Understanding & Conquering Depression | Episode 34

There are at least three major chemical systems in the brain—norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin—that relate to and can adjust the symptoms of depression ... Norepinephrine is thought to relate to the so-called psychomotor defects ... This is the lethargy ... Lack of dopamine in depressive patients is thought to lead to the anhedonia, the lack of ability to experience pleasure. And serotonin is thought to relate to the grief, the guilt, some of the more cognitive or more emotional aspects of depression.

More stress is correlated with more bouts of major depression across the lifespan. How many bouts? ... When you hit 4-5 bouts of really intense, stressful episodes in life... your risk for major depression goes way up.

There are now several studies... pointing to the fact that creatine supplementation doesn't just have these positive effects on physical performance but can also be used as a way to increase mood and to improve the symptoms of major depression.

It's also very, very useful to ingest 2-4 servings of fermented foods on a daily basis or near daily basis ... Fermented foods really keeps the gut microbiome tuned up, so to speak, well in order to offset these inflammatory cytokines, keeping inflammation at bay. It just turns out to be a really good thing in order to keep our mood in a good place.

Major depression impacts 5% of the population. That is an enormous number. That means, if you're in a class of 100 people, 5 of them are dealing with major depression or have at some point.

20% of people that have major depression have low thyroid hormone.

...a gene called 5-HTTLPR, which is a serotonin transporter. So, this is a gene that controls or regulates how much serotonin is available in the brain. If you have this gene, this polymorphism, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will be depressed, but it greatly shifts your susceptibility to depression under conditions of stress.

There's growing evidence now that many forms of major depression, if not all of them, relate to excessive inflammation.

In particular, there's a signature pattern of depression whereby cortisol, the stress hormone that normally is released in a healthy way only in the early part of the day, is shifted to late in the day. In fact, a 9 PM peak in cortisol is one of the physiological signatures of depressive-like states.

There's now a very long list of papers in quality peer-reviewed journals showing that when people ingest a certain level of EPA omega-3 fatty acids, the relief from depressive symptoms matches the SSRIs.

The architecture of sleep is disrupted in depression ... Early in the night, you tend to have slow-wave sleep more than REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep. As the night goes on, you tend to have more rapid eye movement sleep. That architecture of slow-wave sleep proceeding rapid eye movement sleep is radically disrupted in major depression.

When a person takes this drug, some of those drugs include things like Prozac or Zoloft... When people take those, more serotonin hangs out in the synapse and is able to be taken up by the neuron on the opposite side because of this selective reuptake inhibition. It prevents the clearance of serotonin from the synapse, and thereby more serotonin can have an effect. So, SSRIs don't increase the total amount of serotonin in the brain; they change how effective the serotonin that's already in the brain is at changing the activity of neurons.

One of the most common symptoms of people with major depression, one of the signs of major depression, is early waking and not being able to fall back asleep, despite being exhausted.