Is it reasonable to try to treat severe depression/anxiety with supplements & no med?

I've been trying different meds for some time, and throughout the years I've tried different vitamins and supplements here and there. I take vitamin d, which I think probably helps some, and fish oil semi-regularly. I'd been considering trying to just go with less meds (only on lamictal now) but keep remembering how bad my depression and anxiety are and why I need meds in the first place.

I'm pretty desperate for relief and planning on asking my pdoc for EMSAM at my next visit. I'm having second thoughts though, because I'd recently been researching more supps and planning to try them, but I know I can't really do that much if I'm starting EMSAM (difficulty telling what's helping what as well as possible interactions). At the same time, again, I'm badly in need of relief from my depression right now.

Most recently I tried rhodiola rosea, and while it wasn't for long so I might eventually give it another try, I was pretty sure it was making me feel odd, out of it, and kinda crappy so I quit it. I tried chromium picolinate a while back, only for a few days but it was similar. I'm pretty interested in trying NAC next.

When I've heard people say they take only supps and natural stuff for depression and anxiety, or say they're "cured" by them, I brush it off as them being someone with much less severe anxiety/depression.

Is there anyone who has severe anxiety and depression and has actually found the right supplements/natural things to really help them enough? I'm talking like, people who have needed meds to even function well, but now are able to do without largely because of help from supplements. I'm not expecting a simple supplement to cure me, obviously, but would it be reasonable enough to try to make it with that route, or should I focus on meds and use supplements more as a small boost?
Thanks!

I think first step is finding out the cause of the depression.

If it's trauma or situational stuff then presumably any pill you take is just going to take the edge off.

If it's a medical problem, a fair amount of detective work might be needed to answer questions like -- is your brain chronically inflamed, is your brain toxic from heavy metals or mold or other poisons, do you have endocrine problems like hypothyroid or hypoadrenal, or severe nutrient deficiencies.

Seemingly all meds and most supplements are at best only going to make you feel better, but won't resolve anything. And in the case of meds, in the long term might make you worse.

Bud has a lot of good thoughts here. And I will add: if you go the supplement route, consider talking to an herbal specialist or medical practitioner with experience in them. that will you a much better shot of developing a plan of specific types and dosages of the supplements which will improve your chance of success.

Exercise is also shown to be an effective method of treating anxiety and depression

Have you tried seeing an integrative/holistic doctor? I'm seeing one now, and she's done various tests (various blood tests, genetic screening) to determine which supplements would help me the most. There are some high-quality supplement companies that only sell to doctor's offices (Xymogen is one brand that they can get for me that can't generally be purchased elsewhere).
I also just got the results of a food intolerance test she did, which showed I was highly intolerant to soy, which I was consuming daily (soymilk and other forms). Food intolerances can cause a wide variety of symptoms (different from food allergies), including mental health ones. If you don't want to get a test done, you could also try an elimination diet (cutting out the major allergens, like wheat, eggs, dairy, soy, and corn, and seeing if you feel better, then gradually reintroducing foods to see if one negatively affects you).
B vitamins are also often helpful for depression, especially B12 (and some people can't process the main form of that--I forget what the other form is called). And magnesium for anxiety (I'm taking that now), along with valerian and a few others. Various amino acids, too. Getting your thyroid tested would also be good. Hope that helps!

I've had bipolar 2 for 48 years now with major bouts of severe depression, and am now doing extremely well using amino acids and the mineral lithium orotate to control it.

One thing I found out when I was on meds for 13+ years is that psych meds actually have depression and anxiety as a side-effect so every day I was taking a pill that made me more miserable than I had been before I went on them. Of course I was so depressed that I felt I just couldn't go off them or my life wouldn't be worth living. Most people refuse to believe that depression and anxiety is actually a side-effect of the meds they're on so google it for yourself. If you're more depressed than ever, ask yourself if you're worse off than before you went on meds.

I went off my meds after some serious side-effects that freaked me out. I was absolutely shocked at how much less depressed I was!

It took me a couple of months to learn about using amino acids for the bipolar, but I can honestly say that I've done better on them these last 9 years than I did the 13 years on meds. Plus, they're cheaper and I don't answer to a Pdoc for everything I put in my body. I take DLPA that is used by the brain to produce dopamine and norepinephine which make life worth living. I also take 5-htp that is used to produce serotonin, and GABA that helps with anxiety and the lithium orotate to control hypomania. A good book on using amino acids is Heal with Amino Acids by Billie Sahley.

