Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - Dr. Ede: Low Carb Diet Superior to Antipsychotic Medications

Quote:

Originally Posted by cotonpal

I too spent about 2 decades suffering from major depression. No drug, and I tried them all, helped. One psychiatrist diagnosed me with "treatment resistant depression" which seemed to me as just another way of saying our drugs don't work but instead of saying we're clueless they said you're resistant. Diet was never mentioned.

A low carb diet cured me of depression. I have supplemented with magnesium for years and that probably played a role too although I didn't take it knowing of its role in depression. So many of these drugs mess with appetite, raise insulin levels, lead to weight gain and diabetes. It's part of the stupidity of conventional medicine and the grip of the pharmaceutical industry on the psychiatric profession. It's shameful.

I feel like you could be describing me with this story, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who fits this bill. I also spent two decades suffering major depression, and tried every drug available, and got labelled "treatment resistant". And then I went on a LC diet for weight loss and cured my depression. Bam.
(I wasn't even supplementing magnesium until much later, but I know from trial and error that it's the carbs -- particularly refined sugar -- that trigger my depression. I think we are all a little different in our triggers and fixes, but I firmly believe that dietary changes and targeted nutritional supplementation are far more effective than Big Pharma drugs.)

I get so angry now at Big Pharma and the way it has completely rewritten how we treat these illnesses. There are so many people suffering from mental health issues who are unable to believe that dietary changes will really help them -- or unable to enact those dietary changes in the current social climate we live in, because when you're depressed/anxious/messed up in the head it is SO much harder to do all your cooking and meal prep versus just buying prepackaged foods off the shelf.

I have many friends suffering from mental health problems and even after seeing how much it has changed my life, they are unable to apply that to themselves. And even though I hate seeing them suffer, I don't blame them for finding it difficult to fly in the face of everything their doctors and friends and family are telling them, not to mention the constant barrage of messages from society and the media. All I can do is tell my story, and hope that one day they will hear it enough from enough different sources that it gives them the courage to try it themselves. If enough people speak out, maybe we can enact change from the ground up, because it's never going to come from the top down.