Why Is Everyone So Depressed? The SSRI/School Shooting Connection

In my last post, I attempted to shed some light on the obvious association between SSRI medications (antidepressant drugs, like Prozac) and the recent wave of wholesale shootings/suicides.  The correlation is so profound that it should at least warrant some serious investigation, yet all is quiet on that front as the politicians instead rush to blame a very old technology for a very new problem.   This is a sickening exploitation of the death of children, simply to prop-up bad legislation that offers no real solutions to the problem, but instead rekindles long-standing , irrelevant battles between Special Interest Lobbies and Congress.

More than 1 in 10 Americans take at least one of these SSRI drugs regularly.  Why suddenly, does everyone need to be on antidepressants, when humans have thrived for tens of thousands of years without them?   Are people actually becoming more and more depressed and mentally ill?   If so, then why?   These are the questions that I would like to take a look at in this article

I certainly do not believe that everyone prescribed these drugs are clinically depressed nor in need of any chemical sedation.  As I mentioned in the last post, my wife and I were both offered these drugs by doctors, even when we were not expressing any feelings of depression.  These new wonder pills are just another fad drug (similar to Valium in the 1970s), which are being prescribed for anyone with a complaint, but no real disease.   Even though I believe they are given out to perfectly healthy people, I do believe that depression has been on the rise in the last few decades, but handing out SSRI medication certainly does not answer the question as to why.

It appears to be the goal of modern medicine to treat a symptom, rather than the cause of a disease, perhaps because it is far more profitable to establish life-long treatments than simply finding a prevention or cure for a disease.  I believe that there is a root cause for the massive amount of clinical depression arising in the western world and it is not simply because of a poor economy, terrorists and every other excuse being tossed around.  Humans have had to deal with everyday stress of survival for millions of years and very few americans are actually affected by terrorists – only through the scare tactics shoveled out by the media.

The rise in the rate of depression seems perfectly in sync with the evolution of the American diet.   Depression has been on a steady incline since the 1970s (depression in woman has doubled since 1970), which was also when the hysteria concerning high cholesterol began to take hold of America.   Each decade following has pushed the desired cholesterol levels lower and lower and lower.   The most recent advertisements for Crestor now claim that your doctor’s goal for your cholesterol is below 100 mg/dl – that’s suicide – literally!

Low cholesterol, depression and attempted suicide appear to go hand in hand in every clinical study.   The association is undeniable.   This article from Psychology Today (full article) plainly states:

As low cholesterol is linked to depression, low cholesterol is also a risk factor in suicide attempts.”.

Of course, like any modern medical publication, they paint a dichotomy by echoing the rhetoric about high cholesterol causing heart disease, even in spite of a 2009 study published in the American Heart Journal that showed that 75% of heart attack victims admitted to emergency rooms tested with low to normal cholesterol levels.  Read what Dr. Dwight Lundell, a heart surgeon who has performed more than 5,000 open heart surgeries, has to say concerning the role of cholesterol in heart disease here.  Why would nature evolve us to be “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” – it wouldn’t.   So, one of these theories has to be wrong and I believe that the evidence for cholesterol causing heart disease is far weaker than the link between low cholesterol and depression.

This all tends to make sense once you realize that the brain accounts for 25% of the body’s total cholesterol.   Your brain and nervous system are made predominantly of this molecule.   Then again, we have the fact that most of our hormones are also constructed from cholesterol and it becomes obvious how low cholesterol can cause mood problems.   Little wonder why vegans tend to be extremely moody and temperamental?

The human body is completely incapable of making many of the essential hormones without cholesterol, including the male hormone testosterone – perhaps explaining the need for Viagra and Cialis in our zero cholesterol society?   Studies have proven that low testosterone not only causes a lower libido, but can also cause severe mood swings.   Many children today are placed on low-fat diets from birth.   Human breast milk is very high in cholesterol by nature, much higher than cow’s milk; I guess this was just another mistake that evolution made.

