fat, dumb, anti-depressed, but not happy?

Here’s a curmudgeonly article from Orion that claims that one-third of Americans are on Prozac-like antidepressants.  Yet not everyone walks around with a smile on his or her face.  Why not?  The author ascribes our malaise to spending too much time driving alone in our SUVs to Starbucks compared to Europeans who walk to gatherings with friends.


(Question for the comments section:  Do we believe this statistic that 1/3rd of us are on happy pills?)


[Wow, this sure got a lot of comments.  It does seem that the 1/3rd number is a vast overestimate (sadly for shareholders in drug companies).  Pilots at least are safe from pill-pushing shrinks because the FAA won’t allow anyone to fly who is on antidepressants (http://www.aviationmedicine.com/psych.htm).]

47 thoughts on “fat, dumb, anti-depressed, but not happy?

  1. Just once, I would like one of these anti-SSRI asswipes to experience the chronic anxiety or perhaps one of the full-blown panic attacks I’ve had since age 12, or the difficulty of walking down to chat in a neighborly way with friends while experiencing the pain of clinical depression, or the terrible isolation (!) that results from social phobia.

    It’s not about suburbia, it has nothing to do with the national mood, and if you have no idea what it’s like you really should just STFU.

  2. I’m not an anti-SSRI asswipe but I played one onstage in college. Seriously, it felt like almost everyone I knew at my college was on SSRIs, when really they needed attention paid to what was really wrong instead of having some drugs handed to ’em. I don’t believe the statistic, but I do believe that this country is Incredibly Overmedicated. When we’re putting three year olds on stimulants, there’s something really wrong – three year olds are supposed to run around and have short attention spans. In their current tour, do the Stones update “Mother’s Little Helper” so that the kid’s taking the pills instead of the mom?

  3. America is overmedicated. Not sure if I would agree that 1/3 of the population is walking around in a halcyon haze, but sure, it’s not cool in the country to be sad, or unhappy, and most treatment specialists in the mental health field are far too quick to reach for their prescription pads instead of suggesting alternative medicine / therapy. This is an interesting thought Philip, I bet we would be more happy is we got rid of our SUV’s, started riding our bikes to work, boycotted Starbucks, and hung out at 1369 instead!

  4. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the part about “happy camper pills” and their glorious side effects. If you don’t consider tics, rhinitis, weight increase, sexual dysfunction, back pain, etc. to be pleasant, then you might want to reevaluate the “happy” part. I personally would opt for term “zombie camper pills”.

  5. That’s nothing, you should see the effects I get from NOT taking the medication: panic, palpitations, nausea, pain, shakes, profuse sweating, severe abdominal cramps, and depression.

    You hypocrites who pretend to be compassionate while calling me a zombie for trying to reach some degree of normalcy: you are hereby welcome to blow me. Kyle, you can take how pissed I am as evidence I don’t suffer from any sort of zombiesque mood compression.

    If you have no idea what it’s like, you really must SHUT THE FUCK UP. You know, you share this prejudice (against psychiatric mediation) with the Scientologists. You like that kind of company? Happy navel-gazing.

  6. I think the 1/3 is for all perscription drugs — not just for the “happy pills”. That aside, SUVs or not, fat, dumb, or not is not the point here. The American society lives in a fast-pace environment; we are overworked and hardly think about “taking it easy”. People come from all over the world to compete with each other (and the world) in America. Finally, because of our given freedom, we tend to be taken advantage of. For example, watch an hour of TV and chances are very good that you will see an ad about “fix it quick pill” — of course, followed with the disclaimer side effect in the final second of the ad; scary stuff.

  7. Undertoad…have you examined yourself or your past to try to identify any potential sources of chronic anxiety? In many cases, the medication covers up a problem rather than solve it. I’m not saying this is necessarily the case for you, and I don’t think anyone on the board is saying that either. There are definetly cases of clinical, physiological problems where medication is the answer. The point here is that, for the most part, medication is over-prescribed so we don’t have to face the burden of self-examination or the responsibility of improvement.

