Anxiety / Depression Reversal Program

At WELLBEEING, we are all about empowering and educating people to live their best most healthy and vibrant lives and we are committed to being here every step of the way to support you through the process.

Firstly, it’s so important to note that if you have chosen to take medication to manage your symptoms- you have done nothing wrong!. That being said, both anxiety and depression are symptoms with a root cause. So even though medicines (anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medicines) may help you to manage your symptoms we are all about being biochemical detectives to uncover the root cause of your symptoms and put our attention and focus on treating the cause so that your symptoms naturally start disappearing. Sometimes during this process, it’s necessary for the quality of life of our patients to be on medication temporarily but typically our goal is to get you to a point where you feel amazing without relying to medicine  (which often have adverse side effects).

We have a systematic approach to address the root cause and reduce the symptoms. Our goal is to uncover why these symptoms are appearing and treat the cause so that you can start feeling calmer, energetic, feeling grounded and in control, more capable and more productive.

Current research and our traditional science of Ayurveda has proven that both depression and anxiety are likely symptoms of chronic inflammation. Other common causes are poor gut health, hormonal imbalances, and nutritional deficiencies. Hence correction of hormonal balance, bringing balance in neuronal activities in the brain, correcting gut health, is the focus, while overall symptoms experienced cannot be reduced. Hence, there is a step wise approach to this to cover:

• Mentally preparing to accept where you are right now. Series of counselling and mental therapies help reducing your thoughts per second, which will gradually help accept that these things that you are feeling are real and know that your depression and anxiety are not you, but merely very real symptoms of an underlying issue that we can help you uncover and treat.
• Selective relaxing yoga postures and breathing or going for a few minutes’ walk outside, or exercising. At WELLBEEING, we are all about practicality and meeting you where you’re at.  In some cases, exercise can be as effective as antidepressants! It’s such a great way to keep that mood elevated, that waistline down, and that heart beating strong.
• Music is a great way of relaxing mind. Specific type of music can be a mind therapy.
• Our well trained counsellor work with clinicians, who you could trust and allow yourself to open up about how you’ve been feeling. Remember, struggling with mental health issues doesn’t take away your capability. In fact the person can be a friend you can confide in perhaps at some point struggled with some of the things you are navigating through.
• Visualisations and retrospection & introspection, chakra healing will help you revisit good memories of your life that made you laugh, that you appreciate, or that has motivated you. It’s so easy to fall into a trap of thinking that every day is bad or hard, and even though there may be a lot of challenging moments throughout the day you are likely to feel so much better when you start noticing and feeling the good things that happened throughout the day as well.  A 5 minutes technique of decoding with new affirmations helps developing a new aspiration and excitement, reassuring on your strengths that you count on.

These comprehensive approach with select therapies that relaxes you, change your food pattern which supports your gut and mental health, healing techniques not just to calm your mind, but discover an effective way to find the root cause as to why you are not feeling optimal and getting you to a point where you feel great. We take time to listen to you, do a thorough health analysis, offer sophisticated and non-invasive testing, and view you as the beautiful human being that you are who is made up of body, mind, and spirit.

Conventional system attributes to a precise cause to depression, and medical researchers are currently exploring theories linking clinical depression to genetics, as well as to abnormalities in brain biochemistry. Depression can be triggered by disruption to normal brain chemistry caused by factors such as long-term sleep disturbance, long-term use of drugs affecting the endocrine system, patterns of drug and alcohol abuse, and diseases of the thyroid, etc. Depression / anxiety or panic attacks can also be triggered by stressful or traumatic events.

Not that conventional medicine cannot cure it, but, with its symptom-based medicine approach, conventional medicine tackles depression by largely suppressing the function of neurons, rather than determine what actually creates that depression. Mere prescription pad cannot provide an instant solution. If it had, then many people today with the usage of antidepressants, or stimulants, the statistics of these symptoms or problems are only increasing. These statistics are not normal. Basically, you need to know, even though many doctors say this, that depression / anxiety are not the cause of your sadness and despair or panic. It’s just a name we use to group people together for the purpose of giving them all the same drug therapy. Conventional medicine fails to address what causes those feelings and why they differ from one person to the next.

