Cheer Up! Here's Fast And Helpful Depression Advice
Depression can drain your energy, making it difficult or even impossible to function in your daily life. While it is not easy to overcome depression, it is possible. The following article offers tips on how you can beat depression. While overcoming depression takes a lot of work, it's not impossible.
If you are depressed, you should try to work on something productive for at least 30-60 minutes per day. Doing absolutely nothing all day can cause a vicious cycle where you not only have your "base" depression symptoms, but also depression because you are unable to get anything done.
Do not depend on herbal alternatives to medication like St. John's wort. trials of herbal remedies show that they are far less effective than pharmaceuticals, especially for moderate to severe depression. If you are wary of using medication to treat your depression, try talk therapy as a first-line treatment.
If you have been prescribed medication by your doctor but do not feel completely comfortable with it, be sure to discuss this with him or her. He may be able to help you find a better medication or he may even be able to sooth your worries by explaining what it does.
Reach out to multiple people and places for support. People who have pulled through depression themselves may be excellent sources of support and advice, because they can share their experiences and coping strategies.
Make sure that you understand all of the possible side effects before you decide to take any type of medication. Your doctor may be eager to prescribe you pills, and this may actually help you greatly, but you need to be sure that you are aware of exactly what you are taking ahead of time.
A bad diet can play a part in your depression. Eating unhealthy foods can affect how clearly you think. Negative and cloudy thinking can lead to depression. To avoid that situation, eat healthy foods with low fat content.
Laughter really is the best medicine. Research shows that even a smile can raise serotonin levels, the same effect that many antidepressants give. Instead of wallowing in your sadness with depressing music and tear-jerking tragedies, break out the stand-up albums or put on a silly comedy. Even if you don't feel like it when it starts, you will find yourself smiling and laughing despite yourself by the end!
If you feel like committing suicide or hurting someone else, it is important that you seek help immediately. These are signs that your depression has gotten more info out of control and you should get help before it is too late. Do not be scared to tell a professional if you are feeling this way.
Stay away from caffeine if you are experiencing severe depression. Studies show too much caffeine makes depression symptoms worse. You should try to minimize the caffeine in your diet by drinking decaffeinated beverages.
Try your best to remain positive. Thinking negatively is something depression sufferers do often. Someone who is depressed never feels good about anything in their life, while someone who is happy tends to push aside any negative thoughts or deal with them head on. Staying positive makes it easier for others to socialize with you so that you're not lonely.
A great way to deal with depression is to be physically active. Exercise is great for your body and mind because it releases natural chemicals in your body that are meant to help you feel better. The improvements in your body will also help you to feel great about yourself and boost your self esteem.
In conclusion, if you follow the tips in this article, you may see improvement in a short amount of time. Give yourself a pat on the back daily for the accomplishments that you have made. Try to cope with depression the best you can by using these easy tips and never give up fighting the disease.
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/