Good evening everyone. It is Tuesday, January 17, 2017. I'm Shameini, owner of Shameini's Model Health, and I'm a fitness and nutrition expert. Welcome.
This week's podcast was actually a podcast the topic was voted for in my Facebook group, Shamein's Model Health Club, for long term fat loss and health. So I created a poll in the group and the members voted for two things came out on top binge eating, which I covered last week. And then this week's topic, which I think many, many people are going to love and relate to is depression. So yeah, those are the top two that were voted for.
So now we're going to move on and talk about depression. What is it and what are some of the natural treatments that we can do that will help us avoid using drugs or any sort of synthetic chemicals? So depression is a bigger issue than we realize, and it's having a huge impact on us globally, economically and in our close community. Research says that by 2020, depression will be the number two cause of disability and debt, especially between the ages of 15 and 45.
So what is mental health then? Mental health is stated as being a state of well being in which the individual realizes their own strengths and capabilities. They can cope with normal stresses of life, can work productively and can make a contribution to their community. So, but in regards of depression, according to the Mayo Clinic, depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest.
It affects how you feel, think and behave and it can lead to many physical and emotional problems such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obviously suicide, a low immune system because it's a hormone related illness, so therefore it affects your immune system. And then like I said, suicide, there has actually been some research to the non-suicide related to depression and the numbers that came back that were quite shocking and quite scary, not very nice to hear, but they stated that 50% of suicides are correlated to depression. So that's not a nice number, can be quite saddening to hear and I'm sure many of you do know someone or some family that is affected. Most people then will go to their physician or family doctor and they'll explain the situation and that physician is going to prescribe them some drugs.
When it comes to drugs or any sort of antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary, I am against it. When we take drugs or synthetic chemicals, we're not addressing the underlying cause. It's like we're just masking or cloaking the problem. So if you have been just recently diagnosed with some sort of depression, I would recommend that you just you would be gentle with yourself in the beginning and try to avoid synthetic drugs as much as possible and really allow your body to come out of it by itself.
There's many options that you can do to try and get your head in the right space, but synthetic drugs are not, its synthetic drugs will mimic your body's own natural hormones and neurotransmitters and they will end up in the long term causing more of an imbalance and thus preventing you from making the hormones yourself naturally. All synthetic drugs do is they provide you with a short term relief, but they also provide you with long term problems. So down regulation of hormones and receptor sites are generally the big issue, especially in regards to serotonin and dopamine, and we know these are your happy feel good hormones. So we want to be producing them ourselves at optimal levels with no need for any sort of aids or drugs or bandages.
So most people get some prescribed some sort of SSRI, like Zoloft, Prozac, Selectia or Paxil, and these unknowns to many people have some shocking side effects. So side effects like violent behavior, mania or aggression, suicidal thinking, behavior and attempts and in some more serious cases, obviously those behaviors and attempts are successful. The companies that give these out obviously it's a money game and they're not too worried about the side effects. So the likes of the big pharmaceutical company Pfizer, they have 250 lawsuits against them for creating an SSRI and many women had been taking these and even during pregnancy and 250 babies that have came up so far were born with birth defects due to this synthetic drug.
So in my opinion it's not worth the risk if it's going to carry over for generations and generations of side effects. Like seriously, how many people do you know or how many people know someone who's on some sort of anti-depressants, but they're still depressed? So we're not actually getting to the root of the problem, we're just covering it up. A lot of physicians like to say that depression is serotonin related, so it's an imbalance in serotonin, but actually this was always just a theory, there was never anything factual behind this.
The FDA even admitted that in regards to drugs like Zoloft, who advertise depression as an imbalance in serotonin, they basically said that that was not true, that they tried to make their statements as blunt as they could for people that maybe were not so educated to understand it. So basically the FDA were calling people dumb and that they had to put such a topic as depression into a real layman's terms for people to understand and that layman's terms with that statement that they put out was actually in fact not backed by science and no research had been done on it. Never in history has a single study in humans that validate low serotonin levels contributing to depression has ever been done, it's never been justified. It's just a theory that's been driven into society unfortunately.
So take a whiff of pinch of salt because I'm not saying there's no serotonin connection to depression, but serotonin does play some part, but it's not the be all and end all, it's not all about the serotonin. Depression is a complicated condition and we have to address it on many levels so that you can feel your best and prevent reoccurrences and carry over into your daily life. So first we would look at obviously in my teachings I'm going to go as natural and simple as I can with ideas and hacks that you can use immediately. So the first one would be food.
We know that food affects us on a cellular level. So as soon as food goes into our mouth our digestive system starts working and that food immediately has an effect on our DNA. That also includes synthetic drugs as soon as they go into your mouth immediately they are changing you. That's what food does, it changes us physically so you don't just eat something, it physically changes you and it affects all your organs including your gut.
