When you’re experiencing full blown depression, you probably need therapy or prescription medication. However, there are things you can do to help curb your depression so that you never reach this stage. You’ve probably heard that old cliché of wanting chocolate after a bad day. But have you ever had a piece of chocolate when you feel slightly depressed? If so, you may be surprised to note that you actually do feel a little better after eating it. Here are four different foods that can help perk you up from a mild depression.

Dark Chocolate is the first food. Note that milk chocolate, while very tasty, doesn’t contain anything that will help your mood. Dark chocolate contains several different ingredients that can help you feel better. The main one is called phenylethylamine. This ingredient can greatly alter our mood by increasing the amount of serotonin in our bodies. Serotonin helps regulate mood and stop depression. Dark chocolate also contains antioxidants, which can increase your health.

Tea is a great drink that can help make you feel better. Some of the ingredients in tea help reduce the amount of cortisol in your blood. This hormone is one of the things that makes us feel stress. Some types of teas, like green tea, also feature the same antioxidants as dark chocolate. In addition to the ingredients in tea that make you feel better, just the simple act of drinking tea can be relaxing. Taking the time to boil the water, make the tea, and then sit down to relax and enjoy your comforting, hot drink can help make you feel better.

Nuts of almost all kinds are also a great snack, especially if you don’t get enough fiber in your life. Nuts provide protein and other healthy supplements, but the main thing we’re interested in is the high amount of Omega-3 fatty acids that nuts include. These are the same acids that are found in most fish, and studies show that ingesting Omega-3 acids can help make us feel better. Ingesting a good amount of Omega-3 acids also helps us feel better overall.

Finally, salmon is another great food that has a ton of health benefits. As stated above, fish, especially salmon, is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. Salmon is also high in Vitamin D, another nutrient that can boost our mood. It, like dark chocolate, stimulates the body to produce more serotonin. Because salmon, and fish in general, are so good for us, nutritionists recommend we eat fish for two meals a week.

While eating these foods may not always keep you from feeling depressed, especially if you’ve lost a loved one or some other major event has occurred, they can help relieve mild depression and make you feel a little better about life.

Labels: anxiety, depression, health

We all see advertisements on television that tell us how depression and/or anxiety is caused by this type of chemical imbalance in our brains and how medication can fix that, but like all advertising, we shouldn’t take this information at face value. Some psychologists and health experts, in fact, believe that using medication to treat anxiety and depression is simply a bad idea overall. Many others, however, feel that anxiety and depression medication is the best way to deal with these issues. Both groups have a large number of supporters, and there is supporting evidence for both cases.

Drug companies and others who manufacture, promote, and dispense anxiety and depression drugs want us to all think that these products can quickly and easily re-balance chemicals in our brains to make us happy. However, the groups of psychologists who don’t believe in medication say that this isn’t as quick and simple as the commercials make it out to be. While they don’t deny that depression and anxiety can be made worse due to a chemical imbalance and that medication may help with this issue, they believe that the chemical imbalance is only one part of the problem. In order for a person to truly become less anxious or less depressed, other factors need to be addresses. Drug companies don’t focus on these problems, of course, and many who fight anxiety and depression don’t, either. For many of these people, medication does help their symptoms but it doesn’t make their depression or anxiety completely vanish.

Most psychologists feel like medication companies are just out to make money and prey on customers who are simply not educated enough about their condition. These companies offer a quick cure to an ailment that can have horrible effects on a person’s life, so of course they’re going to grab it. Psychologists and other health experts, however, point out that while severe chemical imbalances may be the cause of some anxiety and depression, it is not the cause in many cases. In these cases, a person needs to discover the emotional or psychological cause of their anxiety or depression and deal with it. Once they have handled this cause, they may find that they no longer suffer at all.

What it all comes down to is this: some depression and anxiety is caused by chemical imbalances and some isn’t. Medication companies, of course, want your money, and their commercials and other advertisements are aimed at those who want a quick cure for their anxiety or depression. However, since not all cases are caused by chemical imbalances, these medications are not always going to help. The only real way to discover if medication is useful in your case is to consult your doctor. Do this, of course, before you spend any money on expensive medication that may not help you at all.

Labels: anxiety, depression