    This is funny: I play in a band and we have some young fans. Ofter a show one afternoon, a group of mid-teenage boys was excitedly telling me about their own band, including the complex issue of naming the band. One contender for the title was “Raised on Riddlin.” My laughter was bittersweet, as that’s a sad commentary on American Youth.

    And check out this Sony Music signed band:
    http://www.riddlinkids.com

    scary

  8. Justin, of course. For 20 years I addressed it through coping techniques, self-help, and expensive therapy. It always came back. For the last 6 years I address it through 15 mg of Paxil every morning. It doesn’t come back now.

    It is, from what I can tell so far, a hereditary brain chemistry deficiency. But before I understood that, I described it as “My mother’s a nervous wreck, and so am I.”

    People like Kyle have always told me to “snap out of it” or “pick yourself up by your bootstraps” because that has always worked for them. Everyone brings to this problem the insight of their own normalcy, and the instinct is to tell people who are depressed or anxious that their problem is less imprtant than that of, say, the diabetic — whose chronic condition you’d never say shouldn’t be addressed with medication.

    Until you realize that tens of thousands of people commit suicide every year and that MOST of them could be helped with that so-called “quick fix”.

    If you really thought about that, and you had the means, you’d try to produce really straight-forward commercials to try to tell them that there are medical solutions, wouldn’t you?

  9. ‘Undertoad’ – surely you recognize the possibility that many people, yourself included, can benefit greatly from Paxil and related drugs, but that such drugs are also given to many who do not benefit from them?

    Of particular concern are children, who are routinely and widely perscribed drugs whose effects on children have never been studied.

  10. Joe: children aside please (thread won’t last long enough):

    Nobody takes these medications accidentally, nobody is forced at gunpoint, everybody understands the purpose of the medication, everyone is in the end responsible for maintaining their own health, and nobody is actively trying to make their situation worse.

    The effect of SSRIs on the non-drepressed/anxious is negligible.

    Many more people need the medications than are currently taking them.

  11. Stay off any treatment that renders you impotent is my prescription. As the man said, “I’m gonna lay around the ol’ shanty Mama and put a good buzz on.”

  12. A doctor friend of mine commented the other night that somewhere around 70% of her patients are on something or other. Not a psych either…her patients fill out a medical questionnaire and she’s no longer surprised at what she sees on it.

  13. The biggest problem with antidepressants isn’t really the side-effects — the biggest problem is that these drugs are essentially glorified placebos. In other words, the drugs don’t work. See, for example:

    ===========================

    Study: Antidepressant barely better than placebo

    By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY

    Antidepressants work only slightly better than dummy pills, and the Food and Drug Administration has not informed physicians of how little benefit most of these drugs offer, suggests a study to be released next week.

    Through a Freedom of Information Act request, two psychologists obtained 47 studies used by the FDA for approval of the six antidepressants prescribed most widely between 1987-99.

    Overall, antidepressant pills worked 18% better than placebos, a statistically significant difference, “but not meaningful for people in clinical settings,” says University of Connecticut psychologist Irving Kirsch. He and co-author Thomas Moore will release their findings July 15 in Prevention and Treatment, an e-journal of the American Psychological Association.

    More than half of the 47 studies found that patients on antidepressants improved no more than those on placebos, Kirsch says. “They should have told the American public about this. The drugs have been touted as much more effective than they are.” He says studies finding no benefit have been mentioned only on labeling for Celexa, the most recently approved drug. The others included in his evaluation: Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor and Serzone.

    ===========================

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/drugs/2002-07-08-antidepressants.htm

    Even that small, apparent superiority (18%) is suspect. The problem is that antidepressants cause side-effects that produce an enhanced placebo effect. Patients think to themselves, “Ever since I started taking this drug, I’ve been sleepy all day, I’ve lost the ability to have an orgasm, and my mouth has been dry. Wow, this must be a very powerful drug, and I bet that my depression will lift soon.”

    Antidepressants are essentially a marketing scam.

  14. So from what I can discern in the comments exactly one person among those responding is taking these drugs (and apparently for very good reason). My personal observation is 0 for 5 among my children, myself or my wife. For a period after my father’s death my mother took that medication and credits it with her ability to overcome debilitating depression. This topic seems to attract moralizing individuals who are long on opinion and short on facts.

