The Toll Depression Takes On The Body
Depression is much more than just a brain disorder. It causes physical symptoms and can cause lasting damage to the body because of both direct effects and indirect complications of living with this mental illness. For instance, depression can change your appetite. It may trigger you to eat less and lose an unhealthy amount of weight. Or it can cause you to eat more, leading to weight gain and associated health conditions.
You may also experience chronic pain as a result of depression. Unexplained aches and pains, like headaches, back pain, or joint tenderness, can be triggered by depression. Although not fully understood, it may be that depression makes you less tolerant of pain, so that everything just hurts more.
Living with depression puts you at risk for serious physical health conditions, including heart disease and stroke. The reason for this may be that depression triggers an overproduction of clotting factors and variation in heart rate. These are both factors that can lead to a heart attack or stroke.
Gastrointestinal distress is a potential complication of depression. The gut actually has a major connection to mood and mental health and is sometimes referred to as the bodys second brain. There are important receptors in the gut and an ecosystem of bacteria, which when out of whack can affect mood. If you are depressed, you may experience stomach aches, indigestion, nausea, cramps, or bloating.
Alcohol Use And Suicide
Alcohol use is connected with suicide. Alcohol use can create a situation that feeds into the underlying factors that make someone want to commit suicide, such as depression. Further, it can also decrease the inhibitions that most people have about ending their own lives. Alcohol use is also more likely in people who have conditions that create suicide-related risks, so it can be difficult to tell how involved alcohol is in a particular situation.
More Than A Chemical Imbalance
For many years, researchers thought that the root cause of depression was a chemical imbalance in the brain. Depression was thought to occur because the brain didnt produce enough of certain chemicals , such as dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine, which are important for mood regulation.
Thats why depression is treated with antidepressants. Some antidepressants help the brain produce more of the neurotransmitters and others help these chemicals hang around a little longer inside your head.
Nowadays, the story is different.
Even though antidepressants immediately provide the brain with more neurotransmitters, it takes several weeks for the medications to work. This is a fact that has made more than one researcher scratch their heads. If the chemical imbalance is the problem, why doesnt depression disappear as soon as we fix the chemical imbalance?
Well, new research suggests that the chemical imbalance is a consequence of the more fundamental cause of depression. Its true that neurotransmitters play an important role in depression, but theyre probably not the core problem.
Today, researchers believe that the most probable cause of depression is a slow production of new brain cells and poor connections between brain cells, especially in the prefrontal cortex and in the Hippocampus. Among other things, these brain areas are responsible for mood regulation and information processing.
Simply put:
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What Causes Depression In The Brain
If you struggle with depression, youve probably heard its caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain. While this is technically correct, the whole picture is a bit more complex. Theres no question that the chemicals in your brain play an important role, but its not as simple as one of those chemicals being too high or too low.
Over the last 20 years, scientists and mental health experts have learned so much more about the causes of depression. In this post, were going to break down the causes of depression in the brain so you can get a better understanding of your mental health.
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Why Depression Is Serious
There are many types of depression, including major depression, persistent depressive disorder , as well as situational types such as seasonal affective disorder and postpartum depression.
Our understanding of depression is really evolving in medicine. We used to lump everyone into the category of major depression, but within the past 10 years or so weve realized that not everyone falls into that bucket, says Patricia Areán, a clinical psychologist and professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the UW School of Medicine.
Anyone of any age, gender, race, ability or cultural background can develop depression. And its a serious problem: Over the past decades, suicides have increased in the United States, according to data from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Additionally, The World Health Organization lists depression as a leading cause of disability worldwide.
Depression doesnt just cause absenteeism, but presenteeism, where youre present but you cant function well, youre having a hard time focusing and the quality of work isnt good, but you still show up because you dont feel comfortable calling in sick, Areán says.
How Is Neuroinflammation Linked With Depression
What happens in neuroinflammation is that the proinflammatory cytokines increase.
This then activates the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, increasing a resistance to glucocorticoids .
This subsequently affects serotonin synthesis and metabolism, neuronal apoptosis and neurogenesis , and neuroplasticity .
This is how neuroinflammation is involved with depression.
As you can see, there is so much involved in how the gut affects the brain.
What is also happening is that when there is chronic inflammation present in the body, other inflammatory conditions arise. Digestive issues, autoimmune conditions, IBD, chronic pain, obesity, diabetes, psoriasis, eczema, other skin conditions are all common health issues with depression.
