Treating Depression

During this awful time of the corona virus, there has been so much grief and heartache. Relatives have died, often without any family member by their side. Family members and friends have been separated. Many have been socially isolated.

Our mental health has become ever more important as we fight isolation, boredom, grief and extreme anxiety. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of prescriptions for anxiety and depression during this covid-19 pandemic.

For those coping with depression, it could be as life threatening as the corona virus. Major depression is not just sadness. It is characterized by weeks of a low mood. It is characterized by a lack of pleasure. It is characterized by fatigue, weight gain or loss, difficulty concentrating, and even recurrent thoughts of death.

In the U.S., major depression is the most commonly diagnosed mental illness, and suicide causes over 40,000 deaths a year.

If you are suffering, what should you do?

First of all, especially if you are having thoughts of death, you must get some help. Reach out to a mental health professional, your doctor, a trusted friend or relative, or, call the National Suicide Hotline at: (800) 273-8255.

Just don’t give up! Even the most severe cases of depression can be treated.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, depression is usually treated with medication, psychotherapy, or a combination of the two. Psychotherapy can be extremely valuable during a crisis. These days you can choose a mental health professional and even do your therapy from home, since so many therapists now offer “virtual” sessions.

If these treatments do not reduce symptoms, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and other brain stimulation therapies may be options to explore.

When you’re depressed, your future seems clouded or even nonexistent. If you are in the throes of a major depressive episode, you just want to get out of it. Once the crisis has passed, you certainly want to avoid feeling that way in the future.

If you are in the beginning stages of a mental health dilemma, or you have had an episode of major depression in the past and want to avoid a relapse, you may be looking for a way to gain more mood stability without resorting to medication.

There can always be a bubble of hope and happiness in our lives.  Maybe it’s only for a few hours or a few days, but it’s there.

How can we find those bubbles more often?

I’ve done some research and put together eight mental health or happiness “hacks,” for you.

 1.) Stop eating eggs and chicken

A group of scientists from Israel discovered that rats who were exhibiting signs of depression had increased levels of arachidonic acid in their brains.

In their study published in the Journal of Lipid Research, they reported that they examined the brains of depressed rats and compared them with brains from normal rats. Surprisingly, they discovered that brains from rats with depression had higher concentrations of arachidonic acid.

Other studies appearing in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that people with higher levels of arachidonic acid in their blood, have more episodes of major depression and risks of suicide.

Arachidonic acid is a compound found in some foods that can impair your mood by causing inflammation in your brain.  Your body makes all the arachidonic acid it needs so you don’t need to get it from food.

Arachidonic acid makes your body aware of an injury.  When you get a splinter in your finger, your body’s arachidonic acid causes an inflammatory response that helps fight off the infection.

But, too much arachidonic acid can impair your emotional state.

How can you avoid the inflammation-promoting arachidonic acid in your diet?  Stop eating the top sources of arachidonic acid – chicken, eggs, beef, pork and fish and get happier.

2.) Eat more fruits and vegetables

A review in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience concluded that eating more fruits and vegetables cut the odds of developing depression by as much as 62 percent.

People who are depressed appear to have elevated levels of the enzyme, MAO in their brains.  It appears that many plant foods can tamp down the monoamine oxidase enzyme.  Foods and spices such as apples, berries, grapes, onions, green tea, cloves, oregano, cinnamon, and nutmeg can naturally inhibit MAO.

3.) Eat more carbs

In a yearlong study reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine, about one hundred men and women were randomly assigned to eat either a low-carb or a high-carb diet for a year. By the end of the year, the subjects eating the high-carb diets experienced significantly less depression, hostility, and mood disturbance than those in the low-carb group.

Most Americans are on a carbohydrate deficient diet with forty percent of their calories coming from carbohydrates.  The ideal happiness diet would contain 70% complex carbohydrates. For those unfortunate people following the popular low-carbohydrate diets, they are only getting about ten percent of their calories from brain-fueling carbohydrates.

