What to do if you run out of Anti-Depressants
Learn to talk like a scientist:
I strongly support the notion of dropping the “Talk like a pirate day” for the “Talk like a scientist” week.
In order to get this idea started I compiled a list of some everyday expressions and their appropriate counterpart in more scientific terms.
As I am not capable of producing statements that would be suitable for exemplary purposes I qote the scientific paper: How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs
Every-day-language |
Talk like a Scientist |
| Serotonin makes you happy. | Reported levels of happiness were positively correlated and reported levels of sadness were negatively correlated with serotonin synthesis in the right anterior cingulate cortex. |
| Too little serotonin makes you unhappy. | Research on the association between various polymorphisms and depression supports the idea that serotonin plays a role, not only in the treatment of depression but also in susceptibility to depression and suicide. |
| Happy people are healthy. | Another reason for pursuing nonpharmacologic methods of increasing serotonin arises from the increasing recognition that happiness and well-being are important, both as factors protecting against mental and physical disorders and in their own right. |
| Unhappy people get more often sick. | A meta-analysis of 45 studies demonstrated that hostility is a risk factor for CHD and for all-cause mortality. |
| Happy people life longer. | In a classic study, those in the lowest quartile for positive emotions, rated from autobiographies written at a mean age of 22 years, died on average 10 years earlier than those in the highest quartile. |
| Happy people have more friends. | Research confirms what might be intuitively expected, that positive emotions and agreeableness foster congenial relationships with others. This in turn will create the conditions for an increase in social support. |
| When you think about happy things, you will get happy. | The study by Perreau-Linck and colleagues is the first to report that self-induced changes in mood can influence serotonin synthesis. |
| Bright light makes you feel good. | serotonin levels are higher in those who died in summer than in those who died in winter. A similar conclusion came from a study on healthy volunteers, in which serotonin synthesis was assessed by measurements of the serotonin metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) in the venous outflow from the brain. |
| After exercising you feel good. | motor activity increases the firing rates of serotonin neurons, and this results in increased release and synthesis of serotonin. In addition, there is an increase in the brain of the serotonin precursor tryptophan that persists after exercise. |
| When you eat food that has anti depressants in it, you feel better. | α-Lactalbumin, a minor constituent of milk, is one protein that contains relatively more tryptophan than most proteins. Acute ingestion of α-lactalbumin by humans can improve mood and cognition in some circumstances, presumably owing to increased serotonin. |
The part where they connect thinking of happy things and the raised serotonin level in the brain absolutely plays into the post about Being lucky. Another thing that gets mentioned on the site is a study which proves that meditation (intensive thinking) will increase the level of dopamine. Self fulfilling prophecies are backed up by your brain’s neural plasticity.
Nonscientific conclusion:
So when you are running out of Prozac, take a walk during the daytime and think about happy things. → It will make you happy!
In the case anyone feels like he/she needs more guidance, I suggest to learn:
How to pick up like a scientist
I absolutely love that show!
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