by threadbear » Sun 19 Nov 2006, 16:12:06
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('uNkNowN ElEmEnt', 'I') often wonder how much of psychiatric illness is actually induced by our crappy eating habits, processed food and soil depletion. Theres a book I read recently called The Mood Cure... and re-read and re-read.
One of my girls was diagnosed as being ADHD, I was reading the report of the doctors findings this summer while watching her zone in to the tv, sitting very still and quietly and seeing her twin who was trying to watch the same show, squirm, twitch and talk 5 miles an hour. And I thought that if they call the calm one ADHD what would they diagnose the active one as....
So three weeks ago, I put them both on L-tyrosine like this book said and the active ones teacher reported amazing changes in my daughters behaviour... makes you wonder.
Very interesting, UE. Something else that seems to be routinely overlooked in the treatment of depression, is sunlight exposure. I bet you could parallel on a graph the incidence of depression in the general population, with the emphasis on avoiding direct sunlight, that dermatologists have been pushing for the last couple of decades.
It seems that people have taken the avoidance of sunlight to extremes and are actually doing themselves harm, particularly in Northern climates where exposure to sunlight in winter is particularly difficult to achieve.
Reduced exposure to sunlight is being linked to inadequate levels of vitamin D, in modern Northern society. Inadequate vitamind d is being looked at as a factor in rising incidence of breast cancer, reemerging nutritional diseases like rickets, and also implicated in Multiple Sclerosis. Mega doses of vitamin D look like they could become promising therapy for MS.
Depression may be nature's way of signalling people to get out in the sun more. What if depression is a psychiatric precursor to diseases that eventually go on to devastate the body?
Years ago I read a book about light's effect on mating behaviour. Exposure to sunlight is key here. Many animals don't come in to season without it. I think of the epidemic of sexual apathy, particularly among women and think this may be a factor for humans too. People's lives are just plain gloomy, in many ways, and made doubly so by lack of light exposure.