  15. My personal observation: 2 for 4 among my parents, sister, and self. And sometimes I think that I should have gone the medication route rather than periodic episodes of therapy.

    To Philip’s question: I would seriously question whether 1 in 3 Americans has a health plan that actually covers antidepressants. I’d be more inclined to believe George’s hypothesis that it’s one in three who are on any prescription meds, not just SSRIs.

  16. I have to side with undertoad on this one. I struggled with serious bouts of depression since childhood, apparently inherited from one side of my family; a parent and grandparent struggled on and off with the same thing, and a great-grandparent lived much of her life institutionalized because of it.

    Medication is like anything else; it is a tool that can be misused, overused, underused, misunderstood, etc. Just like some people tale a swat at anything with a hammer, and others resort to hammering in nails with an old hardback book, some people put their kids on ritalin as an easy alternative to discipline, and others start popping valium as recreation. Others suffer for years but are too embarrassed or fearful to get any treatment at all. It doesn’t help to indict the drug completely, nor to tell all drug-takers to ‘get over it; pull yourself up by the bootstraps already; put a smile on your face,’ etc.

    My own experience tells me that a person in a ‘healthy’ state of mind can’t rightly comprehend the workings of an unhealthy mind. I say this as a healthy person coming off of a year of antidepressants; I think back on how I felt and read what I wrote back then, and I don’t understand how my mind was working; those thoughts are inconceivable. At the worst of it, it felt like I was in a constant battle against the degenerating path of my own thoughts, and I never found a way to combat that part of myself successfully to ‘pull myself up by the bootstraps’, although I tried so hard. I’m convinced nothing but medication would have helped, and I only resorted to that after getting to the point that I literally couldn’t force myself to go to work anymore; I couldn’t face people, couldn’t talk to people, was convinced of all kinds of awful things that simply weren’t true. Basically, it came to a point where this depression was running my life and making my decisions for me, and it was time to either get it handled, or give up for good.

    I shudder to think of people continuing to wander in this twilight state of being out of shame, because, to the sufferer, the very need or desire for treatment becomes a symptom of their own personal weakness and failure, rather than a treatable illness. I think that’s an unfortunate result of the backlash against some improper use of the tools that exist now.

    It’s hard to use one’s mind as a diagnostic tool against one’s own mind; can you measure the fault in an instrument by applying it to itself? That’s the most difficult part of handling your own depression, or attempting to; you start to question yourself on every feeling and every conclusion. That, and what do you do when your own thoughts become your enemy? What are you, if not your thoughts and the workings of your own mind? How do you exist as yourself if you have to close yourself off from your own thoughts to do it? It puts the idea of being an ‘antidepressant zombie’ into perspective, I’ll say that. There’s a point at which you’d rather turn off your mind entirely than have to continue to listen to the products of its illness; hence suicide. You know, it’s really almost unexplainable.

    I think there’s merit to the idea that we have an epidemic of depression now because we have so much leisure time; too much time to think! In the past, if you were so focused on your own survival and that of your family, there was no energy left for negative ruminations, and if you had depression, you certainly didn’t have time to entertain it. That and the social isolation are real influences. But the fact that we as a society have created the environment for depression doesn’t mean the depression isn’t real.

    With that, i think I’ve said more than enough!

  17. hmm, are 1/3 of americans college students? we all know that 100% of college students must be taking these happy-pills. 😉 hehe

  18. I have no doubt that millions of people have felt much better after they started taking an antidepressant. I have strong doubts, though, that such positive outcomes had anything to do with some direct, biochemical effect of the drug on your brain. Research shows that if you give a placebo to a large group of sick people, about one-third of the people will feel much better; one third will feel a little better; and one-third won’t see any effect. For more information on this “rule of thirds”, see:

    http://www.astrocyte-design.com/pseudoscience/#thirds

    I’m opposed to antidepressants not because of some moral stance but because the drugs don’t work. Oh, lots of people think the drugs work, but introspection is notoriously unreliable as a guide to measuring drug effectiveness. Instead, we need to conduct rigorously-conrolled, well-designed studies to determine whether a drug does what it’s supposed to do. And such studies show that antidepressants are essentially placebos, though placebos with sometimes severe side-effects.