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What Is Clinical Depression
Most people refer to depression as a mood disorder, but clinical depression is actually a psychological condition that affects much more than the way an individual feels. In fact, clinical depression can impact an individuals ability to function entirely. Individuals experiencing clinical depression typically lose interest in activities they once enjoyed. In addition to feeling hopeless for extended periods of time, individuals living with clinical depression have difficulty working, studying, and interacting with others. They often report that they dont feel like themselves anymore.
Clinical depression can look different from person to person, but most individuals diagnosed with the condition experience symptoms that typically include:
- Feeling sad, empty, or hopeless
- Angry outbursts, irritability, or frustration over small matters
- Loss of interest or pleasure in most or all activities such as hobbies, sports, sex, or spending time with family and friends
- Feeling tired and having little to no energy
- Sleep disturbances such as insomnia or oversleeping
- Reduced or increased appetite
- Self-blame or fixating on past failures
- Frequent or recurrent thoughts of death, suicidal thoughts, or suicide attempts
Evidence From Neuroimaging Studies
The published literature of brain imaging findings in depression has had substantial growth over the past 15 years. Imaging studies can be divided by the imaging modality used i.e. magnetic resonance imaging , positron emission tomography , and single photon emission computed tomography . The findings from these studies can broadly be divided into whether regional brain abnormalities were being studied and found or whether brain circuits or connectivity between brain regions was studied.
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How Alcohol Affects Our Brain Chemistry
The brain relies on a delicate balance of chemicals and processes. Alcohol is a depressant, which means it can disrupt that balance, affecting our thoughts, feelings and actions and sometimes our long-term mental health. This is partly down to neurotransmitters, which are chemicals that help to transmit signals from one nerve in the brain to another.
For example, the relaxed feeling we can experience if we have a drink is due to the chemical changes alcohol has caused in the brain. A drink can make some people feel more confident and less anxious, as the alcohol begins to suppress the part of the brain associated with inhibition.
As we drink more, the impact on our brain function increases. And regardless of the mood were in, with increasing alcohol consumption, its possible that negative emotions will take over, leading to a negative impact on mental health. Alcohol can be linked to aggression and some people report becoming angry, aggressive, anxious or depressed when they drink.
What Parts Of The Brain Does Alcohol Affect
Alcohol creates its effects by influencing gamma-aminobutyric acid receptors in the brain. GABA receptors play an important role in calming the brain when stimulated, they slow and inhibit brain function. By influencing GABA receptors, alcohol also affects different parts of the brain.
Some of the parts of the brain most influenced by GABA receptors include:
- Hippocampus: Influences memory and learning
- Amygdala: The center for emotion and social interaction
- Cerebral cortex: Controls high-level cognitive processes like reasoning
- Cerebellum: Center for motor movement and coordination
- Hypothalamus: Processes and controls biological processes like temperature, pain and appetite
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How Is Genetics Linked To The Risk Of Depression
We know that depression can sometimes run in families. This suggests that theres at least a partial genetic link to depression. Children, siblings, and parents of people with severe depression are somewhat more likely to have depression than are members of the general population. Multiple genes interacting with one another in special ways probably contribute to the various types of depression that run in families. Yet despite the evidence of a family link to depression, it is unlikely that there is a single depression gene, but rather, many genes that each contribute small effects toward depression when they interact with the environment.
Regional Brain Abnormalities In Depression
Mclean introduced the concept of the brain being composed of three different assemblies, radically different in their chemistry and structure and in evolutionary terms eons apart, the so called triune brain . According to this description the brain can be divided into the prefrontal neocortex , the limbic or mammalian brain and the reptilian complex composed of the basal ganglia and brain stem structures . Regional brain imaging studies have investigated abnormalities in each of these brain subdivisions to investigate the location of depression in the brain.
Cortical abnormalities
Cortical brain areas implicated in depression are the dorsal and medial prefrontal cortex, the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex, the orbital frontal cortex and the insula.
The insula particularly its anterior subdivision has been implicated in experience of emotions such as disgust, self-reflection and assessment of internal visceral states, and response to stimuli of taste and smell. In depression, insular activation has been reported to be increased in response to disgust inducing stimuli and negative pictures and insular volume has been noted to correlate with depression scores . One study on the other hand reported increased insular activation in response to negative stimuli after antidepressant treatment . On the whole these findings suggest increased sensitivity of the insula to internal visceral and cognitive processes during depression.
