A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

by Kelly Brogan

half (49 percent) of requests for drugs.31 And fully seven out of ten times doctors prescribe based on appeals made by patients who learned through their computers and televisions that they have an “imbalance” that must be fixed with a pill.32

The flagrant disconnect between the advertisements and scientific literature has been written about for more than a decade now, but you probably haven’t read about

The United States and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow advertisement on television for prescription drugs. In 1997,

Given these forces, along with the number of symptoms listed under antidepressant use, it’s really no surprise that more than $11 billion is spent each year on these medications.36 Pharmaceutical companies have more than six hundred lobbyists, and they finance more than 70 percent of FDA trials.37 They

Psychiatric studies funded by Big Pharma are four times more likely to be published if they report positive results. Only 18 percent of psychiatrists disclose their conflicts of interest when they publish data.

This time he leveraged the Freedom of Information Act to access unpublished studies and found that when these unpublished studies were included, antidepressants outperformed placebo in only twenty of forty-six trials. That’s less than half!

The challenge is that it’s human nature to feel better after doing something we think will make us feel better. But sometimes inaction is the best medicine.

A breathtaking 60 percent of patients are still diagnosed with depression one year into treatment, despite temporary improvement within the first three months.50

For example, ten years ago we didn’t even know that the brain had an immune system, and two years ago we didn’t know it had lymphatics—basic anatomy. We

But now we’ve identified microglia—billions of cells that play a specific role in managing inflammatory responses in the brain based on perceived threats from the rest of the body.56 And it’s not just about tinkering with chemical levels in the brain or the body for that matter.

That said, everything we will explore in this book speaks to the body’s tremendous and almost unstoppable resilience when properly supported.

Then, in 2011, they published a new paper including eighty-five citations proving that antidepressants make things worse in the long run.64 (So when your doctor says, “You see, look how sick you are, you shouldn’t have stopped that medication,” you should know that the data suggests that your symptoms are signs of withdrawal, not relapse.)

Although these drugs may offer relief in the short term thanks to the placebo effect, they lead to chronic, persistent depression that resists treatment when taken for an extended period of time.

A team of American and Italian researchers found that withdrawing from SSRIs was in many ways comparable to trying to quit addictive benzodiazepine sedatives and barbiturates.67 They also discovered that withdrawal symptoms aren’t fleeting; they

The authors analyzed fifteen randomized controlled studies, four open trials, four retrospective investigations, and thirty-eight case reports of SSRI withdrawal. Paroxetine (Paxil) was found to be the worst, but all the SSRI antidepressants were documented as causing a wide range of withdrawal symptoms from dizziness, electrical shock sensations, and diarrhea to anxiety, panic, agitation, insomnia, and severe depression.

The editorial also states that “With SSRI withdrawal, persistent postwithdrawal disorders may appear as new psychiatric disorders, in particular disorders that can be treated successfully with SSRIs and SNRIs. Significant

We must reject the serotonin meme and start looking at depression (and anxiety, and bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, and OCD) for what they are: disparate expressions of a body struggling to adapt to a stressor. There

It is from this space of acknowledged unknowing that we can truly grow.68

From my vantage point, this growth will encompass a sense of wonder—both a curiosity about what symptoms of mental illness may be telling us about our physiology and spirit and a sense of humbled awe at all that we do not yet have the tools to appreciate.

Exercise is an antidote to depression best used without antidepressants.

The New Biology of Depression What Gut Microbes and Silent Inflammation Have to Do with Mental Health

Depression is often an inflammation-driven condition, not a neurochemical deficiency disease. The most powerful path to our brain—and peace of mind—is through our gut.

Depressive symptoms are merely the manifestation of many downstream effects on hormones and neurotransmitters, but if we were to swim up to the source, we would find a river of inflammatory markers coursing by.

