I know it feels like summer has only just begun, but fall is right around the corner — and that means apple season is almost here.

Don’t be fooled by the apples you’ll find in the supermarket year ’round — most of them are actually months old… and you won’t believe the tricks they use to keep them fresh.

The guy in the produce department will tell you that the secret is cold storage — but those apples aren’t just placed in a giant fridge somewhere.

They’re also given a massive dose of pesticides after they’re harvested in order to prevent mold, blight, rot, and stains during that storage period.

They’re pumped so full of chemicals that a recent study based on government data found at least two pesticides on 92 percent of all apple samples even after they were washed and peeled.

And 98 percent of more than 700 apple samples tested by the USDA had at least one pesticide.

As a result, apples were placed on top of the Environmental Working Group’s “dirty dozen,” a list of fruits and vegetables that contain the highest levels of pesticides.

EWG says apples are followed by celery, strawberries, peaches, spinach, imported nectarines, imported grapes, sweet bell peppers, potatoes, domestic blueberries, lettuce, and kale.

If you can’t afford to buy everything organic – and these days, who can? — make sure you at least go organic for those.

While there’s not a lot of research on what a low-but-steady stream of pesticides can do to a person, we do know that higher doses can cause cancer and hormonal problems.

Some studies have found that farm workers exposed to pesticides on the job have a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease. And in pregnant women and children, pesticide exposure has been linked to low birth weight, brain damage, ADHD, and even lower intelligence later in life.

But the news from the produce aisle isn’t all bad. EWG also found a number of fruits and vegetables so low in pesticides that you don’t have to buy organic.

They call them the Clean 15: onions, corn, pineapples, avocado, asparagus, sweet peas, mangoes, eggplant, domestic cantaloupe, kiwi, cabbage, watermelon, sweet potatoes, grapefruit, and mushrooms.

The organization has a helpful guide you can print, clip and bring to the supermarket.

It’s just about the only time you might need to compare apples and grapefruit.

Not everyone is on an antidepressant these days – but it sure seems like it.

A shocking new study finds that some 10 percent of us take these meds now – more than 27 million Americans.

The study, published in August in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found that while 13 million Americans took these drugs in 1995, that number doubled in just a decade. By last year, a stunning 164 million prescriptions were written for these meds, worth $10 billion.

It’s frightening.

Part of the problem is the off-label use of these drugs. Big Pharma tries to get as many people as possible on these meds, and for reasons far beyond their approved use. In fact, a University of Georgia study in 2006 found that some 75 percent of people on antidepressants were given these meds for off-label uses.

So while it’s bad enough that depressed people are taking these drugs unnecessarily, it’s far worse when they take these meds for completely different conditions, such as insomnia or pain.

Making matters worse, most docs have proven to be particularly poor at spotting depression. As I mentioned just last week, doctors miss the key signs at least half the time and incorrectly diagnose it in healthy people 20 percent of the time.

Not only that, but these meds are some of the worst of the lot, with nasty side effects that I’ve warned you about before.

But there’s a much larger problem here, and it’s about how doctors treat patients today. Or maybe I should say how they don’t treat patients. They treat symptoms.

I’d like to say it’s lazy medicine, but there’s more to it than that. Most doctors simply don’t know better, and it’s because of how they’re taught.

This is what happens when the medical schools and professors are bought and paid for by Big Pharma, and its army of drug reps is allowed to wander the once-sacred halls of academia.

Now, the entire nation is paying for it, with millions upon millions of us being given these dangerous and powerful antidepressants, whether we need them or not. Many of these drugs contain fluorine, a powerful oxidizing agent that’s been linked to brain damage and degeneration.

There are right ways to get yourself healthy and win that battle with depression. It’s often as simple as getting more trypophan, essential fatty acids, vitamin B6, or vitamin B12.

Too bad most doctors don’t know this – because they never learned it in the first place.