Subcortical Limbic brain regions
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What Anxiety And Depression Does To Your Brain
Depression is a debilitating disease that runs rampant in todays world. It affects nearly 4.4 percent of the worlds population, a shockingly large number when looking at the size of the worlds population of 7 billion people, and the numbers keep growing. The disorders prominent status in society is followed closely by that of anxiety. Both disorders can deeply affect the life of the sufferer. The two psychiatric diseases pose a major concern for neuroscientists seeking to understand and find answers for sufferers of the disorders.
The great concern surrounding depression lies in its effect on the brain. Studies have shown that the condition causes the memory hub of the brain the hippocampus to shrink. While this may initially manifest as poor memory, it becomes far more problematic later in life. The presence of a shrunken hippocampus has become linked to the development of Alzheimers Disease and dementia in patients with neurocognitive disorder.
In the past, there have been fewer studies of the relationship between depression and anxiety when it combined in patients. However, more recent studies are taking steps to analyze the effect this comorbidity of the two disorders might have on the patient. Comorbidity of the two conditions has grown in concern as the conditions presence increases in society, particularly as the presence of both diseases in a patient have been noted to lead to poorer health and suicidal ideation.
How Depression Affects The Brain
When we think about depression, what comes to mind are feelings and emotions or, for some, the absence of feelings and emotions. In order to really understand depression, however, its important to be aware that the condition has physical aspects as well. Most people understand what depression looks like on the outside, in terms of a persons behavior, but our medical understanding of the actual progression of the disease and its treatments continues to evolve.
What we know right now is that, on a chemical level, depression involves neurotransmitters, which can be thought of as the messengers that carry signals between brain cells, or neurons.
The current standard of care for the treatment of depression is based on what we call the monoamine deficiency hypothesis, essentially presuming that one of three neurotransmitters in the brain is deficient or underactive, says Rachel Katz, MD, a Yale Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry.
But according to Dr. Katz, this is only part of the story. There are about 100 types of neurotransmitters overall, and billions of connections between neurons in each persons brain.
There remains much to learn.
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Is It Possible To Reverse Effects Of Depression
Research suggests that some of the physical brain changes caused by depression can be reversed.
Early studies have shown promising research that treatments such as antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy may reduce inflammation caused by depression as well as help the brain form new synaptic connections that were compromised during depression.
Ketamine and benzodiazepine-like molecules are also promising, according to a 2017 review of human studies of ketamine. This research focused primarily on the activity of glutamate, a neurotransmitter, in the prefrontal cortex.
More research is needed on the potential opioid-like properties of ketamine.
How Depression Affects The Brain: It Causes Inflammation
How depression affects the brain varies from person to person however, it often causes inflammation. There are quite a few recent research findings that find a connection between depression and inflammation – and, not just in the brain.
Inflammation in the brain is most often linked to the length of time that a person has suffered from depression.
Chronic depression and long-term depression have been shown to drastically impact inflammation in the brain. People who suffer from depression for a decade typically show around a 25% increase in brain inflammation compared to those without depression.
How depression affects the brain can be serious since inflammation in the brain often leads to other issues in the brain, such as a loss of neuroplasticity and decreased neurotransmitter function .
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How Does Your Brain Change From Depression
What does depression do to the brain? Unfortunately, this question isnt easily answered, because the effects of depression on the brain can be quite complex. Whats more, they continue to be studied, since we dont understand everything there is to know about the relationship between our brains and depression. Even though researchers have more to learn about the cause, effect, and correlation between the brain and depression, they have been able to establish a foundational understanding of how depression affects the brain.
In short, depression is broadly associated with brain inflammation. But we dont yet know if depression causes brain inflammation, or if its the opposite that the inflammation is causing depression.
Researchers have been able to determine that depression directly impacts multiple areas of the brain, most of which are affected by a loss of gray matter volume . Gray matter is a type of brain material thats dense with cells and needed for strong brain activity.
Does Depression Cause Damage To Your Brain
Depression is one of the most common mental health challenges in the world today. If you live with this condition, you know how debilitating it can be on your mental, physical, and emotional health. Depression can make you feel worthless and hopeless and can leave you bedridden or battling suicidal thoughts. Luckily, a combination of therapy and medication can help treat depression. But if left untreated, it can damage the brain.
Depression is more than just feeling down. It just might physically change your brain. This can affect how you think, feel, and act. Experts who study this arent sure what causes these changes. They think genetics, stress, and inflammation might play a role. Nevertheless, its important to get help for your depression. Thats because repeat episodes seem to damage your brain more and more over time. Early treatment might help you avoid or ease some of the following changes.
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