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Welcome back to happiness isn't Brighton surgery with Doc Snipes: Practical
tools to improve your mood and quality of life. Today we're going to talk about
10 ways to prevent depression. Now you can't always completely prevent it but
you can't keep it from becoming as bad as it could have and that you know what
that means depends on how bad it could have gotten for you but there are a lot
of things that you can do to intervene early just like when you start feeling
like you're getting a cold there are things you can do to prevent getting a
really bad cold or the flu same thing with depression there are a lot of
interventions you can do when you start feeling it coming on but there are also
a lot of things that you can do to help keep yourself from getting depressed
just like you try to help keep yourself from getting sick get enough sleep
getting enough sleep helps keep you from getting sick but it also helps your body
rest and rebalance and keep you from getting depressed depression can result
from neuro chemical imbalances for a variety of reasons one of them is being
too stressed out being worn down depression as your body going I am
completely out of gas I can't go anymore if you're not getting quality sleep and
that's not just any old sleep it's quality sleep then you may find that you
start feeling more depressed get regular physicals there are a lot of hormone
changes that can cause depression like symptoms hypothyroid is one of them
imbalances an estrogen testosterone or progressed them progesterone can also
cause depressive like symptoms as well as other issues like chronic fatigue
syndrome fibromyalgia and even anemia or lack of enough vitamin D so there are a
lot of things that are really easy to treat some that are a little more
difficult to treat that are physical in nature that can cause symptoms of
depression if your symptoms are being caused by something physical then no
amount of mental health counseling and talking that you do is going to give you
complete resolution of your symptoms you have to figure out what's causing that
Oh transmitter and balance the third thing you can do is eat a healthy diet
those chemicals in your brain are made from proteins so you need to have enough
good quality proteins and that's a healthy diet you don't need to get crazy
about it you need complex carbohydrates you know your your grains and vegetables
and things like that because a lot of the vitamins that your body needs in
order to turn the proteins into neurotransmitters are in complex
carbohydrates and vegetables so it's important to have proteins and
vegetables at least and grains if you can tolerate them water if you don't
have enough water you can actually start feeling confused foggy headed tired and
even depressed if you're too dehydrated you can have symptoms of depression too
much sugar and caffeine like I said if the body is too revved up for too long
your it may quote run out of gas and that's just sort of an image that I want
you to get so make sure you minimize your sugar and caffeine caffeine takes
about 12 hours to get out of your body so what you drink at 12:00 noon is still
impacting your sleep quality at 11 o'clock at night so try to cut back on
your caffeine after 12 o'clock in the afternoon a less physical thing that you
can do is silence your internal critic keep a journal or a log of how often you
do something and you're mean to yourself about it or you tell yourself you can
never succeed at that or of course you screwed that up or you're such an idiot
just keep it tally you don't even have to write it down but keep it tally up
every time you tell yourself something ugly or negative I think you'll be
surprised at how awful you are to yourself and you tell yourself things
you would never tell anybody else let alone your children so silence that
internal critic there is no need for it there is no purpose for it
whenever you hear yourself say something ugly say something back first no I'm not
counter it with something positive if you say if you tell yourself I am such
an idiot counter that by saying no I'm not an idiot I just didn't do that well
but I'm good at a lot of things you don't have to say it out loud but remind
yourself that you are not all those negative things because if you keep
pounding yourself and bombarding yourself with negativity you're going to
basically beat yourself down into depression you're gonna feel helpless
and hopeless so instead of telling yourself that you can't do it right and
you'll never win and get it uh silence that critic focus on the things that you
can change and the things that you are good at because you know what nobody's
good at everything and nobody's perfect all the time and
nobody does anything right a hundred percent of the time I wish I could say
that was not true but it is even the things you do really well you're gonna
screw up once in a while but that's okay you're human everybody does it so be
realistic practice dialectics this is the both and you know think bad things
can happen and sometimes you can't change them however it doesn't mean you
can't have a rich and meaningful life you know I lost my job for example well
that really sucks and I have an opportunity to explore whatever in the
next door is that's going to open or and I have an opportunity to spend more time
with my kids until I find another job or whatever both and it's finding the
silver lining in what's going on yes it can be bad but it can be good at the
same time when we're depressed we feel hopeless and helpless we feel like it's
all going to be bad all of the time so by practicing dialectics we're forcing
ourselves to look for that glimmer of hope
add some happy whether you're preventing depression or you're already starting to
feel a little bit depressed schedule happiness into your day every day
whether it's looking at silly memes on the internet or watching funny videos or
listening to a comedian what where it is that makes you smile and
makes you happy do that for at least 15 minutes every day anybody can find 15
minutes that's I'm not asking too much that helps get your body number one out
of the negativity cycle but it also releases endorphins and happy hormones
if you can get a good belly laugh out of it you're gonna get even more benefit
know your depression triggers we all have them you know if I have a bunch of
consecutive rainy gloomy cold wet nasty days outside I'm gonna start feeling
kind of depressed I know that's a trigger for my depression so what do I
do I make sure that I have plenty of bright lights around me that I take
advantage of the Sun when it's out there that I make good use of the time when
it's gloomy so when it's sunny I can be outside you know I try to look at the
both and and I try to appreciate the fact that it's raining so I don't have
to water my crops or it's you know getting the garden ready for spring or
whatever it is other triggers could be people so if you know that somebody
tends to trigger your depression or your anger or make you feel bad whenever
