QuestionHello!
I have several questions and hopefully some or all of them will be within your expertise.
My answer in a nutshell is; what foods can help build my immune system?
I will give you a little background.
I抦 23, female, 10 month old son, have been diagnosed with both mild depression and a general anxiety disorder. I take Wellbutrin as well as prenatal vitamins that I had left over. I抳e had two severe panic attacks -- the doctors put me on Ativan, but I weened myself off that that a couple of years ago. I抦 5??and around 230 lbs, so I抦 obviously overweight (and have been my whole life). I had mono when I was around 16 and since that time it seems I get colds, flus and everything in between a lot worse than everyone else (and for at least 5 times as long). If I didn抰 have a young son I would almost certainly sleep at least 18 hours in a day, not just because I抦 tired but because I have a huge problem with getting motivated to do anything.
When I gave birth I was 318 lbs., some of that because I had pre-eclampsia and retained a LOT of water. So I抳e lost nearly 100 lbs since giving birth, but I want a diet plan that will continue to help me lose weight while boosting my immune system and lowering my blood pressure.
I抦 a vegetarian and am pretty disgusted by the thought of eggs and milk, so that makes things slightly more difficult. I do eat cheese once in a while, and I'll eat milk/cheese products if they're already in something. I eat fish on occasion, but would rather that be limited to once a month or so.
Being a single mother my food budget it VERY limited. Recently I抳e done small things like always keeping my fruit bowl full and trying to eat more vegetables (some frozen, some fresh). I抦 not a great cook, but know the basics, so anything fairly simple would be great.
Any suggestions you have would be fabulous. I really want to start feeling better, having more energy and NOT be sick all of the time.
Thanks so much,
Kate
AnswerDear Kate,
Endogenous depression is a serious affliction, even in mild cases. We cannot underestimate its debilitating effect on one's mental health. It is however, not considered a neurological or mental illness from a spirtitual point of view. Alternative, Anthroposophic, medicine regards this mood-impairment as a sign of organic ill health: it, therefore, is considered a metabolic disorder, with the main focal point generally in the liver-functioning.
It is very probable, from what I can tell from your very brief history, that the depression and the obesity are related symptoms of an underlying cause. Before you take any of my advice on board you must take the responsible decision of double checking for a fundamental metabolic disorder. A simple blood test can scan for liver, kidney, thyroid functions, hormone problems, pre-cancerous conditions, and aenemia.
Even if your overweight is basically down to a life-long poor or excessive diet (with not enough exercise) it will not be easy to lose this weight by a strict diet alone. Your glandular fever period will most certainly have taxed your liver, and by the time you might have recuperated somewhat (although anti-depressants do not help with this process) you went through a pregnancy, which necessarily had to tax you all over again!
After a pregnancy there will then be no escaping the consequences of years of malnutrition and physical abuse (varying from alcohol to white toast and cocoa puffs) and tiredness will become inertia, to soon turn to depression. It cannot have been easy on you these past ten, or even nineteen months! I commend you with much admiration how you have managed to find the willpower and courage to ask for advice, a sure sign that you are ready to turn things around for yourself. It will not be easy, as you well appreciate. But spring (if you are on the Northern hemisphere) is a great time to start.
If there are no underlying malignancies, we still have this depression which finds its royal seat in the otherwise so jovial liver in a corrupt royal household of the metabolism. I say corrupt: because where did all your good currency go! That energy new mums need and should get as a reward for sacrificing so much for a new life! There are several herbs and foodstuffs you can include in your daily diet to boost the self-regenerative potential of the liver (unique to the body), reinvigorate the digestive system and tackle aenemia. Try to steer clear of iron-tablets, which do not stimulate your iron-building process. Try to learn to think about your needs in a holistic sense (whole, all parts of you, incl, body, mind, soul and spirit; your temporary and eternal self at the same time). This wholeness is achieved by processes (which use the building blocks provided by nutrition). Organs need healthy (maintenance) processess to keep them turning over, or they will become defect and sluggish.
Iron deficiency makes for "thin blood" and this causes great fatigue and does not help you absorb the necessary minerals for combatting your imbalances. About 2-3 cups of nettle tea a day is the first (cheap) thing you should be drinking to help get your blood back in order. For at least 6 weeks
If you must sweeten this tea, use honey.
