Personal Stories

Guidelines to readers:

1. These individual stories are not the same as scientific studies and they are not offered as any definite proof of the effectiveness of any nutritional approach, but only to give visitors an idea of some of the experiences people have had.
2. They are not intended to be medical advice, but to stimulate thinking with a qualified health care professional.  No changes in treatment should be undertaken without consulting with a qualified health care provider.
3. Ideas and recommendations are those of the submitter only. Be cautious of  "always" or "never."  For example, omega-3 fatty acids are needed by many for depression. However, according to Dr Walsh from the Pfeiffer clinic and other sources, there is a small subgroup who have become manic on these same omega-3 fatty acids. Also, St John's Wort has been known to provoke mania. The most important thing in evaluating options is to know what you know and know what you don't know. 

Guidelines for submitters:

1. Your real name and/or email address will only be posted at your request. 
2. I reserve the right to edit for brevity, while trying to be true to your thoughts.
3. Visitors are interested in all kinds of stories, not just "success" stories. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aBYgkHznuux0

Since you lectured in Ashland in January I tried the Empower Plus, and have now been off lithium since the spring, with no change in mood. I am still hyper (getting 3 hours of sleep a night) but not manic or even hypo-manic, and have been loving my life more than I ever did when I was "normal" before becoming bipolar at age 60. By the way I am a LCSW too. I do feel that the potential for my mood shifting any day is still there, but I've been stable now for a year and a half, one year on lithium and half a year on Empower Plus that I'm starting to dare to hope that it's permanent. Peter Silverman

Note by the editor Since the timing of mood shifts is highly variable, a long period of stability would be needed to know that a particular treatment is working.

Dave,

Thank you for reading my e-mail.  I think it would be great to create a place at your site where people could share their story.  I would like to share my story with you and so here it is.

I started having panic attacks in the third grade and from there things continued to get worse. I was first hospitalized at the age of 17 years old. At that time I drank heavily to get rid of the racing thoughts and terrible mood swings. I continued to suffer with symptoms of my illness and to be hospitalized multiple times in the next 15 years. Approximately 5 years ago my illness took a turn for the worse.  I suffered a complete mental breakdown, and not knowing what I was doing I carved "I hate me" in my leg with a razor.  I was subsequently hospitalized again for 3 weeks and for the next 6 months I did not even know where I was or what I was doing.  I lost my job and my life do to my illness.  After 6 months of being on many medication (12 at one time) that did not work the doctors decided to try ECT treatment.  I received 6 ECT treatments with only very mild improvement. For the next four years I was totally unable to function, and I was in and out of the hospital (10 times last year alone).  The illness totally consumed my life and just about destroyed it.  After being ill for so long I had given up the will to continue to live and attempted suicide several times. The doctors no longer knew what to do for me and had basically decided that I would not get any better.  Essentially my life was over at the age of 34. Then the miracle of Empowerplus came into my life as you know.  My doctors are absolutely amazed at how well I am doing.  My counselor stated to me that they had basically given up any hope of me getting any better, and did not think I would make it through another year.  But, now I love every day of my life. I never think of hurting myself in any way - never.  I am currently seeking employment, and look forward to re-entering the workforce.  I have two children, and they have been through a lot due to my illness.  I can be a mother to them again, and that is wonderful.  I want to get the word out to people about this wonderful alternative to medication, especially people like me for whom the medication did not work, and they too have given up hope. Therefore, please feel free to share my story with anyone you would like.  If I can help one other person it would mean a lot to me.

Thanks again and God Bless You!

Regina ReginaE32968@cs.com

The following material regards the use of amino acids and other natural measures to treat depression. While these ideas do not apply to everyone,  many of these concepts and approaches may be germane to many, if not most, persons that are in a depressed state. 

The current medical model almost summarily uses various antidepressant medications in which to treat depression.  These medications often operate to increase the availability or usage of the neurotransmitters of serotonin and/or dopamine in the brain.

Many orthomolecular and naturopathic practitioners and books extol the use of 5HTP or tryptophan to increase one's serotonin level, and the use of tyrosine, phenylalanine, or both to increase dopamine. They recommend this for the treatment of depression. Certainly, these amino acids, taken along with the necessary vitamin and mineral cofactors, do exactly as intended, which is to increase serotonin or dopamine in one's brain. And certainly, doing so often substantially alleviates the symptoms of depression.

The substitution of antidepressants that work on the serotonin or dopamine axis with nutrient precursors that do the same represents "an allopathic conceptual approach" to depression.

However, depression, far more often than not, is not simply a lack of serotonin or dopamine or both. This is true even if raising the levels of one or both of these two key neurotransmitters often brings substantial relief to this state of mental and physical dysfunction.

