Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The Connection between Food and Depression

Recently, I ordered a book about recovering from postpartum depression through eating certain nutrients.  I read many reviews of this particular book, researched some of the ideas that were supposedly in this book, and begged my husband to let me spend the $20 on amazon.  I think he hesitates to okay these orders because they rarely contain one item; I start out wanting one book and end up ordering a few plus some toys for the kids and special Dora panties (or another similar, unneccesary item).  Anyway, he agreed to the purchase and I excitedly clicked away until the book was confirmed to be on its way.
When it finally arrived, I sat down and read immediately.  The book was full of interesting stories about this particular woman's journey through childbirth and depression.  It was hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, and I found myself relating to many of her experiences.  I, myself, have been pregnant for the better part of the last five years but had never really considered myself to be depressed.  I did consider that I was "situationally depressed" during my 6 weeks of hospitalization in my second pregnancy, but that was--I had decided--only because I was heavily medicated and separated from my daughter who was then nine months old.  Who wouldn't be depressed if they had to lay in a hospital bed 24 hours a day, separated from their child and only allowed to get up to use the invalid commode which was directly next to the hospital bed?  It was a terrible way to live, and I refused to eat much of the time.  Certainly when I did eat, there were few healthy foods going into my body, which was trying earnestly against the doctor's efforts to deliver the second baby in a year far too early. 
During my third pregnancy, Joel was out of work much of the time.  Most of our food budget came from his day labor work that paid $6 an hour.  Needless to say, I shopped for the cheapest food possible to feed us and our two little ones, which amounted to tons of canned tuna noodle casserole made with processed cheese.  Gross. 
Finally, during my last pregnancy, we were no longer struggling for money.  Thus, I considered it a blessing that I could daily spend extra change at Dairy Queen to eat the only thing that didn't give me heinous heartburn: BLIZZARDS!  By the time I was eight months pregnant, ice cream, candy, and peanut butter bagels were the only foods I would eat.  Then, at 35 weeks, Bell's Palsy struck and I was reminded what it feels like to have your body fighting against you.  The virus that caused the Bell's Palsy also made me very sick with flu-like symptoms and migraines, and I was desperate for Jack to hurry up and be born. 
I give all of this background to say that the idea of your body needing to replenish nutrients in order to restore mental, emotional, and physical health really made sense to me.  I had abused my body through four pregnancies in such a short time, never feeding it the nutritious food I needed to maintain good health.  After Lizzie was born, I experienced nightly panic attacks and had to forego watching true-life crime shows because of total paranoia and despair that one of our children would be murdered.  I would wake my husband up in the middle of the night, crying and insisting that if we didn't wake one of the girls up and take her to the hospital RIGHT THEN, that she would surely die before morning.  He was patient with me, reminding me that none of the children were sick when we put them to bed and that it was unlikely that they had caught anything in their sleep. 
The author of the book had experienced similar anxiety and labeled it depression.  Suddenly, as I read this book a couple of weeks ago, I felt relieved that there was a more likely reason for these panic episodes than a remarkable ability to see the future.  Thank goodness, I thought, that there's actually just something wrong with me, and not something terrible in our children's future.  I couldn't put the book down; I read and read through her whole journey, feeling more and more convinced that I had been depressed because of my lack of nutrients. 
As the week wore on, however, a new desperation came over me.  Suddenly, I realized that if I was going to believe everything in this book, I had a huge job in front of me to totally overhaul the way our family eats.  Our oldest daughter, now five, got diagnosed recently with reactive airway disease.  I fretted over whether or not this was an accurate diagnosis, or if she was often sick with colds, etc. because I don't feed her the way the book details.  Was medicine the way to go, or should I take it upon myself to ditch the idea of preventative medicine and instead just feed her nothing but whole foods?  Keep in mind, we already had been eating with an eye toward health.  We raise pigs for pork with no antibiotics, steroids, etc.  We purchase non-homogenized milk from a local farm, and many of our fruits and vegetables were bought locally.  So we had already come a long way from the tuna noodle casserole days, but we were not fermenting our own grains and making kefir water as the author of the book instructed.  Perhaps, I thought, this was the problem.  I agonized over our eating habits, Ellie Jane's medication, the kids' vitamins, and even the splenda I put in my coffee; until I was totally paralyzed.  I suddenly didn't feel like feeding the kids at all, nor doing anything else, because no effort seemed good or healthy enough.  Why go to the grocery store if they don't sell quinoa?
As in other areas of my life when I feel desperate and don't know what to do, I finally realized that it was time to ask God.  Seek Him first, and all these [answers] will be added unto me also, right?  Unfortunately, I don't usually seek Him first; I seek Him when I have sought all sorts of other answers and they confuse me.  I thought about the claims the book made, such as the idea that every woman who gives birth loses years of their life to depression, induced by pregnancy.  That these "lost years" are caused by nutrient depletion from pregnancy, and women who don't have children live longer and aren't depressed.  Are these claims truth, according to the Bible?  Immediately I remembered 1 Timothy 2:15, "But women will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety."  I remembered that God created my body for (among other things) having precious babies.  Yes, it's true that I did not feed and maintain my body the way I should have, but certainly He extends grace.  The book I read said that I was depressed because I did not have all the nutrients I needed.  But the Bible says "And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Phil 4:19).  The book said that sometimes even early death can result when nutrients depleted from pregnancy are not replaced.  The Bible says, "The fear of the Lord leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction." (Prov.19:23).  And on and on the Bible goes to remind me that, although He means for me to eat food that is healthy and close to the way He originally designed it, Jesus is ultimately the way to joy and life.  When I am depressed, I only recover by feeding my spirit with the word of God.  Feeding my body, no matter how healthy, will only lead to dissatisfaction and desperation if I am excluding Him from my soul.  Jesus reminded me this week, "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about your body...Life is more than food" (Luke 12:22-23).  Lord, help me to seek You for joy, health, and answers about what I should make for dinner.