It plays a big huge part and now more studies and more research on good health and the microbiome is coming out and it's about to blow up. The microbiome and the gut is extremely important for your health including your mental health and how you feel. Most people don't realize that serotonin, most serotonin is produced in your gut so you want to have a healthy gut. There was a study in public health nutrition journal showed that people that ate fast food regularly had a 51% increase in depression.
So that means that even eating small amounts that you're going to drive to a Dairy Queen or A&W and you're pretty much eating depression. That's what you're doing. Because these foods are carb-rich foods and they carry over from carb-rich foods, it affects our hormones not to mention all the trans fats but it affects our hormones and our way of thinking. It slows down our digestive system, it slows down pretty much our whole body in general.
If you've ever had like a Reevy day or a cheat day or a treat day, the following day you know you've got some sort of food hangover and you feel gross maybe you're a little bit cranky, you're tired. That's what these carbohydrates are doing to you and especially carbohydrates that have been made in a fast food joint that maybe you don't have the best efficacy and not to point fingers but there's some ingredients that we'd rather not have in our food or going into our mouth. So avoiding fast food where you can is definitely going to play a huge part in managing any sort of depression. Then we move on to protein.
So protein is a great source of tryptophan. Now tryptophan is an amino acid and that amino acid gets converted into serotonin or happy hormone. This actually fine actually works a lot better when you take in small amounts of good carbs with it. So I'm saying good carbs there and that means tearing your protein like turkey, fish, chicken, nuts, eggs and so on with some organic food and veg to help convert that tryptophan to serotonin.
So you're just aiding in your production of happy hormones by making some smart choices with the food that you're putting in your mouth. No grains like I didn't mention grains there or processed carbohydrates because grains effect us on so many levels especially are gut health that we want to try and minimize what kind of grains we're taking in not only for the sugar and complex of it but also for like the GMOs and how they've been processed. There was a randomized clinical trial in the Journal of Elementary Pharmacology and Therapeutics found that gluten caused depression in people with none so with none see a gluten sensitivity. So these were people that weren't actually celiac and didn't have a gluten sensitivity and they found that by these people raising or eating on grains that they had an increased chance of depression.
It's basically because in addition to gluten there are gluteal morphemes so a molecule in gluten and it is you can kind of hear it in the name it's gluteal morphemes so we know morphine is a drug and then sugar is better than the grains they react with opiate receptors. So opiate is what it says again so we know opiums as a drug so opiate receptors are receptors in your brain that reacts to intakes of any sort of molecular chemical that resembles a drug. So when we take in grains and sugar and carbs these gluteal morphemes and sugars react with the opiate receptors in the brain and they cause a reaction so in addiction we get addicted and when we get addicted we lose control and then depression follows and so on also taking in grains produces electrons these are anti-nutrients. These anti-nutrients contribute to IBS and leaky gut syndrome.
So what does that say that means they're causing a problem in your gut your digestive tract to seven issues when you've taken these foods and if your digestive tract or gut is having issues then it's got a less likely chance to be creating those happy hormones that we want. So also we know that carbohydrates play a huge part in inflammation and now we're seeing that inflammation and inflammation of the brain specifically is a big contributing factor to autoimmune disease and therefore depression so that's inflammation of your brain from just taking in some carbohydrates. So what can we do to help with this? So we've covered avoiding fast foods we've got on to making sure that we're getting good proteins and pairing them with some good carbohydrates.
Vitamin C studies have shown that increasing vitamin C from the lives of Kamu Kanoberry, Laveri, Goji Berry and Asarola Cherry these are great sources of vitamin C and vitamin C has been shown to improve depression symptoms of depression and also in some cases eliminate depression altogether and that's just from taking some vitamin C. So that's an amazing option of vitamin C is one of these vitamins that's insoluble in the body so whatever you don't use up you're just going to pee it out. So the recommended dose that they seem to be saying is 700 milligrams a day particularly for women so that's a natural option for you to try. There's also other supplements like St.
John's Wart that's great for mild depression, Rodeola Rude Extract is excellent and has been used for thousands of years by our ancestors to help fight depression. Now Omega-3 or EPA which is an anti-inflammatory so this is a good fact not Omega-6, Omega-3 is the good fact. Studies have shown in the medical journal of nutrition people with depression have low levels of Omega-3s especially from their foods. So in society now we get an abundance of Omega-6 it's been added to most foods and this causing a problem for us.
Omega-6 is coming in the form of canola oil which is a racy oil which everyone at this stage should know to avoid this genetically modified oil. Like this is a broken oil and it's going to do nothing but damage in your body along with corn and soy oil so any kind of vegetable oils you should be avoiding like the plague. What you do want though is butter, coconut, ghee, avcados and krill oil is an excellent bioavailable form of Omega-3 and another study showed that people who supplemented with krill oil actually had a reduction in suicidal tendencies associated with their depression. So really what we're at right now because Omega-6 is high in our foods.