Now, babies are fed very low-fat formulas at the point in life that the brain begins developing – remember, the brain is made predominantly from cholesterol, which might explain why human milk is so high in it.   Cholesterol is so important to our health, that not only is it manufactured in the liver, but every cell in the human body can synthesize cholesterol if necessary.  This is why the pharmaceutical companies had to create certain drugs in order to pound cholesterol down to the unnaturally low levels they recommend.  Very few people realize that the American Heart Association even scoffed at Ancel Key’s “Lipid Hypothesis” up until the year that he was appointed to their board of directors.  Click here for a great breakdown on the history of how the bogus Lipid Hypothesis came into being.

Once the AHA foolishly adopted Keys erroneous theory, the drug companies ran to manufacture drugs that could lower cholesterol.   This would ultimately become the 30 billion dollar a year industry that is presently their leading cash cow.   Cholesterol lowering drugs are the top money-maker for the pharmaceutical industries, is it any wonder why they are the driving force behind perpetuating the lie that is the “Lipid Hypothesis” and bury any evidence to the contrary?

Most of everything that your doctor believes, was taught to them by the pharmaceutical companies and their less-than-honest studies.   Here are just a few pieces of evidence of the drug companies influence over medical schools here, here and here.  Even many years after leaving medical school, nearly every lecture, conference or piece of literature that your doctor is provided is paid for by the pharmaceutical companies – they are the core of modern medicine and doctors are strictly the licensed vehicle they need to distribute their wares.

Now we see that SSRI medications are beginning to close in on the profits of statins by garnering some 19 billion dollars in revenues.   The pharmaceutical companies are double-dipping on this one.   As long as they continue to perpetuate the myth that cholesterol causes heart disease, people will lower their cholesterol, thereby becoming depressed – not to worry, they have the answer for this with another magic pill – a pill that also causes thoughts of suicide!  How long until they invent a pill that will attempt to prevent the suicidal side-effects of the SSRI?   That’s how the pharmaceutical game works.  Let’s take a look at just how SSRI work to prevent depression – at least in theory.

SSRI stands for “Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor”, which means that the drug increases the amount of serotonin available at the synapses of the nervous system by inhibiting the body’s ability to re-uptake the excess serotonin.  These nerves also include the brain.   The synapse is a fancy name for the gap between nerve endings.  As a signal is sent along a nerve, it ultimately reaches a nerve ending, where the signal must be relayed across this gap or “synapse”.  This relay is achieved by the secretion of certain chemicals, like acetylcholine, serotonin and glutamate called neurotransmitters.

Any one of these neurotransmitters in extreme abundance can be considered an excitotoxin, because they will keep the nerves constantly firing, which we are not designed to do.  This action can eventually cause cell damage to the nerve.   Do any of those chemical neurotransmitters sound remotely familiar with any ingredients in the American diet?   How about glutamate – as in Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) – does this ring a bell?   MSG became a necessary ingredient in most processed foods the minute that the fat was removed.   Food without fat can become rather flavorless and boring to eat.   Flavor enhancers, such as sugar, salt, MSG and aspartame made up for the loss of fat and excited the nerve endings, which creates a pleasurable experience in the brain when eating this non-nutritious garbage.

Glutamate is used in literally thousands of food products from frozen pizzas to chips and cookies.  It is hard to know all the products that contain MSG, because the federal government allows manufacturers to list it as “natural flavorings” in their ingredients list – but Americans are consuming a butt-load of this chemical.  So, is the real problem with the rise in depression caused by a lack of serotonin or is it too much glutamate?   High glutamate levels have also been associated with OCD and other brain disorders in some studies.   Glutamate is also manufactured in our bodies from blood glucose, so it has been found to be very high in those with type 1 diabetes, also causing depression (source).

Whenever any of these neurotransmitters become out of balance, depression is sure to follow.   It is very apparent after a little study that the modern problem of depression is rarely that serotonin levels are too low, but that glutamate levels are far too high and that is easily associated with the modern diet of processed foods, which jack-up blood glucose levels and dump tons of excitotoxins, such as glutamate and aspartame, into our children’s bloodstream.  The following is a must-see report on flavor enhancers aired 60 Minutes.  They are quite candid on what the manufacturers are trying to achieve when designing these chemical cocktails.

