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

by Kelly Brogan

Depression is merely a symptom, a sign that something is off balance or ill in the body that needs to be remedied.

And if you think a chemical pill can save, cure, or “correct” you, you’re dead wrong. That is about as misguided as taking aspirin for a nail stuck in your foot.

The medical literature has emphasized the role of inflammation in mental illness for more than twenty years.

That’s right: there has never been a human study that successfully links low serotonin levels and depression.

when patients on SSRI medication improve, it appears that their brains are actually overcoming the effects of antidepressants, rather than being helped by them. The drugs are interfering with the brain’s own mechanisms of recovery.

In other words, the brain’s natural functionality is assaulted by the medication to the point that it can become permanent.

when you feel terrible upon stopping an antidepressant, what you’re experiencing is withdrawal—not a return of your mental illness. And when you choose the medication route, you’re actually extending the duration of your depression.

As Mark Twain said: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they are fooled.” Make yourself the exception.

The notion that dietary cholesterol, such as saturated fat from beef, converts directly into blood cholesterol is totally false. Science has never been able to connect dietary fats of animal origin and dietary cholesterol to levels of serum cholesterol or risk for coronary heart disease. And when scientists try to track a relationship between serum cholesterol and egg consumption, they continually document that cholesterol levels in people who eat few or no eggs are often identical to people who consume lots of eggs.