Detox
One of the major waste eliminations systems of the body is the skin. Sweating is a good way to excrete things the body doesn’t need. Aerobic exercise probably gets rid of a significant amount of toxins from your body.

Lymphatic Cleansing
The lymphatic system relies on body movement to keep lymph flowing. So exercise helps flush out the lymph vessels, which carry toxins away. The lymphatic system also carries nutrients to the cells, and is a big part of the body’s immune system. It’s good to keep it functioning properly with regular exercise.

Muscle Building
Aerobic exercise may not build as much muscle as weight lifting, but it does build some. When you build up your muscles, they burn more calories, not just when you’re exercising, but all the time.

Cardio Pulmonary Health
Aerobic exercise helps strengthen your heart and lungs, which improves your stamina. It also lowers cholesterol and regulates blood pressure.

Bone Density
Regular weight bearing exercise can increase bone density or prevent further bone loss. “Weight bearing” means putting increased stress on your bones. Most aerobic exercises do this, but cycling and swimming do not (though, they are still beneficial!).

Insulin Resistance
Aerobic exercise can improve insulin resistance. It increases insulin sensitivity and helps your body process glucose better. It also helps to prevent diabetes.

Depression
Regular aerobic exercise helps alleviate mild depression.

I’m keeping all of the above in mind to motivate me to exercise. Mostly I would like to be able to walk across the parking lot at work without feeling out of breath. Yes, really! How embarrassing! I think muscle building exercises might help more with fat loss, but aerobic exercise makes me feel healthy, so I’m definitely including it too.

Bye for now. ~Me

St. John’s Wort
I used this for a few years on and off. I took 1/6 the recommended dose on the bottle. It said to take two pills three times a day. I took one pill a day. It was supposed to start working in a few weeks. For me it started working in a few days. It was great. It lifted my mood. But after a while I noticed a mild headache, constant. The headache grew worse over the weeks/months. Ginger could take the edge off of it. I didn’t want to take ibuprofen or acetaminophen daily, though. Also over a few months it made me more and more agitated. Anxious. It gave me insomnia. Those are all symptoms of serotonin syndrome, where the body has an overload of serotonin. I was taking the teeniest amount of St. John’s Wort, but it was still building up in my body and causing these symptoms. I also gained a little weight with it, and found it impossible to lose even a pound when I was taking it. Very frustrating. So I stopped taking it. I took it during three different time periods, for a few months or even a year at a time, with a year or two between each phase of taking it. So I know it was the St John’s Wort that caused these symptoms. It’s unfortunate because it really was great for the depression!

Blessed Thistle
This one is fantastic for depression. It worked fairly quickly, I felt the effects the first day I took it. I took one 380 mg pill per day. Not a lot of people seem to know about this as an herb for depression. Susun Weed in her book Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year says it helps with depression. Every herb has other effects, however, and blessed thistle is also an appetite stimulant. It gets the digestive juices going. I could tolerate that for a while, it was mild at first, but the effect grew. Like it was building up in my body. I became so ravenously hungry I’d feel like I was starving right after I ate a meal. I stopped taking it, and my appetite returned to normal. Another effect is that it is energizing, so I took it in the morning instead of the evening, and that worked well. It also is a liver cleansing herb, which made my skin clearer and healthier looking. Less acne, less blotchiness, etc. It made my skin somehow smoother. Other liver cleansing herbs have that same effect on me (yellow dock, burdock root), so I still have that nice side effect. But the excessive hunger thing made me stop taking this one. I even bought a tincture so I could take a really microscopic dose, but I didn’t have the patience to try it. That might work, though, taking a smaller dose.

There you have it. I think my body is really sensitive, and these herbs might not bother another person as much as they bothered me. I think I would use them again, short term, in the future if I ever needed to.

Bye for now. ~Me.

5-HTP
I’ve taken this for almost three years. I started taking it as an appetite suppressant, which it works very well for, but then I kept taking it because it helped with the depression. It works great. I take 50 mg twice a day. In the morning and in the evening. It has a calming effect also. It’s good for anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which I also have. It’s probably good for insomnia, though I don’t take it for that. When I take it I can feel the effects within about 20 minutes. It’s a fast working supplement. Other supplements can take days to start to work. It has a side effect, though. It causes nausea. At least in me. I take one 500 mg ginger pill to help with that. One ginger pill a day does the trick. I also skip one dose of 5-HTP per week. One evening per week I won’t take the 5-HTP. It tends to build up in the body and become less effective over time. Some people take a whole week off every few months, but I don’t think I could handle being depressed for a week!

Rhodiola
I take one 500 mg pill of Rhodiola every morning. This one is great. It also helps with anxiety and OCD. It calms me down and gives me energy somehow. And helps with depression. I take it in the morning, because it sort of peps me up and makes it hard to sleep if I take it in the evening. Ironically when I take two pills a day it knocks me out. I can barely keep my eyes open. When I first started taking it I could feel it wear off at about 4 pm every day. When I was still at work! And I’d have some sort of mild panic attack. I started taking garlic every day and that got rid of the mild panic attack. No idea why. I stopped taking garlic and started taking CoQ10 for the same thing (garlic and CoQ10 help lower blood pressure), and it works. No more mini panic attacks. I take Rhodiola every day with no break. It doesn’t seem to have that same build up problem that 5-HTP has.

Flax Seed Oil
I read that this helps with brain chemistry somehow, the essential fatty acids, so I tried it. It made a big difference in my depression. I take 1000 mg every day. At first it gave me a little headache. Now I don’t feel that. If I try to take more than 1000 mg I get the headache again. Not sure why it causes that. I figure it’s something my body needs, so it’s okay to take it. Maybe the headache was my body adjusting.

B Vitamins
These I added recently. I take a B-50 supplement, 50 mg/mcg of all the B Vitamins. I thought I was getting enough from food, but when I added the supplement it helped immensely with my depression. Maybe food doesn’t have as many vitamins and minerals as it should. That’s a whole other topic.

There you have it. That’s what I take for depression. And I feel great. Or normal anyway. I have a down day just like anyone, now and then. But I don’t have DOWN days anymore, and that’s important.

Oh, one more thing. Here is a great website with depression information: Kelly’s St. John’s Wort Pages. There are articles on different natural therapies, and there is a discussion board where people talk about what worked for them. It’s very helpful.

‘Til next time. ~Me.