Other things that contribute to depression are low magnesium levels and low thyroid. Magnesium is needed for over 300 functions in the body including warding off depression. Almost everyone is low in it, but don't buy a cheap magnesium like magnesium oxide or you'll be stuck in the bathroom for a few days as it's not absorbible so most of it is shunted to the gut causing raging diarrhea. You want to take something like magnesium citrate, magnesium chloride [the most absorbable] or magnesium malate. Be sure and take calcium, vitamin D3 and K with it as they all work together.

If you don't have hyperthryoidism or Haskimoto's, look into taking nascent iodine which is an ionic form of iodine that is much more absorbable. The foods don't contain adequate iodine so your thyroid could be sluggish and iodine is needed for proper thyroid function. There]'s a good video on youtube on iodine by Dr. Ed Group from the Global Healing Center that explains the importance of iodine.

If you have SAD, research the use of melatonin in treating it. A good full spectrum light is a must too. I used to have SAD for months on end before using these, and this year I haven't noticed my mood slipping at all which I think is due to the iodine as I'm usually starting to get depressed by this time of the year.

One last comment. I have a twin sister that suffers severe depression, but refuses to believe natural treatments would work so she suffers the way you are as she has decided it's a disease. It's very sad at how bad off she is, but her faith is in Big Pharma to look out for her well-being.

I tried supplemenets, but they did not work even for mild depression.

Gut health is critical. Problems in the brain often begin in the gut. When the gut becomes permeable and starts leaking toxins, bacteria, food particles into the bloodstream, the brain can be bombarded. Things like Glutamine and Bone Broth can help heal the gut. Also the gut ecology is critical. A lifetime of antibiotics, NSAIDs, processed food, etc can wipe it out. Probotiocs supps, fermented foods, other stuff can bring it back. People think the brain is in charge but seems it is secondary to the gut (the "second brain") in many ways.

All of this can quickly get overwhelming. Functional and Naturopathic docs can help.

One reason people don't see results with supplements is because the dose is too low. The RDAs are what it takes to prevent the most severe disease from a deficiency of whatever nutrient. For example, the RDA of iodine is 150 mcg that is the amount needed to prevent you from growing a goiter. A top doctor who specializes in iodine recommends 12 mg that is 80 times the RDA as that's how much the body needs to be able to do it's job a day. Same with vitamin C--the RDA is 60 mg that is just enough to keep you from dying from scurvy and your teeth from falling out.

Another reason is that not every supplement is effective for every person just as not every med helps every person. No one blames the doctor when a drug doesn't help them, but if a supplement isn't effective, most people swear off supplements claiming they're a waste of money. If a person wants to use supplements, they need to study the subject so they have an idea of what each supplement helps with. When I went on supplements after going off meds, I tried supplements based on what each nutrient helped with, and what I was experiencing. That's all a doctor does.

Uh oh. That just made a disturbing amount of sense. Good thing I'm too depressed and anxious to even imagine life unburdened by pharmaceutical-induced psychopathology. That your twin sister is doing so poorly under a conventional psychotropic regimen in contrast to your success with less conventional treatments really makes an impression.

I do speculate
would my kidneys tolerate
lithium orotate
after lithium carbonate
decreased their glomerular filtration rate?
I'll have to wait.

I can't begin to tell you how upsetting it is to me to see her so bad off, but she truly believes that 'if it [natural supplements/herbs, nutrients] are strong enough to help, they're strong enough to harm.' I agree with her, but she also claims she and her daughter who also is on psych meds have never experienced a side-effect from their meds in spite a host of side-effects I can clearly see she has.

People believe that Big Pharma and their doctors truly care for them, and don't understand that it's the goal of Big Pharma to get everyone on at least one med so they have repeat business. They also refuse to believe that their doctors are being paid to prescribe meds so it's in the doctor's financial interest to keep people on meds.

Another problem that prevents people from trying alternative treatment is the belief that a blood test shows all nutritional deficiencies. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have some sort of genetic issue with not being able to hang on to magnesium in my cells and had a list of symptoms as long as your arm of magnesium deficiencies that made my life a living hell. When I told my ARNP that I was thinking of taking extra magnesium, she did a magnesium blood serum test that came back perfect and seriously cautioned me not to take extra. It was a few years later before a top naturopath realized what was going on, and I learned that your cellular magnesium level can be depleted in order to keep the blood serum level high because if it gets low, you'll have a heart attack. The naturopath put me on a series of vitamin injections called Myers Cocktail that demonstrated that all I needed was enough magnesium. Now I make sure I get enough magnesium, and my symptoms are under control. I take what would be considered very high doses, but there again, it appears that my body can't hold on to it. I wouldn't take as much if it could.

There's one unasked question that bears directly on how reasonable it would be to try to treat such an illness with supplements and no meds: Are you participating in some form of psychotherapy in addition to the supplements? Most studies comparing psychotherapy and medications for depression or anxiety find no significant difference in effectiveness between the two
forms of therapy, or so I've heard.