We're looking at a 2021 ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 in our food. Realistically though we only want two to one ratio so we need to be a bit more aware of this. Then moving on to chocolate I'm sure many of you are going to be happy to hear this. Chocolate contains enamelamide which is a bliss chemical, phenylaminine which is a low of chemical and tryptophan and serotonin as well as all the healthy fats that are in chocolate.
So this is good grade chocolate. You can also get some great tryptophan so some high sources of tryptophan from cashews and pumpkin seeds as well. So chocolate is great when we know that real chocolate is super food. It's packed full of dense nutrition so you want to be getting chocolate into your diet so that's real raw organic where you can in my heat of guide in the shumit in yeah the heat of guide.
I think in module five I gave a cooking class on how to make your own chocolate at home so from scratch. Totally good, totally raw, totally nutrient dense. So if you're interested in that you can go over and check out chamingsmogel.com and you will find information there. The next is turmeric or curcumin which is a subsidy of turmeric.
It has been shown in studies to improve symptoms of depression as much as pro-zile. So we're looking at about 12 grams a day of turmeric which is not too bad because you can just add it into your curries, you can add it into other foods, you can add it into tea, you can add it into hot chocolate. Then we move on to sleep. So of course we all know sleep plays a huge part in how we feel.
If you're too tired you're going to get cranked, you're going to have headache and then if you get a great sleep you feel amazing the next day. Studies have shown, so I'm all about the studies on this one because I think depression is very important that we back it up with some science. Another study shown that even partial sleep deprivation can impact your mood and hormones. So jacks that received 4.5 hours and had reported feeling stressed, angry, sad and mentally exhausted.
When they increased their sleep to 6 to 8 hours a night, they noticed that all subjects had a big improvement on their moods because not many people know this. Serotonin actually converts to melatonin and if you've listened to me speak before about melatonin, melatonin is our calming hormone. It's not our sleep hormone, it's our calming hormone. It enables us then to get good quality sleep.
So melatonin is very important. So if you're converting serotonin correctly then you're going to have amazing sleep and that's going to carry over into the next day and you're going to feel amazing. Okay, we're nearly finished. Exercise of course we all know about exercise, how empowering and good that can make us feel.
Exercise has been shown to help with depression but even better. The results from exercise have been shown to last longer than those from drugs. So that's like walking at a moderate pace. You could do some meditation, you could do some pilates, you could do some yoga, some weight training.
There's so many options. So making sure that you're moving each day is going to play a big part in how you're feeling overall, especially in your mind. Then vitamin D, if you're going walking, you want to go out walking in the sun because your skin then in the sun is going to produce some vitamin D and vitamin D is also a hormone which contributes to us feeling good. Vitamin D actually converts cholesterol as well.
So there's some more studies coming out now about cholesterol so I'd urge you to keep an ear on the ground for that. And then of course stress, we know stress plays a huge part in our health, how we're feeling and depression. But most people find they manage stress a lot better when they integrate some sort of exercise and of course going back to sleep get a good night's sleep. So stress contributes to depression but if we can fight that with some exercise and some good sleep then we're definitely on the right path to taking control of how we want to live our life and how we want to feel.
And then last one, this, many people will understand this but I've noticed in my work that not everybody does get this. The connection between your mind and your thoughts and how you feel and your body and how hormones react with that, a lot of people don't understand. People think that it's just your mind, you just think, you just do and that's it. If only that was the case.
Everything you think and feel and do has an impact on your body. So how you perceive things is going to have an impact on how you feel. So you can either say I lost love or I was actually lucky enough to have had a love in the first place. So I'm grateful to have experienced love.
The choice is up to you. What are you going to choose to focus on? You can either be that person that says I lost love, I've lost everything or you can be grateful for the love you have had. You can then look at it as if to say I have so much love still to give and I'm excited for whatever the future has to bring me.
So focusing leads to your feelings and feeling of good. So positive of being happy, excited, joyous. So really it's your perception. So hone in that in and just being aware of how you think and how your thoughts are affecting your hormones and your overall feeling.
Really at the end of the day and I'll leave you with this because this has been quite a long podcast. It is your choice on how you live and how you choose to see things. Depression is not necessarily something that we're born with but it's something that grows or evolves within us like most other diseases and there is a way to take care of it which doesn't mean you need to resort to drugs that are just going to harm you more in the long term. So there are many many people that would be happy to help you or anyone that's struggling with depression.
Myself included if you have any questions you can reach out but if you know anyone because this is a really serious topic and not many people are up shall we say on it. If you know anyone that might be struggling with this I would urge you to share this podcast with them and just let them know how they may tackle and how they may help themselves feel a little bit better. And that's it. I thank you for listening and I hope you have a healthy happy week and I will chat to you all soon.
Bye guys. Be safe.