Kelly Brogan > Quotes

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“Instead, when you have a symptom—when you feel cloudy, sad, sore, gassy, weepy, tired, or unnecessarily anxious—bring some wonder to it. Ask why and try to make the connections. Your body’s symptoms are telling you something about equilibrium. Your body is trying to tell you that it has lost balance. Stand back and appreciate the infinite complexity of your organism. Know that fear will only drive you to treat your body like a robotic machine that needs oil and gear changes. We are so much more than buttons and levers.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“So if depression isn’t a disease, then what is it? As I briefly mentioned in the introduction, depression is a symptom, a vague surface sign at best that doesn’t tell you anything about its root cause. Consider, for a moment, that your toe hurts. Any number of things can cause a toe to hurt, from physically injuring it to a bunion, blister, or tumor growing inside. The hurting is a sign that something is wrong with the toe, simple as that. Likewise, depression is the hurting; it’s an adaptive response, intelligently communicated by the body, to something not being right within, often because things are also off in our environment.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“For starters, consider Study 329, which cost GlaxoSmithKlein $3 billion for their efforts to promote antidepressants to youngsters.10 This drug company manipulated data that hid signs of increased risk of suicide. The company also falsely represented Paxil as outperforming a placebo.11”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“depression should be categorized with other inflammatory disorders including heart disease, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. And”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“ZUCCHINI WITH GROUND BEEF AND CUMIN Serves 2 to 3 2 tablespoons grass-fed ghee ½ yellow onion, diced 2 large or 4 small zucchinis, sliced Dash of unprocessed sea salt Pinch of ground cumin Splash of apple cider vinegar ½ pound organic grass-fed ground beef Heat the ghee in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion and zucchini and sauté for 5 to 7 minutes, until softened. Stir in the salt, cumin, and vinegar. Add the ground beef and cook, stirring to break it up, for 3 to 5 minutes until browned.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“Six decades of study, however, have revealed conflicting, confusing, and inconclusive data.17 That’s right: there has never been a human study that successfully links low serotonin levels and depression. Imaging studies, blood and urine tests, postmortem suicide assessments, and even animal research have never validated the link between neurotransmitter levels and depression.18 In other words, the serotonin theory of depression is a total myth that has been unjustly supported by the manipulation of data. Much to the contrary, high serotonin levels have been linked to a range of problems, including schizophrenia and autism.19”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
― Kelly Brogan, Own Your Self: The Surprising Path beyond Depression, Anxiety, and Fatigue to Reclaiming Your Authenticity, Vitality, and Freedom

“A group of researchers at Columbia University analyzed data from two large, multicenter discontinuation trials encompassing 673 people diagnosed with major depressive disorder and who were taking fluoxetine (generic Prozac) for twelve weeks.47 After those three months, they were told that they’d be randomized to either a placebo or continued fluoxetine. So while they all knew they were taking the antidepressant in the first three months, they didn’t know if what they were given afterward was an active antidepressant or a sugar pill. The results spoke for themselves: both groups—the ones still taking the fluoxetine and those on the placebo—experienced a worsening of depressive symptoms. This outcome suggests two significant interpretations: (1) the initial effect during the first three months was attributable to placebo, as all patients knew they were receiving treatment; and (2) the worsening of symptoms upon the mere possibility of getting just a placebo is indicative of the undoing of the placebo effect, what’s sometimes called the nocebo effect.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“The medicalization of distress obliterates meaning and creates profit.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“Psychiatry, as a guild, has made a strong effort to legitimize itself through this lens and “make material” the mind and emotions. The problem is that perceived pathology has been reduced to the localized effects of neurochemicals, which act in a vacuum in the brain. Psychiatrists regard troublesome emotions as emerging from inborn errors of neurochemical trafficking, with a reductionist focus on the neurotransmitter serotonin. The mind as enemy, pumping out mood- and anxiety-producing thoughts like a ticker tape. This view holds no consideration for the interconnectedness of immune cells and endocrine glands throughout the body or the microorganisms in, among, and around us, let alone the emerging science of quantum biology and the role of energy in our manifest experience of being.5 Neither is there regard for the role of human emotion and its expression as an articulation of bodily imbalance, or personal suffering as a precursor for growth.”
― Kelly Brogan, Own Your Self: The Surprising Path beyond Depression, Anxiety, and Fatigue to Reclaiming Your Authenticity, Vitality, and Freedom