4.) Eat more seeds

Serotonin is called the happiness hormone, but it can’t cross the blood-brain barrier without the help of a building block called tryptophan.  In studies done in the 1970s, it was found that people who were deficient in tryptophan were irritable, angry and depressed.

Even though tryptophan is found in high-protein foods like chicken, eggs, cheese, fish, milk and turkey, research has found that eating carbohydrates can produce higher tryptophan levels. Carbohydrates help tryptophan cross the blood brain barrier. The best foods to help get serotonin into your brain include sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, or butternut squash seeds.

Dr. Craig Hudson released a study to the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology of a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of butternut squash seeds for social anxiety disorder. He reported a significant improvement in anxiety levels within an hour of eating them.

5.) Drink coffee, but not too much

In a study it was found that people who drink between 2 and 6 cups of coffee a day only had half the suicide risk as non-coffee drinkers. However, people who drank more than eight cups a day have been associated with increased suicide risk.

Drinking sweetened beverages was found to increase the risk of depression in older adults.  Adding sugar to coffee may negate many of its positive effects on mood, and adding the artificial sweeteners aspartame or saccharine was associated with an increased risk of depression.

Individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to this artificial sweetener and its use in this population should be discouraged.

In another experiment with healthy individuals, it was found that after only eight days on a higher-aspartame dose, participants exhibited more depression and irritability and performed worse on certain brain function tests.

Artificial sweeteners are not only found in diet sodas, but are also present in more than six thousand products, including breath mints, cereals, chewing gums, jams and jellies, juice drinks, puddings, and even nutritional bars and yogurts.

(6.) Exercise

One study of nearly five thousand people across the country, found that people who exercised regularly had 25 percent lower odds of a major depression diagnosis.

In the largest ever exercise trial of patients with depression, researchers from Duke University randomly assigned depressed men and women aged fifty or older to: (a) either begin to take a 3-times-a-week group aerobic exercise program, (b.) take the antidepressant drug, Zoloft or (c.) exercise by themselves at home. No matter whether they did exercise in a group or alone, exercise appeared to work about as well as drugs at bringing depression into remission.

(7.) Eat More Foods Rich in Antioxidants

Accumulating evidence suggests that free radicals may play an important role in the development of various psychiatric disorders, including depression. Modern imaging techniques confirm autopsy studies showing a shrinkage of certain emotion centers in the brains of depressed patients that may be due to death of nerve cells caused by free radicals.

This may explain why those who eat more fruits and vegetables, which are rich in the antioxidants that extinguish free radicals, appear protected against depression.

A nationwide American study measured the level of carotenoid phytonutrients in people’s bloodstreams. Not only did people with higher levels of these nutrients in their bloodstreams have a lower risk of depression symptoms, but there was an apparent “dose-response relationship,” meaning that the higher the level of phytonutrients, the better people seemed to feel.

A study of nearly one thousand elderly men and women found that people who ate tomatoes or tomato products daily had just half the odds of depression compared with those who ate them once a week or less.

Recent studies following people over time suggest that low dietary folate intake may increase the risk of severe depression by as much as threefold. Folate is a B vitamin concentrated in beans and greens.

Supplements of antioxidants nor folates have not been found to work.

(8.) Improved Health and Self-image

Following a healthy diet and lifestyle with the right amount of sleep, sunshine and exercise leads to the final component necessary for lasting mental health, which is excellent physical health.  People who are overweight and physically ill are often mentally ill, as well.  To themselves, their condition appears hopeless – a future of increasing pain and progressive immobility; with relentless deterioration until a premature death.  Obviously, one look in the mirror and/or the medicine cabinet is enough to depress most people who follow the Western diet.  This dilemma is solved by the right diet and lifestyle choices.

REFERENCES

 Greger, Michael, How Not to Die, Chapter 12.

McDougall, John, A Natural Cure for Depression.