Most of the conventional medicine work by affecting the uptake of Serotonin in the brain, and psychotherapy, which can help the patient increase awareness of thought patterns, develop skills to fight off negative thoughts, and explore unresolved personal issues.  Additionally, western medicine recognizes the therapeutic benefits of having contact with others suffering from similar symptoms in the form of support groups. Electroconvulsive therapy (shock therapy) is used in extreme cases of depression, and light therapy is used in seasonal affective disorder, a seasonal form of depression. There are some standard approaches for mild or severe depression or anxiety.

What you need to know is, with two different incidents, the symptom could be the same, but the causes are different. Say, you have a head ache because of stress or migraine, or another person has a head ache due to his hit by a window pane. In this case, the symptom called ‘head ache’ is the same. Obviously, these two headaches can’t be cured in the same way, because their root causes are different.

Although this is a very simple example, the conventional approach is similar to the route which the conventional medical community takes to treat depression or anxiety. Simply label the disease and approach the treatment identically, even though the cause of that disease may be radically different from person to person. Ultimately, drugs like antidepressants don’t necessarily cure the disease; they just mask the symptoms. One don’t need to continue using these same drug treatments that don’t work, make things worse with side effects, or at best give partial relief. There’s got to be a more effective way isn’t it?

Generally, patients who visits us for depression or anxiety have already visited conventional doctors, who likely prescribed numerous drugs to address their condition. These patients often feel frustrated because conventional medicine has failed to address their underlying symptoms and they aren’t feeling better, simply because of feeling tired of prescriptions of medicine whose dosage are only titrated based on increase of their symptoms, and experience varying results and miserable side effects like drowsy, sleepy, less active, gastric problem, etc.

An Integrative & Functional Medicine Approach to Depression and Anxiety

At WELLBEEING, we attempt to understand what creates it, as explained in our approach details. Our approach reveals a gut-brain connection for this problem. When it comes to the gut, most specialists / doctors miss what is right in front of us, because we are looking for solutions in the wrong place. As per many research and traditional approaches like Ayurveda, these emotional, psychiatric, and behavioural symptoms are triggered by problems in the gut. Many times, we have observed that patients feel free of a long-term depression after a course of we used to clear out bad bacteria from the gut. Basically, it’s our strong experience that depression or anxiety is not in your head. It is in your body. When you fix your body, you fix your broken brain. Your energy, memory, focus, and your joy will all increase. Depression will fade away like a bad dream. The solution involved here is balancing the core systems in your body through many non-invasive interventions, food, multi-vitamins, corrective diets, therapies to correct functionality of vital organs in the gut, and there by addresses:

• Optimize nutrition
• Balance hormones
• Cool off inflammation
• Fix digestion
• Enhance detoxification
• Boost energy metabolism
• Calm the mind

Depression is classified as a mood disorder. It may be described as feelings of sadness, loss, or anger that interfere with a person’s everyday activities. People experience depression in different ways. It may interfere with your daily work, resulting in lost time and lower productivity. It can also influence relationships and some chronic health conditions.

Conditions that can get worse due to depression include: Arthritis, Asthma, Cardiovascular disease, Cancer, Obesity, and many other chronic disorders.

It’s important to realize that feeling down at times is a normal part of life. Sad and upsetting events happen to everyone. But, if you’re feeling down or hopeless on a regular basis, you could be dealing with depression. Depression is considered a serious medical condition that can get worse without proper treatment. Those who seek treatment often see improvements in symptoms in just a few weeks. Depression symptoms can be more than a constant state of sadness or feeling “blue.” Major depression can cause a variety of symptoms. Some affect your mood, and others affect your body. Symptoms may also be ongoing, or come and go. The symptoms of depression can be experienced differently among men, women, and children differently.

Depression causes may can range from biological to circumstantial. Common causes include:

• Family history. You’re at a higher risk for developing depression if you have a family history of depression or another mood disorder.
• Early childhood trauma. Some events affect the way your body reacts to fear and stressful situations. vBrain structure. There’s a greater risk for depression if the frontal lobe of your brain is less active. However, scientists don’t know if this happens before or after the onset of depressive symptoms.
• Medical conditions. Certain conditions may put you at higher risk, such as chronic illness, insomnia, chronic pain, or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• Drug use. A history of drug or alcohol misuse can affect your risk.