“So when people ask me about why we’re suffering from what appears to be an epidemic of depression despite the number of people taking antidepressants, I don’t think about brain chemistry. I turn to the impact of our sedentary lifestyles, processed food diets, and unrelenting stress. I turn to the medical literature that says a typical Western diet—high in refined carbs, unnatural fats, and foods that create chaos in our blood sugar balance—contribute to higher levels of inflammation.19”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“ADRENAL AND HYPOTHALAMUS GLANDULARS Glandular supplements, also commonly called glandulars, are made from various organs and tissues of mammals. They were used successfully to treat multiple conditions throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They have recently been making a comeback, thanks to new science showing their positive effects on damaged tissues and organs by exposing the tissues to growth factors that influence the body’s capacity for self-repair and regeneration. Because glandulars contain a complex array of enzymes, vitamins, fatty acids, amino acids, minerals, and neurotransmitters and a host of nutrients in addition to the tissues within the gland, they are difficult to study in a standardized way. On the other hand, this also makes them a food, and one that we are increasingly finding to be far more beneficial to our physiology than the sum of its parts can convey. Adrenal cortex is most helpful for depressive symptoms in addition to a general adrenal glandular. Adrenals must come from pastured animals. Begin with one twice daily of each. Hypothalamus is a calming glandular that begins to repair the communication between the brain and glands. Take one to four for agitation and acute anxiety along with one twice daily. Over time, you will need less.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“The term stress as it is used today was coined by one of the founding fathers of stress research, Hans Selye, who in 1936 defined it as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“We have to move out of the comfort of certainty and into the freeing light of uncertainty. It is”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“All you have to do is spend a few minutes on SurvivingAntidepressants.org, BeyondMeds.com, or SSRIstories.org to appreciate that we have created a monster. Millions of men, women, and children the world over are suffering side effects, including complicated withdrawal routinely dismissed by their prescribing clinicians. Contrary”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“The idea that depression and all of its relatives are manifestations of glitches in the immune system and inflammatory pathways—not a neurochemical deficiency disorder—is a topic we will explore at length throughout this book. This”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“Cholesterol performs many vital functions, but we’ll focus on three specifically: cell membrane structure and support, hormone synthesis, and vitamin D production.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“When you look at the impossibly long list of symptoms and maladies for which antidepressants can be prescribed, it’s practically farcical. These drugs are indicated for classic signs of depression as well as all of the following: premenstrual syndrome, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), bipolar disorder, anorexia and binge eating, pain, irritable bowel, and explosive disorders fit for anger management class. Some doctors prescribe them for arthritis, hot flashes, migraine, irritable bowel syndrome, and panic disorder. The”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“Dietary change is step one, because we can change the microbiota dominance within seventy-two hours of simple changes to eliminate potential triggers to the immune system and rebalance the gut flora.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“The human body cannot digest artificial sweeteners, which is why they have no calories. But”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“But no situation has ever been more easily resolved, better handled, or supported by freaking out. Responding with fear leads us to make decisions that are myopic. Some of these decisions may ease our sense of disorder, but they simultaneously engender new and more complex problems. Instead,”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“Over the past three decades there have been hundreds of mass shootings, murders, and other violent episodes that have been committed by individuals on psychiatric drugs. Big”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“It turns out we have a decent explanation for the deep pleasure associated with dairy and its best friend, wheat. It’s the morphine-like exorphin compounds found in these foods, which interact with opiate receptors in the brain and other bodily tissues.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“Light boxes produce artificial light that mimics the sun’s intensity without emitting ultraviolet radiation.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“When I talk about medicine and mental health to large audiences, I often start with the following imagery and facts: think of a woman you know who is radiantly healthy. I bet your intuition tells you she sleeps and eats well, finds purpose in her life, is active and fit, and finds time to relax and enjoy the company of others. I doubt you envision her waking up to prescription bottles, buoying her way through the day with caffeine and sugar, feeling anxious and isolated, and drinking herself to sleep at night. All of us have an intuitive sense of what health is, but many of us have lost the roadmap to optimal health, especially the kind of health that springs forth when we simply clear a path for it. The fact that one in four American women in the prime of their life is dispensed medication for a mental health condition represents a national crisis.1”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“If you’ve picked up this book, then chances are you can relate to any of the following: persistent distress, malaise, anxiety, inner agitation, fatigue, low libido, poor memory, irritability, insomnia, sense of hopelessness, and feeling overwhelmed and trapped but emotionally flat. You might wake up most mornings unmotivated and uninspired, and you drag yourself around all day waiting for it to end (or waiting for a drink). Maybe you feel a sense of dread or panic without knowing why. You can’t silence the negative thoughts, which puts you on edge. Sometimes it seems like you could let loose an endless stream of tears, or perhaps you can’t remember the last time you cared enough about something to cry. All of these descriptions are symptoms that typically fall under a diagnosis of clinical depression. And if you were to seek help through conventional medicine, even if you don’t consider yourself “depressed,” you’d likely be handed a prescription for an antidepressant, joining the more than 30 million users in America. You might already be part of this community and feel like your fate is now sealed. It doesn’t have to be. Over the past twenty-five years, ever since the FDA approval of Prozac-type medications, we’ve been taught that drugs can improve the symptoms of or even cure mental illness, particularly depression and anxiety disorders. Today they are among the most prescribed, best-selling drugs.1 This has led to one of the most silent and underestimated tragedies in the history of modern health care.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“Antidepressants have also been associated with an increased acute risk of suicide in younger patients while they may decrease the risk of suicide in older patients or with longer-term use. Also, all major classes of antidepressants have been associated with unpleasant (and sometimes dangerous) symptoms when they are discontinued abruptly. Discontinuation of antidepressants is associated with relapse and recurrence of MDD (Major Depressive Disorder). In a meta-analysis, this risk was shown to be higher for antidepressants that cause greater disruption to neurotransmitter systems . . . [And] there is a growing body of research suggesting that when they are used in the long term as a maintenance treatment, antidepressants can lose efficacy, and may even result in chronic and treatment-resistant depression. Such reactions may be due to the brain’s attempt to maintain homeostasis and a functioning adaptation in spite of the medication.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“fully 99 percent of the genetic material in your body is not your own. It belongs to your microbial comrades. These microbes not only influence the expression of our DNA, but research reveals that throughout our evolution microbial DNA has become part of our own DNA. In other words, genes from microbes have inserted themselves into our genetic code (mitochondrial DNA being the prime example) to help us evolve and flourish.”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives

“According to Andrews, when patients on SSRI medication improve, it appears that their brains are actually overcoming the effects of antidepressants, rather than being helped by them. The drugs are interfering with the brain’s own mechanisms of recovery. This”
― Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives