AUSTRALIAN NATUROPATHIC NETWORK
 Serving the community since 1998

Suicides among Australian teenagers are among the highest rate on the planet. In the land of plenty, the Lucky Country, the country where it’s said that world Chi is steeling in the modern era, the land where the economy is (lately) booming, we with amazing opportunity in employment and education, the wealth gap about the lowest in OECD countries, the host of the millennium Olympics, the highest standard of the Most Accessible Health Care (combined with the lowest percentage of GDP spent on illness of any Western Country), with us being supposedly The Land of Winners, what is going wrong?

The suicide figures are of course just the tip of the iceberg. The real sleeper is the teenage depression, which leads to these suicides.

How can this be? I mean – is there a deficiency of Prozac in the Land Down Under? Are our kids depressed because of some mysterious psychosocial phenomenon, which doesn’t afflict other countries? Is there something in the air? The water? The food? Or – and this may be a little closer to home – is there something MISSING in the vital humours of life in the land of Oz?

Or could it be a bit of everything?

It is my belief that there are several factors combining to pull us down – all occurring at one time.

And the solution will lie in a multi-factorial, coordinated approach. That means cooperation between normally warring factions in the community.

Like the farmers’ war with the city folk who are - funnily enough – their customers.

Like the doctors’ war with the natural therapists who – funnily enough – see over 60% of THEIR customers.

Like the corporations’ war with the average punter – the antagonist yet the customer.

Like small Governments’ war with the rate payers, Federal Government’ war with the taxpayer – who, once every three years becomes the voter.

Like State Governments’ war with just about everybody.

And like service “corporations” who – until recently – were State and Federal Government departments.

Why are all of these forces lined up against the most innocent and defenceless ones of all – you and me?

Profit, greed, inertia, laziness, stupidity and political correctness will do for a start.

Brain chemicals in your food and water

The farmer can’t imagine growing cows without intensive farming (IF) practices. Ie filling them full of antibiotics, hormones, and other rapid-growth chemicals; dipping in toxic pesticide; doing it all in the name of making more profit (ie by replacing land and labour with chemicals) and convincing everybody that they are doing it for our own good.

The ones who do aren’t rewarded at the saleyards – they get the same price for their healthy beef that is received for the IFfy stuff.

The same applies to pork and even more to poultry.

Even many fish now are “farmed” in virtual chemical cesspools and are now as badly off as chooks.

Fruit and vegetables are treated with even more pesticide and insecticide. At least the organic growers of these are rewarded for their efforts by a better price, so that practice is thankfully strengthening.

This stuff makes it into our water supply, also – via rainfall run-off.

Meanwhile, in the supermarkets, 3 sizes of popular cola drinks remain in the top ten sellers.

(An American hamburger chain has just got the nod as exclusive caterers for Australian Olympics. Their cooking technique manages to convert potatoes (that begin as fat-free vegies) to horrible looking “food” that is 50% fat, using buns with nearly 40% fat and beef rissoles with “cheese” layers that – on one occasion at least – didn’t decompose even after three month’s standing near an open window. I can only imagine how much preservative is in the preparation of all this).

Apart from the appalling lack of respect for Australian firms, I can only but gaze in wonderment at the thought process of the body (State Government again) who gave them the “concession”.

The water supply – as noted in previous articles – is inadequate in its mineral content needed to support healthy life.

The higher incidence of takeaway foods leads to poorer nutritional content of meals – both in micronutrient (vitamins and minerals) and a gross imbalance of protein, fat and carbohydrate. That’s without even thinking about extra additives, such as preservatives and MSG (a brain nerve drug).

So, seeing as how we’re talking about depression and suicide, why not look at the effect of these chemical additives and micronutrient deficiencies and macronutrient (fat etc) imbalances on the human central nervous system?

Caffeine

Firstly – the BIG one – plain colas and those with coca added.

The amount of caffeine in a litre of one of these would be enough to fuel the tea in a sewing club for a week.

And our teenagers can easily knock over a litre in a day.

Why?

Because it gives them a mental “lift” and gratifies energy requirements. (This is a classic nutritionist's description of “empty calories”).

According to Martindale (The Extra Pharmacopoeia), caffeine elevates the mood. It describes it as a central nervous stimulant. It also stimulates muscles, which dilate the bronchioles – as well as others, which contract arteries.

That’s good, in some cases – where this effect might help someone with depression, breathing difficulties or low blood pressure.

Where it’s bad is if the “patient” is normal to begin with. The mood elevation then becomes an artificial “high”. You can have a mild to moderate “trip” on caffeine. Your blood pressure also rises – putting a strain on the kidneys. If your lungs are normal, nothing will happen initially.

So far, so good. Now – what happens the next day after a caffeine binge?

You guessed it – rebound depression. The effect of withdrawal of a CNS stimulant is the typical “black hole” which addicts of dexamphetamine (“speed”) will tell you about. The depression can be like a black curtain being lowered over your brain. You are completely unaware of the agent who precipitated this phenomenon – all you know is that you are really “down”. Gloomy. Depressed. You get to the point where you can’t see the reason why you should continue. You can get so bad you just want to kill yourself to ease the burden on your brain.