In fact, the relationship between depression and inflammation is so compelling that researchers are now exploring the use of immune-altering medications to treat depression.1

But only recently, thanks to better technology and large, long-term studies that reveal the impact of the relationship between immunity, inflammation, gut flora, and mental health, have we really begun to understand the relevant connections.4

Nor can we say that the same exposure causes the same illness in all people. According

Remember, not until 2015 did we even know that the brain has a

lymphatic system with a primary purpose of connecting it to the immune system.

When the trigger for inflammation becomes chronic, the effects can be directly toxic to our cells. Unlike the inflammation that follows bruising your arm or skinning your knee, this more silent, ongoing inflammation deep

The brain lacks pain receptors, so when we’re showing signs of depression we can’t feel inflammation in the brain like we do in a laceration or arthritic hip. Nonetheless, scientific research has clearly demonstrated over and over again that inflammation underlies the development of depression (and most other chronic diseases).

In other words, the inflammation may be the trigger of rather than the response to depression.8,9,10

But there’s also compelling literature suggesting that even stress, specifically psychosocial stress, can cause this inflammation by mobilizing immature immune cells called macrophages from your bone marrow to start the inflammatory process.12 So you

Cortisol, you’ll recall, is the body’s chief stress hormone; it’s also a buffer against inflammation.

lose their sensitivity to cortisol, they become resistant to cortisol’s message, and the result is prolonged inflammatory states. It helps to keep in mind that broadly speaking, the stress response largely dictates the inflammatory response and its perpetuation.

Specialized cells in the brain called microglia represent the brain’s immune hubs and are activated in inflammatory states.

One of the most important takeaways from the new information gained about the role of inflammation in depression, in particular a continuous state of low-grade inflammation and the stress signals associated with it, is that in many cases it tends to be generated from an unlikely source: the gut.

LEAKY GUTS FANNING THE FLAMES OF INFLAMMATION AND DEPRESSION

First, some basic anatomy. Your gastrointestinal tract, the tube that goes from your esophagus to your anus, is lined with a single layer of epithelial cells. It’s the largest mucosal surface, and this

intestinal lining has three main functions. It’s the means through which you obtain nutrients from the foods you eat. It prevents potentially harmful particles, chemicals, and organisms from getting into your bloodstream. And it’s the home to specialized ce...

Later on, we’ll see how ingredients like gluten, sugar and artificial sweeteners, casein proteins (dairy), and processed vegetable oils can activate the immune system and result in pro-inflammatory cytokines coursing through your system. But

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is not only a mouthful of a word, but it’s among the most villainous of biological threats. It flips on inflammatory pathways in the body like a switch. LPS is a combination of lipids (fat) and sugars, and is found on the outer membrane of certain bacteria that are naturally found in the gut, representing as much as 50 to 70 percent of the

LPS serves to protect these bacteria so they are not digested by bile salts from the gallbladder. LPS is not supposed to travel beyond the interior of the gut, however, but it can if the gut lining is somehow compromised.

Levels of LPS in the blood are in fact indicative of both leaky gut and inflammation in general.

Researchers around the world are finally looking at LPS as playing a pivotal role in depression.

And here’s where the science really shouts out to me: LPS not only compromises the gut by making it more permeable, it can also trespass the blood-brain barrier, bringing the pro-inflammatory message there as well.18

So far, it’s been estimated that there are 300 trillion bacteria in our large intestine and 100 trillion on our skin.19 The human body contains an estimate of 30-50 trillion cells, with an average of 100 mitochondria per cell. The

mitochondria are tiny structures within our cells (except red blood cells) that generate chemical energy in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate). They

The mitochondria are considered a third dimension to our microbiome and have a unique relationship with the microbiome in our guts.

These intestinal microbes participate in myriad different functions, from synthesizing nutrients and vitamins to helping us digest our food and preventing us from becoming obese. The good bacteria can also keep things in harmony by turning the spigot

off of cortisol and adrenaline—the two hormones associated with stress that can wreak havoc on the body when they are continually flowing.