***Antidote for Depression

We have become a society that relies a great deal on prescription medications. For instance, we use
antidepressants to change our mood. But although we rely on them heavily, antidepressants don’t work at all.

Even when they do seem to help, they often lose their effectiveness over the course of treatment. Antidepressants are made to increase the chemicals known as neurotransmitters. Even when they work, it’s an artificial way of changing the brain, generating activity that’s not present in a normal brain. Though it may relieve the symptoms, the antidepressant doesn’t cure the depression. The cause, which lies in an imbalance in the brain, is untouched by the medication. In fact, the antidepressant may trigger an even greater imbalance.

People tend to think of depression as a single syndrome, but it isn’t. When the brain patterns of depressed individuals are examined, it becomes clear there isn’t just one pattern associated with depression. For this reason, each brain needs a specific approach if it is to be restored to harmony.

Balancing the brain is much more precise, and becoming increasingly so. It looks at a person’s emotional state from the vantage of the various lobes of the brain as the trainers put the brain through its paces during the assessment. Then the computer compares how the mathematical algorithms applied to this particular brain’s energy patterns depict possible areas of imbalance. For instance, if one person says they are happy, while another says they are unhappy, we pay attention to the differences in the brain’s energy patterns to determine which balances or imbalances may be connected to the state of happiness being experienced. We see the reasons for a person’s happiness or unhappiness in the brain’s activity. From observing thousands of brains, it’s been possible to begin understanding how brain pattern imbalances are associated with some pathologies.

The Power of a Belief
Many of us want to solve all our problems with a pill rather than looking at the dysfunction that’s causing the problems. But a problem that doesn’t originate from the lack of a pill can’t be solved with a pill. It can only be masked or mitigated temporarily.

Extensive research has shown that many claims for antidepressants simply can’t be validated. In actual clinical trials with thousands of people, a sugar pill often worked as effectively as the antidepressant—and it didn’t have the repercussions that antidepressants can have.

In such cases, the person believed that the pill they took could make them feel better, and their belief—not the drug or the sugar pill—brought this about.

The Limitations of a Pill
There is a widespread belief that antidepressants correct brain chemistry. Is this really true?

Continually adding an antidepressant to our system doesn’t work because depression isn’t the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. There is a chemical imbalance— you can see an imbalance in brain assessments. But the cause of the imbalance lies deeper than the mere lack of a chemical. It lies in an imbalance of the neural network, which antidepressants can’t address and only mask for a while. In other words, a problem that wasn’t created by the lack of a pill can’t be solved with a pill.

When a person exercises their brain, they address the imbalance in the network—the functional aspects of the brain—and thereby correct the cause of their difficulty. In other words, balancing the brain can affect depression at its source.

Naturally, people wonder whether we can prove this clinically, and we can. It’s possible to do blood tests that reveal from biological markers how a person’s chemistry has been altered. In a similar non-invasive manner, it has also been demonstrated that exercise can alleviate depression more effectively than antidepressants.

People whose brain becomes balanced not only feel excited about life, they tend to sleep more soundly and have more energy. For instance, a woman had been sleeping nine or ten hours a night and still felt tired in the morning. When she began training her brain, she found she slept only five or six hours, yet she awakened rested and felt great all day. “What’s wrong with me?” she wondered when she simply couldn’t sleep longer. Of course, this woman had been sleeping nine or ten hours because she had been depressed for years.

I hypothesize that brain function drives brain chemistry. Previous medical science would contend that the chemistry drives the function. Someday, should the walls come down so that the new technology is utilized alongside the old science, we will probably find that a combination of the two approaches enables a knockout blow for afflictions such as anxiety and depression using a combination of pharmaceuticals and brain fitness.

If pharmaceuticals are used primarily as a bridge until brain balancing has a chance to address the root of the problem, the person receives maximum benefit in the short term, together with a minimum of side effects over the longer haul.

When the science of the future addresses an individual’s body, mind, and spirit, and not just a single aspect of our humanity, it will lead to optimizing the whole of our being. Physically, psychologically, and spiritually, our lives will exude balance and harmony.

How soon this will happen on a wide scale is unclear, but it’s where the flow of our information and technology is leading us.