Holiday & Winter Depression

A bit of research turned up that the holiday season can be difficult for people who have depression and other mental health problems.

Feeling lonely, financial stress, disruption in regular schedules and activities can cause stress for many people. Overeating sugar and junk food, and drinking too much alcohol are additional stressors.

Physical Health Problems Cause Many Mental Health Problems

The mental health industry (and likely your doctor) is entirely focused on “chemical imbalance” and “brain function” as causes for mental health problems. It’s a very rare doctor who will look for underlying physiological health problems before prescribing antidepressant drugs or talk therapy.

As a doctor, I talk to many people about depression and anxiety. Very few are even aware of a connection between their hormones, blood sugar, digestive system, and psychological state. Because these physical issues are among the most common cause of mental problems, it’s frustrating to see that millions are put on dangerous, addictive antidepressant drugs without any attempt at even checking to see if there’s an underlying health problem.

Mental stresses (such as holiday stress) can be more of a trigger than the cause of anxiety and depression. Typical mental health treatments such as medications or talk therapy mainly work as symptom relievers (at best).

As with any symptom treatment, if nothing is done about the cause of the problem, you must continue to treat the symptom indefinitely. Antidepressant drugs have serious physical and mental side effects. As reported by many of my patients, one of the worst is having little to no feelings about anything. Sure, the depression is less, but there’s no joy or interest either. Patients say their emotions are like cardboard cutouts, and they no longer fully experience their lives.

Another severe downside to antidepressants is that many are addictive and can be difficult or impossible to stop.

Talk Therapy?

Many of my patients have reported that talk therapy has helped them to better control their depression and anxiety.

Anything that helps is great unless that help hides a solution to the whole problem. Someone suffering from anxiety and depression might continue talk therapy for many years to keep their symptoms under control. If they had handled the underlying health conditions that caused their problems in the first place, they would no longer need the therapy and would be much better mentally and physically.

Take Away

Medicine is designed for the most part to treat health problems (symptoms) rather than look for underlying causes. If a doctor sees evidence of holiday depression, then a prescription for an antidepressant drug may seem like the correct treatment. The doctor won’t even think of addressing hormones, blood sugar or digestion, because medicine has virtually no treatments for any of these.

To summarize: If you feel depressed over the holidays and would like to feel better, you have these choices. Seems to me that the first one would be highly preferable!

A: Get evaluated and tested to find the underlying physical cause of your problem and get this resolved.  You may have holiday stress in the future, but you’ll deal with it much better and not have any lasting effects once January comes around.

B: Get on a possibly addictive drug with serious side effects that may prevent you from enjoying your life. Then, have to stay on this medication or go back on it whenever something in your life makes you sad and depressed.

C: Tough it out and try to act like nothing is wrong.

Please Share!

If you know someone with the “holiday blues,” please send them a link to this post. I’ve found that this information is unknown, and most people are convinced that something is wrong with their brain if they feel anxious or depressed.

Here’s a bright ray of truth and hope for the holiday season!

Patient Story:

Difficult Skin Conditions

Why are there no working solutions for difficult or stubborn skin conditions? Often the drugs prescribed don’t work at all, have severe side effects, or stop working after a while.

Skin problems can be itchy, burning, painful and embarrassing.  Many skin conditions don’t respond to medical treatment or keep returning, making this health problem incredibly frustrating.

My practice specializes in helping people to resolve complex, stubborn health problems that haven’t responded to conventional medical care, so I have had a lot of experience with skin conditions.

Many patients with skin problems first come to me after being on continuous antibiotics for a year or more or on steroid treatments for even longer. Both of these treatments can cause damage to health and rarely result in a cure for the skin condition.

New biologic drugs are often used for skin problems. These suppress the immune system and can have serious side effects. But skin problems can be so frustrating that they drive a person to try risky solutions.

Treating Symptoms Can Cause More Problems

It’s easy to understand and empathize with people who get their skin symptoms treated, even when the treatment may damage their health.

• Their doctor has no other solution and may believe that the treatments he knows are the only legitimate ones.
• Going out in public with a skin condition can be embarrassing and introverting.
• Skin conditions can be itchy, burning, and painful to drive one to distraction.