They admit that their goal is to create an addiction and design flavors to not “linger”, so you will want to eat more and more, never being satisfied – how ethical is this practice in a nation suffering from a rising obesity problem?   By every definition, these flavor enhancers behave more like a drug and just like street drugs, they continue to get more powerful as the technology progresses.

The medical industry’s solution is very similar to their solution to the imbalance of fatty acids, also caused by the modern diet.   The medical community would have us believe that humans do not get enough omega 3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA, in their diet and therefore why they constantly push fish and flaxseed oil to patients.   But, the reality is that americans consume far too much omega 6 fatty acid via vegetable oils (actually seed oils, because they came from grains or beans).

This again is a mainstay of processed foods and is also recommended as being more heart healthy than saturated fat.   Rather than have people cut down on the amount of plant derived oils, the insanity is now to attempt to match the over-consumption and resulting inflammation of omega 6 fatty acids with an over-consumption of omega 3 fatty acids.

In a similar way, these same geniuses are attempting to offset the high glutamate levels, caused by a diet high in processed foods, by jacking up the serotonin levels at the synapse of the nerves.   This is a complete over excitement of the nerve cells and is little wonder why this experiment is beginning to back-fire.   Their logic reminds me of the children’s song, where the old woman accidentally ate a fly and then she decided to eat a spider to catch the fly.   She continues to eat larger and larger animals to get rid of the last one, until ultimately eating a horse, which finally kills her (lyrics here)).

I don’t think you can cheat nature this way – excess is excess, but no entity of commerce would dare advise anyone to reduce the consumption of any product, when they can double their profits by advising you to double your consumption of something else.  It’s like telling you to eat a pound of poison and not worry, because I have a pound of antidote.  Who would do this?   The old woman in the story would be proud of this logic, unfortunately she’s too dead to enjoy it.

I am sure that the people who have very low cholesterol and are inundating their bodies with all these excitotoxins do feel better when first taking these drugs, but we can see that it leads to a much larger meltdown as time passes.   It also appears that the problem becomes even worse when someone on these SSRI medications withdraws from them.  These drugs are extremely addictive and create a dependence by taking away the body’s natural ability to “feel happy” or “good” without the drug.

Not unlike methamphetamines, this dependence seems to become permanent or at least have withdrawal symptoms so long that few people make it without going back to the drug or committing suicide.  It would seem that the dopamine receptors are severely crippled after long-term damage to the nerve cells, so with or without the drug, the patient experiences a hopelessness and inability to feel good about life anymore.

With methamphetamines, the dosages must be continually increased in order to achieve the happy feeling the user desires – ultimately the drug no longer delivers the happy feeling at all, but the drug must be continued just to prevent falling  into a feeling on total desolation.  Without the drug, their life becomes a dark and miserable place.  I think we are seeing evidence that these SSRIs can produce a similar result and a similar feeling of despair in some users when the drug is no longer taken.

Some of these maniac shooters had stopped taking their medication prior to their explosion.   This leads many to believe that these people were insane to begin with and that the SSRI medication made them civil.   Once they stopped taking the medication, they went back to being nuts.   This could be a possibility, but that theory begins to fall apart when we see how many of the shooters were still on their medication when they went postal and the fact that very few of them had shown any signs of violent behavior towards others prior to being on the drugs.  (Here is a list of shooters and the drugs they were on or withdrawing from at the time of the shootings)

We will never know the answer, because no one cares to investigate this problem.   The politicians, news media and Hollywood know-it-alls see these shootings as an opportunity to further other political agendas they hold dear – they also hold the megaphone with which to shout their opinions much louder than the rest of us and draw all attention away from this problem.

Though I believe that many doctors prescribe these drugs to people who are not depressed or are just going through a temporary depression with an obvious cause (death in the family, divorce, loss of job, etc..), but there is a growing population of people who are manic-depressive, and that number is most likely growing because of the deterioration of the American diet.   As the medical professionals continue to push the recommended cholesterol level lower and lower and the manufacturers of these flavor enhancers continue to make them more powerful, this problem will become worse.

