On its own, depression can be heartbreaking.
But throw real heart problems into the mix, and you've got a dangerous one-two punch that can quadruple your death risk.
Researchers examined data on 6,000 middle-aged male and female civil servants who had been participating in the British Whitehall Study II for an average of 5.5 years. During that period, 170 of the patients died--47 of them from heart disease or stroke.
The researchers found that heart disease on its own led to a 67 percent increase in the risk of death by any cause during the study period when compared to patients who did not have heart disease or suffer from depression.
Patients who suffered from depression, but were otherwise healthy, had double the death risk, according to the study published in the journal Heart.
So far, so bad... but it gets worse. Much worse--because when the two conditions hit the same patient, it was like throwing kerosene on an already-deadly fire.
These Double Whammy victims had triple the risk of death by any cause, and four times the risk of death by cardiovascular disease, of patients with neither condition --and that's even after adjusting for age, sex and other risk factors.
The researchers say docs need to watch their heart disease patients for signs of depression, which affected 20 percent of the heart patients in this study.
And naturally, you can expect the mainstream to use that advice as one more chance to sell antidepressant drugs.
Big mistake, because studies have found that antidepressants can actually increase the death risk in heart patients. A Duke University study published in 2006 found that coronary artery disease patients who took common antidepressant drugs faced a 55 percent higher risk of dying.
The Duke team even suggested that heart patients avoid meds and work on nondrug answers to depression instead--a pretty stunning conclusion when you consider that Duke is about as mainstream as they come.
But it's also a pretty logical one--because of all the dangerous and ineffective meds in common use today, antidepressants are among the worst... and that's true whether you have heart disease or not.
Antidepressants come with nasty side effects such as addiction, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, personality changes, and even an increased risk of suicide.
And despite all those risks, the shocking truth is that they just don't work--and study after study has proven it.
One major study earlier this year found that the benefits of antidepressants for most people ranged from "nonexistent to negligible." And in other studies, these meds are routinely defeated by safe herbal remedies and other nondrug alternatives.
Take the latest study, in which patients who had failed on antidepressant meds were given either a placebo or S- Adenosyl Methionine--a safe supplement better known as SAMe.
After six weeks, 36 percent of those taking SAMe improved-- double the 18 percent in the placebo group. In addition, 26 percent of those taking SAMe saw a complete remission, versus just 12 percent in the placebo group, according to the study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
Other studies have also found that SAMe can beat depression –-and it's commonly used for the condition in Europe.
And that's not your only option.
St. John's wort, exercise, magnetic stimulation, ordinary talk therapy and even the plain old sugar pills used as placebos have all proven to be at least as effective as antidepressants in many studies--with none of the risk, and none of the heartbreak.
On a mission for your health,
Ed Martin
Editor, House Calls
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