Postpartum Depression
Depression, Panic & Postpartum: Let’s take a closer look at this picture. "Postpartum" is the Latin word for "after childbirth." It is understood to denote a period of time directly after childbirth. Surely this time period is limited—some references say that it can be up to six weeks—but it is definitely temporary. Yet this woman is being told (via her current diagnosis) that she is still “postpartum” after four years. The word “postpartum” doesn’t match the present timeframe—four years after giving birth.
Looking deeper into her “diagnosis,” "depression" can be defined as the lowering or reducing of something. Panic on the other hand describes frenzy. Are these one and the same? No, they are opposites. She has been given a "diagnosis," a “label” of "postpartum depression" and is being medicated with a drug that is supposed to be an antidepressant (Effexor®), but she has been experiencing what was labeled as “panic attacks.”
What is going on here? Is this drug depressing the “panic attacks,” elevating/pushing her out of the “postpartum depression,” or just making everything less noticeable without fundamentally changing anything at all about her condition? If so, is this her only choice? What about her future?
This drug is only an example of the whole class of drugs similar to it called “serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors.” They act by inhibiting normal processes that happen on a microscopic level in the brain. A quick look at the manufacturer’s website and you’ll notice a strong warning that states “Patients who are started on therapy should be observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality [sic], or unusual changes in behavior.”(1) There are many other unwanted side effects of this particular drug. Some of these side effects include physical and psychological dependence, anxiety and agitation, insomnia, bizarre vivid nightmares, nervousness, and sleepiness.(1,2) These are exactly some of the symptoms this woman is presently experiencing.
Awareness: I asked this woman a very important question to increase her awareness. "If you were to stop taking this medication, what do you think would happen?" She immediately stated that she couldn't just stop taking her medication, as it needs to be weaned off over time (the drug is addicting). Assuring her that this was just a hypothetical question, and that I was not asking her to stop her medication (nor would I), I repeated the question. She answered by saying that she thinks her “panic attacks” would soon come back frequently.
To illuminate another important concept, I then asked: "So, is your medication helping you to get better, or is it just covering up your symptoms?" She answered with a new perspective: "It's just covering up my symptoms. As a matter of fact, even though I'm taking this medicine, there is still some anxiety that I always feel underneath it all. That part never goes away."
In reality, her condition isn’t fundamentally improving, and now she’s stuck. After two years of use, there is no plan to even wean her off of this addictive substance. It is ironic that one of the slogans used in ads for Effexor® is “Break the cycle” which insinuates that a person would be able to take this drug for a very short time, then stop taking the drug and be well. Is that the way this drug is being prescribed? Clearly, after two years on this drug, and (beforehand) two years of other drugs just like it, this woman hasn’t broken out of any cycle.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to truly help this woman fully recover and heal from this awful condition that she has been experiencing for four years, despite all the medications she’s tried? The only ways to truly help such a person is first to take a step back from two faulty premises that were initially assumed by the prescribing doctor and followed by the patient, who now erroneously believes that her problem should be labeled as “postpartum depression,” and that her behavioral reactions are “caused in her brain.” The second way is to know that there is an alternative to this type of treatment.
“Panic attacks” are not caused by a problem originating in the brain. The brain is only an end-user in the game being played by the body. Imagine a set of dominos, all standing upright in formation. All one has to do is push the 
first one over and all the others will follow. Now, you look at the last domino and see that it has fallen down. Is it the fault of the last domino that it has fallen, or was something else at fault? This is the same way we can look at how the body is organized. Call to Get Results Now!
first one over and all the others will follow. Now, you look at the last domino and see that it has fallen down. Is it the fault of the last domino that it has fallen, or was something else at fault? This is the same way we can look at how the body is organized. Call to Get Results Now!The brain is a processing station, receiving four hundred billion pieces of information per second. It is not the cause of the information; it is the receiver and the interpreter. If the information going to the brain is distorted, irritating, excessive, or random and prolonged, then the brain can only react normally to those aberrant stimuli. Yes, the brain reacts normally—it’s the information it receives which is abnormal. Why then would a drug that shuts down the brain's ability to react normally be used in such cases? Wouldn't that be short sighted? Wouldn't that be a poor application of scientific principles? Wouldn't that be bad medicine? Unfortunately, we have been bombarded with false information about the brain's role in too many erroneously named "diseases" and "disorders." Tragically, this faulty thinking is dominating the treatment protocols in use today.
If the cause is not in the brain, then where is it? Remember, the brain reacts to the information it receives. If what it receives is grossly irritating, then the brain will react accordingly. Therefore, it is the irritation bombarding the brain that we must address. To dampen the receiving and discerning ability of the brain is a poor choice, and (considering the possible devastating side effects of psychoactive drugs) an extremely temporary symptom management scheme at best.
It only took ten minutes of my personally taking this woman's health history to pinpoint the most likely culprits that pushed her "first domino" leading to a four-year bout with a label of "postpartum depression," and ending with the prescription of an addictive drug. So why, instead, did her other doctors “manage” her this way?
Old Beliefs, Outdated Perspective
One reason is because of an outdated paradigm; the demeaning paradigm of “It’s all in your head.” If some medical decisions are based on an outdated paradigm such as this, then the treatment protocols used will be the same as what we see in this woman’s situation. Optimal health will never have a chance to manifest for patients embedded in a medical system that blames it all on “it’s all in your head.”
The second reason is in the way that the current medical paradigm generally compartmentalizes symptoms into segmented, local areas of the body, and labels those areas (or areas immediately adjacent) as the cause of the problem. Aside from the obvious acknowledgment of shoulder pain relating to heart attack, addressing interconections is otherwise not the norm in Medicine today. Medicine’s history of unnecessary tonsillectomies, and appendectomies, illustrates their general concept of the body having “independent parts,” not parts that interact and benefit from each other.
It’s no wonder that we have people figuratively being told “it’s all in your head,” and getting treated with antidepressants, whether the symptoms are those labeled as depression or not. Unfortunately, it’s part of the established paradigm of contemporary Medicine. However, there are alternative systems that are outside of Medicine. We do have a choice.
Natural Alternative
Your body should be able to regulate itself, if your healing potential were not blocked to some degree. The way that a chiropractic doctor who uses Nutrition and Detoxification (the best chiropractors are members of their State Association, eg. Calif. Chiropractic Association—CCA), or an acupuncturist, may address the body is in many ways very different than that of the usual medical doctor. The key difference is that in Chiropractic the body is looked upon as a potentially self-regulating and self-healing organism with parts that naturally affect and depend on each other, and are integrated by a master controlling system called the nervous system. In Acupuncture there is a similar idea, of a circulation among bodily pathways (meridians) that traverse many regions of the body, having an affect on the whole body.
Biological information comes from every part of our bodies, is integrated through our nervous system and interpreted by the brain (this is basic biological and neuro-science). All of our body parts are interdependent. The idea of “it’s all in your head,” does not take these facts into account.
If the skin gets cut, the brain and body respond. One of the responses may be that the spinal muscles get tighter. If the spine tightens up, back pain may be next. Then, the brain and the body respond, domino after domino. The heart starts to pump faster or harder (reference notes 3,4,5), sleep becomes impaired, the onset of nausea, impaired attention, nervousness—all are symptoms relating to the initial stimuli and the body’s sequential responses. Is the solution to shut down the brain’s responsiveness with an addictive drug? No!
We can choose to use a non-drug system available today—like Chiropractic with Nurition/Detoxification—to reestablish normal function, rejuvenate, and rebuild our health—even after surgery and drugs have left their scars. Chiropractors and acupuncturists use non-drug physical procedures that are an entirely alternative way to access the body—the chiropractor with the hands and the acupuncturist with needles. Find one that uses natural medicines like food concentrates, herbs, homeopathic remedies and nutraceuticals instead of the poisonous pharmaceuticals in use today that potentially yield so many side effects. Additionally, the Alpha-Stim® SCS appears to be a good adjunct to recovery. [call us for info about Alpha-Stim]
In order to really “break the cycle,” the chiropractic doctor may use a combination of physical, biochemical and neuro-emotional (not psycho-logical) portals into the body.(4) There is no pre-set protocol for all people experiencing a symptom like depression because the causes of the same symptom in different people may be entirely different for each individual. Each person should be examined to uncover what will be the best intervention. Irritations, toxicities, deficiencies and imbalances get addressed with a multifaceted, neurologically considerate, non-medical approach.
Taking prescription drugs is not normal, nor is having surgery, elective or not, as both are a shock to your nervous system (a cause of post surgery depression), and either can overwhelm your brain. Even after surgery and drugs have left their scars, when we choose a non-drug system for optimizing our health (instead of just covering-up symptoms with conventional drugs), more and more of us will fundamentally get better- and that is a wonderful thing.
310-282-8882 www.WholeBodyCures.com
References:
3. Chaitow, Leon, Soft-Tissue Manipulation: A Practitioner's Guide to the Diagnosis and Treatment of
4. ‘Muscle contraction related to heart’ Humphreys, P. W. and Lind, A.R., Journal of Physiology (1963), pp. 120-135
6. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1999 Jun; 88(3 Pt 1): 1019-28.
©2007-2010 Barry J. Lieberman, D.C. Beverly Hills, CA 90212
also serving West Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Centry City, Culver City, Mid Wilshire, Miracle Mile
If you found this helpful, please consider linking to this page from your website.
Consider a woman who came to see me at my office with pain, fatigue, vivid dreams that wake her at night, nausea, and several other symptoms that affected her frequently. When asked if she were taking any medications and for how long she said “yes, Effexor®” (Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories), “for two years,” and many other similar medications during the preceding two years that didn't seem to help her at all. I asked, "Why are you taking this medication?" She said she has "postpartum depression." She said that she is taking this medicine so that she doesn't get as many “panic attacks.”
Cures for Postpartum Depression Understanding Your Alternatives
