I cured my depression with food

When her depression was at its worst, 35-year old landscape gardener Jill Robert was so wary of contact with other people that she could hardly bear to venture out to her local supermarket. "I'd stand outside the shop, petrified to go in. I felt so negative about myself that often I had to give up and go home.

I was paranoid about people looking at me, or worse, talking to me. I devised a system where I'd wait outside before the shop opened, then I'd rush around doing my shopping while it was still empty and run home."

Jill was diagnosed with clinical depression at 21. Her mother had committed suicide when she was 13, although no genetic link was established. She had seemed happy before, out of the blue, she began to suffer a series of anxiety attacks and mood swings. What followed was 12 volatile years on prescription antidepressants, including Prozac and Seroxat, the drug which 4,000 people in Britain want to sue makers GlaxoSmith-Kline over, claiming it is addictive and can lead to suicidal thoughts.

While antidepressants worked in the short term for Jill, they did not cure the problem. As soon as she stopped taking them, her original severe symptoms - anxiety, exhaustion, despair - returned once more. Still, her doctors advised her to stop taking the drugs when she felt stable, as one of the side-effects of prescription antidepressants is that they alter the chemical balance of the brain.

"For years, I lived under a black cloud," she recalls. "I felt I was useless. I couldn't believe that anyone liked me or cared about me. I was paranoid and negative about everything. Often, I could hardly get up in the morning. All I wanted to do was sleep. I'd get home from work and just go to bed. I got very weepy over silly things and chucked whole dinners in the bin if I felt I hadn't cooked it right. I knew something was wrong, but I had no idea what." Jill says her depression worsened when she split from a boyfriend when she was 25. She grew distant from her family and friends: "No one understood that I had a mental illness, so they weren't able to be supportive," says Jill, who has two brothers. "They thought I should pull myself together and snap out of it."

It became increasingly hard to hold down a job, although she worked sporadically in customer services. Things came to a head in 1999 when she was 32. She discovered her boyfriend of two years had been unfaithful, and moved out of the house they shared in London. "I got to a point where I couldn't take it any more. I wanted to be off planet earth and I didn't care how. I left work halfway through a shift, went home and packed a bag. I put a note through my brother's door asking him to look after my dog and just left - I had no idea where.

After two nights spent sleeping in her car in the Scottish Highlands, she went home. "My mother had been depressed, too, and took an overdose when I was 13. I ended up being more of a mum than a sister to my little brother, and realised I couldn't do this to him," says Jill.

"But that was the turning point. I knew I had to do something. My GP gave me yet another prescription for antidepressants and I remember saying to her: 'What are these actually doing for me?' I became determined to find another solution."

After being locked in a cycle of depression and medication that was ruining her life, Jill began her quest for an alternative cure three years ago. "I went to the library every day and started to read anything I could get my hands on: books on psychology, physiology, chemistry and molecular biology, science magazines - anything I could to learn."

An article about the menopause listed symptoms - including anxiety and crying - that sounded all too familiar. Thinking she might have a hormone imbalance, Jill went back to her GP, who suggested she try an oestrogen-only contraceptive pill. "I took that for two years and the effect was unbelievable - it was like getting my life back. The anxiety went, the mood swings disappeared and my life became stable. My depression didn't budge completely but everything levelled off."

Inspired, Jill started researching diet and nutrition, in particular the link between state of mind and food intolerance. As many as one in five people in Britain will experience prolonged depression during their lifetime and new research reveals that we are taking more antidepressants than ever. But pills can have unpleasant side-effects. Improved nutrition is now being researched as a way to tackle depression.

"I discovered how vital vitamins, minerals and amino acids are. Without enough of them, your brain can't produce the hormones that work as neurotransmitters. Put simply, your body doesn't have enough building blocks to create the balance of what you need in order to function on a daily basis." Slowly, Jill implemented changes to her lifestyle.

She realised her diet consisted largely of white bread, pasta, dairy produce, cakes and biscuits. "I ate the odd vegetable, but no fruit. Mainly, I ate processed food and didn't have a clue how much that can affect mood and energy levels."

Cutting out dairy, white bread, white sugar and processed food, Jill began eating lentils, beans and pulses for the first time. She replaced pasta with brown rice, she cut out meat almost entirely and started eating three or four pieces of fruit a day. "Now I eat wholemeal muesli for breakfast with fruit and Brazil nuts which contain selenium, which is particularly good for mental health. I eat grapes or a banana mid-morning and have brown rice and vegetables for lunch. I try to eat onions and garlic every day and make a lot of vegetable soup. Dinner is usually mixed beans or pulses."

"I eat salmon every few weeks for Omega 3 and 6, which is good for the brain. And lots of sweet potato. It is full of natural oestrogens.

"Just before going to bed I eat a piece of wholemeal toast, which saves me waking up with low blood sugar. And probably the most important thing is two litres of water every day, which flushes out toxins."

Having smoked 10 cigarettes a day since the age of 18, Jill quit smoking. She also started cycling for an hour, at least three times a week. She bought weights, and a step machine to use at home and started swimming and playing badminton. She found a fairly physical job as a gardener, which she loves. Exercise boosts serotonin levels, which control mood. "It took a while, but soon there was a definite change in my state of mind. I went from feeling lethargic, unenthusiastic and pessimistic, to feeling positive every day. I feel enthusiastic about life for the first time in years. I've lost three stone and am fitter than I've ever been. My attitude to life is to really go for it." "I know now that if I get tired, or my blood-sugar level drops, I can start feeling negative. I have a banana or a piece of wholemeal toast with jam on it - and within 20 minutes I begin to feel better. "Obviously I have off days. I'm going to have to work on that for the rest of my life. But, compared to what it was like, my life is unrecognisable. And, best of all, I'm on no medication at all."