Many Faces Of Depression…

Depression is defined as “a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest.” But is it really a disorder? Couldn’t it be a suppressed state of the nervous system that causes feelings of sadness and apathy?

The current definition implies that something is broken and in the US healthcare system, we have a drug for everything that we can label as a disorder. Current research, however, is finding that depression has many subtypes.

This state can be brought on by many things including emotional or physical trauma, drugs/medication, pregnancy (Post Partum), lack of sunlight (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and chronic illness. It is the last three that prompted me to write this blog. Our body chemistry and lifestyle play a major role in how the brain works. The brain is an amazing electro-chemical organ sitting in a soup of chemicals that influence its function.

If sunlight, hormones and chronic inflammation are KNOWN CAUSES of depression, shouldn’t we be assessing these things in everyone who experiences depression???

Today I want to go more into Inflammatory Depression. If you Google the words Depression Inflammation together, you will get 176,000,000 hits in less than a second. This correlation is so strong because inflammation plays such a big role in depression for so many, yet it is almost NEVER evaluated for…

There are many reasons why people become chronically inflamed. Here are a few: obesity, elevated blood sugar (prediabetes), concussion, poor diet, gut dysbiosis (unhealthy microbes in the gut), low grade infections and chronic stress to name a few.

The chemistry of chronic inflammation changes the way our brain works in several ways, but one key area is how it alters its ability to create neurotransmitters. Imagine taking a medication like an SSRI (Prozac, Zoloft, etc) that works on your Serotonin system and you are NOT MAKING SEROTONIN because you are chronically inflamed???? Of course you can. When those drugs don’t work they call you “Treatment Resistant” and move you to a different class of drugs, instead of searching for WHY you are treatment resistant.

A new group of doctors is looking at depression as a chronic illness, and not a “mental illness’. I am very proud to say that I have been asked to create an Alliance of these doctors for an international mental health non profit called #SameHere Global. We see patients (usually while they are working with a therapist) and look for underlying physical issues that are causative or contributory to the mood challenges that these patients face. You can check out the Alliance here: https://samehereglobal.org/docs-alliance-directory/

Lifestyle changes like getting more sunlight, reducing exposure to technology screens (blue light), eating less carbs and processed foods, exercising regularly, drinking more water, fixing underlying imbalances in the gut and others can make all the difference for people experiencing depression. The challenge is that it isn’t so easy to make these changes while feeling so bad and unmotivated, but this is where the functional doc plays the big role. Examining you, evaluating your neurology and chemistry, creating a plan of action and working through it with you until you see results.

So much can be done when we look for the root cause of problems vs treating labels and symptoms. If you are interested in a complimentary Zoom consult to see how a functional approach to restoring health can help you, set one up here:

https://calendly.com/the-optimum-u/15?month=2022-09

YOU DON’T NEED A PILL, YOU NEED A PROGRAM!

Read more about Inflammatory Depression here:

Inflammatory Depression—Mechanisms and Non-Pharmacological Interventions https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/22/4/1640/htm

The Role of Inflammation in Depression and Fatigue https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6658985/