence that inflammation can cause depression. A new technique called vagal nerve stimulation is very helpful in depression.10 The vagus nerve is your calming, relaxation nerve. When you take a deep breath, meditate, or do yoga, the nerve is activated and it releases acetylcholine, which reduces the production of inflammatory cytokines. There may be many reasons deep breathing and relaxation work, but certainly one of them is the fact that inflammation is reduced." - Mark Hyman MD, The UltraMind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First (Get the book.)

"And do not take Saint-John's-wort with conventional antidepressant drugs because they may interact. SEXUAL CONCERNS See also Sexual Matters, page 46 LOW LIBIDO • A Ginseng Way to Go There are two different kinds of popular ginseng root (American and Oriental), plus myriad variations in quality and strength of formulation—which might explain why so much of the literature on herbal aphrodisiacs is sketchy. One of the reasons it is so difficult to measure herbal (and other) effects on sexuality is that sex is so...subjective. What constitutes good, bad or so-so sex varies Hi,,, ." - Bottom Line Books, Uncommon Cures For Everyday Ailments (Get the book.)

"This fact has encouraged a number of authors to recommend eating sweets—in particular chocolate—as the ideal alternative to antidepressant drugs. I strongly disagree. While chocolate does raise serotonin levels, it is not the best solution for raising your serotonin levels and relieving depression. Chocolate may work for someone else, but not for you. You are sugar sensitive. When you eat chocolate you will get a rise in your serotonin level, but at a huge price. Chocolate will backfire on you by increasing your craving for sweets and reinforcing your addiction." - Kathleen DesMaisons, Potatoes Not Prozac: Solutions for Sugar Sensitivity (Get the book.)

"Carl Elliott, physician, bio-ethicist, and author of Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream, wrote in 2003: "The pharmaceutical industry is now the most profitable industry in America, with 18 percent annual profit margins, and its most profitable class of product is the antidepressant drugs."9 Which would mean that antidepressants have been the most profitable product in the most profitable industry in the most profitable country in the world. Psychiatric drugs are the number-one therapeutic category among the world's top two hundred prescription medicines." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

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