Ok, so heres my problem. I have been dealing with chemical depression and anxiety for years.. Tried the medication route in the beginning only to feel worse and decide on trying to heal myself more naturally. After being a vegetarian for over a decade I decided to give fish oil a try after much research on natural ways to combat severe depression and mood swings.. Also, I switched the rest of my diet over to vegan (other than the fish oil) and also taking other multivitamin vegan supplements.. I cut all wheat/gluten out of my diet as well.. Within about a week of this change I was pulled up from a really dark depression and was feeling and looking better than I had in years.. For some people fish oil seems to be a miracle for those who don't respond to medications or want to treat naturally.. esp in those w mood disorders and bipolar disorder. Still though I couldnt shake the guilty feeling for using the fish oil.. so I decided to try flax seed oil even though I had read in cases similar to mine it didn't seem to be as effective.. I have read all about the different absorbtions etc.. within days of the switch i crashed and started feeling really low again.. Was having a really hard time dragging myself to get excercise.. my skin started breaking out again and my over all energy is zilch.. What would you do? I am debating on giving the fish oil a try again but ever time I think about it I get this terrible guilty feeling about it.. I want so bad to feel well and healthy but I am not sure if I am wrong by taking the fish oil.. I kinda feel like who am I to say my life is higher than another creature on this earth.. like what gives me the right to support a company that does endorce the killing of any living creature. At the same time Im wanting to survive myself and live a happy life.. I just don't know what to do.. Would you take this fish oil or not? I'm feeling pretty crummy here and needing advice. Much Love and Light..
hmm... how about a mic of high omega flax and st Johnswort? Or simply a higher dose of flax to counteract the absorption rate?
Yeah, I did experiment around with higher doses of the flax with really no avail.. Im too sensitive to st. johnswort to take it.. in some people with bipolar genes it can trigger mania.. Thanks so much though for replying.. Ill get all this figured out somehow. Much Love and Light... p.s. I noticed the photo of you with the camera.. what do you shoot with? I just sold my canon 20d and need to get another camera when I get my funds back up. Do you have a website with any of your work on it? I would love to see it. I need to get one together.
so if the non animal alternatives aren't working, do what you have to. I'd tell anyione needing insulin (made from pigs) the same. I'm a Nikon girl. the camera in the pic is an N90. I shoot with that, an F made in 1964 (no batteries, it's a workhorse) and a D70. I have a sony cybershot 707 for fun. I have some pix in my gallery here, but I'm also in need of getting my crap together. My brother took that shot. The camera was his. when he decided to go fully digital, he offerd the N90 to me. He could not believe how fast I burned a roll of film on a wind farm!
before anything else, Love your self. if you are in a challenging situation, especially like this one, don't focus on anything else until you have only love and support for yourself. Then you will be fully free to choose what's best aligned with your highest guidance... and you'll be free of fears, shoulds, and other things. what i'd do is irrelevant the question is when you love yourself unconditionally, what would you do. everybody here is complicit in suffering, using electricity for the net, or supporting corporations that own the net. "Perfection often isn't an option.... but Improvement almost always is " i for one support you to explore what you feel is best, and won't judge you for whatever you sincerely feel is best.. Jon
okay, the reason that flax oil isnt working for you is that it just contains the precursors (ala) to the dha that the human brain needs, and unfortuneately pple who are already ill just arent able to process it into dha. i've been reading about krill oil lately, it's an even better form of omega 3 than the fish oils. krill is lower on the food chain and thus has fewer pollutants. it's still technically a kind of living creature though, it's a tiny shrimp (whales eat them). the krill feed off of algae. if you reallly want to stay vegan you might want to try looking for a supplement that gets the dha straight from the algae. just avoid supplemental oils that only contain ala, because it's just the precursor to dha, and is useless to you as you know from your experience with flax oil. good for you for getting off of dairy and gluten, they're major offenders when it comes to maintaining good health! i consider gluten, dairy, soy and corn to be the four horsemen of dis-ease causing diet. when my ex went off of gluten/dairy/soy/corn, his anxiety and panic attacks totally disappeared. i've got a thread on my forum about dealing with depression from a nutritional viewpoint, but i'm not veg, so there may be mention of meat, but there will still be useful info for you regardless.
I am vegan and soy does fulfill alot of our nutritional need protein wise. My infant drinks soy milk from a sippy to get a protein boost. So far I've seen no adverse affects in either him or us. Other than the terrible gas I got when I went vegan. As I my body adjusted to the new diet that faded considerably. Whats so terrible about soy?? And corn? I guess I'll go ahead and read that link you posted.
As for the OP I say take care of yourself! I am vegan and understand your distress. I also have struggled with chemical imbalances myself. If fish oil is the only thing that helped me I would take fish oil. Perhaps to help yourself be at peace with this decision you could develop a ritual of thanks? Develop a prayer of thanks to the fish that sacrificed their lives to help you whenever you take the pills. Maybe even set up a tiny shrine to them, with a candle and a little dish of salt and some little bits of nori and maybe a framed picture or image of a fish? So that when you see this shrine you can visualise in your head your thankfulness to the fish. I say this in all seriousness, I hope nobody thinks I'm silly.