But what if the cause of your skin condition isn’t in or on your skin? What if it’s a systemic problem somewhere in your body, and the skin rash is just a clue to the real problem?

If you do nothing and “live with” your problem, or if you use drugs to suppress the symptoms, nothing is being done about the actual cause. This can result in worsening symptoms and new, seemingly-unrelated health problems.

Foundational Solutions: Your Gut

Inside your intestines or “gut” are trillions of microbes (bacteria). These microbes are integral to your health even though they aren’t part of your body.

Damage or imbalances to these microbes can result in out-of-control inflammation, immune system overreaction, allergies, autoimmune conditions, digestive problems, and nutritional deficiencies. Many skin conditions can be a result of gut problems.

In fact, in 28 years of helping patients with skin problems, I’d say that almost every case was related to or almost entirely a result of the gut.

A Plan for You

If you’re suffering from skin problems (or any issues related to the above list of gut symptoms), the first thing to do is test and find out what is happening.

I do this in phases: First, I reflex test and find out what is going on generally, then I use functional labs to test the details. This approach is a fraction of the expense of using high-priced functional labs to shotgun test everything.

Next, I use specialized acupressure therapies along with diet improvements and clinical nutrition (supplements) to work with your body step by step and help it to recover gut and immune health.

Commonly, your body may begin to show improvements in those areas stressed by gut problems: digestion, skin problems, brain fog, fatigue, sleep, and difficulty losing weight. Even many hormone problems will resolve once the immune system and gut are healthier.

Stop treating your skin symptoms and get your gut tested to see if the cause of your problem is more than “skin deep.”

Psoriasis Clears Up

How to Not Worry and Be Happy

The biggest barrier to overcoming anxiety, worry, and depression is often the idea that nothing can be done about it.

I will show you that this isn’t true.

Further, I’ll show you how to improve your mood WITHOUT:

• Spending any money.
• Engaging in meditation, thought exercises, mantras or exercise.

The Agreed-On Reasons for Anxiety & Depression:

I’ve found that people often think that stress causes anxiety and depression in their lives. Another popular idea is that anxiety and depression are from chemical imbalances in the brain.

One problem with these ideas is that you are unlikely to be able to do much about either one. Another is that the chemical imbalance theory has been thoroughly debunked as a marketing idea to sell antidepressant drugs.

Sure, stress may affect your moods, but it’s more likely that stress is making an existing problem worse rather than being the main cause.

The Actual Reasons for Anxiety & Depression:

If you’re suffering from mood problems, you may have physical issues or weaknesses with your body that you aren’t connecting with your mental condition. These could be digestive problems, blood sugar, or hormone issues with mild or common symptoms you may well believe are “normal.” Further, many of these problems may not be diagnosed as a disease by your doctor, so you may think you’re physically “perfectly healthy.”

However, when combined with mental stress, these physical weaknesses can overwhelm your body and trigger anxiety and depression.

Your mental problems may be caused by these physical health problems and made worse by the stress in your life.

You Can Test This Yourself!

Try the actions below, designed to reduce the physical stress on your body. In short order (a couple of weeks, if not sooner), you will most likely see a definite improvement in your mood.

Your Assignments:

Read the labels on food and stop eating junk, preservatives, flavor enhancers, and colors.

If you can’t pronounce the ingredients or don’t know what they are, you are eating stuff that IS NOT FOOD. Artificial sweeteners and flavors, preservatives, colors, texture enhancers, flavor enhancers—all this stuff can directly affect your brain. Further, many people develop allergies to these chemicals, which can cause severe brain fog and difficulty concentrating.

Your stress may be made worse by food allergies. Try avoiding these most likely allergic foods.

Allergy testing and a health improvement program to address allergies can reduce inflammation, allow natural weight loss, and help with everything from digestive stress to brain fog (see here for more information). While the testing and treatment of allergies can permanently reduce your problems, the do-it-yourself approach can still work wonders:
Try avoiding the foods below for four weeks. I recommend doing it one food group at a time to learn what to avoid and what you can still eat. If you notice that you can think more clearly, have a better mood, or that other symptoms improve (joint pain, digestive problems), quit eating that food group.

