Depression is one of the most common modern ailments, affecting about 6.7% of the U.S. population each year. Women are 70% more likely than men to experience depression.
Depression is a growing problem worldwide, although it is more common in the developed Western societies.
Kratom, a leaf from a tree growing in Southeast Asia, is increasingly popular as a D-I-Y remedy for depression. It has been used for centuries to improve mood and boost energy by the people of the Orient.
Here is how the National Institute of Mental Health describes the cause of depression:
“Most likely, depression is caused by a combination of genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors.”
Well, what does that mean? And how do we apply this information to help us get better?
Medical doctors and psychiatrists think depression is a brain disorder, caused by a chemical imbalance, which they postulate is most likely caused by our genetics. which they try to correct by adding synthetic chemicals.
Couldn’t this mysterious “chemical imbalance” be more plausibly explained by our diet’s lack of essential nutrients, our limited exposure to the sun’s rays, and extremely limited opportunities for physical exertion (which produces natural endogenous “feel-good” chemicals called endorphins).
What if depression is just a symptom that we are “living wrong“?
We are, after all, animals with need for regular exercise, real food of various kinds, social interaction, fresh air and sunshine, and an environment not contaminated with toxic chemicals. On all counts, modern life presents a very unnatural situation for citizens of modern, highly industrialized societies.
Our modern lifestyle and diet have changed dramatically in the past 100 years — Could this have an effect?
We get less exercise. Most of us work in sedentary situations. We drive everywhere, instead of walk. We are exposed to the sun less, which limits our absorption of Vitamin D, which has been found to be important for many reasons including making us less susceptible to depression.
Our food is mass-produced, grown on soils drenched with herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and depleted of nutrients.
Processing our food adds artificial flavors, colors, sugars, preservatives known to cause hormonal disruptions, depression, and cancer.
Our food still looks, smells, and tastes like Grandmom’s specialties, but the nutrition isn’t there like it used to be. Those missing nutrients are needed to protect our cells from the attacking environmental toxins and the endogenous waste products of metabolism called free radicals.
Without good nutrition, our intricate physical and mental functions will sooner or later break down as we are battered by the stresses of everyday life.
One of the signs that something is missing…that systems of our body are breaking down…is Depression.
Depression — major depressive disorders — couldn’t possibly be caused by something so easily remedied as our choices of food, drink, and recreation. Or could they?
Medical Doctors — who are mostly of the Allopathic school of thought — would like us to think that depression is a very complex and mysterious condition that only they can correct.
They are taught to diagnose this way for a reason. The reason being, all they have to sell us are drugs, tests, and (when all else fails them) surgery and barbaric technologies like Electro-Convulsive Therapy.
The Allopathic methods of treatment are a clever way of distracting the public from the simple, more effective, and low-cost methods we could use to treat our own depression.
So…We shouldn’t be surprised that most doctors warn us not to use herbs such as kratom to treat ourselves!
If the medical and psychiatric professions simply counseled us on the correct way to eat, live, and recreate, there would be little need for their services. They have little financial interest in teaching us how to stay mentally and physically healthy, so they pay little attention to causative factors.
I learned all about the failings of the way our medical industry treats depression from watching the clumsy attempts my mother’s doctors used to treat her.
My widowed mother, who was finally diagnosed with depression after years of her MD’s trying to find some drug in his arsenal to snap her out of what must have seemed to them like a psychosomatic ailment (probably fibromyalgia), was given tricyclic antidepressants and also ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) — a large jolt of electricity to the nervous system. After they got done with her, she was never the same.
Soon she was totally demented and didn’t know who I was. In 25 or 30 years of trying every method Allopathic medicine had to offer, the doctors’ methods of treatment only made her less healthy and more depressed.
This all happened almost 35 years ago. My inclination at that time was to encourage her to improve her nutrition, take vitamins, start drinking coffee again — most people’s biggest source of antioxidants — or even drink some red wine.
She wasn’t going for any of it, being the perfect “Church Lady” that she was.
Since then I have learned a lot about depression and the influence our poor nutrition and sedentary lifestyle play in bringing it about.
All of the mystery surrounding what causes depression begins to clear when we begin to look at the changes in our diet and lifestyle in the past 50-100 years.
Sugar has been added to nearly everything we eat! Why? Sugar makes things taste better, it gives us a quick psychological boost — which quickly goes away, leaving us wanting more — and it is a cheap government-subsidized filler.
Interestingly, sugar has been found in studies of brain wave activity to be as addictive as cocaine. This helps boost processed food sales as well as increasing the prevalence of depression.
Our consumption of refined sugars has increased from about one pound a year in 1900 to approximately 130 pounds a year today. The prevalence of depression has matched sugar’s growth curve.
Sugar has been implicated in the causation of diabetes, depression, cancer, and mental illness. But, rather than simply tell us firmly to avoid the sugar that is found in nearly all processed foods, the disciples of allopathic medicine are taught to sell us one or more other unnatural substances to help us cope with our unnatural way of nourishing ourselves.
Is it any surprise that this method of treatment leaves patients even more depressed?
So, what does kratom have to offer for ridding us of depression?
Kratom is more well-known as a pain killer, but it also contains the adrenergic alkaloid , mitragynine.
Mitragynine, among its other functions, stimulates the adrenal glands. Many people report that — unlike opioid painkillers — kratom not only relieves their pain, but it makes them feel like going for a walk, playing with their children or grandchildren, or other physical activities which are known to counteract depression.
Shy people have been seen to come out of their shell with the soothing, yet invigorating tonic of kratom running through their veins. Increasing sociability is another benefit of kratom that may reduce feelings of hopelessness and isolation.
Getting back into the play of life comes natural with kratom. This is very different than the heavily medicated, lethargic feeling produced by antidepressants — which by itself contributes to depression.
In this way, kratom contributes to the healing of depression. There is no doubt much more to be learned about HOW it relieves depression, but with the pharmaceutical industry giants showing little interest in funding research in this direction, we must satisfy ourselves with the evidence that kratom works.
We hear from users of kratom in private online chat groups how kratom has helped alleviate their depression and anxiety, after years of taking prescription antidepressants which were no help.
Kratom seems to foster a self-empowered mechanism of taking action to relieve a person’s depression — they change their habitual use of alcohol, change their diet in healthy ways, and give up unneeded medications that weren’t improving their depression.
Having more energy, thanks to kratom’s adrenergic action, they begin taking up physical activities that have been shown to help relieve depression equally as well as the antidepressant Zoloft did.
Kratom’s major alkaloid mitragynine “exerts an antidepressant effect in animal behavioral model of depression” in laboratory experiments. This seems to confirm the daily reports we read that formerly depressed individuals who switched from antidepressant drugs to kratom found a new enjoyment of life.
However it works — and it doesn’t work all the time for everyone — the testimonials we hear say that kratom does help prevent moderate and severe depression without the unhelpful side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs.
Many people worldwide are finding kratom to be the new superfood antidote to our diet-induced depression and diabetes epidemic.
Resources:
For top-quality regular and enhanced kratom, visit OnlineKratom.com
For Kratom Benefit Testimonials You Won’t See on TV (with several featuring depression relief)
http://www.naturalnews.com/037021_foods_depression_mental_health.html
http://www.naturalnewsblogs.com/high-fructose-corn-syrup-and-diabetes-what-the-experts-say/
http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Exercise-and-Depression-report-excerpt.htm
