Toronto’s CAMH develops natural dietary supplement to combat postpartum blues

Twenty-three percent of Canadian women suffer from postpartum depression (PPD) according to the government of Canada’s 2018-2019 survey.

A far greater number, up to 80 per cent of women, experience postpartum blues within the first few days after giving birth, typically peaking around day five. Postpartum blues are a major risk factor for later depression.

“It was horrendous … the human brain is wired such that over time you start to forget things … but when it was happening it was devastating to be honest,” says Ria Riaz about her experience with postpartum depression when she had her daughter seven years ago.

“The way that your energy is being asked for all the time, that in itself causes a lot of like anxiety. And then now couple that with having postpartum depression, it’s debilitating.”

Riaz says she was riddled with doubt about her mothering skills and whether she was “good enough,” a sentiment Janany Jayanthikumar relates to all too well.

“It was a lot of fear, a lot of distress around ‘can I take care of him? Am I doing things the proper way?'” she says, recalling her experiences after her son, now seven, was born.

“It really impacted my ability to securely attach with my eldest in the early phases of his life.”

Jayanthikumar, who also has three-year-old twin boys, is a mental health professional herself, but says all her training and experience in that field did not help mitigate her PPD symptoms.

“Even though I know all the signs and symptoms of it, you can’t be aware of it when you’re the one actually going through it,” she says.

Riaz adds that it took almost an entire year to recover from her C-section and PPD.

“It took a lot of support from family and friends as well as therapy,” she says.

New supplement to help with postpartum challenges

A revolutionary new natural dietary supplement developed at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) aims to address postpartum blues, which in turn could reduce the risk of developing postpartum depression.

“In the sample of just over a hundred women, those that took the supplement had less severity of their postpartum blues. And then we also found that three to six months later, the women who took the supplement had less symptoms of depression as well, and nobody who got the supplement had a clinical level set of symptoms of depression,” says Dr. Jeffrey Meyer, senior scientist at CAMH and inventor of the supplement.

It has three components – an antioxidant and the amino acids tryptophan and tyrosine.

“The ingredients are designed to address a brain change that happens in women in early postpartum of elevated MAOA protein, which we found on brain scanning about 14 years ago,” says Meyer.

MAOA protein has the opposite effect of an antioxidant, removing brain chemicals that support healthy mood like serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine.

“The idea of the supplement was that the antioxidant was to counter certain effects of MAOA, and then the tryptophan and tyrosine are like building blocks for the brain chemicals that MAOA removes,” he explains.

Tryptophan and tyrosine are already present in breast milk and studies conducted while developing the supplement showed that taking it did not have an effect on overall concentrations of the amino acids in breast milk. As such, it is safe for nursing mothers.

The supplement, called “Blues Away,” is already available in the U.S. and is before Health Canada for approval. It consists of a course of four drinks to be taken over three days, starting from day three after giving birth.

“So the night of day three, the morning of day four, night of day four, and morning of day five. All of the doses have antioxidants in them. The tryptophan is the night of day four, which also helps a bit with sleep. And then on the morning of day five has the tyrosine,” says Meyer.

“MAOA protein is really dramatically elevated around day five postpartum, perhaps up as much as 55 per cent or more. So there’s this window of time where this change is quite dramatic [and] the risk for having a potential trajectory towards a risk for depression [is elevated]. And that’s the window that the supplement is covering.”

The supplement will be available without a prescription to make it widely accessible.

Meyer says they are looking into other applications for the supplement, including for those going through perimenopause. He hopes their research will also inspire others to delve further into women’s health and discover other such supplements.

Both Riaz and Jayanthikumar say given the general dearth of studies into women’s health issues, the extensive research into maternal health that went into developing the supplement at CAMH is encouraging.

“The fact that it’s natural, that’s even more exciting to me. Because there’s a lot of stuff that’s prescribed to you when you’re going through hormonal changes, and when you look at like the side effects of those, it’s not great,” says Riaz.

“I think that it is so important to recognize that not only can it help prevent baby blues in those first few days, but six months later, this research is actually showing us that it also helps protect against postpartum depression,” says Jayanthikumar

“And maternal mental health is so important because it’s not just that generation that we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with generations to come and … if we have that secure attachment with mom and baby, that psychologically sets up these infants, toddlers, children and adults to be psychologically healthy.”