Avoid these foods in the order given:

• Gluten-containing foods (wheat, barley, rye).
• Dairy foods (milk and cream are the worst, cheese and yogurt are a problem for fewer people, butter is usually OK).
• Eggs

Stop eating refined sugar.

Your blood sugar is crucial to the correct operation of your nervous system. Eating refined sugar can make blood sugar swing from high to low and back, which can cause mood swings, depression, anxiety, and brain fog. Try this: Quit eating sugar for two weeks and see what happens. Most people who do this experiment never return to their previous sugar consumption.

AVOID Cake, cookies, candy, soda, ice cream, and other high-sugar foods.

Eat regularly, at least three times per day.

Skipping meals puts extra stress on your adrenal glands. Your adrenals are your body’s system for handling physical and mental stress. There are two things you can do to reduce adrenal stress:

Eat every four hours throughout the day, and eat within an hour of waking in the morning (your body runs out of blood sugar about an hour after waking and will force the adrenal glands to make more sugar if you don’t eat).

Eat some protein with every meal. Protein “buffers” carbohydrates and sugars and reduces stress on the adrenal glands.

Avoid Alcohol

Alcohol is often high in sugar, stresses your liver and immune system and can be very stressful to your body.

There is More that Can Be Done

It is not true that simple diet changes can eliminate most anxiety and depression. The actions recommended in this article are to demonstrate that some noticeable mood improvements are possible from something as simple as diet changes.

Every day in my clinic, I see dramatic improvements in my patient’s health and mood. Diet changes are a crucial part of my programs, but also essential is:

• Lab tests to determine areas and causes of stress.
• Clinical nutrition: exact supplementation gives the body the tools and replacement parts to heal.
• Targeted acupressure treatments to destress allergies and help the body balance hormones.

By structuring these actions into an individualized health improvement program, I can provide the support needed to help my patients regain their ability to heal.

As a person’s health improves, it’s normal to see their anxiety and depression improve or disappear entirely!

Patient Story:

Need More Energy?

Are You Fatigued? Take this mini quiz:

Y / N: “Feel tired or lack energy almost daily.”

Y / N: SEVERE “I’m tired more than once daily.”

Y / N: “I recall at least one recent time when I decided NOT to do some activity because I didn’t have the energy for it.”

Y / N: SEVERE “This happens almost daily.”

Y / N: “I plan around my energy level; I know what times during the day I may not have energy.”

Y / N: “I am living at less than my potential for both activity and enjoyment because I lack the physical or mental energy required.”

Known Causes of Fatigue

Several physical conditions are known to cause fatigue. The good news is that if you have one of these conditions, you’ll have an excellent idea of what is causing your fatigue. Not sure if you have one of these? Read on; there’s more about that.

1: Anemia. This creates a lack of oxygen in your blood. You may get dizzy when you stand up, have brain fog, and get heart palpitations.

2: Diabetes. Blood sugar fluctuations require a great deal of energy, leaving you with little left for your life.

3: Thyroid. The metabolism master hormone gland. It dictates how much energy will be manufactured by every cell in your body. If it is stressed, you may have brain fog, exhaustion, and lack of motivation.

4: Heart Disease. If your heart isn’t pumping blood normally you can be severely fatigued. The tiredness will get worse as you exercise. You may also get shortness of breath and swelling in your arms and legs.

5: Sleep Problems. Insomnia, sleep apnea or just bad sleep habits can build up and lead to chronic tiredness and feeling sleepy.

6: Menopause / Prostate Problems. Having interrupted sleep from frequent urination, night sweats, and other symptoms of low hormone levels can cause severe brain fog, memory problems, lack of energy, and general misery.

7: Depression. Severe stress that goes along with depression can cause hormone and neurotransmitter imbalances. You may have trouble sleeping or wake too early and can’t get back to sleep.

8: Long Covid. This one has a wide variety of symptoms that are not yet understood. Fatigue is a common long-Covid symptom.

Even if you can identify which of these problems is causing your fatigue, there’s still the question of what can you do about this?

Some of these problems have real solutions, but most of them have only long-term drug-based symptom management available.