Thank you, soft drink corporations.

By the way – many non-cola drinks have caffeine added just to get the kids “hooked”. Watch out for them.

Sugar

Remember we said the drinks were loaded with sugar? Do you know what sugar does to your brain?

It makes it feel good, that’s what. For a while. Then, something strange happens.

Your body reacts to a sudden influx of sugar by attempting to get rid of it out of your bloodstream, using insulin. Big spurts of insulin. So much insulin, in fact, that it overdoes it. Most often, you finish up with too much insulin and you have a rebound drop in blood sugar (glucose) level (BGL).

And it keeps dropping.

This causes an unexpected result. Your brain energy suffers and its activity begins to shut down. A black mood settles in. (The brain – unlike the rest of the body – cannot store its own glucose. It relies on the bloodstream to provide a continuous supply. Normally, you have a wonderful system to allow for this. When you strain this system beyond tolerance, disaster strikes).

You come up all depressed.

So, if you’ve had a lot of a caffeinated, sugary drink – you get the double whammy depression. CNS stimulant withdrawal and low activity both at once – although the caffeine withdrawal may last a lot longer due to neuro-transmitter burnout.

That all adds up to – one depressed teenager.

(As an unpleasant little sequela, too much of any of this sort of stuff instead of water and you run into trouble with osmotic kidney strain. Too much of this act and you’ll finish up damaging nephrons (tiny filtering units) on a daily basis. One day, you reach critical mass (too much work shared by too few nephrons) and bang! Down go the kidneys).

By now, you’ve guessed that I’m not a soft-drink enthusiast.

Pesticides

The problem with farm pesticides is that they are designed to kill insects by nerve paralysis. The problem is that they affect our nerves in exactly the same way.

The “pro chemical” advocates say that they are so diluted by the time we ingest them that they are harmless.

I say that they are fat soluble, chemically stable and accumulate in the body. The brain is made up of fatty cells. Enough said?

They act by stopping certain brain neurone s from working properly. (Too much of this and you’ll finish up foaming at the mouth – like family pets do when they crawl under a recently sprayed house. Which reminds me – there’s another source of insecticide in our lives – the local pest-control agency).

We are also drinking this stuff in our water supply if farmer Brown has been spraying close to a river, seepage system or run-off slopes – in other words, just about anywhere.

Just to top it off, the grain elevator board saturates the contents of silos everywhere – with 3 different kinds of spray – as it makes its merry way up the conveyor belts.

A client of mine once nearly died from chemical poisoning when he accidentally got in the way of the contents spewing out of an open silo hatch (he thought it was completely empty, but it still had some remaining wheat in it).

The incidence of multiple sclerosis in the country has been reported as up to 50 times that of the city.

While there’s no proof that insecticide toxicity contributes to MS, that remains an unexplained mystery, putting it mildly.

So, our teenager who drinks lots of cola-type drinks and eats a lot of fruit to make up for it is copping it coming and going.

Nutritional deficiency

Of course, all those empty calories (from sugary drinks and fast foods) have meant that you are not taking in the same amount of micronutrients (per 100 grams of food) that you would if you here eating “proper” food.

The low mineral content of the Sydney (and other cities) water supply compounds that problem.

AS you grow through the teenage growth spurt, your body actually needs extra micronutrient to form new tissue. Instead, it’s getting less. That means nerve fibres won’t function properly (among other problems). This causes symptoms of sleeplessness and anxiety.

The plot thickens.

Eventually, some well-meaning GP decides to try antidepressant medication. Prozac is flavour of the month, so that’s what you have.

Hold on a minute – did someone say Prozac? The last time I looked up the side effects of Prozac, one of them was clearly listed as “tendency to suicide”. (PP Guide).

Uh huh.

Looks like we’ll have to try something else or else!

So, the bottom line is – nerves need nutrient too. So, drink water, eat organic food and take a couple of suggested supplements, some herbs and some correct counselling. Your local Nutritionist, Naturopath or Herbalist (out of the Raymond Khoury school) will recommend this type of activity to help reverse the adverse effects of all of the above factors and help start the process of restoring your nervous system. We will do this in collaboration with your medico (if there is one already on the case) or just work through it with whatever professional person you normally see.

If you don’t have anyone, Email us. We will see what we can do to help. We will do what we can by correspondence or may be able to help find a suitable practitioner or team to achieve our goal of helping to get rid of the depression.

There is hope and there is a way back, so don’t despair.

For general suggestions for a good nutrition plan for nerve health, contact the pharmacy at  theausnat.@hotmail.com.au. Pete, Scott and I will send you “start-up” information (which will help begin the task of restoring health and vitality). At the same time, we will do our best to put you in touch with a practitioner or help line who can take your case. Don’t let poverty be a barrier for you, as there are plenty of colleges - on our list -  with student clinics (in various modalities) who will be only too happy to help you.

  Phil Wade  (April 2000)