Each generation of children are raised on more highly processed diet than the previous one – food lower in fat and higher in exitotoxins.  Younger and younger children are being placed on these drugs as a result.  Our government has pretty much taken over the diet of the American children through the school system.   There are some states who have begun to make the school lunch program mandatory, not allowing parents to send their children to school with a homemade lunch.

I have read other stories of some schools that inspect the lunches sent from home and have confiscated any foods that their diet guidelines doesn’t agree with (the confiscation was claimed to be a misunderstanding, but this is the type of problems that will arise once the genie is let out of that bottle).

 

This next video is a good illustration of just how fake our modern food can be.  Remember as you watch this, according to the story of the confiscated lunch in North Carolina, the chicken nuggets were the school system’s replacement for the turkey sandwich.  Let’s see what our government considers a superior food.

I am not sure how American parents are going to take back control of the food that their children eat, but if something is not done soon, this problem will continue to grow, no matter how many weapons that the government decides to ban.   The school lunch mandate also included fruit juice, which may as well be soda as far as quantity of sugar and artificial flavoring.  If a parent does not want their child drinking this liquid candy, what right does a school have provide it to the child?

In Summary

It seems quite clear that the problem begins with this American diet that is low in healthy fat and cholesterol, yet high in sugar, starch and flavor enhancers (excitotoxins).  Low cholesterol and high glutamate levels is a recipe for depression, OCD, and ADHD.  This leads to a visit to the doctor, who will no doubt prescribe one of these drugs, further elevating the level of excitotoxins at the nerve synapse, which will ultimately cause cell damage to the nerve endings and dependence on stronger and stronger doses.   Given the fact that these drugs are being administered to people at a younger and younger age, even at the point where a child’s brain is still growing and developing, how are we surprised when these kids go off the deep end?   And why is it that our leaders in both politics and medicine cannot see this pattern and refuse to investigate?

I think this is the appropriate time to say, “follow the money”.   The pharmaceutical companies have an endless goldmine propping up the lie that cholesterol is deadly and setting the desired level far too low to achieve by diet, thereby needing their cholesterol lowering drugs to smash cholesterol down to a level that nature never intended (remember, their statin drugs work by crippling the liver’s ability to manufacture cholesterol – like everyone’s liver decided to take out a contract on our hearts).   This accounts for 30 billion dollars per year for statin drugs.   Perpetuating this lie for profit has also caused the American people to reduce their fat intake, even to their children, whose developing brains need cholesterol far more than an adult.

This all leads to depression, onset by the lack of cholesterol, coupled with the high intake of excitotoxins.   The fact that children consume more junk food than adults, further complicates the problem as junk foods are inundated with these flavor enhancers.   Now we finish off the poor child’s brain by tossing in more excitotoxins in the form of drugs in an attempt to offset the ones in the highly processed foods.   Using favor enhancers is far cheaper to produce processed food and the removal of fats also extends their shelf life, so it is far more profitable to the food manufacturers to continue this pattern.

Then we have the fact that the politicians not only receive huge contributions from both of these entities (pharmaceutical companies and processed food manufacturers), but they also have other agendas that expand federal government power by taking away the liberty of the people to make their own choices.   It was not only the talk of gun bans (the dream of every politician), but there was also a lot of rhetoric concerning the expansion of mental health – translation: MORE POWERFUL DRUGS and easier access to them.

Given the fact that Obama’s goal is “Mandate people to behave” (according to his interpretation of behavior), may we also see court ordered medications for those deemed mentally ill in our near future?  Possibly even those deemed physically ill?   A heart attack victim may be ordered by the court to take statin drugs once Obamacare becomes the law of the land.

Why people continue to place the welfare of their children into the hands of a government that has lied to its people so many times and been flat-out wrong in may of its assumptions, boggles the mind.   It is actually not so hard to understand once you see the fear that is created and maintained by our leaders and the media by the corporations and special interest groups that support them both.

I plan to cover this in greater detail in an upcoming post in my newest category called “Fear Mongering”.  Creating fear is the favorite tool of commerce and it is through that fear that we surrender our right  to make choices for ourselves and do what we’re told by the media and their sponsors.   Americans must find the courage to take charge of their own lives and decisions, before we completely lose the ability or freedom to make those choices.