Dear Healthy Friend,

A diagnosis of depression means many things - and for most, it usually means getting pumped full of drugs that usually only make the situation worse. We're all familiar with the litany of side effects brought on by blockbuster anti-depressant drugs. Whatever that bouncing smiley face in the ads tell you, they're bad news.

But there has to be something you can do. Depression can't just be left alone. Christine O'Brien reveals the latest...

In the name of good health,

Taryn Strugnell
Managing Editor of Nutrition & Healing

New hope for depression sufferers
Christine O'Brien
Editor, Nutrition & Healing

New research from Japan, reported in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, brings new hope to depression sufferers. Researchers at Seitoku University found that daily supplementation with 7mg of zinc (as zinc gluconate) was associated with significant decreases in measures of anger and depression in young women.

Mood swings are common symptoms of people with zinc deficiency. Curious to find out if zinc supplements could boost mood, researchers put a group of young women on either multivitamins or multivitamins plus zinc for 10 weeks.

At the end of the study, the women who had received zinc supplements showed significant reduction in scores of depression and anger.

It's interesting - previous animal studies have found that only females showed increases in aggression levels when they weren't getting enough zinc.

Of course, this isn't the first Health Bytes readers have heard of the powers of zinc. It's effective for fighting colds and mouth ulcers and is important to maintaining optimum skin health. This is all because it stimulates your immune system by promoting the ability of white blood cells to fight germs.

Dr Wright recommends a higher level of zinc each day. It's not always easy to get enough zinc in your diet, so he suggests supplementing with 15mg per day. If you want to try more, it's best to consult with a doctor experienced in natural medicine.

Dr Wright also recommends offsetting your zinc intake with a small quantity of copper (about 1mg per day if you're following the 15mg/day recommendation for zinc). Zinc supplementation without adequate copper intake raises your risk of having heartbeat irregularities and an imbalance in cholesterol.

So make sure to balance your supplements and beat depression, natrually.

The right plan for HRT

Q: After having my hysterectomy a few months ago, I showed my doctor some of your articles. He actually agreed to use bio-identical hormone replacement therapy instead of conventional HRT drugs, but he says I don't really need progesterone because my uterus has been removed. I know you recommend progesterone along with the bio-identical programme, so I'm wondering what you think.

Dr. Wright: All medical textbooks - even mainstream ones - state that there are "receptors" for progesterone on bones (where progesterone helps trigger bone growth), on brain cells (where progesterone helps to stabilise mood), on white blood cells (where progesterone helps support and regulate the immune system) and on and on. In fact, every textbook I've ever read says that there are progesterone receptors on nearly every cell in the body.

Progesterone is one of those essential-to-life molecules that our bodies make whether or not we take extra amounts, so even though you won't die from not supplementing any, your internal production of it slows down as you age, just like your oestrogen production slows down. So if you're taking bio-identical hormone replacement therapy for oestrogen, you should follow nature's plan by also taking natural progesterone.