Depression—Natural Options for Dealing with Depression

1. Diet for Depression
   

   There’s no specific diet that works for depression. Still, while certain diets or foods may not ease depression (or put you instantly in a better mood), they may help as part of an overall treatment for depression. Dietary changes can bring about changes in your brain structure, both chemically and physiologically. Those changes can improve mood and mental outlook.

2. Pfeiffer Treatment Center Bibliography for Depression
   

   Excerpts from scientific studies regarding nutrition and depression.

3. Pfeiffer Treatment Center Bibliography for Aggressive and Violent Behavior
   

   Excerpts from scientific studies regarding nutrition and aggressive or violent behavior.

4. Healing Without Freud or Prozac
   

   Review of a book by Dr David Servan-Schreiber details seven approaches to healing mental illness, all of which use the body as the doorway to transforming mental pain. "They all capitalise on the mind and brain’s own healing mechanism for recovering from depression, anxiety and stress," he says. Discusses acupuncture, physical exercise, omega-3 essential fatty acids, circadian rhythms, "heart rhythm coherence" with biofeedback, and EMDR, which makes use of eye movements. They are all backed up by research evidence for their effectiveness.

5. Constipation and Depression
   

   Constipation and depression have a history of coinciding with each other. In the brain, there are two chemicals that affect your mood. Serotonin and norepinephrine. These two chemicals work as transmitters, sending signals from the brain to the nerves in the body. When there is a deficiency in these chemicals, the signals don’t get sent and it throws everything off. Constipation prohibits food nutrients from being absorbed by the body. These nutrients are needed for the brain to produce the right amount of serotonin and norepinephrine. When constipated for a long period, the lining of the small intestine can actually build up a layer of toxins that fully prevent any nutrients from being absorbed.

6. Integrative Therapies for Depression: Serotonin Precursors and SAMe
   

   SAMe (pronounced "Sammy") stands for S-adenosyl-L-methionine. SAMe is a compound produced by the liver and used throughout the body in a chemical process called methylation. Methylation, essential to many chemical reactions in the body, is one of the last steps in the production of the brain chemicals serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine (which regulate mood). SAMe slows the breakdown of these brain chemicals, allowing them to work longer.

7. How Omega-3 Fatty Acids Can Relieve Depression
   

   Studies suggest that populations that eat more fish per capita, such as Japan and Iceland, have unexpectedly low rates of seasonal affective disorder. While researchers don’t recommend omega-3s as a first-line treatment for anyone with major depression or bipolar disorder, emerging research suggests it may be effective for people with mild depression or as an adjuvant to medication. Fish oil has been shown to prevent relapse and alleviate depressive symptoms in some bipolar patients.

8. Lower Plasma Coenzyme Q10 in Depression
   

   There is now evidence that major depression is accompanied by an induction of inflammatory and oxidative and nitrosative stress pathways and by a lowered antioxidant status. Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is a strong antioxidant that has anti-inflammatory effects. Plasma CoQ10 was significantly lower in depressed patients than in normal controls. The results show that lower CoQ10 plays a role in the pathophysiology of depression and in particular in treatment resistant depression and chronic fatigue syndrome accompanying depression. Lower CoQ10 is a risk factor to coronary artery disease and chronic heart failure, explaining the risk to cardiovascular disorder in depression. Since statins significantly lower plasma CoQ10, depressed patients represent populations at risk to statin treatment.

9. Depression on Wikipedia
   

   Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity and experiencing feelings of sadness, helplessness and hopelessness. Physical activity has been linked to the increase in blood serotonin after exercise, similar to the effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI).

10. What Happened to Lithium? Antidepressant Augmentation in Clinical Settings
    

    Antidepressant augmentation is recommended when patients do not respond to antidepressant monotherapy. Although lithium currently has the most research support, antipsychotic medications and a second antidepressant are the most widely used augmenting agents.

11. Research Explains Lithium’s Dual Anti-Manic/Anti-Depressive Effect
    

    John F. Cade discovered lithium’s mood-stabilizing effect. It has long been the drug of choice in treating bipolar disorder. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Medical School have solved the puzzle of how…lithium can effectively stabilise both the wild euphoria and the crushing melancholy that are the hallmark of manic depression, or bipolar disorder. Researchers found that…lithium exerts a push/pull effect on the neurotransmitter glutamate, eventually causing it to level off in a stable zone where it can control both extremes.

12. Lithium Normalizes Elevated Intracellular Sodium
    

    Both mania and bipolar depression are characterized by elevations of intracellular sodium concentrations. This observation has been purported to be central to the pathophysiology of abnormal moods in bipolar illness. Lithium can normalize abnormally elevated intracellular sodium levels.

13. Think Twice: How the Gut’s "Second Brain" Influences Mood and Well-Being
    

    "A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut." An often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts…is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our "second brain". Technically known as the enteric nervous system, the second brain consists of sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut. The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system.

14. The History of Lithium Therapy
    

    The use of lithium in psychiatry goes back to the mid-19th century. Early work, however, was soon forgotten, and John Cade is credited with reintroducing lithium to psychiatry for mania in 1949. In 1970, the United States became the 50th country to admit lithium to the marketplace. Lithium’s status today is threatened by the “mood stabilizers.”

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