Hi LindaLou - Sorry it took a bit to get back to you here. Haven't had time to read the rest of the thread so keep that in mind. I'm not going to argue the beat-to-death anecdote vs. clinical study and bias vs. bigpharma issues, but something jumped out about your response and disturbed me:
LindaLou writes:
Yes, most drugs have side effects. Wouldn't you like to prevent yourself from needing to take any? Try following Buzsaw's regime.
Since you are giving me medical advice, I have to ask you:
Am I male or female?
How old am I?
What drugs am I currently taking?
What supplements am I currently taking?
When was the last time I had a physical?
How often do I exercise?
Do I smoke?
Do I drink alchohol?
Do I use recreational drugs?
What dietary restrictions do I have?
What dietary allergies do I have?
Am I a diabetic?
Am I HIV-positive?
What diseases and conditions have I been diagnosed with?
What is the history of disease in my family?
Am I pregnant?
Etc., etc., etc.?
Can you honestly answer a single one of those questions?
It's always dangerous to dispense medical advice to someone about whom you know absolutely zero. Luckily, I'm intelligent enough to realize that I should regard your advice very critically before following it. The problem is, you are also obviously intelligent, and your impassioned information (and at times misinformation) could persuade the gullible to blindly follow your suggestions.
You are probably correct - many cases of "depression" could likely be helped with dietary changes and exercise plans. That doesn't mean you can broadly dispense a "natural" cure-all for depression, or disparage an entire field of researchers and medical doctors.
I would hate to have the wrong person take a supplement that could interfere with their chemotherapy, or anti-viral meds; or have someone become violent or suicidal because they trade in their antipsychotics for a handful of omega-3's; or have someone avoid traditional medicine or pharmaceuticals entirely.
Sick people are gullible, and scared.
I've heard anecdotes of people foregoing valid colon cancer treatments to give themselves hourly black coffee enemas while the cancer spread throughout their body, because those enemas were supposedly a "natural solution" to cancer that the medical establishment was keeping hidden for financial gain. I've held a human breast with a necrotic (black) tumor on it the size of a baseball, and a human penis with a tumor on it the size of a ping-pong ball, (both owners deceased). Both of the people with those tumors avoided medical treatment because they distrusted doctors, and believed that the people they knew who had tumors and died were killed by the treatment, rather than the cancer.
...a naturopathic approach -- unlikely to do any harm whatsoever...
But such an approach
can do harm - you simply don't know. One major way it can cause harm is when people replace necessary traditional intervention with a multivitamin, or supplement traditional medicine with naturopathy with unexpected and unknown epistatic or synergistic effect.
Please be careful in giving advice to complete strangers.
And
please realize that, however impassioned you feel about the subject, you are misinformed on many points,
you do not hold in your hand the universal cure for depression, and that just maybe the medical establishment is not as evil or stupid as you might think.
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