[shortstuff]

Dear Basketball,

I hope you're feeling better.

I'm not a medical person but I know enough about antidepressants to tell you that the cause of your problems may not be in your brain but in your gut. All antidepressants affect the digestive system and the liver. It sounds like you had a particularly bad reaction to Cymbalta. You may want to ask a naturopath (holistic doctor) how you can do a detox on your liver and colon to make sure you've got the Cymbalta and any other drugs out of your system.

I've had gut problems for years while on Cymbalta and other antidepressants. The things that are helping me are eating really well, working out really hard, an Omega 3 supplement, 5HTP and a few other nutritional supplements.

My experience is that regular Western doctors don't know shit about how to diagnose problems relating to antidepressants and don't have a clue as to what to do about these kinds of symptoms. They'll all take guesses and probably throw more pills at you while you go from doctor to doctor. If I were you, I'd take my health into my own hands and get to a really good naturopath who has a good track record with gut issues.

Sorry to be on a soapbox but I hate to hear of people slipping through the cracks of our inept health care system!

Whatever you do I hope you find relief soon.
Sincerely,
Shortstuff

[shortstuff]

Hello,

I've experienced a bit of what you're talking about with the "drugged up" feeling but not to the extent that you're describing.

I have a good friend who is a naturopathic doctor, chiropractor, nutritionist and homeopathist. I will ask him tonight what he suggests for detoxing the liver and colon in a safe and effective way. I have a feeling he's going to tell me that enemas are the most effective treatment. I know that sounds awful and gross and everything but it really is extremely effective at helping the body get rid of toxins. Maybe he has some suggestions for other ways to support and detox the gut, I'll find out and check back in later tonight.

Shortstuff

[shortstuff]

shortstuff, on 04 January 2011 - 06:22 PM, said:

Hello,

I've experienced a bit of what you're talking about with the "drugged up" feeling but not to the extent that you're describing.

I have a good friend who is a naturopathic doctor, chiropractor, nutritionist and homeopathist. I will ask him tonight what he suggests for detoxing the liver and colon in a safe and effective way. I have a feeling he's going to tell me that enemas are the most effective treatment. I know that sounds awful and gross and everything but it really is extremely effective at helping the body get rid of toxins. Maybe he has some suggestions for other ways to support and detox the gut, I'll find out and check back in later tonight.

Shortstuff

Hello again Basketball,
I just spoke to my friend the naturopath and here are his suggestions (the same ones he tells me every day!):

1. Immediately address your gut issues by figuring out what foods you may be allergic to. These can be tricky to figure out on your own so the help of a natural doctor is really helpful. The most common things that cause gut issues (that I know about) are: gluten, dairy, nuts, soy and eggs. For bloating you may want to watch your food combining (animal proteins eaten with carbohydrates are a bad combination).

2. Exercise hard, every day. You need to get your heart rate up high and really sweat. This helps tremendously.

3. Detox the liver and the colon. There are lots of ways to do this and some may not be very healthy for you so do some research before you dive into something. Doing enemas is a great way. You don't have to use a lot of water. After you run warm water through, you can do a coffee enema or an enema with wheat grass juice (small amount in a cup or two of warm water). Coffee and wheat grass juice are both excellent detoxifiers for the liver. There are websites that tell you the correct way to do enemas.

4. You may want to seek out the assistance of a natural doc to help you through this and to help figure out what exactly is going on in your system. Sadly, regular Western docs don't know shit about this stuff and often do more harm than good because they just don't know what to do.

I hope this is helpful to you and others. Keep in mind that if you do all kinds of detox stuff but don't really clean up what you're putting in your mouth, the detoxing can be a big waste of time!

Be well,
Shortstuff