https://padlet.com/jithut212/Bookmarks Made with an open mind en-us 2021-08-20 18:23:22 UTC 2021-08-20 18:31:28 UTC hello@padlet.com jithut212 https://padlet.com/jithut212/Bookmarks/wish/1688364517 The way we live can powerfully affect the way we feel. It’s a simple observation, but one with profound implications when it comes to fighting depression.

For as we’ve seen, six distinct lifestyle elements—ranging from exercise to nutrition (omega-3 fats) to social support to light exposure—can fight depression as effectively as any medication. They can even bring about important changes in the brain. Modern-day hunter-gatherers benefit from each of these lifestyle factors in abundance, and this explains why they rarely get depressed, despite leading very difficult lives.

And although the world has changed a great deal since the days of our ancestors, these protective lifestyle elements were still present in American and British life—to a somewhat lesser extent—right up until the past century.

 In recent decades, though, they have steadily disappeared, and the rate of depression has skyrocketed in lockstep with their departure. When I first began to put all this together a few years ago, I started encouraging my depressed patients—whom I treated at the time with a more traditional form of psychotherapy—to incorporate these antidepressant lifestyle elements into their daily routines.

 Not only did I find that most patients were surprisingly eager to make such lifestyle changes, but the clinical results were stunning. Even patients who had not responded to drugs or traditional therapy began recovering—quickly. Such dramatic results took me by surprise. Sure, I thought a lifestyle-based strategy might be helpful in some cases of depression, but I had no idea just how powerful it would prove to be.

 I caught an early glimpse of its effectiveness, however, in the experience of the first patient I ever worked with on these principles of therapeutic lifestyle change. A tall, soft-spoken man in his mid-forties, Bill had been severely depressed for over four years. Other than a few brief periods of remission, he had been continuously depressed since his early teens.

When we started working together, he had already been on depression medication for well over a year with little meaningful improvement. In one of our first sessions together, Bill casually mentioned that although he didn’t exercise regularly, he’d noticed in the past that working out sometimes made him feel a little better, at least for a short while.

 Since I’d recently been immersed in the research literature on exercise and depression, I was intrigued by his comment and decided to push him a bit on the point. “Bill, would you be willing to try working out on a regular basis? Dozens of published studies show it can help with symptoms of depression.” Although his energy level was pretty low, he agreed to try jogging three times a week, either outside or on the small treadmill stored in his basement. (Like most pieces of home exercise equipment, it had been gathering dust for years.)

At our next session, Bill reported a small but noticeable improvement in his ability to sleep through the night, and he attributed this to the exercise. The following week brought a noticeable upswing in his energy level. Encouraged by this development, I decided to see if he was willing to crank things up a notch on the lifestyle front.

 So we spent the next few sessions talking about the clinical benefits of omega-3 supplementation, the toxic effects of time spent alone ruminating, and the importance of getting adequate sunlight exposure, social support, and sleep. To his immense credit, Bill gradually began putting into practice every major therapeutic lifestyle element we discussed. And within two months, his depressive symptoms were gone. Completely gone.

It was nothing short of remarkable. It’s now been over five years since we began working together, and Bill is still fully recovered—the first stretch of continuous recovery in his adult life. In fact, we still touch base by phone every so often for a quick checkup, and during our most recent conversation Bill told me, “Steve, these past four years have been by far the best of my life.”

Many others like Bill—people who had given up hope of ever beating their depression—have overcome the dreaded illness as well. The great majority of patients in our clinical trials have escaped depression’s grip,27 and the response rate to Therapeutic Lifestyle Change has been considerably higher than researchers typically see with antidepressant medication. I realize this is a surprising claim.

After all, depression is a serious illness—one that robs people of their vitality, their hope, their sleep, their play, their friends, their work, and sometimes even their very lives. Can this debilitating disorder really be fought more effectively with a set of basic lifestyle changes than with powerful antidepressant drugs? It is hard to believe.

But I’ve seen firsthand the dramatic improvements that typically follow in the wake of these simple changes, even among those who haven’t responded to medication. Despite the best efforts of mental health professionals, depression continues to destroy millions of lives each year.

This simply cannot continue. As we begin to reclaim the natural antidepressant benefits of the life we were all designed for, I believe we can put an end to the modern depression epidemic once and for all.

About author
I am certified in addiction counseling, public health, health education, mental health and I am also an AIDS-certified registered nurse with more than 30 years of experience and founder of Hindi health point

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