Depression is often a broad deficiency state across most, if not all, of the entire neurotransmitter range... and there are about 100 known neurotransmitters. Once depression is recognized as such, it is profoundly treatable in an amazingly short time.

In my recovery from manic depression, I began to use tryptophan, tyrosine, and phenylalanine in mid 1997, with very substantial and positive mood effect. I initially used tryptophan, taurine, and GABA daily for brain inhibition and to assist with sleep (this regime is very similar to what Julia Ross suggests in her book "The Mood Cure"). I also used the key nutrient combination of 500 mg. of L- carnitine in the morning and phosphatidyl choline throughout the day to slow the spontaneous rate of neuronal firing in my brain, an effect that was very similar to lithium. In addition to this, to treat depression in myself I used both tyrosine alone and/or a tyrosine/phenylalanine combination on a fairly regular basis from May 1997 until February 2000. The use of tryptophan, tyrosine, and phenylalanine did substantially help me to alleviate depression in myself, and I learned a great deal from the use of these amino acids...

however...

I later found that just jazzing my serotonin and dopamine levels, as helpful as this was to my mood and well being for a few years or so, was a rather weak approach to treating depression in both myself and other persons vs. increasing the levels of all of my neurotransmitters all at once.

One must realize that out of the roughly 100 known neurotransmitters, 99 of them are amino acid based, and the key exception here is acetylcholine. Assuming that all of the vitamin and mineral cofactors are present, the entire amino acid range and choline (or phosphatidyl choline, it's more active form), represents precursor loading of the entire neurotransmitter range, for all ostensible purposes.

In February of 2000, I began to experiment with taking broad based amino acids, rather than simply taking a few individual ones to treat depression in myself. Almost immediately, by a process of trial and error, I found that a mixture of two readily available blends of amino acids, along with added tryptophan, carnitine, phosphatidyl choline, and vitamins B complex and C, would boost me out of any degree of depression that I was in and/or keep me out of depression entirely if I took it in adequate quantity often enough. Specifically, the two blends of amino acids that I am referring to here are Pure Form 20 and WAC blend from www.jomarlabs.com. After trial and error of a number of Jomar Laboratories blended amino acid products in early 2000, I settled on a 50/50 mix of these two specific blends to affect mood change in myself. These two blends are quite reasonable in cost, reasonable enough for most persons to be able to afford in quantity.  I would commonly get a kilogram of each blend in either powder (the powder does not taste too good. yuck!) or capsule form and take between 20 and 50 grams or more in total of these blends on a daily basis (10 to 25 grams of each blend). To these amino acid blends, I would add some tryptophan, for which I had a prescription, and ALWAYS add carnitine and phosphatidyl choline as well (if I did not add choline I would get a bit of a headache if I took too large a dosage of these two blends). I would also always take vitamins B complex and C at the same time, along with lots of water.

The effect of my using the broad based neurotransmitter precursor approach discussed above on my mood and well being was, and still is, absolutely AWESOME, compared to my prior approach of just using tryptophan, tyrosine, and phenylalanine in order to effect mood change in myself.

The single and crucial catch to all of the above was that I had to be adequately absorptive in my gut. Since 1997, I have found that the absorptive rate in my intestines could vary widely from day to day and week to week depending. Even a single exposure to a rather small amount of a food that I was allergic to could substantially impair my intestinal absorptive ability for days, assuming that I did not recognize this and intervene. I also learned that if I was bloated in my abdominal area  I was malabsorptive as well. In addition, I if I was exposed to a lot of allergic food, that I could quite easily get to the point where I could not even absorb water well, much less almost any nutrients at all, until this situation was resolved. And lastly, I learned how to massively correct my nutrient absorptive rate within a matter of hours.

Once I learned how to correct my nutrient absorptive rate I could effect absolutely profound change in my mood and well being.  I have found that it does not take the brain that long to build a lot of neurotransmitters, once it has adequate nutrient raw material to work with.  Even four or five hours can be very significant in this regard.

I can quite literally correct a state of very severe depression with suicidal ideation in myself within a single day, something that no one else in the world can do at this time, to the best of my knowledge.

Once I put the above concepts together, I realized that I had gained complete and profound control of any and all states of depression in myself, as well as I could avoid such states entirely if I so wished to do so. This is a fact that has been true for over three and a half years.  It is also a fact that I fully expect will remain so for the rest of my life, as long as I have access to the supplements discussed here.