Sloeberry elixer is a great booster after pregnancy and during periods of nervous exhaustion. From tiny white flowers, the sour, blueish-mauve berries took all summer to ripen, compacting the inspiration of solar energy by drawing up its juices free of earth's loving pull. Its adstringent flesh does not to show off celestial sweetness, but was made in a valiant exercise of living life.
Also eat plenty of carrots, both grated in a salad (with olive oil vinagrette or yoghurt dressing) and steamed or cooked. Also drink carrot(-apple) juice daily for a while. The orange is uplifting (astralising) and the vit.A good for the liver and the immune system. Eat some nuts, seeds (not peanuts!) or a slice of bread and butter with the carrot (vit. A is only fat soluable). Apple juice is also good for the liver and apples make very wholesome fruits for more reasons than I can go into here. In general eat local(ish) fruit in season. (no more than 3 bananas a week) This not only makes for cheaper choices, but also helps attune you to your environment more, which is important when you feel isolated by depression. The only way up (the way we want your spirits to go) is by a force that can lift you up from within. Nothing or noone can pull you out in a depression. That is why it is such a harsh and cruel condition. The spring will want to try to pull you up, and this is why you may feel even more lethargic and sombre than before! Depending on what climate you live in this could make you feel even more pityful or dismayed about yourself (in a temperate climate, you are expected to enjoy the first rays of sun after a cold winter).
The path towards normalisation of your body shape and energy levels, must travel the long and winding way of processes. Our organic self resonates most naturally to a feast full of light and life. It wants food that is fresh, pure, sparkling with starlight, radiant with sunlight. Varied and regular meals keep the organism most even keeled. It will matter that you buy quality products. I can appreciate that going fully organic may be too expensive, but once you cut out all the things you are used to calling luxuries, but might actually be harming you, there is but a small basic shop to do for each meal (which will then amount to spending the same as before, granted). For example, dried apricots would be a great snack for you: but if you can only buy the bright orange kind, don't bother! They are steeped in sulpher to make them look more appetising (like fresh one, which is insane because they are dried, after all!). Organic food also tastes of something, sweet and good, a real harvest of the earth, which satisfies your senses, which do half the real eating for you.
Part of the therapy in depression is reestablishing new and healthy relationships with the world outside (your current reach). Food is the first and most direct relationship a person can have with that world. It is also valuable to realise your relationship is the first example to your son. Until he is three a silver cord binds him to you in an inter-soul manner. Many things unspoken or even unseen are transferred that way. Sometimes this will only become apparent much later in the child's life - often in aberrant ways.
Anyway, this then to just underpin that you are very right to take your condition seriously and want to tackle it in a rudimentary fashion preferably without medication, building up your immune system. Remain sensible, though, and montior honestly for yourself whether you need some kind of psychological therapy or counselling (a group) alongside the body work I am going to recommend. Having a baby often gives rise to many things previously repressed, while it also matures you into a state of being better able to cope with any trauma, disappointment or confusion from your younger years. The pressures of motherhood alone, under the best of circumstances, can sometimes add to a depression, which also make you feel guilty.
It is important to realise that you are a very young mother for two reasons. Firstly, this makes you resilient and gives you much time ahead to have a "second life" once the baby becomes more and more independent, and even when he has eventually flown the nest, you will still be young. But, secondly, you cannot expect to be wise and perfect - not even with the best of intentions.It's not all in the head! At 21, in spiritual science, a person is an adult. They have arrived at the stage where one can begin to work on oneself properly. (At 18 not all of you has landed fully on earth, yet.) Only at 28 does one begin to find out that it takes time to build a core of oneself. It takes 7 years to get used to operating all the parts, then at 28 you start to veer into a direction you are likely to keep going in for the next 21 odd years (not carved in stone, but as a rough pointer). This is not easy to do in this day and age. But I mention these esoteric facts to help you see, that you must be realistic in your expectations and allow yourself to go slow and learn step by step.To really become your self (and nobody else). Depression is all about stripping the false you away. It would be foolish to expect instant results (instant already bracing 7 years in my calculations!). Growing wise may take time, but there is no time in a mother's life to be foolish.
Back to some concrete advice.
