Dr Kelly Brogan's Book "A Mind of Your Own"
I read this a couple of months ago when I came across it in the bookstore. What a perfect find as I can completely identify with the subtitle: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives.
This book touches upon everything. For me, it's completely related to why I first started turning to what is called the alternative medicine field over ten years ago when I began having panic attacks. From my early twenties onward, right after college, I would always have stomach and gut issues - bloating, diagnosed with IBS, high anxiety, stress and the whole host of accompanying conditions. I have always been a very moody and irritable person and that state is unpredictable when it would arise. But maybe it isn't so unpredictable. It's likely due to a lifetime of exposure to and ingestion of food-like products full of chemicals and pesticides, environmental toxins and other unhealthy lifestyle traits. I am a highly sensitive person, so due to my ongoing seeking further and further into the depths of the natural health and wellness realm, this is how I ended up here. Below I share a few excerpts from Kelly Brogan's book. Finally we have a medical doctor who is calling out the insurance and big pharma and big food industries as well as the field of psychiatry. Thanks to her for writing this and spreading the wider message to all of us - I highly recommend reading her book. I thought for a long time that only my family and a few others were suffering from inflammatory diseases and auto-immune diseases, but I have learned that it is widespread.
On modern inflammatory health issues and diseases: "We don’t eat food anymore. We eat food-like products, and when we eat actual foods, they have often been grown in depleted soil, shipped across the globe, and saturated with chemicals. Food is not just fuel, though. Food is information, and it speaks to our genes. We no longer can get away with eating food that screams at our genes. We need food that whispers a love song."
On modern day toxins and related health issues: "We are swimming in a sea of 80,000+ unstudied chemicals that we never evolved, over 2.5 million years, to recognize. Our immune systems are ablaze because of it and our hormones are going haywire. I have grave concerns about endocrine-disrupting plastics, about fluoride in our tap water that directly affects the brain and thyroid, about pesticides that decimate healthy gut bacteria, and about neurotoxic metals like mercury and aluminum. Mostly, we are beginning to see that the dose doesn’t necessarily make the poison and that small amounts of these chemicals combine and interact with our systems in unique ways to cause significant problems, many of which manifest psychiatrically. We have to also include medications, now the third leading cause of death in America, in this discussion."
On lifestyle changes in response to chronic inflammatory health issues related to modern day toxins: "Through this process, we remember what we have forgotten—that the body is best at self-healing if we just get out of our own way. We realize that we can reclaim something we gave away. Something that’s not available through a model of care based on life-long pharmaceuticals. It’s that feeling that we are always missing something even if our symptoms are “managed.” It’s our personal power and fearlessness. With this, anything is possible, including becoming medication-free after decades of exposure."
She does offer encouragement and positivity on how to approach all of this: "The human body interacts with its environment with deep intelligence. Your body creates symptoms for a reason. Depression is a meaningful symptom of a mismatch, biologically, with lifestyle—we eat a poor diet, harbor too much stress, lack sufficient physical movement, deprive ourselves of natural sunlight, expose ourselves to environmental toxins, and take too many drugs. Inflammation is the language that the body speaks, expressing imbalance, telling you that something is wrong somewhere that needs your attention. We usually suppress these symptoms with medication, but that is like turning off the smoke alarm when you have a fire."
She covers so much - the serotonin debate, the history of depression, natural treatments for whole body wellness and the power of all these lifestyle shifts that can enhance wellbeing. She gives so many recommendations that confirm what I had learned when I visited an integrative and functional medicine doctor for women a few months ago. I am pretty healthy and do yoga and a whole bunch of other good lifestyle habits, yet I still tested low for selenium, magnesium, B vitamins and more. No wonder my hormones were still awry! I love that she is a fan of kundalini yoga too. I know a lot about holistic nutrition and I learned so much more by reading her book. I underlined so much and marked so many pages that it wouldn't do justice to try to list them all, just read it for yourself.
This is exactly the kind of holistic study and book of guidance that we have been waiting for and that I personally have needed for 20 years so I'm sure I'm not alone! Much love to whomever is still suffering with these issues - get your copy asap and pressure your library to keep one on the shelves as well! xo