    For more information, see: “Antidepressants Versus Placebos: Meaningful Advantages Are Lacking”, by Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., and David Antonuccio, Ph.D. (published in Psychiatric Times):

    http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p020906.html

  19. An update: I wrote to the author of the article originally cited in Dr. Greenspun’s blog entry. The author’s name is Jim Kunstler. I asked him for a reference to the statistic he cited that one-third of all Americans are taking an SSRI antidepressant. He wrote back, saying that he read it somewhere but can’t remember where.

    Ahem.

  20. Alex, I guarantee you that my ability at introspection is simply enormous, my interest in a scientific outcome persistent, my skepticism at medication thorough. And the damn drug WORKS FOR ME in ways that sugar pills simply could not. That’s hard to explain. But in fact, for me, it’s been equally effective during times when I thought that it would work and times when I thought it would not. And different doses affected me in different and interesting ways. I understand that placebo effect is complicated, but the nature of the brain is not completely understood either.

    Also I believe you are doing yourself a disservice by selectively picking which data you would like to believe in. It’s important to read all the studies, not just the ones that you think prove your point.

    Until then, my advice remains. Shut the fuck up.

  21. Undertoad…you completely undermine your position on this board by being an ass. Why should anyone sympathize with you when you are vitriolic?

  22. Undertoad, you can’t possibly know that the drug works for some reason other than the placebo effect. Unless you’re not human, of course. But if you feel better after having taken the drug (post hoc, ergo propter hoc), hey — who am I to tell you to stop taking it? Nothing succeeds like success, as they say.

    As for selectively picking which data to believe in, this is part and parcel of critical thinking — separating the wheat from the chaff. Otherwise, you end up believing everything, nothing, and all things in between. Of course, you need to be very careful about deciding which data is real and which is spurious — no easy task, I realize.

    I’ve spent the last eight years (roughly) examining data related to antidepressant effectiveness. I even maintain a web page on the subject. Did you look at it? Hold the “shift” key down while clicking on this link, so the page will open up into a new window:

    http://www.astrocyte-design.com/pseudoscience/

    I also maintain a blog on pseudoscience in the mental-health industry:

    http://www.astrocyte-design.com/blog/

  23. Alex: I emailed the author as well, and got the same response, he also went further to say “I actually resisted attempts by the editors to dress the article up with
    statistical analysis. ” In my original email I pointed him to this blog, and in his response he mentioned something about his article being misunderstood…

    i think a lot of people here, including undertoad share this sentiment.

  24. Recently, a Cochrane review was published which appears to show that the placebo effect does not exist – that a placebo is no different to no treatment. See the authors’ original article at http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/344/21/1594

    With regard to the 18% improvement due to antidpressants not being clinically significant: ARRs of as low as 2% are heralded as a breakthrough and instituted as standard practice (ie – it is unethical to withhold) with drugs like thrombolytics.

  25. Yes, I know about the research that disputes the existence of the placebo effect. The research is seriously flawed. You can read a critique of it here:

    http://www.journals.apa.org/prevention/volume5/pre0050022i.html

    As for the 18% figure, I suppose that what’s clinically significant and what’s not depends largely on the specifics of the disease you are trying to treat. In the case of antidepressants, you have to balance the (possibly) beneficial effects of the drug against the (sometimes dangerous) side-effects. See, for example, this article about homicidal/suicidal behavior possibly induced by Paxil (generic: paroxetine):

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,3605,534058,00.html

    There are better ways to treat depression than to take a pill every day. Cognitive therapy and interpersonal therapy work well. Also, “common-sense” type remedies are overlooked too often. Starting an exercise regime, changing your job, getting marriage counseling, improving your sleeping habits, and eating healthy food can all go a long way toward lifting your mood.

  26. A lot of people have spent a lot of time running studies, analyzing studies, deconstructing studies, and the like, and their analyses can be found all over the web among other places.

    I know I found this interesting — http://www.mcleanhospital.org/psychupdate/psyup_I_6.htm — it describes the variance of results in certain groups, as well as some of the difficulties of running studies on psychiatric drugs when the studies purposefully exclude severely-depressed patients (after all, how can you give a placebo to a severele depressed, possibly suicidal person, without telling him), which are exactly the kind of patient these drugs are meant to be used for.