Strawberry leaf tea makes a very good tonic for the liver. If you are at all specially thirsty or have cravings for sweet things you must treat the liver with an actual homeopathic "remedy" made of strawberry leaf: Hepatodoron (Weleda), available without prescription. But of course, I don't know if you can find it where you live. It's just a remedy I can highly recommend because it also uses vine leaves, also an essential rebalancer. Then once the first strawberries become available to you, spoil yourself with a punnet: they are gems for the blood. As are their later cousins, raspberries and blackberries. Eating diluted jams, sugary preserves, or flavoured yoghurts, e.g. will do nothing for you, though. Also include some stone fruit once they come into season (cherries, peaches, apricots and plums especially dried,); think of rosehips and buckthorn, elderberry, pears, (some) grapes/raisins, blueberries, blackcurrants, but unless you live in the tropics, go easy on tropical fruit (high in sugar and too cooling for the North)
Aloe vera, however, can be most beneficial for detox. It cleanses the gut. Drink juice pure. Sour!
Another great detoxer is 3 weeks of birch elixer.
Spice up your food with onion, garlic, ginger mustard, horseradish, chili peppers, and make thick, well filled soups. This can't set you back much and you can vary endlesly, from fish to black-eyed peas. You need warming foods. Lentils, pulses are filling and cheap. Soy and meat substites more expensive and not really necessary. Rice, grits, oats and barley especially, buckwheat, quinoa, bulgur, kasha, couscous, in short all sorts of grains should be your staple carb. They are cheap to buy in bulk - take some time to prepare, but that cooking process is part of the warming you need. They may well have an acquired taste at first.
An egg now and then (ultra fresh) could give you the iron and B-vitamins you direly need, and could well be lacking. Make sure you get B12 from this egg or otherwise fresh milk (don't use long life) or best of all yoghurt daily. It is not in anything else, and a deficiency can cause serious irreparable damage in some cases. A Vitamin B deficiency, notably B6 and B3 and B2 is commonly found in depression. Avocados, bananas, fish, cabage, canteloup melon, seeds and wholewheat products above all are rich in B6. Add prunes for B3. Keep your diet rich in leafy veg for B2. Leaves also help invigorate your respiratory/circulatory system for the energetic qualities truly "living"leaves emport. So make sure they are fresh and when eaten in salads organic is best, or you toxify yourself again with pesticide residues and artifical fertilisers make for a different (overly fast) growth pattern with reduced vitamins/minerals.
You need magnesium to help B6 do its work. Stress, coffee, and tea deplete magnesium levels. You will find it in brown rice, pulses, nuts. Basically, you are probably begin to see, you just need a balanced, varied diet with fresh foods, prepared at home. One great improvement most of us can make simply: find a great baker, who bakes proper bread. Our daily bread, if of a high quality, can feed us for 75% if need be. Make sandwiches with nutspreads, sesamepaste, marmite, cottage cheese, cream cheese, hummus, olivepaste, cucumber, radish, carrot, tomato, lettuce, or just creamy butter (fresh from the cow!). Try to eat different types of bread (barley, rye, rice, kamut, spelt, etc etc).
The birth-control pill (oestrogen) can interfere with Vit B2 absorption, as do alcohol and caffeine. If you have breastfed, it will have taken a lot of vit B out of you, more than an anti-natal vitamin supplement can replace. But multi vitamin supplements are not always known to solve much. Sometimes an organic, natural version of B6 might be prescribed (by homeopathic doctor) for post-natal depression. It might help to know that Vitamins are crystallised life forces, which chemicals imitate. They lack the resonance to really help the body learn to auto-regenerate. It is far better to derive vitamins from food sources, because then you stimulate processes. Your body is not a generator which needs fuel to operate. We eat to develop our soul through lessons on earth. Our body is our first teacher: largely unconsciously. Illness is a kind of hyper-consciousness.
Remember to work on discipline, using your diet as an exercise field. Only a disciplined mind can be kept in balance. You should feel modestly satisfied after a meal. Snacking on the go cannot achieve that. It is why eating has to be considered a joyous blessing and meals should be taken in peace and in a pleasant environment. These considerations are vital to diet, too. Always have three meals a day, and plan in any snacks (max 3 times a day) at regular times. Stick to them!
I am no fan of supplements and delighted to hear you have weened yourself off prescibed anti-depressants while you could. They seldom give you a better chance of happiness. However, I cannot say that ALL depression can be treated without chemicals, and if all alternative paths fail and diet and soul-hygiene are not properly manageable, then one is wise to get some professional treatment for their depression. Bearing in mind, too, that all to often, mild cases tend to be progressive. It is almost one of the worst conditions I can think of, because it is so very hard to do battle with.But one has to try to come to terms with the fact that nearly all illness is a blessing in disguise (although it seldom feels that way at the time!) because it provides us with an opportunity to heal what really matters: our light and love body.