Here are some other lessons I learned:

1. The brain is far more protein dependent than most persons realize.  Everyone knows that their muscles need protein, but few know that that their brain, as small as it is, probably needs, uses, and uses up more protein that all of their muscles put together, despite the fact that their muscle mass is far greater than their brain mass. I now think of depression as a protein deficient state.
2. When protein deficiency has gone too far, it is extremely common for a person to crave "cheat fuels" such as sugar or alcohol, rather than protein, which is what they really need.  Cheat fuels only make things worse, not better.  Often, just the simple measure of eating a large piece of broiled fish instead of getting that box of ice cream or that bottle of vodka when you first sink into a state of depression represents very powerful and effective chemical intervention.  This measure is even much more effective when a powerful digestive enzyme such as DigestEnz is used to assist in the protein breakdown of protein foods.  EVERY depressed person should be using such a digestive enzyme at every single meal when they are depressed. 
3. I believe the common naturopathic approach of using the amino acids of tryptophan (or 5HTP), tyrosine, and phenylalanine to treat depression is a flawed conceptual approach that was probably the result of copying the medical model approach to depression, simply tweaking serotonin and dopamine levels in order to alleviate depression.
4. Each person's requirements are different. Others responded to the amino acid blends of Pure Form 20 and WAC in dosages that were often much different than that which I often needed. I found that some depressed persons responded quite well to as little as eight grams total (four grams of each blend) of the two amino acid blends I was using, some responded quite well to fifteen grams total of these blends, and for some persons fifteen grams total was way too much, etc.
5. If these amino acid blends were taken in dosages that were too high for one's biochemistry they could quite easily become hypomanic or manic on these blends, similar to a bipolar person taking too much tyrosine, phenylalanine, or aspartic acid at once.  One ALWAYS needs to "slowly dose up" with these blends, being cautious to not become too manic if they are bipolar (or even if they are "normal"), the same as when they are taking tyrosine or other excitatory amino acids.  Another idea that might help here is to add some taurine to these two blends, as taurine is almost always inhibitory, such that the resultant mixture might be more balanced in regard to excitation and inhibition.
6. Taking these two blends and the additional nutrients caused the hair on my head to grow thicker and faster and that the muscles on my arms and legs both grew noticeably and became firmer, despite the fact that I was not exercising at all. These were both unexpected side effects, and most welcome ones.
7. I need, and I take, as many as 20 to 25 625mg. HCL capsules when I eat a large meal, and 7 or 8 capsules of HCL for even a single small can of tuna fish.  I have recognized and treated a severe deficiency of HCL (stomach acid) in myself.   Digestive enzymes do help my mood and well being when I eat high protein foods as well, due to the fact that they break this protein down better such that it can be absorbed into the body.   However, the use of digestive enzymes coupled with eating protein foods does not help me nearly as much as when I am severely depressed as the taking of amino acids as I am suggesting here does. Adequate good gut bacteria appear to me to play a key role in protein utilization for reasons that are unclear to me at this time. I use the probiotic Primal Defense for this.
8. It is ALWAYS wise to add fish oil and the other "good oils" to one's regime when they are taking high dosage free form amino acids such as I am suggesting here.  Don't neglect these good oils when you are using amino acids, and try to take some the same day.  The brain is 60% fat, and fat is clearly important to its proper function.
9. Juicing of raw organic non-allergic vegetables ought to ALWAYS be used to treat a depressive state (and eat some of the fiber as well, don't throw it all out).  Juicing is mineralizing, it is alkalizing, it is "gut healing", it does not need either digestive enzymes or HCL to help tremendously (even if a person in deficient in these secretions), and it contains a powerful array of essential and easily absorbed nutrients.
10. High dosage bentonite/psyllium/water combination prior to taking glutamine can "unblock" a number of common problematic issues in the intestine within a matter of hours, and thus substantially increase one's nutrient absorption rate as well (assuming the use of such a combination is not contraindicated for some reason). High dosage bentonite/psyllium/water can very effectively remove yeast, many "bad bugs", undigested food, allergic food residue, excess mucous, etc. from the gut. In the proper dosage for one's gut size and gut status, high dosage bentonite/psyllium/water is a gut cleansing routine that is unparalleled, in my opinion. However, if there is any bleeding in the stomach or intestines, any ulceration, any serious gut abnormality, any allergy to psyllium, any severe constipation, and/or any stricture (see Bernard Jensen's "Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management") in the gut, the use of such a gut cleansing routine may be contraindicated.

Nothing has done more for me both physically and mentally than the free form amino acid blends and the necessary added nutrients that I have mentioned.  These necessary added nutrients are tryptophan, phosphatidyl choline, carnitine, EFA's, and the entire vitamin and mineral range for the most part. 

I refuse to teach any person how to use excitatory nutrients until they learn how to use inhibitory ones, ESPECIALLY if they are bipolar.

Never forget the two most common causes of recurrent depression in anyone. These are the issues of the likelihood of multiple hidden food allergies and the likelihood of intestinal dysbiosis.  Usually when someone has one of these problems, they almost always have the other as well. These two issues always ought to ALWAYS be assessed and/or addressed in any person that suffers from chronic or recurrent depression.

I sincerely hope that the above material is helpful to the reader.