Dear Health Conscious Reader,
Remember when doctors told men that if they were having sexual problems, it was all in their heads? We know better now that what they said … 90 percent of it is in your head … was exactly wrong. It was more a result of the darn drugs the doctor was giving you.
Now they’re doing a similar thing to women.
Let me explain …
Doctors are busy telling women that are depressed after they have their babies that it’s psychiatric. They’ve given it an acronym … PPD for postpartum depression. And they’re treating women who are experiencing this with psychotherapy or worse yet … antidepressant drugs. Which is terrible news … especially if the woman is trying to breastfeed.
The real problem is not psychiatric in the vast majority of cases. It’s physiological … a matter of chemistry.
Progesterone is the major hormone that helps you regulate your menstrual cycle each month and support a healthy pregnancy. It’s right in the name – pro-gestation, or for-pregnancy.
In fact, when you become pregnant, your placenta produces 350-400 mg of progesterone a day.
Progesterone is a feel-good hormone, and 50 percent of your progesterone receptors are in your brain. It helps you feel satiated and content. It also keeps your estrogen levels balanced.
After you give birth, your progesterone levels drop like a rock all of a sudden … and remain low during the postpartum (after-delivery) months. This happens to prevent fertilization. That’s because nature doesn’t want you to get pregnant right after you have a baby.
But when you go from thousands of milligrams of progesterone in your body to zero in an instant, good luck trying to stay in a good mood.
What makes it worse is the amount of estrogen, and chemicals that mimic estrogen, in your environment. Those chemicals are in plastic, shampoo, detergents, perfumes, moisturizers … you name it.
And they have a big part to play in the increase in postpartum depression.
When your body takes all that in, it inhibits your production of progesterone, meaning you have a terrible estrogen dominance in your body. This provides temporary relief during pregnancy, but worsens immediately afterward, causing fatigue, memory loss and … depression.
But you probably won’t hear Big Pharma telling you that postpartum depression is all about progesterone. Why would they? They can’t patent it. They can’t make any money off of it. It’s natural. And they’d be happier if people don’t know the true cause of postpartum depression, so they can continue to sell anti-depressants that have a 4,000 percent markup.
But anti-depressants, such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, can cause side effects such as nervousness, headaches and upset stomach. Not to mention that traces of them can end up in your breast milk.
Here’s how to beat postpartum depression without pharmaceutical drugs:
Part of it involves having a few measurements taken. The value of knowing these levels is that you’ll know if you have a deficiency, and exactly what you might need to do, so you can get back to normal.
To get measured, you can visit your primary care doctor, or a lab that specializes in helping you find out where you stand. Once you know the results, a qualified doctor will be able to tell you what normal levels should be, and what needs attention. If any of your measurements are not in the normal range, you can work with your doctor to fix it.
So, there are three things you need to do:
1. Get your progesterone measured. The best time to get your levels checked is a couple days after childbirth. Interpretation of progesterone levels depends on the reason for testing and requires knowledge of where a woman is in her menstrual cycle or pregnancy. If your levels are low, you can supplement. And you don’t have to worry about progesterone affecting your baby if you plan to breastfeed. Progesterone doesn’t have sex characteristics, like estrogen and testosterone, which could interfere with your baby’s development.
2. Get your CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone) levels checked. Your body produces CRH during pregnancy and childbirth. That’s because CRH increases cortisol in the blood. Cortisol raises blood pressure and helps to maintain normal blood pressure – to prepare the body to cope with the stress of labor and delivery. But sudden, out-of-balance levels of these stress hormones can lead to depression. A recent University of California Study looked at 100 women and found 16 had postpartum depression … and they were the ones with the highest levels of CRH.1
Fortunately, CRH levels can be tested as early as 25 weeks gestation. If your levels are high, you could be at risk for postpartum depression. But if you know you’re at risk before you give birth, you can begin getting the emotional supports in place, as well as support with your newborn that you will need to cope.
3. Know what’s happening with your thyroid. With a healthy thyroid, you’re happy and alert. But an underactive or overactive thyroid can cause problems with weight and feelings of depression, exhaustion and fatigue. It’s common for doctors to medicate depression and overlook thyroid problems because the symptoms are so similar. But they occur in as many as 10 percent of new mothers.2There’s a simple test for thyroid status. Most of the time, your thyroid will go back to normal after you have a baby. But if it doesn’t, try increasing your intake of iodine. The easiest way to do this is to season your food with iodized sea salt. You can also try eating edible marine plants, such as wakame and nori, which are high in iodine. Or you can take iodized oil capsules and supplements. I recommend getting 150 mcg of iodine daily. If your condition is severe, you should discuss bioidentical hormone therapy with your doctor.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1 Yim, Ilona S., “Risk of Postpartum Depressive Symptoms With Elevated Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone in Human Pregnancy,” Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 2009;66(2):162-169
2 “Hyperthyroidism and Pregnancy,” New York Thyroid Center, http://cumc.columbia.edu/dept/thyroid/pregnant.html