And that’s not even including the people who take these meds and actually kill themselves — a known side effect of some antidepressants.

Researchers looked at data from seven studies that compared either the drug Cymbalta or another SSRI antidepressant to a placebo and found that 76.3 percent of the patients responded to anything at all — including the placebo.

They claim people who took the med did better than those on the placebo — but then again, they only looked at six studies. Other studies have found that placebos work every bit as well as common antidepressants.

But the point here isn’t the remarkable power of the placebo — it’s that at least the placebo didn’t make the depression worse. You can’t say the same about meds: Up to a fifth of all patients who took antidepressants ended up with worse depression.

Since close to 30 million Americans take antidepressants each year, that means nearly 6 million people are actually getting worse instead of better because of the “cure.”

Some cure.

And along with making the depression worse, common antidepressant drugs have been linked to stroke, suicide, personality changes, cognitive decline and sex problems… just to name a few of the biggies.

I know that beating depression isn’t always easy — but you don’t have to take those risks to do it. As I’ve told you in the past, St. John’s wort has proven to be at least as effective as meds — at least as effective as meds when they actually work, I should add — with very little risk.

Another natural option is the amino acid SAMe, which is so effective it’s widely used instead of meds in Europe. In addition, exercise, talk therapy and magnetic therapy have all shown they can help beat depression — including the kinds of serious depression you think you’ll never get over.

For more on the best ways to beat depression without going near a pill bottle, visit the Web site of the Health Sciences Institute and enter “depression” into the find a cure box.

A new survey finds that 40 percent of Americans believe the FDA only gives the OK to “extremely effective” meds — and 25 percent believe FDA-approved drugs don’t have serious side effects.

Even the FDA will tell you that’s not the case.

Drugs don’t have to be safe to win approval: Meds that win passage often have severe and terrifying side effects, up to and including death itself. And they don’t even have to be especially effective, either: Some meds work for less than half of the people who take them… yet get approved anyway.

Just look at all the studies on everything from painkillers to antidepressants in which the drugs barely beat placebos.

So the real secret to drug approval isn’t in safety or even effectiveness — it’s in passing the FDA’s nebulous and industry-friendly “risk vs. benefits” calculation.

Sounds like some delicate balancing act, right?

In reality, it’s about as delicate as a hippo playing seesaw with a mouse. I don’t think I need to tell you which one of those animals represents “risk” — and in many cases, meds win approval before all those risks are even known.

The survey also finds that warning labels might help people reconsider meds… sort of.

In one case, when given a choice between two fictional heartburn meds, patients reflexively chose the one they believed to be newer. But when given a warning that new drugs might carry more serious risks that aren’t yet known, the majority switched to the older one.

In another, participants choosing between two cholesterol meds reconsidered when told one contained a warning that said “It is not known whether it will help patients feel better or live longer.”

But out in the real world, patients rarely compare meds they way they do spaghetti sauce. In most cases, the doctor prescribes and the patient complies — and that’s why millions of people take drugs they barely understand for conditions they might not even have… like cholesterol and heartburn.

You should always read the warnings, of course — but before you even get a prescription bottle in your hand, you need to ask your doctor a series of questions.

Keep reading for more.

A certain combination of drugs can increase your risk of death. The drugs in this case cut across all classes and categories and include everything from painkillers to antidepressants to antihistamines. But they do have one thing in common: They block acetylcholine, a major neurotransmitter.

British researchers rated 80 meds based on this neurotransmitter-blocking effect, giving one point to drugs with the mildest effects, two for moderate, and three for the most severe. After examining data on more than 13,000 seniors, they found that higher total point combinations led to a dramatically higher risk of death.

Seniors with a combined four points – a severe drug and a mild one, for example — had a 20 percent chance of death in two years, even after adjusting for disease and other risk factors.

Seniors who took no meds, on the other hand, faced only a 7 percent risk of death in that time.

Bad enough if it ended there — but it didn’t.

Each point beyond the first four boosted the death risk by another 25 percent.

Of course, even if the drugs don’t kill YOU, they could still be killing your brain.

Patients with a combined score of five or more also suffered a four-percent drop in brain function. No surprise there. After all, low acetylcholine levels have been linked to cognitive decline and dementia before. I can’t help but wonder how many seniors who suffer from the condition would be cured if they just got off these meds…

Don’t be another nameless victim in Big Pharma’s drug war. Starting today, figure out the anticholinergic load of your own meds and work with your doctor to get off as many of them as possible — or at least switch to drugs that don’t all have the same effect on your brain.

Better yet, work with a naturopathic physician who can get you off your meds completely, and you won’t just lower your death risk — you’ll raise your quality of life.

Why? Because not only do antidepressant drugs fail miserably at doing anything to treat your depression — they could also boost your risk of having a stroke in the process.

That’s according to a study recently published in the journal Stroke.

To top it off, the researchers who stumbled upon this information say you should keep taking those antidepressants anyway.

(The jury is still out on whether the researchers themselves are suffering from some sort of “denial disorder.” It’s either that, or they’re getting paid to push the antidepressants. It’s tough to say.)

Either one of those reasons could explain why they’re so reluctant to blame the meds — despite the evidence right under their noses. And the evidence is pretty clear.

When the researchers tracked 80,574 women between the ages of 54 and 79 for six years, they found that depressed women had a 29 percent boost in stroke risk when compared to women with no history of the condition.

Women who took antidepressant meds had an even greater risk, rising 39 percent when compared to non-depressed women.

Those are the facts. Everything that comes after that is just a giant guessing game. Because instead of blaming the meds for that extra risk, the researchers guessed that the women who take them must simply be more depressed.

And since depression on its own seems to boost stroke risk, they further guessed, more severe depression must cause it to shoot even higher.

But guess again, because none of that is supported by the data in the study — or even by basic logic. After all, many of the people who take antidepressants aren’t battling severe depression in the first place.

Statistics from The National Institute of Mental Health say that only 2 percent of the population suffers from severe depression, and 6.7 percent suffer from depression. Yet some 10 percent of the entire U.S. population is taking antidepressants in any given year.

In case you still want to blame the depression instead of the meds, there’s more research that backs the link between antidepressants and stroke.

One study last year found that women on SSRIs such as Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and Lexapro had a 45-percent increase in the risk of stroke and a 32-percent increase in the risk of death from all causes. (You can check out the details of that study here.)

Of course, then — like now — researchers urged women to keep taking their meds anyway.

But if you’re on these meds, talk to your doc about a safe way off — because the bottom line is that you can beat depression without drugs. Studies have shown everything from ordinary exercise to simple talk therapy can match or beat powerful antidepressant drugs.

A little exercise can even cut your stroke risk, too — and that’s not a guess.