St.John's wort. This solstice flower of light, if taken during three months will have a mood-elevating effect, mainly because it works as a detox and its ability to effect neurotransmitters in the brain.Capsules, drops and oil are readily (cheaply) available. Under the Lating name of Hypericum auro (with gold) the homeopathic medicine works more intensely. If used as an oil, it relaxes and untenses muscles, which hold onto the depression subconsciously; it gives you a protective sheath; but be careful not to expose yourself to direct sunlight with this oil applied freshly, since it is photosensitive and can cause irritation. But it is this light-quality which you need to seek to help dispell the dark, dank blanket of depression. St.John's wort is also made into a (Californian) flower essence remedy (FES), which works directly on a soul level - you've got to believe in it though; not for it to work, but for you to invest in buying a bottle that tastes of nothing....Flower remedies work rather well with depression, actually. If you ever have the chance to meet with a flower essence therapist don't simply miss up on the opportunity to learn more about which remedies would work for your precisely. Crystals, too , can achieve a lot in combination with your other tools.
The Chinese swear by Ginseng for improving brain functions and enhancing the immune system. It's root detoxes the liver and raises energy in one go, stimulating bloodflow to the brain, harmonising your systems. Usually taken as a tea or in capsules. It seems to have quite a reputable success rate with stabilising mood swings and strengthening your nerves. Use for 4 weeks continuously to notice any result. Don't use for months on end.
Drink plenty of fluids - herbal teas and water. Kick start the day with a citrus fruit juice (astralising). Once you have time and appetite for breakfast sit down to a bowl of muesli, soaked overnight or 5 hours - (milk/water/yoghurt), served with yoghurt is the best start you could get. It gives your metabolism something to get stuck into, energising the lower pole, freeing up the head pole. It is a clean and refreshing meal, but long-lasting and packed with all those vits and minerals you need. It also builds up a healthy intestinal flora. You could drink acidophilus drinks (but they are expensive). Better to eat lots of good quality unsweetened yoghurt (or with jam sweetend with apple juice, or some honey - but better dried fruits, raisins, dates, figs). Cut out all sugar and make sure you do not eat any salt you did not add yourself (that means a tiny amount: read my response before yours, to Questioner Sara if you want to know more about salt).
Finally: exercise. Not just so many miles, push-ups and laps a day! Much better to use exercise as a way to connect with your surroundings. Walk (30 mins daily) in nature. Exercise is an important key to fighting depression head on. Start with cleaning your house, doing some gardening (sow lettuce in a window box if need be), walk the baby, etc. Take time to sit and listen to birds, spot a crocus, or smell the first magnolia. If you live in the tropics: find some surf... you get my drift. Connect. Don't expect to feel anything, or find it restorative immediately. Let it wash over you, at first. Feel how darned exhausted you are and note you don't have a clue where you are going to find energy for your next move back off the bench and all thoses steps to take you back home....Then watch yourself as you do manage to move. Note that you did arrive home. Wow! Something IS working: and you were thinking that you were half dead! Nope: you are half alive. The more you concentrate on this half alive part, the more you will start to recuperate and learn about what you need to be doing. Once you know what that is the energy will start to flow again.
Take rosemary baths to help dispell fatigue, or lavender for releasing tension, so that you can have a properly refreshing night's sleep (son permitting...!). Have a footbath (add rock/Himalaya or Dead Sea salt). or put on a facial (white or green) clay pack whenever your energ levels drop dramatically low while you are at home. Do one tiny positive thing (read a poem, smile at a dog, you name it) to help set the realignment in process. Your guardian angels want to help! But you have to find portals for them. Positive things are such spaces.
It will be about finding the room within to press back up against the heaviness. Like a spring bulb, like a green sprig, like a bursting bud: just imagine the sheer power it takes a "dead" tree to come back to life all over again....To become conscious of this is most assuredly a high level of soul development.
I hope somewhere amongst all my words you will find a strand of inspiration. Just pick it up, tie it firmly to a finger, as a memory knot, and think about it every time you can. Slowly things will fall into place, around your own personal thread. I think you are the type of woman who can handle a lot of responsibility. With it comes the risk of becoming swamped. Then we must just bail out the muck and start row-rowing our boat again.
ENJOY your meals as beautiful compositions from heaven!
Do not hesitate to put more specific questions on meals or ingredients to me, whenever you get stuck again.
Love Evelyn.
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