… The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) was aware that there was no research to back up the assertion that 80 percent of depressed patients improve if they keep trying different medications, so NIMH funded “Sequential Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression” (STAR*D), the largest ever study of sequential depression treatments. STAR*D results were published in 2006. …
(An article in the recent Scientific American Mind indicates that cognitive therapy ignores the most important aspect of therapy which is emotional problems. Dynamic Therapy which emphasizes emotional problems in the Freud mode can be seen in Treatment on HBO. I believe cognitive therapy has been oversold and does not work for most patients, unfortunately. We operate much more from emotion than prefrontal cortical thinking and planning. Jim)
Remember that what is reported on television, including PBS, is “honestly” misreporting what they think is true. Remember propaganda simply involves emphasizing one point of view beyond all others. That is what happens on Meet the Press. Time who does the most talking.
In the recent past I reported to you what PBS reported on Depression, the pills used, and the success rate of these procedures. Apparently it might not be the whole truth. That is one reason I do not watch the NewsHour very often. I normally turn it off after ten minutes of watching. I know too much to believe what they are telling me.
Our corporations have even intruded into the world of science and health with owned scientists who support their corporate influenced academic scientists by offering them both research grants and lucrative consultantships. Of course the corporations hire those who have the most influence who can decide what gets published or not.
This has been the case with the impact to our health regarding poor safety studies on drugs, contaminated foods, sunscreens with a sharp increase in neurological diseases, flu, colds, and melanoma, high fructose corn syrup obesity and diabetes Type 2 crisis, fiberless and high salt and fructose and glucose sugars in high amounts in sodas and foods, allowing untested drugs from China such as the heparin disaster. Where at least 20 patients died.
Many counterfeit drugs from China passed on to Americans through pharmacies throughout our country may have led to undetected deaths and illnesses.
Wal Mart is now in the process of a Class Action Suit where women are suing because the management favored men over women for promotion not addressed in clever Wal Mart public relation ads on television. Unfortunately we have a corporate Supreme Court majority who call themselves conservatives, but a more appropriate term would be radical judges who overwhelming favor pro-corporate “clients” than the American people as seen clearly by their decisions.
Corporations are not people, but our Supreme Court treats them as such without taking away the special secrecy and tax privileges they have over we the people.
Since Reagan, we now live in a world where profits trump all other human needs except greed. More recently we have seen Big Pharma and our Health Insurance industries act in ways that are detrimental to our health and welfare. Corporations are amoral and the only way to control them is through laws and regulations.
It has always been this way forever once we became a larger society where expulsion of the crooks and killers is no longer as easy to do, especially if they are in positions of power.
We all do things which are less than admirable to survive whether at Universities, corporations, or living in large anonymous cities where relationships are difficult to form. Smaller towns and cities require more cooperation to survive in any function.
However, the biggest medical scam may have been with the push for use of antidepressants and for pills for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD. We now know that university students do use ADHD pills obtained legally or not at levels as high as 50 percent to allow them to concentrate during their studies. Perhaps it has been more than the Internet, ipods, and cell phones that led to greatly distracted and the inability of students at MIT admit they cannot write for longer than 15 minutes without taking a break.
Vitamin D3 formed in our skin by sunlight’s UVB burning rays is apparently necessary in much larger amounts than realized. I became interested in vitamin D when I saw an article mention that a White person with enough skin exposure can make 22,000 IU of vitamin D3 in just 15 minutes! I concluded immediately that vitamin D3 must be more important to our health than just bones.
Just a few years ago I had difficulty finding much data on sunscreens blocking UVB causing an increase in cancer except for a Swedish and Australian study in the 1980s that showed a mushrooming of Melanoma soon after the widespread use of sunscreens. Swedish people all have good incomes so they normally take long vacations in sunny climates during the winter. Sunscreens allowed they to stay in the sun longer, but the sunscreens above did not block out the penetrating UVA which likely causes melanoma.
Now we know beyond a reasonable doubt that vitamin D3 helps us prevent cancer for reasons I delineated a number of times. Search google “vitamin D and cancer” Bush’s FDA with lobbyists running the regulatory agencies prevented a French sunscreen which did block UVA until November 2006 from approval until American companies had a substitute. I had to buy this product from Canada in early 2000s.
