Dea: > Hi everyone, >Does anyone here take prescribed medications ontop of their raw food diet? I indeed takd prescribed medications: Xanax (anti-anxiety) 3.5 mg/day + Tophranyl (sp?) (anti-depressant) 50 mg/day. However, I'm not totally 100% raw food vegan (yet far from it). I started last July to change my diet from a traditional one towards a raw food vegan one. I can say I'm over 95% vegetarian, 50% vegan, 10% raw food vegan, considering meals as a whole (e.g. 10% of my meals are 100% raw food vegan). > If so, does it seem to work O.K.? It works so well that I reduced my Xanax by half and totally gave up my Tophranyl. Note that Xanax has also a mild anti-depressant effect. I must say I also take Super Blue Green (tm) Algae. > I've been trying for some time now to work through depression on a raw food > diet alone. Though I've noticed improvement, depression still remains a > problem. I used to take anti-depressants on my old standard diet and they > seemed to help. But I fear they might seem too foreign to my body now that > it's much more purified. It's true that detoxification has removed most of your anti-depressant (I guess). Note you don't mention how long you took it, since when you are a raw food vegan, the kind of anti-depressant, and the reasons for your depression. I understand these details are not easy to mention on a public mailing system. If the reasons that caused your depression are still there, it may be harder to get rid of it. > Anyone have experience with this sort of thing? Or at least some ideas? IMO, your diet is not balanced, I'm not an expert about food composition but I think your diet contains too much free glucose, maybe too much fruits, and not enough minerals, especially trace minerals. One hint may be to have a look at the Glycemic Index website, URL is: http://www.cruzio.com/~mendosa/gi.html You sould focus on raw vegetables rather than fruits. They contain more minerals and glucose is mostly in form of complex carbohydrates that are assimilated more slowly. I hope someone else in this list will be able to send you a good table of veggies that contain high amounts of minerals. Don't use sea vegetables such as Kelp and Dulse. IMO, they contain too much sodium (Na). Also, I would suggest you eat large amounts of alfalfa sprouts, from organically grown seeds. Sprout them 2-3 days approx. Alfalfa is known to contain many trace minerals that are helpful in brain chemestry. I hope this helped. Pierre.