In most cases, the drugs used for symptoms won’t do much, if anything, for your fatigue or lack of energy.

Unknown Causes of Fatigue

So, what if you’re exhausted but don’t have any of the above health problems? Now what?

You’re in the same situation as people with diabetes, thyroid, menopause, depression, and long Covid. No medical solutions to these health conditions would resolve the fatigue associated with them.

The only possible solution in any of these cases is:

Get tested to determine what factors are preventing your body from healing.

If you don’t do this, you will be guessing, trying one thing after another to see what might work, researching the internet endlessly, and finding little that actually helps.

A word of caution: Discovering the cause(s) of your health problem is just the first step. You’ll also have to do something effective to assist your body in regaining its ability to heal.

If you have a stubborn/long-term health problem, there is no single treatment, drug, supplement, or diet that will solve it.

Read that last statement again. It’s important.

You Don’t Need a Single Treatment; You Need a Guide and a Program

You need an entire program to work with your body, diet, and lifestyle to restore your life and health. You’ll also need a guide to work with you through the program and ensure you get complete results.

It doesn’t have to be hard. Often a health treatment program takes much less time than you may imagine.

I understand how you feel; it was my own frightening health experiences that inspired my clinic. I’ve been where you are myself!

I’ve been helping the most stubborn health cases for 30 years and have developed a comprehensive program that is individualized and unique to you.

Here is your plan:

1. Use the link below to go to my online health quiz.
2. Fill out the quiz and submit it.
3. We’ll call you and do a phone consultation to determine if it’s likely that we could help you.
4. You’ll get started toward feeling better and achieving your diet and health goals.

TAKE THE QUIZ! GET YOUR ENERGY (AND YOUR LIFE) BACK!

I Just Want To Feel Better!

Avoiding the Downward Health Spiral

Listen To Yourself

This hesitation in believing yourself about your own health results from a health care system that specializes in treating symptoms instead of health.

I recommend you listen to your body and believe what it tells you.

If You Feel Bad, Something is Very Wrong

If you take the right actions, you can reverse your declining health and resume a happy and fulfilling life.

If you don’t do anything effective about your health, your happiness can be reduced. Your health may continue to worsen, and you may eventually have a health problem that your doctor can diagnose. At this point, treatment will likely be long-term medication to control a symptom while your health continues to deteriorate.

The Spiral Down

Many people feel bad, can’t get help from their doctor, think that this is their lot in life and just suffer.

Some, however, put up a heroic fight to improve:

• First, you might go to your doctor. Doctors must diagnose you to do any treatment. If you can get no useful diagnosis, this is likely to result in either no help or a prescription for antidepressant drugs.
• If you discover that this is certainly not what you were looking for, you may research the internet for products to try. This often results in countless hours wasted while becoming more confused.
• You may use many different supplements, herbs, and remedies. Some of these may help and create hope, only to stop working after a while.
• Some people may search for professionals: naturopaths, chiropractors, and functional medicine doctors. In many cases, treatment will produce an improvement. But this can often be followed by a plateau with no progress and then a slow slide back into feeling bad.

The final result can be a person who feels bad and has convinced themselves that there’s nothing left to try. They may have come full circle back to thinking this is their lot in life.

You Don’t Need a Treatment; You Need a Guide and a Program

If you generally don’t feel well long-term, there is no single treatment that is likely to help. Your problem is probably more complex than a single solution from a drug, supplement, or diet.

What you need is an entire program to work with your body, diet, and lifestyle to restore your life and health. You’ll also need a guide to work with you through the program to make sure you get a full result.

This doesn’t have to be hard. It could be done in less time than you may be imagining.

I understand how you feel; it was my own frightening health experiences that inspired my clinic. I’ve been where you are myself.

I’ve been helping cases like yours for 28 years and have developed a comprehensive program that is individualized and unique to you. What I do isn’t a secret! You can go to my Information and Education Hub webpage and read as much as you like about what I do and how it works.

Here is your plan:

1. Use the link below to go to my online health quiz.
2. Fill out the quiz and submit it.
3. We’ll call you and do a phone consultation to determine if it’s likely that we could help you.
4. You’ll get started toward feeling better and achieving your health goals.

