How to Stop Depression Without Turning Your Body Into a Chemistry Lab

When a person comes into a doctor's office with complaints of depression, it is often assumed by the doctor that there is some aberrancy in brain chemistry. Sometimes underlying issues such as thyroid problems, nutritional deficiencies, toxicities, or poor brain stimulation go unrecognized.

Medications that are often prescribed for depression are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that affects a person's mood when utilized in the brain. The drug affects serotonin by blocking the reuptake of the neurotransmitter that is not bound to the receptor. This increases the possibility of serotonin binding to the receptor as it spends more time around the receptor site.

This treatment is effective when there is a low sensitivity of the receptors to serotonin or a low production of serotonin. However, using medication like this does have its drawbacks.

If the receptors have a low sensitivity for serotonin, flooding them with greater amounts of serotonin for longer a time will only decrease their sensitivity more. An analogy would be listening to somebody with an annoying voice and you trying to tune them out. The person with the annoying voice sees that you are trying to tune them out and gets a microphone to make themselves louder so that you can hear them. Now you're really annoyed and you put in earplugs to try to block out their annoying voice, making it even harder for the annoying person to get heard.

If there is a low production of serotonin naturally, flooding the body with synthetic serotonin will cause a down regulation of production of natural serotonin. An analogy would be when body builders use steroids to build bigger muscles. The steroids have testosterone in them, which you normally make naturally. Once the body realizes that there is enough testosterone already, it stops producing it naturally. This is why the ever known side effect of shrinking of the testicles (which produces testosterone) takes place. Same type of negative feedback loop goes on in the brain with serotonin.

A solution to depression is creating your own serotonin by improving precursor nutrients, improving the sensitivity of the receptors to bind with the neurotransmitter, and increasing brain activity so that there is a need for the creation and utilization of neurotransmitters.

Specific nutrients like vitamin B6, zinc, copper, selenium, iron, 5-HTP, EFAs, St. John's wart, Phosphatidylserine, and S-adenosyl-L-methionine are all required or helpful in the production or utilization of serotonin.

Applying this with a metabolically appropriate exercise program, counseling and specialized diet and you have got yourself one powerful way to treat depression.