In addition to these causes, other risk factors for depression include:

• low self-esteem or being self-critical
• personal history of mental illness
• certain medications
• stressful events, such as loss of a loved one, economic problems, or a divorce

Many factors can influence feelings of depression, as well as who develops the condition and who doesn’t.

How to diagnose Depression?

There isn’t a single test to diagnose depression. But your healthcare provider can make a diagnosis based on your symptoms and a psychological evaluation. In most cases, they’ll ask a series of questions about your moods, appetite, sleep pattern, activity level, thoughts, etc. Because depression can be linked to other health problems, your healthcare provider may also conduct a physical examination and order blood work. Sometimes thyroid problems or a vitamin D deficiency can trigger symptoms of depression.

Don’t ignore symptoms of depression. If your mood doesn’t improve or gets worse, seek medical help. Depression is a serious mental health illness with the potential for complications.

If left untreated, complications can include weight gain or loss, physical pain, substance use problems, panic attacks, relationship problems, social isolation, thoughts of suicide and self-harmful feelings.

Types of depression

Depression can be broken into categories depending on the severity of symptoms. Some people experience mild and temporary episodes, while others experience severe and ongoing depressive episodes. There are two main types: major depressive disorder and persistent depressive disorder.

Major depressive disorder

Major depressive disorder is the more severe form of depression. It’s characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness that don’t go away on their own. In order to be diagnosed with clinical depression, you must experience 5 or more of the following symptoms over a 2-week period:

• feeling depressed most of the day
• loss of interest in most regular activities
• significant weight loss or gain
• sleeping a lot or not being able to sleep
• slowed thinking or movement
• fatigue or low energy most days
• feelings of worthlessness or guilt
• loss of concentration or indecisiveness
• recurring thoughts of death or suicide

There are different subtypes of major depressive disorder, which the American Psychiatric Association refers to as “specifiers.” These include:

• atypical features
• anxious distress
• mixed features
• peripartum onset, during pregnancy or right after giving birth
• seasonal patterns
• melancholic features
• psychotic features
• catatonia

Persistent depressive disorder

Persistent depressive disorder (PDD) used to be called dysthymia. It’s a milder, but chronic, form of depression. In order for the diagnosis to be made, symptoms must last for at least 2 years. PDD can affect your life more than major depression because it lasts for a longer period. It’s common for people with PDD to lose interest in normal daily activities, feel hopeless, lack productivity or have low self-esteem.

Ayurveda has a very different approach to depression, stemming from a radically different understanding of mind. Conventional system’s understanding of mind is often limited to the function of the biochemical processes of the brain, an organ which is in itself little understood. It lacks a functional cohesive framework for working with aspects of the human being such as consciousness, thought, emotion, and feeling which actually universal realities of the human experience are. Ayurveda offers a lot in this respect. By providing a complex theory of the human being and of health, as well as a holistic methodology of healing and transforming consciousness, Ayurvedic psychology offers many approaches to the understanding and treatment of depression.

In Ayurvedic, the thought, consciousness, or ‘chitta,’ describes the totality of the contents of the mind, including conscious, unconscious, and super conscious thought, ideas, emotions, sensations, energy, will, memory, intuition, instinct, love and faith. Chitta contains all memories and attachments, all mental conditioning which distorts our perception and disturbs our emotions.  The term ‘chitta’ encompasses the totality of our inner world, and Ayurveda and its sister science.

Yoga is a process of union of mind and body, which helps learning to look within and observe the contents of chitta with clarity. As human beings, we have the ability to perceive through the aspect of consciousness known as ‘buddhi,’ or intelligence. The main action of intelligence or wisdom is to discern the true and real from the false and unreal.

Classical Ayurveda has the goal of alleviating all disease and suffering, which includes mental, psychological and emotional suffering. This science looks at the world through an elemental model in which all aspects of manifest reality are created from the building blocks of the five elements – earth, water, fire, air, and ether. The earth element creates all solidity and stability. Earth is heavy, gross, dense, and static. The earth element provides material form and structure. In the mind, earth creates dependability, reliability, consistency, and stubbornness.