    Here’s a study that attempted to determine a physical difference in patients who responded to placebo vs those who responded to medicine, and they claim to have had success: http://www.depression.ucla.edu/news/PDF/aboutcom_020615.pdf

    This paper not only describes some other difficulties of interpreting patient results, but also tries to compare different types of antidepressants to eachother in effectiveness. It comes out with SSRIs as least effective, MAOIs and electroshock therapy as most effective.

    Of course, if you hit a drug manufacturer’s site, you’ll come away convinced ‘happy pills’ are infallible. Read an herbalist’s site, and nothing non-herbal has any effect at all.

    With the disparity of information (some say all antidepressants are no more effective than placebo; some say they’re god’s gift to psychiatry; all this about drugs that vary so widely in formulation and dosage that it’s hard to believe any blanket statement made about ‘all antidepressants’), you can perhaps understand some being underwhelmed by your (Alex’s) one site, among so may others. In the face of the personal experience of a lot of medicated people, it seems specious for one person to counter that with what seem to be selectively-chosen studies. Of course, a lot of people have personal experience of religious revelations, too, and I don’t believe them either.

    Finally, although my experience speaks against the ‘it’s just a placebo’ theory in all the same ways that undertoad likely does, with the fervor of personal effects, I think I can argue the other side from a more machiavellian perspective. If a suicidal person feels better because a drug was effective, or a person feels better just because they feel better, for no real medical reason, in the end, does it really matter? Either way, the final product is a person who is going to make it through the next day, which may be a relief to their families and friends, if not to you.

  27. Webwench wrote: “If a suicidal person feels better because a drug was effective, or a person feels better just because they feel better, for no real medical reason, in the end, does it really matter?”

    It might not matter, except for the fact that there are more effective, less dangerous, more long-lasting ways to treat depression than with pills. Seems to me that people should choose the method that gives the highest probability of a positive outcome, and shun methods that are fraught with difficulties.

  28. Also, when you say “There are better ways to treat depression than to take a pill every day. Cognitive therapy and interpersonal therapy work well…”, I’d say (1) you’ll find even less support for the effectiveness of ‘talk therapy’ than for antidepressant medication, including a sizable contingent who say talk therapy makes things *worse*, and (2) any reputable doctor will prescribe antidepressants accompanied by therapy as a matter of convention, and I know mine emphasized that antidepressants were a tool, used as a temporary crutch to help me be able to pursue other treatment (therapy), and not to be thought of as ‘the cure’ or as something I should expect to need permanently.

    Regarding “Also, ‘common-sense’ type remedies are overlooked too often. Starting an exercise regime, changing your job, getting marriage counseling, improving your sleeping habits, and eating healthy food can all go a long way toward lifting your mood…” you’re confusing the blues, something that’s a natural part of live, with depression, which can and does happen even when life seems to be going perfectly well. I know the last and worst bout I had with depression came at a time when I had a stable, well-paying job, a fulfilling personal relationship, no financial hardships, good social network, etc. Feeling profoundly bad ‘for no reason’ is a pretty good tipoff that you’re not blue because of job or marriage problems.

    Finally, if you actually talk to some psychiatrists, psychologists, patients, even herbalist St John’s Wort types, they’ll tell you that people have tried the ‘usual remedies’ before they seek additional treatment; the general population may not be as ignorant of the ‘take a walk’ school of self-treatment as you seem to assume. And anyone who hasn’t will be told to as soon as they visit their doctor or a psychiatrist, I can just about guarantee.

    I think some of you are laboring under assumptions you aren’t even aware of, that you could counter by widening your research just a little bit.

  29. Alex, I’m curious, do you really think most people are so foolish as to start popping pills that mess with their brain chemistry before trying the more prosaic methods of treatment (diet, exercise, and the like)? Have you ever actually asked people what they tried before seeking treatment, or looked at surveys or studies of the same?

  30. Alex, how can you say I can’t possibly know? It’s MY perception we’re discussing here! (Like I said, six years’ worth, and at different dosages too, and I’m only telling you a small part of the story.)

