Are you one of the 100 million, or one-in-three, Americans struggling through life with a “broken brain?”

It doesn’t have to be that way. Today, I’m going to share with you the key to good mental and emotional health -- to an “UltraMind” … one that’s calm, confident, and happy.

But first, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you fear losing your job because you’re tired, unfocused, and inattentive, and your memory is failing, so you can’t properly perform your tasks at work?

• Do you feel depressed, hopeless, disconnected, and disengaged from your life?

• Do you see your relationships breaking down because you are mentally and emotionally absent or numb?

• Do you forget to meet friends or go to appointments, and then can’t figure out how in the world you forgot?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, you are not alone.

Right now in America, there is a rising tide of “broken brains.” And conventional medicine cannot cure it.

How many of you are stuck?

Do you feel stuck in depression, sadness, or anxiety? Or are you just a little confused, overburdened, or unhappy?

Maybe you are one of the 25 percent of Americans who experience a major depression in their lifetime.

Or maybe you are taking one of the 189 million prescriptions written for depression, at a cost of $12 billion a year, and wondering if there is another way.

Perhaps, like most people who take antidepressants, you find that they don’t work, lose their effectiveness over time, or give you only slight relief from symptoms.

Or maybe you quit your antidepressant regimen after a few months, like 60 percent of people who take them do, because of side effects such as weight gain, loss of sex drive, or worse.

Are looking for a way to reconnect to your life’s meaning and purpose and emerge from a life that feels half lived? Are you looking for a way to overcome the depression that’s been haunting you?

If you are, I guarantee you are not suffering from a Prozac deficiency. In fact, I want to challenge you to consider that depression, as we understand it, does not really exist.

“Depression is not a disease…” That is how the remarkable new book, by James Gordon, MD, begins. It is called “Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression.”

James Gordon, MD, was recently given an award by the Bravewell Collaborative for being one of the most pioneering medical thinkers of our time.

Ideas that can change a culture come only a few times in a generation. “Unstuck” is such an idea. It provides an answer to the leading cause of disability -- depression -- that until now has had very poor solutions.

Here’s some depressing recent medical news: Antidepressants don’t work.

What’s even more depressing?

The pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have deliberately deceived us into believing that they DO work.

As a physician, this is frightening to me. Depression is among the most common problems seen in primary-care medicine and soon will be the second leading cause of disability in this country.

The study I’m talking about was published in a recent issue of “The New England Journal of Medicine.”

It found that drug companies selectively publish studies on antidepressants. They have published nearly all the studies that show benefit -- but almost none of the studies that show these drugs are ineffective. (1)

That warps our view of antidepressants, leading us to think that they do work. And it has fueled the tremendous growth in the use of psychiatric medications, which are now the second leading class of drugs sold, after cholesterol-lowering drugs.

And it’s even worse than it sounds, because the positive studies hardly showed benefit in the first place.

For example, 40 percent of people taking a placebo (sugar pill) got better, while only 60 percent taking the actual drug had improvement in their symptoms. Looking at it another way, 80 percent of people get better with just a placebo.

That leaves us with a big problem -- millions of depressed people with no effective treatments.

Let’s take a closer look at depression.

There's no doubt about it -- the brain is truly connected to the rest of the body.

And for many of you or your kids who have been diagnosed with behavioral disorders, the conventional treatments of drugs or psychotherapy completely misses this body-mind connection.

This robs you of one of the MOST powerful techniques of fixing so-called "mental illnesses" -- by the end of this article you'll find out that your "mental illness" might not be so mental after all.

I'll talk more about the science behind this idea in a future article.

But this week, I'd like to tell you about a little boy named Jayson and how I used a different approach to help him make a stunning recovery from ADHD, and surprisingly, at the same time, dramatically improve his handwriting.

Can your body affect your mind?

By making different food and lifestyle choices, can you rid yourself of depression, boost your mood or even improve more serious conditions such as ADHD, autism and more?

In my experience, the answer is YES and I'll show you precisely how in just a second.

But first, let me tell you about one of my patients, Sarah.

She's a very vibrant, smart young woman of 18 who had just finished high school with honors and was admitted to a top university.

Even more exciting, her passion for theater and acting had recently landed her the lead role in a real movie.

The future ahead of her was bright and full of possibilities. 

So why had Sarah's distraught mother brought her to see me?

Well, over the previous few weeks, she had sunk into a debilitating depression.