PREVIOUS FAILURES IN GETTING HELP WITH YOUR HEALTH CAN CREATE A FEAR OF TRYING ONE MORE TIME.

DON’T BE STOPPED. DON’T DELAY OR “THINK ABOUT IT.” TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW TO DISCOVER IF THIS IS THE SOLUTION YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR.

TAKE THE QUIZ!

Feeling So Much Better!

To Lose Weight… Stop Trying to Lose Weight

If you are frustrated (or beyond frustrated) by your inability to lose weight, I have some radical advice:

Stop trying to lose weight.

The usual actions for weight loss revolve around diet and exercise. Weight loss is supposed to happen if you burn more calories than you take in.

But in many cases, this has proven to be completely ineffective.

This can leave you frustrated, often trying one diet, supplement, or exercise program after another.

There Are Other Reasons for Stubborn Weight

Some people can lose weight by making a few diet changes and becoming a little more active (you may hate these people).

However, genuine cases of stubborn weight rarely succeed with calorie-based solutions because calories frequently aren’t the reason for the weight.

Less known but very common causes of stubborn weight:

• Food allergies
• Digestive problems
• Hormone imbalances
• Blood sugar problems

Many people can’t lose weight or stop gaining weight due to health problems that have nothing to do with calories or exercise.

Most attempts to lose weight are based on calories and exercise, thus maximum frustration.

An Essential Action

If you’ve had trouble with your weight and want to lose it and keep it off, you’ll have to be active. I have never seen a patient successfully lose weight without becoming active*. By “active” I mean walking each day, moving around during the day, and doing several hours of activity on weekends (yard work, hiking for an hour or two, etc.) on weekends.

If you have a health condition preventing you from being active, this may need to be improved to lose weight. Commonly my weight patients say they have no energy or motivation to be active. There are usually physical reasons for this which can be improved, resulting in good energy, better motivation, good activity level… and weight loss!

*Don’t start an exercise program without your doctor’s approval.

Cravings!

Often I’m asked, “What if I can’t control what I eat? I crave sugar, carbs, and junk food all day long.”

This can be a barrier to any weight loss. Happily, I researched and addressed this problem decades ago. I have specialized acupressure treatments that help the body reduce or eliminate cravings so you can control your food intake.

Weight Loss Formula:

1. Identify and resolve any health problems, such as hormones, allergies, etc., that will prevent weight loss (this is a worthwhile action for your happiness and future health, anyway).
2. Eat a healthy diet for your specific health challenges. For example, if you have blood sugar problems, you need to control your carbs and sugar more than most people.
3. If eating healthy is challenging, reduce your cravings and get on a diet consultation program.
4. Become (or continue to be) active daily.

You Don’t Need a Treatment; You Need a Guide and a Program

If you have been dealing with stubborn weight for a long time, there is probably no single solution to resolve this.

The reason for your weight problem is going to be more complex than a drug, supplement, or diet solution can handle.

You need an entire program to work with your body, diet, and lifestyle to restore your life and health. You’ll also need a guide to work with you through the program and ensure you get a complete result.

This doesn’t have to be hard. It could be done in less time than you may imagine.

I understand how you feel; it was my own frightening health experiences that inspired my clinic. I’ve been where you are myself.

I’ve been helping cases like yours for 28 years and have developed a comprehensive program that is individualized and unique to you. What I do isn’t a secret! You can go to my Information and Education Hub webpage and read as much as you like about what I do and how it works.

Here is your plan:

1. Use the link below to go to my online health quiz.
2. Fill out the quiz and submit it.
3. We’ll call you and do a phone consultation to determine if it’s likely that we could help you.
4. You’ll get started toward feeling better and achieving your weight and health goals.

PREVIOUS FAILURES IN GETTING HELP WITH YOUR WEIGHT AND HEALTH CAN CREATE A FEAR OF TRYING ONE MORE TIME.

DON’T BE STOPPED. DON’T DELAY OR “THINK ABOUT IT.” TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW TO DISCOVER IF THIS IS THE SOLUTION YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR.

TAKE THE QUIZ!

The Incredible Shrinking Woman!!