    If the only way you can verify your own take on the matter is to completely ignore patients like myself and our understanding based on real-world experiences, I should hope you would never take up medicine.

    You’re saying that the little-understood, psychological, somewhat negative side-effects are real, and ARE produced by the medication, but that the little-understood psychological positive benefits on mood and personality MUST be produced by SOMETHING ELSE. Yeah, ok, right, good luck with that theory!

    Justin: apologies, my usual online haunts are less high-falutin’.

  31. Webwench, I first became interested in antidepressants back in 1995, when I got a job in the marketing-research department of a major pharmaceutical company. Part of my job involved interviewing psychiatrists to find out which methods they used to treat depression, and how they decided on a particular treatment for a specific patient. I can assure you that my research on the subject has been quite wide, contrary to what you implied in your post.

    Also, you can’t lump all talk therapies together. As you pointed out, some can be harmful. However, some are very beneficial.

    In any case, the tide is really starting to turn with respect to antidepressants. Ten or fifteen years ago or so, they were viewed as miracle drugs. Prozac even appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine. Now, we get more and more stories like this one:

    ===================

    FDA cites possible suicide link between children, Paxil

    WASHINGTON (AP) — No one under age 18 should be prescribed the drug Paxil for major depression because the adult anti-depressant may increase a child’s risk of suicide, the government said Thursday.

    The Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation came a week after Britain issued an even stronger warning against pediatric use of Paxil, sold there under the name Seroxat.

    ======================

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-06-19-paxil-children_x.htm

    I predict that within ten years the current crop of antidepressants will all be off the market. Of course, there’s no guarantee that we won’t have some other, equally-bad replacements.

  32. Summary: Depression is real, and pills can help, but our culture is ill, and they are overprescribed.

    In my personal network, I know of 3 people who have been on antidepressants. I was one of them, and it did me some good with the occasional side effect, and I’ve been able to move on. Having been in the Pit, I can say that there is something real there.

    One other person seems to be helped by them as well, and the 3rd one is living a life not at all suitable to their ideals, and the antidepressants are the wrong solution for them.

    I don’t believe that 33% of Americans are buzzing on happy pills, but I do believe that a lot of us are self-medicating on a variety of substances and intellectually numbing media. It’s easy to do so, and with our media connecting showing us the worst of the world on a routine basis, the appeal of avoiding reality is obvious.

    Whether such malaise leads to drinking, working too much, reading Buffy fanfiction all day, Paxil, or Everybody Loves Raymond, I don’t much see the difference.

    It’s a bit misleading to hold up Europe as a crowning centre of mental health by discussing traffic fatalities. The crowding in Britain would drive me bananas.

  33. OK, I read the article that started this thread (“Big and Blue in the USA”, by James Howard Kunstler).

    Science writer Robert Wright made much the same points back in 1995, but he did so in a far more convincing and eloquent manner. Time magazine won’t let you read the article for free, but it’s reprinted here:

    http://www.alamut.com/subj/evolution/evol_psych/wrightDespair.html

    The article is called, “The Evolution of Despair”, and it outlines a Darwinian explanation of the current depression epidemic. It’s a good read.

  34. How about this checklist, before taking any medication?:
    – blood sugar levels high and constant enough?
    – a long-term-issue: Enough Omega3-fats in nutrition (~60% of the brain consist of fat, ~30% ought to be Omega3 types)?
    – enough bright natural daylight?
    – enough (aerobic) sports (one effect: blood circulation into the brain)?
    – enough sleeps with a stomach light/empty enough (recovery and hormonal issues)?
    – change of environment needed?

    Better than treating symptoms is treating the reasons. But that’s oftentimes a too big logistical effort, granted. But hey, aren’t we all free pro forma?

    BTW, can’t resist a comment about the obesity issue mentioned in that article:

    I think (it’s type of an alternative thesis/feeling) that all “modern” obesity can be tracked down to a single cause: Sugar and white flour, which are refined products. Sugar and white flour, esp. the first are in almost EVERYTHING. For a good reason: Sweet sells. Non-sweet remains untouched in the shelves. Taste is accustomed to VERY sweet food. The brain gets a “kick” due to rapidly high blood sugar levels (=luck, energy). It needs about two weeks of sugar-abstinence to get down from that addiction, because it is an addiction!