What's needed in my opinion is total paradigm change. Depression as a "disease" holds no water. It's a symptom. The question is of what? Many possibilities it seems. Here's how I see various interventions:

- Rx psych drugs: Tools for symptom suppression and for altering mood, nothing more, and with possibility of long term damage and worsening symptoms.

- talk therapy: When you strip away the pseudoscientific methods and approaches, seems what could help is just having a connection with another human. I don't see this as treatment, Comes with huge risks and problems with transparency, ethics, lack of evidence.

These are the things that seem essential or critical:
- healthy relationships
- exercise, proper sunlight and circadian rhythm habits, direct contact with nature
- good diet, good gut health
- good sleep
- addressing nutrient deficiencies, thyroid and adrenal issues
- amino acids/neurotransmitter precursors (as mentioned by others): Similar to the drug model and a little sketchy I think, but seemingly with substances that are closer to what the body recognizes as nutrition, less toxic, less dangerous
- treating chronic viral and bacterial and fungal infections
- reducing body burden of environmental toxins: mercury, aluminum, mold, EMFs, plastics, etc
- spiritual, existential stuff

This is just my take...

Somebody made the useful observation that what is commonly referred to as the "side effects" of medications are in fact part of the overall effect. Pharma has a done a great job of framing the desired effects as primary, and the other effects as secondary. But in reality most drugs produce a huge range of effects involving many organ systems, and many of them are adverse, and surely this is a sign that the body is being poisoned or damaged in some way.

Oh! This post, especially the part I bolded, is a little bit mind-blowing for me because it never occurred to me that people might think otherwise.

Not counting medical or marketing jargon and just looking at normal English, "effect" means something that happens as a result of something and "side" (as an adjective) means "happening or done in addition to the main or most important thing." So a side effect is literally any result that happens other than the one you were aiming for. It means the same thing outside of the context of medication.

I wouldn't give "Pharma" any credit for painting intended effects as intended effects and side effects as side effects, partially because of legal reasons and partially it'd be really hard to paint it otherwise even if they wanted to.

Whether or not a particular drug effect is a "side effect" won't necessarily be the same in all situations. For example, mixed amphetamine salts (Adderall) can improve executive function and lower appetite, among other effects. In my case, I'm taking it for treatment of EF issues, so the reduced appetite is a side effect. The reduced appetite is actually a good thing for me, but it's still a side effect because it's not the reason I'm taking it. For other people, the side effect of reduced appetite would be a bad thing (adverse effect) because it makes it too difficult for them to eat adequately.

On the other hand, because it lowers appetite, Adderall is also used for treatment of things like binge eating disorder. For someone taking Adderall for that reason, the reduced appetite is the primary effect and any EF improvements are a side effect.

Not sure if this is true everywhere, but in the USA, drug companies need approval from the federal government (FDA) to market the drug for treatment of certain things. Adderall is approved only for ADHD and narcolepsy, so those are the ONLY things the manufacturer can make advertisements saying it treats. Doctors can prescribe Adderall to treat BED, but the makers of Adderall can't make advertisements about it treating BED. (Fun fact, this requirement is severely reduced for supplements. As long as they put some kind of fine print along the lines of "This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA," supplement manufacturers can claim it's good for dang near anything.)

Me too, did nothing for me. Everyones different though.

But the marketing is the whole point. Pharma marketing and propagandizing manipulates people into believing its drugs are fixing some known pathology in a targeted way, and the other effects are somehow of lesser significance. But that is a conceptual con. Most drugs fix nothing. They produce a wide range of effects and symptoms.

If I take too much magnesium, I might get loose stools. That is a side effect. The main effect is that of increasing tissue levels of magnesium.

Many early psych drugs were discovered accidentally, as unintended side effects of drugs for completely different ailments, like TB. Change the marketing up, and presto now you have an "antidepressant".

Yup, I did and it worked! It's certainly worth a try.
I got myself out of a depression by taking the amino acid l-tryptophan. Really recommend it!
I got my energy back, sleep better, better mood, less anxiety.
Have a read about it online
I recommend the pure powdered stuff that's been tested for safety. iHerb has it.

I tried all sorts of vitamins etc too, and they help very gently, but I barely notice it. Tryptophan I notice the effects within 10 minutes! I've been taking it for a few months and my symptoms got progressively better. I'd say I was mostly cured of depression within a month and got a big part of my energy back within a few days (that'll be the niacin our bodies make out of tryptophan, an essential player in energy).