During the spring, summer, and fall, try to get at least ten minutes of sun without sunscreen between 12-2 PM or more at higher latitudes above Los Angeles. Even those who live in sunscreen Miami have deficient vitamin D of 40-75 nanograms per milliliter of non-active metabolite 25-hydroxy vitamin D.
How does a corporation get around this embarrassing truth? By averaging all people in the world no matter what latitude they live at where sunlight is less prevalent. Looking at regions shows that health and latitude from the equator are very important for our health due to a lack of vitamin D3. These were large epidemiological studies done in various regions. The Framingham study just takes in one town.
Tanning beds are a perfect way to get vitamin D3. Don’t believe all the propaganda that tanning beds are responsible for an increase in melanoma. Perhaps redheads who use it a lot more than they should get melanoma. This is just another lie. The same people who use tanning salons are likely the same who spend hours on the beach with sunscreens. Look how healthy a regular tanning bed user Alaska’s Sarah Palin is!
Just use one with a higher level of UVB and use it for only a short time, or 5-10 minutes. I plan to use the one at my apartment complex soon. Sun makes us feel good just like eating cookies. The same brain chemicals emerge to make us feel good. It will keep us from getting depressed during the winter months. Yes, a tanning bed may be all you need to help cure your depression.
Take at least 2,000 IU, but more appropriately 4,000 IU of vitamin D3. Remember activated vitamin D in our cells help prevent cancer cells from growing. Pancreatic, ovarian, cervical, deadly form of fast growing surface prostate cancer undetected by the PSA test, and lung cancers which are well advanced before detection are especially important for prevention with vitamin D. Once cancers advance, they produce enough of a protein that prevents vitamin D from working.
Jim Kawakami, Dec 6, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com
Are Antidepressants a Scam? 5 Myths About How to Treat Depression
Many treatments for depression are no more effective than placebos.
Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and his latest book is Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007). His Web site is www.brucelevine.net
December 5, 2010 | http://www.alternet.org/story/149084/are_antidepressants_a_scam_5_myths_about_how_to_treat_depression_?page=entire
A warning: for people satisfied with their standard depression treatments, debunking myths about them may be troubling. However, for critically-thinking depression sufferers who have not been helped by antidepressants, psychotherapy, or other standard treatments, discovering truths about these treatments can provide ideas about what may actually work for them.
Critical thinkers have difficulty placing faith in any depression treatment because science tells them that these treatments often work no better than placebos or nothing at all, and if one lacks faith in a depression treatment, it is not likely to be effective. In fact, it is belief and faith—or what scientists call “expectations” and the “placebo effect”—that is mostly responsible for any depression treatment working. Critical-thinkers can find a way out of depression when their critical thinking about depression treatments is validated and respected, and they are challenged to think more critically about their critical thinking.
Myth 1: Antidepressants Are More Effective than Placebos
Many depressed people report that antidepressants have been effective for them, but do antidepressants work any better than a sugar pill? Researcher Irving Kirsch (professor of psychology at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom as well as professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and author of The Emperor’s New Drugs) has been trying to answer that question for a significant part of his career.
In 2002, Kirsch and his team at the University of Connecticut examined 47 depression treatment studies that had been sponsored by drug companies on the antidepressants Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, and Serzone. Many of these studies had not been published, but all had been submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), so Kirsch used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to all the data. He discovered that in the majority of the trials, antidepressants failed to outperform sugar pill placebos.
“All antidepressants,” Kirsch reported in 2010, “including the well-known SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors], had no clinically significant benefit over a placebo.” While in aggregate, antidepressants slightly edge out placebos, the difference is so unremarkable that Kirsch and others describe it as “clinically negligible.”
Why are so many doctors unaware of the lack of superiority of antidepressants as compared to placebos? The answer became clear in 2008 when researcher and physician Erick Turner (currently at the Department of Psychiatry and Center for Ethics in Health Care, Oregon Health and Science University) discovered that antidepressant studies with favorable outcomes were far more likely to be published than those with unfavorable outcomes. Analyzing published and unpublished antidepressant studies registered with the FDA between 1987-2004, Turner found that 37 of 38 studies having positive results were published; however, Turner reported, “Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, [falsely] conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies).”
Myth 2: If the First Antidepressant Fails, Another Antidepressant Will Likely Succeed ... (This article is over ten pages long. Jim http://www.alternet.org/story/149084/are_antidepressants_a_scam_5_myths_about_how_to_treat_depression_?page=entire
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