Dr. Mark Hyman argues antidepressants don't work and that pharmaceutical companies publish only positive studies. He says depression has complex causes that functional medicine addresses better than medication alone.
The most depressing recent medical news is that antidepressants don't work. Hi, this is Dr. Mark Hyman. Even more depressing is the fact that we've been deliberately deceived by the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA that they do work. And that's frightening to me as a medical practitioner because depression is among the most common problems seen in primary care and will soon be the second leading cause of disability in this country. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine discovered that drug companies selectively publish studies on antidepressants. They published nearly all the studies that showed benefit and almost none of the studies that show that they don't work, which warps our thinking and our view, leading us to think that antidepressants do work and it has fueled the tremendous growth in psychiatric medications which are now the second leading class of drugs sold after cholesterol lowering drugs. And that's really worse than it sounds because the positive studies hardly showed benefit in the first place. In fact, 40% of people taking a sugar pill got better while only 60% taking the actual drug had improvement in their symptoms. Looking at it another way, 80% of people get better with just a sugar pill. That leaves us with a big problem: millions of depressed people with no good treatments. So what is depression? Anyway, depression is simply a label we give people who have depressed mood most of the time, have lost interest or pleasure in most of their activities, are tired, can't sleep, have no interest in sex, feel hopeless and helpless, and can't think or make decisions. But that label tells us nothing about the cause of those symptoms. And in fact, there are dozens of causes of depression, each one needing a different approach to treatment. It's not one size fits all. So how much of a problem is this anyway? Well, women have a 10-25% chance and men a 5-12% chance risk of major severe depression in their lifetime. One in 10 Americans takes an antidepressant and the use of these drugs has tripled in the last decade according to a report by the federal government. In 2006, expenditures on antidepressants soared 130%. Now unfortunately, as we know from this report in the New England Journal of Medicine, they don't work and have significant side effects. Most patients taking antidepressants either don't respond or only have partial response. In fact, this is crazy, but think about this. Success is considered a 50% improvement in half of your symptoms. So, this minimal result is also achieved in less than half of the patients taking antidepressants. Wow. Fixing half the symptoms in half the people half the time. Wow. A pretty dismal record made worse by the fact that 86% have one or more side effects including sexual dysfunction, fatigue, insomnia, loss of mental abilities, nausea, weight gain. I mean, no wonder half of everyone that tries antidepressants quits after four months. First, I want to talk to you about the reasons doctors and patients have been deceived by the antidepressant hoax. And then I will tell you about the real causes for depression and how to fix them. Despite what we have been brainwashed to think, depression is not a Prozac deficiency. Drug companies are not forced to publish all the results of their studies. They only publish the results of those they want to. The team of researchers that reported their findings in the New England Journal took a critical look at all the studies done, both published and unpublished, and they dug up some serious dirt. The unpublished studies were not easy to find, right? They had to search the FDA databases, they had to call researchers, they had to hunt down hidden data under the Freedom of Information Act, right? It shouldn't be so hard to get the scientific truth, right? What they found after looking at 74 studies involving 12 drugs and over 12,000 people was 37 of 38 trials which showed positive results were published, while only 14 of 36 negative studies were published. But those that were negative were, in the words of researchers, the researchers published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome. That means the results were twisted to imply that the drugs worked even when they didn't. This whole episode is not limited to antidepressant drugs, but is an epidemic problem in scientific research, with some drug companies even paying or threatening scientists into not publishing negative studies on their drugs. This shoots an arrow right into the heart of the sacred cow of modern medicine called evidence-based medicine. But most of the time we only have the evidence that the drug companies want us to have. And both doctors and patients are deceived, putting billions of dollars into drug companies' pockets before the truth is exposed, while leaving millions suffering and poor. The scientific trust has been broken. So what is a person to do? Unfortunately there is no easy answer, but I do think functional medicine, on which my approach of ultra wellness is based, provides a more intelligent way of understanding the research and treating patients. Rather than using drugs to suppress symptoms, we can find the true causes of the problem, including depression. I've seen this in so many of my patients that I've treated over the years. Just like I said about obesity, the same things that make us sick also make us fat. The same is true for depression. The same things that make us sick also make us depressed. So fix the causes of the sickness and the depression takes care of itself. So just to take these few cases, a young 23 year old who had been anxious and depressed most of her life, spent her childhood and adolescence on various cocktails of antidepressants. Turns out she suffered from food allergies that made her depressed. Studies now show inflammation in the brains of depressed people. In fact, researchers are now studying powerful anti-inflammatory drugs used in autoimmune diseases such as Enbrel for the treatment of depression. So after eliminating her food allergies, her IgG or delayed food allergies, her depression went away, she got off her medication and she lost 30 pounds as a side effect. Or how about the 37 year old executive woman who struggled for over a decade with treatment resistant depression, that means drugs that don't work. Fatigue and a 40 pound weight gain. We found she had very high levels of mercury and getting the mercury out of her body left her happy, thin and full of energy. Or what about the 49 year old man with severe lifelong depression who had been on a cocktail of antidepressant and psychiatric medication for years and still lived under a dark cloud of depression every day without relief. We found he had severe deficiencies of vitamin B12 and B6 and folate and after giving him back those essential brain nutrients, he called me last year to thank me. The last year, he said, was the first year he could remember he felt happy and free of depression. So these are just a few of the dozen things that can cause depression. These are the roots of depression and are found in the seven keys to ultra wellness and the seven fundamental underlying imbalances that trigger the body to malfunction. So as we now see, antidepressants are not the answer to our looming health mental health epidemic. We need different solutions and I'm very excited about my new book coming out next year called Ultramind Solution. In the meantime, here are a few things that account for a lot of depression and can help millions. One, try an anti-inflammatory elimination diet getting rid of food allergens. Two, check for hypothyroidism. Three, treat vitamin D deficiency. Four, take omega-3 fats. Five, take adequate amounts of B12, Folate and B6. 6. Get checked for Mercury. 7. Exercise vigorously 5 times a week for 30 minutes. This increases something called BDNF which is a natural antidepressant in your brain. Now these are just a few of the easiest and most effective things you can do to treat depression but there are many more that you can address by simply working through the 7 Keys to Ultra Wellness. Thank you for listening. This has been Dr. Mark Hyman.