You can't take this in combination with antidepressants though. But it's natural and doesn't have all of the terrible issues antidepressants bring with them, like increased suicide risk and getting fat :/

This might not work for everyone, but if you have a trauma history it probably will. (constant fight/flight mode caused by trauma depletes tryptophan storages by using it all up to make cortisol, not leaving enough for the body to make melatonin, niacin, serotonin etc.) I therefore also do things that will hopefully help lower cortisol production. And take an essential amino mix regularly as well which does me good.

Good luck!

Wow thats good to hear. So you are only taking Tryptophan? B6 is critical for converting Tryptophan to Serotonin and is apparently depleted by stress. Was reading up on Tryptophan, and the prevalence of high carb low protein diets could be part of the problem with depleted Tryptophan.

I have tried 5htp (intermediate btwn Tryptophan and Serotonin) a few times. Did nothing.

Speaking of Niacin, I am trying it currently. It also has an established track record for alleviating depression. Schizophrenia patients have been treated with Niacin, B6, and Zinc with some success.

Yes, cured it with just tryptophan.
I tried 5htp before this and didn't do anything for me either.
How are you going with the niacin? I'd get the one that gives you a flush
I tried that before tryptophan as well as melatonin. Because they both worked well for me, I switched to tryptophan, as the body makes those things out of it. It's like the base ingredient.

Good to know about the B6.
I've tried GABA in the past which helped with anxiety.
I've started taking a essential amino mix recently, and I've been on a natural multivitamin for a long time, but I don't feel like they actually cured the depression.

This site helped me get onto it: Dominate Depression | Overcome Depression For Good Maybe you've seen it?

p.s. I first tried melatonin, which helped my sleep. I then tried niacin, which gave me a part of my energy back. But it was not until I started taking tryptophan, that both of those things improved, as well as my mood; I feel happier, I feel like I can do things again, I've started thinking about the future again, getting creative. It's like I'm starting to feel my emotions again or something. Got a part my motivation and energy back.
Pretty neat

This is compared to me having insomnia, no energy, no motivation, no thoughts about the future, simple things like cooking drained me, numbed emotions, no hope, etc.

And when I say cured, I do mean that I still take this supplement. I feel like I'm a huge part of the way back to normal, no longer depressed, and I keep seeing improvement over time. My family say I've improved tremendously too.

Seems the niacin was making things worse. Seemed to cause sleep disturbances. I've stopped and have slept better. Also the flushing at times was terrible. TBD. I think B vitamins in general can be very hard to get right. Methylation is a confusing and critical area that is influenced by Bs.

Have not seen that site.

I am increasingly wary of taking too many isolated nutrients, especially in high doses. But in some cases like yours it seems to be helpful. And I think it is far better than using synthetic Rx drugs. The goal in all cases should be to stick as close to whole food nutrition as possible.

In your case I would wonder what is going on that you need tryptophan supplement.

I have been forced to resort to natural supplements for various reasons...one being I have had to switch Drs and have had some time without appts.

I have done research on various things because I do have a prescription of Gabapentin (Neurotin) and wanted to ensure I wasn't messing myself up.

- I take Magesium Citrate - for calming and better overall sleep (take in a.m.)
- I take Vitamin D - prescription 1x a week
- I take Gabapentin 300mg at night
- I take 5 mg of Melatonin at night
- I take (chew) 2 gummy bears with Melatonin (3mg, L-Theanine and Chamomile) at night.

I sleep awesome now...never did before on my 2 benzos.
I have one benzo available for the daytime if I'm anxious..which I'm always anxious
I am supposed to take the Gabapentin 3x a day at 300mg

I have been smoking weed to take the edge off during the day...but not liking it too much..lately its making me go to sleep.

According to some, Melatonin should not be used long term, because it weakens your body's ability to produce it on its own. Might be good to pulse it.

BTW, heard somewhere that cannabis increases melatonin, but don't quote me on that. I used high CBD cannabis at bedtime often.

Magnesium is best at night. Also some forms are supposed to be better absorbed than others. I take Glycinate.

Sorry to hear that.
Are you generally already a good sleeper?
Yes, I agree about taking the isolated nutrients.
That's why I like the essential amino acids, because my body can just make however much it needs of things out of that. I've stopped taking the non essential ones.
A few years back I did notice that when I ate heaps of fresh leafy greens and lots of uncooked fruit/veg for a long time that I also felt fantastic. Leafy greens are the best for aminos.
I'm getting back into that, but in the meantime, supplementing helps.
I have a trauma history is why I need it, to do with high cortisol production due to trauma.

Depression cannot be treated by supplements without medicines.

My sleep is a mess due to chronic illness, high stress, and more.

Seems humans are extremely complex biochemically, and a holistic/systems approach is best, but sometimes simple interventions seem to do the trick as in your case.