There are many alternatives to drugs for treating depression, including nutritional interventions, light therapy, exercise and more. If you’re in a place where you feel you can begin to make positive changes, here are some of the top alternative treatments for depression to consider:
- Exercise. Those who didn’t exercise were 44 percent more likely to become depressed compared to those who did so for at least one to two hours a week. Exercise primarily works by helping to normalize your insulin levels while simultaneously boosting "feel good" hormones in your brain. Researchers have also discovered that exercise allows your body to eliminate kynurenine, a harmful protein associated with depression.
- Restoring health to your gut is also of prime importance. Your gut is literally your second brain, and can significantly influence your mind, mood, and behavior. Your gut actually produces more mood-regulating serotonin than your brain does.
To optimize your gut microbiome, eat real food, and be sure to include traditionally fermented foods such as fermented vegetables, raw milk kefir, kombucha, and others. Ideally, you'll want to start trading out all processed foods for whole foods, and cook from scratch.
Limit sugar. Refined sugar and processed fructose in particular are known to have a very detrimental impact on your brain function and mental health in general .Men consuming more than 67 grams of sugar per day were 23 percent more likely to develop anxiety or depression over the course of five years than those whose sugar consumption was less than 40 grams per day.
- Omega-3 fats, which have been shown to lead to improvements in major depressive disorder. Make sure you're getting enough omega-3s in your diet, either from wild Alaskan salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel and anchovies, or a high-quality animal-based omega-3 supplement.
I also recommend supplementing your diet with a high quality animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil. This may be the single most important nutrient for optimal brain function, thereby easing symptoms of depression. In fact, one 2009 study12 showed that people with lower blood levels of omega-3s were more likely to have symptoms of depression and a more negative outlook while those with higher blood levels demonstrated the opposite emotional states.
- Vitamin D is another part of the mental health puzzle. Sun exposure is ideal, but if you opt for a supplement, remember to take vitamin K2 and Magnesium in conjunction with it. Also, since vitamin D is fat soluble, taking some form of healthy fat with it will also help optimize absorption. Vitamin A, zinc, and boron are other important cofactors that interact with vitamin D. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also contribute to depression, and affects one in four people.
- Magnesium. Magnesium supplements led to improvements in mild-to-moderate depression in adults, with beneficial effects occurring within two weeks of treatment.
- B vitamins. Low levels of B vitamins are common in patients with depression, while vitamin B supplements have been shown to improve symptoms.
- Mindfulness meditation and the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). In a study of 30 moderately to severely depressed college students, the depressed students were given four 90-minute EFT sessions. Students who received EFT showed significantly less depression than the control group when evaluated three weeks later.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy, which works as well as antidepressants and may reduce your risk of relapse even after it’s stopped.
- Last but not least, make sure you get enough sleep. The link between depression and lack of sleep is well established. Of the approximately 18 million Americans with depression, more than half of them struggle with insomnia. While it was long thought that insomnia was a symptom of depression, it now seems that insomnia may precede depression in some cases.
Recent research also found that sleep therapy resulted in remarkable improvements in depressed patients. While there are individual differences, as a general rule, you'll want to aim for about eight hours of sleep per night.
The take-home message here is that one or more lifestyle factors may be at the heart of your depression, so you'd be well advised to address the factors discussed in this article before resorting to drug treatment.
Surse:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/01/18/chemical-imbalance-theory-for-depression.aspx?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=facebookmercola_nonlead1&utm_campaign=20180118_chemical-imbalance-theory-for-depression#_edn38
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/12/03/light-therapy-seasonal-affective-disorder-depression.aspx
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