A study published last year in the journal Biological Psychiatry shows that certain foods are better at treating depression than antidepressant drugs. The study found that omega-3 fatty acids and foods high in a compound called uridine were able to reduce the symptoms of depression as well as or better than three different antidepressant drugs that were tested. This research was conducted at the McLean Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard.

It's very exciting to see this kind of study, because it shows yet more scientific evidence for the healing effects of food as well as the relative uselessness of prescription drugs.

Based on the results of this study, it seems silly that anyone would continue to use antidepressant drugs to try to treat depression when there are simple healing foods available that do a better job. This is especially true when considering the potentially dangerous side effects of antidepressant drugs that are now coming to light, including increased risk of suicide, violent behavior, and other similar acts of aggression.

But what healing foods in particular are we talking about in this study? In addition to the omega-3 fatty acids, there are health enhancing substances found in walnuts, molasses, and fish, according to researchers. They're also found in many other foods.

It's especially interesting to note that molasses is included in this list, because molasses is produced as a waste product from the sugar refining industry. When you refine sugar beets or whole grains in order to make refined white sugar or white flour, you remove as much as 98% of the nutrition from those natural foods, leaving only a white, super sweet, highly concentrated refined sugar, and that's what ultimately gets fed to human beings.

The waste product from this process is a thick, brown, syrupy liquid — that's molasses. Molasses contains most of the nutrition of the original food, including the vitamins, minerals, and various compounds such as uridine. It is this molasses that's normally sent off to be used in livestock feed, and yet what we're finding here with this research is that this molasses can help prevent depression. Eating molasses is part of a food strategy that's just as good as antidepressant drugs.

This also goes to show why people who pursue healthy diets tend to have such a positive outlook and outstanding mental health — it's the foods. Because food greatly affects your mental state, if you eat healing foods, and foods rich in vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients, then you're going to have healthier mental function and will rarely experience depression, especially if you combine these foods with natural sunlight. But if you eat processed foods and manufactured foods, as are generally consumed by most Americans, then of course you're going to be depressed, because you're not giving your brain the nutrients it needs to achieve a healthy mental state.

So it is in fact the food supply that is causing depression in this country. It's all the refined ingredients that have their nutrition stripped away. That's what's causing depression. But what do we do in this country to treat depression? We come up with new drugs like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, and we give those to people and charge them sometimes thousands of dollars a year to stay on these drugs. They don't need these drugs — what they really need are healing foods. They need to go to the grocery store, shop for some healthy foods like wheat germ, molasses, avocados, and so on, and eat those foods in order to have healthy brain balance and avoid depression. It's really not that difficult.

Page 1 of 3 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 3 | Next