By managing symptoms with synthetic man-made drugs, you may feel bette
r for a while. But once you stop those drugs, you will end up with more symptoms than you started with.
by Jim Farris
I experienced this firsthand.
When I was on antidepressants, I felt better initially.
But then something just didn’t feel right.
I started suffering from cognitive decline, something I hadn’t experienced before.
I eventually got fed up with the medication and tried getting off of them.
But then I felt remarkably worse – much worse than I did before starting the medication.
Doctors simply told me I was experiencing a relapse of my depression and anxiety.
But that couldn’t be it, because not only were my symptoms much worse, but I also had new symptoms – symptoms I didn’t experience before I went on medication.
Studies show that pharmaceutical drugs can deplete your body of critical nutrients through multiple mechanisms, including increased excretion of nutrients, and impaired digestion, absorption and storage of nutrients. Over time, nutritional deficiencies can develop. And these deficiencies can cause additional symptoms and increase side effects. In fact, many drug “side effects” are simply nutritional deficiencies.
This is clearly a problem because, as I’ve discussed before, nutrient deficiencies can be one of the main causes of mental illness. Being prescribed medication which then further depletes nutrients from your body will make you worse. It’s an epidemic that seems to be ignored by the conventional medical system.
You may even develop new symptoms or side effects months or years after starting a medicationbecause it takes time for nutrients to be depleted from your body. So both you and your doctor may not make the connection between the original medication and new symptoms.
These additional symptoms and “side effects” are often diagnosed as a new disease, leading to a new prescription, which further depletes nutrients.
So it’s clearly a downward spiral where you could end up being on multiple medications.
At my worst, I was on four psychiatric medications. Thankfully I’m off them all now and very healthy.
But this article discusses the seven key nutrients that are commonly depleted by psychiatric medication, and how you can replenish them, minimize side effects and feel better.
Your drug package insert won’t list these deficiencies, and your doctor is definitely not aware of them.
Magnesium is a vital mineral that participates in more than 300 biochemical reactions in your body. This includes neurotransmitter, enzyme, and hormonal activity, all of which can have a huge effect on your mood and brain function.
Interestingly, these symptoms sound very similar to the list of side effects of many common common psychiatric medications.
And research has shown that the following psychiatric medications deplete magnesium from your body, increasing the likeliness of developing a deficiency:
Inadequate magnesium levels contribute and worsen many neuropsychiatric problems. This includes depression, anxiety, insomnia, seizures, ADHD, pain, schizophrenia, irritability, premenstrual syndrome, drug abuse, and short-term memory and IQ loss. Case studies have shown that patients with schizophrenia or major depression who have attempted suicide had significantly lower levels of magnesium in their cerebrospinal fluid.
Maybe doctors should consider prescribing magnesium – something that actually gets to the root cause of these conditions – rather than giving out medications that cover up symptoms and actually make the underlying condition worse. Just a thought.
Besides supplementation, you should make sure to eat lots of food with magnesium, including avocados, almonds, pumpkin seeds, swiss chard, spinach, dark chocolate, halibut and beets.
Melatonin is a hormone released by the pineal gland, a small gland in your brain. Melatonin helps control your sleep and wake cycles (circadian rhythm).
It is critical for deep and restorative sleep, which is necessary for optimal brain and mental health.
Yet many psychiatric medications can deplete your supply of melatonin, increase your need for melatonin, or interfere with the activity of melatonin. This can lead to insomnia at night and fatigue during the day, which are common side effects of psychotropic medication. You may also experience frequent waking throughout the night.
Here are some of the drugs shown to affect melatonin:
If you take one of these drugs, you should consider supplementing with melatonin every night. If you don’t take medication, it is still a safe and effective way to fall asleep and stay asleep throughout the night. You can get melatonin here.
You can also consider taking this sleep supplement. It contains magnesium and a number of natural compounds that increase the production of melatonin naturally. You can use the coupon code FIVE$45496275 for a 5% discount.
Lower levels of vitamin B2 have been found in people with depression, so giving them psychiatric medications can actually make them feel worse in the long run.
To help yourself, you can supplement with Vitamin B2.
Vitamin B12 and folate are essential B vitamins that play a key role in methylation, one of the most important processes in your body and brain for optimal energy and nervous system function.
Yet, instead of looking at folate and B12 levels in the blood, doctors often prescribe all sorts of psychiatric medications that have been shown to deplete folate and B12, including:
Anticonvulsants and Mood Stabilizers, including Lithium (Lithobid), Phenytoin (Dilantin), carbamazepine (Tegretol), Primidone (Mysoline), Methsuxamide (Elontin), Valproic acid (Depakote), topiramate (Topomax) and Gabapentin (Neurontin)
B12 and folate deficiency can lead to an inability to methylate properly and increased homocysteine levels. This can worsen your depression, irritability, fatigue, confusion and forgetfulness.
If you decide to supplement with folate, avoid synthetic folic acid. Instead, you should take a biologically active form of folate (methylfolate).
I take methylfolate. It’s the most effective supplemental form of folate. Many people, including myself, have genetic mutations in the enzyme that produces l-methylfolate in the body. Folic acid is a waste and can actually cause harm if you have this genetic mutation.
Methylfolate also helps produce SAM-e in the body, which can help fight depression and improve your mood.
If you decide to supplement with B12, you should avoid the semisynthetic version (cyanocobalamin) and take the methylated form (methyl-B12), which is better absorbed.
Both methyfolate and methyl-B12 are included in this B complex. Or you can take them separately.
Good dietary sources of natural folate include leafy greens, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries. B12 is found primarily in animal foods, and beef liver is a really good source.
More
Here are some more nutrients that have been shown to be depleted by psychiatric medication. Reduced levels do appear in the research – just not as consistently as the nutrients above – so supplementation should still be considered:
Vitamin D – Antidepressants, Benzodiazepines, Antipsychotics, Mood Stabilizers
The bottom line is that the medication you may be consuming to manage your mental health actually reduces nutrient absorption, and can rob your body and brain of essential vitamins and minerals. This can lead to unwanted side effects and declining health.
If I had simply been prescribed these nutrients, I wouldn’t have needed medication. Instead, I was given a prescription that made my underlying deficiencies worse, and dug me into a deeper mental health hole.
If you have to take a prescribed drug, you can offset many of the side effects and experience much better health by supplementing with the above nutrients.
So why isn’t this information passed on to patients who are taking psychiatric drugs? Because unfortunately, almost all doctors are unaware that medications can deplete nutritional reserves.
So for now, you’ll just have to be aware of drug-nutrient depletions yourself.
Kishi T, et al, “Inhibition of myocardial respiration by psychotherapeutic drugs and prevention by coenzymeQ,” Biomedical and clinical aspects of coenzyme Q, Yamamura Y, Folkers K, and Ito Y, eds, Elsevier/NorthHollandBiomedical Press: Amsterdam, 1980, vol2, 129-154.
