Antidepressants – “Natural” and Otherwise

I was on antidepressants for over a decade. They probably saved my life. If you’re taking them and want to try eliminating food, keep taking them until you feel like the depression/anxiety is gone, don’t stop first. I could tell when I could stop taking them even though I hadn’t had a break in over 10 years.

If you suffer from anxiety or depression but you find it’s fairly manageable (or you can survive without antidepressants), I highly recommend 5 HTP. Here are links to some that don’t have soy or anything in it I react to:

Canada – NOW 5HTP

America – NOW 5HTP

You should take it with food. When I try to reintroduce something that doesn’t go well on the diet, I take 400 mg, 3 times a day until the flare up is gone. That’s a really high dose… start with much less, but I’ll need that much. 200 mg a day doesn’t do anything. You might be different. I usually do this for about 4 weeks until the flare is over. If I have an IgG reaction, leading to a serious flare up, I’ll go back on antidepressants for about 12 days and then switch to 5 HTP on day 13 for another 10 or 11 days. This is not what the medical community suggests, but it’s what works for me. Sometimes the flares are bad enough that they warrant a short period of antidepressants. Granted, the dose I usually use is 1/4 of what I used to take all the time, and that’s good enough.

If you’re on an antidepressant, do not take 5 HTP at the same time. It can cause serotonin syndrome in a very unpleasant way. I figured that out the hard way.

5 HTP works on serotonin. I’ve met people with anxiety who tried 5 HTP and it made them more irritable. Obviously their out of whack neurotransmitter wasn’t serotonin, so if you feel like it makes you worse, stop. It works really well for what happens to me though.

I haven’t taken antidepressants in a very long time. I’m good enough at this diet that when I reintroduce something and have a flare, it’s fairly minor. Obviously , nothing that hits your mood, digestion, skin, etc, feels minor, but it is minor enough not to need pharmaceuticals. The only reason I took antidepressants with a flare was when it was caused by IgG food.

Another quick thing: not everyone will have as severe a reaction to an IgG food as my dad and I. This is a warning mostly for people who suffer from anxiety and/or depression. My mom doesn’t have mental issues (although wheat makes her feel pretty unstable), and her IgG reactions are mostly physical. If she eats an IgG food she’s pretty okay. I am not okay at all when that happens. I seriously recommend an IgG food test if you suffer from mental problems at all. Reintroducing food that triggers an IgG reaction is god awful, and it’s not as obvious until you start messing around with diet. I can’t stress this enough. My depression used to be pretty much the same year-round, worsening slowly as the days got darker and peaking in early January. When I started messing around with food, the depression would go away and come back worse than before when I messed up. I didn’t do the IgG testing before I started changing my diet and it was a huge mistake. This is avoidable if you pay attention to the IgG foods.  If you don’t suffer from a mental problem, reintroducing an IgG food (from what I’ve seen) isn’t nearly as dangerous.

Anyways point of the post: 5 HTP is awesome for me. If I take it with food I don’t have any side effects, even at higher dosages. It makes me much more relaxed and during a reaction helps with irritability and doom sensations. I highly recommend it.

The other thing you might want to try is dihydromyricetin (it works weakly on GABA).