    They say sugar is natural and essential for supplying the body cells with energy for life. But that’s probably a concept error, because industrial sugar is type of an anorganic product, while the human body needs organic nutrition, that is nutrition which is complemented by its natural vitamins and other (partly unknown?) substances. It is due to the lack of this substances that the metabolism gradually deescalates somehow.It’s related to insulin, which is freeded into the blood to lower high sugar levels, something needed to excess when eating sugar-foods (which virtually skyrockets blood sugar levels fast up and later down). Somehow the body needs to use its reserves of vitamins and trace minerals to process this empty food (all “nutrients” are separated from it in the refinement process). Thus sugar eaters eat lot of food which is “empty”. The body looses its e.g. B-Vitamine reserves, senses overall deficiency, and thus triggers eating reflexes to compensate for the lack of nutrients, but just gets more empty food (that wasn’t planed in evolution), a vicious circle. Probably this contributes to a cascade of metabolic disturbances, which might be partly passed from the mother to the child. Without (industrial) sugar there would also be almost no diabetes and no tooth decay (but that’s another story). But just avoiding 90% of supermarket food is not enough, one needs healthy alternatives.

    BTW refinement was introduced, because freshly ground whole wheat flour spoils within hours and even when preserved (through heating) is subject to vermin, while the sterile white flour is not touched by living things (but – what for an irony – used for human nutrition).

  35. These pills definitely make executives of drug companies happy! For many folks it’s easier to take a pill than to do a 20 minute aerobic excersize three times a week. Nobody knows exactly ow these pills work and what kind of long term effects they may have on the brain. I would be suspicious of injesting something that immediately makes one importent, sleepy, causes excessive sweating, etc. These are the signs that the body does not particularly like the chemical – how hard is it to comprehend? Yet people keep asking for prescriptions. I’ll bet there is one case in ten where the pill is the only answer.

  36. So many people here can’t see their nose in front of their faces. The situation is simple: some mental/emotional/psychological problems are caused by biochemical deficiencies and appropriately addressed by medication; others are not and are not; telling the difference is hard in some cases but not hard in others. Sheesh!

  37. Rereading Aldous Huxley might cast some light on this matter; the society in his dystopia mimics ours to a great degree, save for one point. They have a drug called soma which eases the pain of living in such an inhuman environment and people are able “to put a good a good buzz on.”
    No such pleasure drugs are allowed in our puritan society, rather our palliatives render people into functioning automatons who can’t even get it up any more.

  38. Joe Shipman: I think it’s mostly a matter of denial. When your thoughts and personality make up all of whom you are, I think some people can’t accept that biochemical things can go wrong and be outside your control to fix. They get absolutely hysterical over the possibility that it could happen, even to them, and that taking a walk in the park after a good night’s sleep won’t make it all better.

    — webwench, in a less charitable mood

  39. Also, re pilots and pill-pushing shrinks, it might interest you to know that the FAA’s knowledge of medication you’re on depends largely on self-reporting. I wouldn’t be surprised if a random survey found a lot of pilots doing some selective self-reporting.

  40. Phil: It’s not very interesting to say “average joe is not that smart.” What is more interesting is to see that someone with a PhD is so ignorant. God. That’s where your blog comes in, regularly oversimplifying everything…one difference is that you think you’re smart.

  41. Tom, Dude says right on the front page that one idea every three months will be interesting. That’s the intellectual humility you were looking for – it’s advertised right there in the sub-title.

  42. While I can attest to a lot of people around me on anti-depressants, I also think some is genetic and some behavioral (which is the point some have made here). The main point of the article though is that our lifestyle isolates us from each other and that is not a good thing. I think it is worth fighting for that sense of connectness to daily life. Like in programming, I believe too much abstraction is a bad thing. I did live in the UK for 4 years and you do walk more.. and though more crowded.. it doesnt have the sprawl. Besides carpooling and giving up my cubicle space for a project team area, I want to build a front shaded patio with a wood fired oven so my neighbors can come hang out and share food and drink ..

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