In Ayurvedic philosophy, the elements group together to form doshas (thri-doshas), the three basic energies or principles that are present, in varying degrees, in all people and things.  It has a unique genetic blueprint and a unique constitution that accounts for many differences in the way we look, feel, and behave.  When the doshas are in balance in our bodies and minds, our health is optimal and we are peaceful and at ease. It is easier for the light of truth to shine and for perception to be clear and unmarred by negative thought patterns. However, the doshic balance can easily be disturbed by stress, environmental factors, and improper diet, which gives rise to negative emotions and physical and mental disease.

Vata dosha is the energy of movement, comprised of the elements of air and ether. When vata is in balance, we are creative, flexible, happy, and joyous. When out of balance, vata creates fear, anxiety, and instability. Vata is related to prana, the pure life force that animates us without which we could not survive for one second. Prana provides us with a sense of excitement about life, an inherent enthusiasm and joy.

Pitta dosha is the energy of metabolism or transformation, composed primarily of fire but always contained within water. When pitta is in balance, or perception is clear and we are logical, understanding, and quick to learner. As pitta goes out of balance, anger, jealousy, criticism and hate arise. Pitta is related to tejas, the strength of the intellect and the capacity of the mind to understand, discriminate, and know truth.

Kapha dosha consists of water and earth, and creates structure, strength and immunity. What kapha is balanced, love, compassion, and gentleness are expressed. When there is a vitiation of kapha dosha, the mind tends towards attachment, greed, and clinging. Kapha is related to ojas, the force of stability and contentment. When our ojas is strong and healthy, we have endurance and are able to withstand.

Another important concept in Ayurvedic physiology and psychology is ama (or toxicity). Ama is like a viscous sludge that forms when foods or experiences are not fully digested. In the physical body, toxins can clog up all bodily systems and suppress their healthy function. The same is true of the mind. Things that we see or hear stay with us, often leaving negative traces on our psychic fabric. Residues of abusive, hateful, or violent things that we have heard or experienced become a cloudy haze in our consciousness, adversely affecting our ability to see clearly, love fully, and act harmoniously. A process of detoxification is often necessary to return to a state of optimal health.

Finally, Ayurvedic psychology offers us the language of the three gunas of sattva (clarity), rajas (activity), and tamas (ignorance) to describe the state of a person’s consciousness. The state of these personalities is reflected in the mind and the lifestyle. As a person evolves from ignorance to understanding, and from understanding to transcendent awareness, the state of mind and actions of the person reflect this evolution. The cultivation of clarity is of great importance in rising above the negative and compelling dramas of the mind.

Thus the normal utilisation of the mind is the goal that Ayurveda strives for, using many methods of treatment including diet, herbs, and mantra, pranayama, and Panchakarma therapies.

An important aspect in treating depression or anxiety is re-establishing a harmonious relationship with the cycles of nature. Healthy routines include waking in the morning, around the same time as the sun. Rushing should be avoided as this creates anxiety and disrupts the mind. Food should be fresh, free of chemical residues, and well-prepared, and should be consumed mindfully. Sattvic food is recommended to help open the mind and the heart, along with herbal formulas that are instrumental in lighting the path towards growth and healing. Specific type of fat or ghee are recommended for instance in “impaired intelligence and memory.”

Many healthy eating habits and corrections in the routine lifestyle like science behind eating, resting after meals to give food time to digest, chewing all food to an even consistency, and eating without distractions like music or television, early which can avoid aggravating vata, many such things are recommended.

Daily practice of asana, pranayama, mantra and meditation is recommended to increase sattva. Panchakarma is recommended in the classical texts as a treatment for mental illness. Internal and external oleation as well as fomentation are powerful methods of liquefying ama and purifying the channels of the body.  Therapeutic emesis removes excess kapha and can alleviate depression, grief and attachment. Therapeutic purgation alleviates anger and irritability (pitta), and enema therapy treats fear, anxiety, insomnia and many other symptoms of vata mental disturbance. The benefits of each of these interventions are explained to the individual.