When you are a doctor your power is immense. They have the means to save people's lives and to prolong them. The drugs they give out can have a profound effect on people and their well-being. And when they screw things up, they can really do damage.
When I met my wife she had been diagnosed with depression a few years before. She had been prescribed anti-depressants - Effexor, the flavour of that particular month, so to speak - and took them daily. She said if she didn't take them, the withdrawal symptoms were quite severe.
A few years into our relationship she decided not to take them anymore, but instead of going cold turkey (which she had tried before and gotten massive headaches, dark thoughts and nausea) she opted to wean herself off them.
I have vivid memories of us cutting pills into thirds and quarters in coffee shops, laughing at the time because we must have looked like desperate addicts trying to eke the goodness out of the last of our stash. But she needed to do this in order to maintain enough of a dose to stave off the withdrawal symptoms but still reduce her dose.
After a good six months, she was off them - just as evidence started coming out that Effexor were quite nasty indeed. Just Google the name and you'll come accross endless tales of spiralling into depths that most of us can't imagine.
But just because she was off the pills, it didn't mean her depression had gone away. The symptoms came and went in waves, according to how much she drank or how tired she was from work - but she did a good job of carrying on regardless.
And every time she went to the doctor for something else, they always pointed to the fact she had had depression in the past - one even brought it up when she had broken her wrist, as if the two could somehow be related.
Quack after quack tried to foist various potions onto her in order to "cure" her of depression. Tranquillisers, feel-good pills, various riffs on Effexor - she was offered them all. But instead she tried thinking her way out of it. And it worked to a certain extent.
But after our daughter was born, some symptoms came back with a vengeance, along with a chronic sense of fatigue. It wasn't just because of the broken nights' sleep, because this went on for 18 months. Again, doctors looked to the symptoms and immediately diagnosed depression - and, young lady, why not try these pills?
Admittedly one tried blood tests, but found nothing, so diagnosed ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome. Well, at least it wasn't depression.
But then she did something that helped her no end. Or rather she stopped doing something. She gave up wheat.
Not only did her energy levels rise and her digestion improve (I didn't go into details about that bit, I have to confess), but also what she termed a "fog" lifted from her head. Optimistic thoughts began to flow in.
As these good thoughts were appearing, her mind had been on the default setting of being depressed for so long, it demanded to know why she was being so damned positive.
But the fact she was thinking positive thoughts was a massive step forward - and because the fog had lifted, she was able to rationalise the 'good' thoughts as the way things are for the rest of the world.
The giving up of wheat came about because a friend of hers had suffered from ME as a teenager and she had also been told to omit it from her diet - and had seen improvements. But for it to drasically improve my wife's outlook on life in general was something she had not expected to happen.
It was such a simple thing to do - because giving up wheat isn't the biggest sacrifice in the world, by a long shot. I would say swearing off coffee, beer and chocolate would be a lot more difficult to do than steering clear of bread, pasta and cereal.
Sure, our evidence is anecdotal - my wife only knows it works for her. But as it hasn't involved a radical change in lifestyle and certainly nothing could have got any worse if she tried it, it was worth a go. As treatment regimes go, it is pretty damn low-risk.
But here's where I get a little perplexed. If the answer was so simple - and, as the internet has shown us, far from unknown - why didn't one doctor in the last 10 or 12 years suggest to my wife that perhaps instead of taking a bunch of pills which will at best numb your brain a bit and at worst make a person suicidal, she change what she eats?
It can't be because it is in their best interests to peddle the pills they have in turn been peddled by smart sales reps who give generous gifts at Christmas time. Could it?
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