Postpartum Depression Cures
Consider a woman who had consulted me regarding her pain, fatigue, vivid dreams waking her at night, nausea, and several other frequent symptoms. When asked if she were taking any medications and for how long she said "yes, Effexor® for two years." During the preceding two years she took many other similar medications that didn't seem to help her at all. I asked, "Why are you taking this medication?" She said she has "postpartum depression," and that she is taking it so that she doesn't get as many "panic attacks."
Definition: 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.
Definitions: Depression & Panic: Investigating her “diagnosis,” "depression" can be defined as the lowering or reducing of something. Panic on the other hand describes frenzy. Are these the same? No, they are opposites. She has been given a "diagnosis," and “label” of "postpartum depression" and is being medicated with a drug that is supposed to be an antidepressant (Effexor®), but she says she has been experiencing “panic attacks.”
What is going on here? Is this drug depressing the “panic attacks,” elevating 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 re-uptake 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 class of drugs. 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 then asked 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 addictive). Assuring her that this was just a hypothetical question, I asked her again. She answered by saying that she thinks her “panic attacks” would soon come back frequently.
To illuminate this 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" she said. "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 for selling Effexor® is “Break The Cycle” which insinuates that a person would be able to take this drug for a short time, then stop taking it and be well. Is that the way this drug is being prescribed? Clearly not. 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 truly help this woman fully heal from this awful condition that she has endured for four years, despite all the medications she’s tried? The only way to truly help, is to take a step back from two faulty premises that were initially assumed by the prescribing doctor and then subsumed by the patient. She now erroneously believes that, 1: her problem should be labeled as “postpartum depression,” and 2: that her behavioral reactions are “caused in her brain.” These are two dangerous beliefs. You must know that there is an alternative to this type of treatment.
Depression Cures: Natural Cures: Panic Attack Cures
“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. All one has to do is push the 
first one over and all the others will follow. When, you look at the last domino you see that it has fallen. Is it the last domino's fault that it has fallen, or was something else at fault? This is the same way we can look at how the body is organized.
first one over and all the others will follow. When, you look at the last domino you see that it has fallen. Is it the last domino's fault that it has fallen, or was something else at fault? This is the same way we can look at how the body is organized.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, 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 bad science? 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 information is dominating the treatment protocols in use today.
Not a brain disorder: If the cause is not in the brain, then where is it? Remember, the brain reacts to the information it receives. If that information is grossly irritating, then the brain will react accordingly. Therefore, it is the irritation bombarding the brain that we must address. Dampening the receiving and discerning ability of the brain is a poor choice. Considering the dangerous side effects of psychoactive drugs, it is a temporary, risky, symptom management scheme at best.
By personally listening to this woman, it only took me ten minutes to pinpoint the most likely culprits that "pushed her first domino" leading to four years with a label of "postpartum depression," and ending with the prescription of an addictive drug. So why did her other doctors “manage” her that 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 outdated too, like we see here. Optimal health will never have a chance to manifest for patients embedded in a medical system that proclaims: “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 with heart attack, addressing interconnections is otherwise not the medical norm today. Medicine’s history of unnecessary tonsillectomies, and appendectomies, illustrates their general concept of the body having “independent parts,” not parts that interact and need each other.
It’s no wonder that we have people figuratively being told "it’s all in your head," and getting treated with antidepressants for a "mental disorder," whether the symptoms are those labeled as depression or panic attacks. 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.
Your Natural Alternative
Your body should be able to regulate itself, if your healing potential were not blocked to some degree. A chiropractic doctor who uses Nutrition and Functional Medicine (the best California chiropractors are members of the California Chiropractic Association), can address the body in different ways than a medical doctor ever could. The key difference is the starting point. Your depression is not the starting point, it is the end point. The disorder starts in the body, not the brain. The right chiropractor can, correctly focus on the starting point of depression, understanding your potentially self-regulating and self-healing body, whose parts naturally affect and depend on each other, integrated by a master controlling system called your nervous system.
Biological information comes from every part of our bodies, is integrated through our nervous system and interpreted by the brain (basic neuro-science). All of our body parts are connected. The dangerous belief that "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, 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!
Choose to use a non-drug system
available today—like chiropractic with nutritional kinesiology and Functional Medicine —to reestablish normal function, rejuvenate, and rebuild health— even after surgery and drugs have left their scars. Chiropractors and acupuncturists use entirely alternative non-drug physical procedures to help the body—the chiropractor with the hands and the acupuncturist with needles. Find a full-spectum chiropractor that uses natural medicines like food concentrates, herbs, and homeopathic remedies, instead of poisonous pharmaceuticals that potentially yield so many devastating side effects. Additionally, the Alpha-Stim® SCS appears to be a good adjunct to recovery that we have available here in Beverly Hills. [call for info about Alpha-Stim] The Alpha-Stim SCS (Stress Control System) cranial electrotherapy stimulator helps treat anxiety, depression, insomnia and other stress related disorders.
In order to really “break the cycle,” the chiropractic doctor may use a multifaceted physical, nutritional and neuro-emotional (not psycho-logical) approach to the body.(4) There is no magic medicine for all people experiencing a symptom like postpartum depression because the causes of depression in different people may be entirely different for each person. Each person should be examined to uncover what will be their best treatment. You need a multifaceted, non-drug, non-medical approach.
Taking prescription drugs is not normal. Like surgery, it is a shock to your nervous system (as seen in post surgery depression), and can confuse your brain. However, when we choose a non-drug system for optimizing health (instead of just covering-up symptoms with conventional drugs), more and more of us will fundamentally get better, and that is a beautiful thing! Call me today. Let's get started.
Call 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.
©2007-2012 Barry J. Lieberman, D.C. Beverly Hills, CA 90212
serving Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, West Hollywood, Century City, Culver City
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Investigating Cures for Postpartum Depression
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