How To Win Against The Blues And Become Happier
Depression can be one of the hardest times of someone's life. Sufferers often feel misunderstood, tired and deeply unhappy. If these kinds of feelings sound familiar, you're not alone. Millions of people suffer from depression every day. Here are a few tips about dealing with depression that might be able to help.
One way to treat depression is with prescription medication. Every year new ones come out too, so if you tried one years ago there are many alternatives now. Most of them work by attempting to restore the chemical balance in your brain as they believe depression is caused by a chemical imbalance.
Balance your diet to control your depression. If you go too long between meals, you'll end up tired and irritable, which makes your depression worse. Eating too much, however, will make you feel sluggish and guilty. Eat small meals on regular intervals to keep your energy levels up and your brain operating at its peak.
One of the best ways to fight against depression is to develop hobbies. People are mostly depressed when they are idle. By keeping yourself occupied on something that you love, you automatically keep your mind off negative problems and emotions. This is also an easy way to build appreciation for life.
If you're working on your personal issues, it can help you with your depression. You can avoid getting overwhelmed if you do this in baby steps. You can get a handle on your depression and lessen its effects by taking this one step at a time approach.
Become more physically active. A healthy body is a necessity for a healthy mind. In addition to the obvious health benefits, exercising releases feel-good chemicals called endorphins. It is these chemicals that give rise to the term "runner's high". It is a natural high, one that is safe and even healthy to become addicted to!
While it may seem impossible to express your feelings to someone when you are depressed, you could find that crying on someone's shoulder or explaining your feelings, is the best remedy. When people listen to you, get more info you are able to get your feelings hashed out without having to feel alone. Depression is a condition that is best met with support and company. Being alone only makes it worse.
Although clinical depression is a medically documented disease with roots in your brain's bio-chemistry, you will still be able to trick it sometimes. This basically means that the power of positive thinking will be an incredibly effective trick, as long as you are able to cut the sad moments before they get too strong.
In order to help your depression, set realistic goals for yourself. For example, if you want to lose weight, set a goal to lose 10 pounds in 8 weeks. Having a goal helps to keep the mind off of your depression symptoms by giving you something you can look forward to.
If you feel that you or even someone you know might be depressed, then you should consider looking for professional help right away. Depression can be tough to fight by yourself. A professional or loved one can help a lot.
New Method to Improve Brain Stimulation Treatments
Stimulating brain regions to treat Parkinson’s disease, depression, and other disorders involving brain damage could become more precise, thanks to a new way of mapping the brain circuitry involved in those conditions.
The study describing this research, “Brain stimulation and brain lesions converge on common causal circuits in neuropsychiatric disease,” was published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Depression and Parkinson’s both associate with well-defined brain lesions and can be treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
Both techniques involve stimulating electrical activity in specific brain regions. However, proving that a targeted location in the brain actually corresponds to a specific point of damage and that this affects a symptom of interest has been a challenge.
The controlled experiments that enable scientists to map neural circuits in animals rarely can be repeated in humans.
An international team of researchers addressed this issue by analyzing data on the well-defined brain lesions associated with Parkinson’s and depression, and that are commonly treated with both DBS and TMS.
The team examined 14 separate datasets, comprising 461 lesions, 151 TMS sites, and 101 DBS sites, comparing lesions, symptoms, treatments and outcomes — such as where depression improved versus showing no change. The datasets included individuals who had been evaluated and treated for depression after having strokes or penetrating brain injuries, as well as patients receiving DBS for Parkinson’s or epilepsy for whom changes in depressive symptoms were measured as a potential side effect.
“This is a new technique that uses existing data on patients with brain damage to develop new treatment targets for real-world patients with similar symptoms,” Shan Siddiqi, MD, the study’s principal investigator, said in a press release.
Using their technique, Siddiqi and his collaborators identified a pattern of activity — a neural circuit — common to brain lesions, DBS, and TMS.
To demonstrate their approach can be applied to neuropsychiatric disorders more generally, they next examined 29 lesions and 95 stimulation sites associated with Parkinson’s motor symptoms.
Similar to their depression-related results, the team found that lesions associated with symptoms such as tremors and rigidity were connected to the same circuits as the stimulation sites used to treat them.
Overall, these shared patterns imply that brain lesions associated with neuropsychological conditions, as well as both TMS and DBS sites used to treat them are all connected to similar circuits.
https://parkinsonsnewstoday.com/2021/07/15/method-improves-brain-stimulation-therapy-parkinsons/