they're around know what it is about them that triggers you and figure out
how to deal with it I have one family member who is always critical she always
has something that she's got to say this contrary and I've learned that that's
just the way it's gonna be that's just the way she is
so I breathe and I exhale and I greet her and I know that it's gonna come but
as soon as it comes I can say all right you did it it's kind of like getting a
shot you know you knew what was coming it happened we're done with it and I
just let it go but that's how I deal with that so know what things trigger
your depression if there are holidays if there are times a year if you know
Valentine's Day is a horrible holiday for a lot of people do something on
Valentine's Day we have at my house we have an anti Valentine's Day we do
everything in black that day just because I don't want my kids to get a
hook into that notion that you should be in a
relationship and you know all the Disney sort of fancifulness on that day you
know we have fun with it though and we really enjoy the anti Valentine's Day
and even enjoy the day after more because it's 50% off chocolate so that's
another way of both and you know we have fun that day kind of making fun of the
holiday and then we get chocolate the next day bonus identify what's different
when you're not depressed so think about a time when you weren't
depressed what were you doing differently were you exercising were you
working less were you getting better sleep were you drinking less were you
spending time with different people what was different and how can you make that
happen now how can you alter what's going on now to make it more like the
times when you're not depressed because there are certain things that make us
happy and sometimes you know and I'll do it myself
I'll get caught up and doing stuff at work and you know four or five weeks
straight I'll be working and I'll kind of forget just put my head up and take a
breath and I start getting cranky and I look back and I go you know what now
this is not it this is not how I want to live my life this is not what makes me
happy I need to set some boundaries so I can spend time with my family and on the
farm and with the animals because when I'm not depressed when I'm not stressed
out that's what's different get sunlight we know that lack of adequate sunlight
leads people to develop seasonal affective disorder sunlight helps us
make vitamin D and there are tons of vitamin D receptors in those areas in
the brain that are responsible for our mood they don't exactly know how vitamin
D plays in there but they know it does so get sunlight if you're in one of
those places where it rains six months out of the year or where it's dark six
months out of the year talk with your doctor about light
therapy regular overhead lights are not bright enough and they're not the right
spectrum to give you the benefits that sunlight would so if you really do
experience a lot of seasonal affective look into light therapy exercise I know
you're like really when I'm depressed that's the last thing I want to do I
don't mean you've got to go to the gym and run 5 miles I mean get your body
moving exercise releases serotonin serotonin improves mood and helps you
relax so if you can exercise even if it's walking around the block or for me
occasionally if I'll if I'm having a depressive episode I'll go outside and
I'll try to weed and you know I get caught up out in my garden weeding and
it's not a whole lot of exercise but it's enough I'm moving my body around
I'm not sitting on the couch in the dark watching Netflix all day long and it
helps keep your circadian rhythms in alignment so your body knows when it's
supposed to sleep and it's when it's supposed to be awake it gets oxygen
throughout your body which helps you feel more energetic and it helps release
if you exercise for long enough it helps release serotonin so exercise is a
really good thing play with a dog play with your kids you don't have to do
something where you're working at 65% of your target heart rate - additional
bonuses for preventing depression essential oils
the molecules in essential oils enter through your nasal passages and actually
do affect emotional states and they've done a lot of actual actual research on
this in birthing centers and trauma centers and they found that there are
certain essential oils that help calm people down
valerian catnip and lavender are three of the best for calming people down but
you need to figure out what works for you so go to your local health food
store a lot of times they have sample essential oils snip give them the sniff
test if it's something that you need something that's going to work for you
you're gonna sniff it and you're gonna go oh that helps me feel relaxed or I
really like that smell and if it's not something you need you're gonna smell it
and you're gonna be turned off by it that's how we use essential oils with
animals since they can't tell us what they like we let them sniff it and the
ones they linger on are the ones that they probably are going to benefit from
but I digress things that help you feel a little bit more energized can include
Clary sage peppermint and rosemary I'm not as big on peppermint as I am on
rosemary I would much prefer the smell of rosemary so again it depends on your
personal preferences and your own body makeup and all that kind of stuff which
essential oils will work for you and you don't have to put them on just the act
of inhaling them the molecules get in your nose will trigger the effect that
you're looking for so you don't have to worry about toxicity or anything you can
diffuse them in air diffusers or you can just have a little bottle and take a
whiff periodically if that makes you happy the other bonus is to minimize
anxiety and stress when people are depressed they often have an anxiety
component ahead of time and they go hand-in-hand people get depressed then
they get stressed that they're never gonna feel any better or maybe they were
stressed to begin with and they just were stressed for so long that
eventually they ran out of gas and they became depressed but they still have all
these stressors going on if you are constantly basically sitting
in your car in the driveway with your foot on the gas pedal revving the engine
which is what you're doing when you're anxious and depressed at the same time
you're gonna crack your own engine block you're not going to get any better so in
order to allow your body time to cool down and recharge so it doesn't so you
don't feel depressed anymore you need to get rid of those drains on your energy
figure out what you can do to eliminate or minimize the anxiety and stress in
your life and that's a whole different podcast but make a list of things that
cause you anxiety and stress even little things and see how many of them you
could eliminate for one week you know I'm not even saying forever how many of
them can you eliminate for one week so you can just do what you need to do to
get by for a week and let yourself rest and rejuvenate and see if it helps if
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