Posted 3/8/2015 10:17 AM (GMT -8)
Just reading Dr. David Williams recent Alternaties and he has this segment in his letter this month:
Anxiety Solutions
Question: I know you don’t think too highly of antianxiety
medications, but the panic attacks I experience
are real and I believe inherited. I’ve tried natural
remedies, including valerian root and St. John’s
Wort. At first I thought they were helping, but maybe
it was the placebo effect because my anxiety and
panic quickly returned. Can you please offer any
other suggestions? My doctor and family want me to
see a psychiatrist for medication, but I’d prefer to try
other alternatives first. — M.S., Houston, TX
Answer: To say I’m not a fan of antidepressants
or anxiety medications is an understatement.
Chemically altering brain function is akin to playing
catch with live hand grenades.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM) from the American Psychiatric
Association lists around 300 official mental disorders,
including schizophrenia and autism to depression
and ADHD.
While the accepted cause of all these mental
disorders is a chemical imbalance in the brain, not a
single one can be determined by a physical diagnostic
test. Because there’s no brain scan or blood,
urine, or saliva test to define any of these conditions,
doctors diagnose solely by behavior.
Everyone experiences periods of grief, doubt,
uncontrolled anger, aggression, confusion, sadness,
pain, and even depression at one point or another.
Based on behavior alone, there’s not a single one of
us who couldn’t be diagnosed with one of the 300
disorders on any given day.
But if a chemical imbalance is to blame, wouldn’t it
be reasonable to assume that you could make a true
diagnosis by testing the levels of certain chemicals?
And wouldn’t a return of certain chemicals to appropriate
levels validate that a treatment program was
working? Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works.
Psychiatrists will tell you certain behaviors are a
sign of chemical imbalances or genetic aberrations,
but those imbalances cannot be validated with any
physical test. Their answer is to prescribe powerful
drugs that chemically alter brain function, but without
some kind of tangible baseline, there’s no way to
tell if chemicals are actually being “balanced.” It’s all
based on behavior. Prayer, meditation, magnetism,
and crystals all change behavior but are labeled as
scams, placebos, or wishful thinking. But psychiatry
gets a pass. Psychiatrists claim it’s different for them.
The proof is in the pudding. If behavior changes,
then it means the drugs are working.
The side effects of these drugs are often worse
than the problem they are meant to treat. And in
almost every case, if you read the warning labels,
you’ll find that taking them can actually cause the
very issues they are supposed to eliminate.
You might ask, what about conditions such as
autism, where it seems obvious that the behavior
is a clear result of neurological problems? Like
many other disorders, it’s far easier to classify it as
a chemical imbalance when you want to sell drugs,
rather than admit it could be caused by a head
injury, vaccinations, environmental toxins, or even a
nutritional deficiency.
Psychiatry is one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated.
It has no basis or grounding in science. It is
licensed, dangerous experimentation on the masses.
Fortunately, there are natural alternatives, some of
which have been used for hundreds, even thousands
of years without any safety issues or side effects.
■ Lithium: One example is lithium, which is a trace
mineral, not a drug as many people believe.
Deficiencies in lithium have been linked to higher
rates of manic depression, mental hospital admissions,
suicides, homicides, rapes, criminal arrests,
and alcohol and drug use. No toxicity problems
have been reported at doses of 10–20 mg of
elemental lithium a day. The chelated form of
lithium—either lithium orotate or lithium aspartate—is
recommended. Check the label to see the
actual amount of elemental lithium the supplement
contains. For example, a 120 mg tablet of lithium
orotate provides roughly 5 mg of elemental lithium.
■ Glycine: The amino acid glycine is one of the
primary components of collagen (or gelatin).
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that our lower
intake of glycine-rich collagen over the last few
decades is linked to an increase in panic attacks.
In the past, glycine was shown to calm the central
nervous system and be an effective method
of controlling panic attacks. At the first sign of
a panic attack, I’ve seen remarkable results by
putting 2 grams of glycine powder underneath
the tongue and letting it dissolve slowly. Glycine
is one of those “therapeutic pearls” from the past
that seems to have been forgotten. It’s low-cost
and widely available, but the fact that it isn’t a