Natural Interventions For Depression And Anxiety
The World Health Organization estimates that the Covid-19 pandemic has increased the prevalence of anxiety and depression by 25% worldwide. Fortunately, these 2 conditions respond well to an integrative approach. In this interview, Karolyn A. Gazella talks with naturopathic physician Lexi Loch, ND, who has a clinical practice in Portland, OR. Loch discusses why and how an integrative approach is an effective first-line treatment plan for patients diagnosed with depression and anxiety. She also discusses 3 dietary supplements that she often recommends for these conditions.
Advantages Of Holistic Treatment For Anxiety And Depression
Highest Standards, Nationally Recognized:
Anxiety and depression affect more than forty million adults age 18 and over, making them two of the most common mental health concerns in the United States. Since these illnesses involve a complex set of emotional and functional challenges, they require a holistic treatment for anxiety that addresses more than symptoms.
Holistic medicine is an approach to healing that considers the whole person: body, mind, spirit and emotions. The practice of holistic treatment for anxiety integrates conventional and alternative therapies to prevent and treat disease and to promote optimal health. According to the holistic treatment approach, true well-being can only be achieved by gaining proper balance among the various aspects of life.
A Holistic Approach To Treating Depression
If youâre depressed, taking medication is only one of many treatment options. A holistic approach focuses on treating your whole being — body and mind — to help you feel better. A healthy diet, exercise, and talk therapy are a few of the holistic approaches you can use, along with your medication, to help speed recovery from depression.
In a given year, nearly 15 million adults in the U.S. suffer from depression. Those with depression often have another medical condition such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, or cancer, which makes treating the whole body even more important. This article looks at the benefits of diet, exercise, and therapy, and how you can use them alone, or with medication, to help treat depression.
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What Is A Home Remedy
Any treatment that you can perform from the comfort of your own home can be seen as a home remedy for anxiety. Herbal supplements are an example of a common home remedy. People seeking to treat their anxiety may use herbs such as:
These are believed to be somewhat effective at reducing anxiety in certain cases more than any other type of natural supplement. In addition, there are many vitamins that are also highly beneficial for anxiety. Magnesium is perhaps the most valuable, 25% of the country is magnesium deficient and that deficiency may cause anxiety and anxiety symptoms . Vitamin B12 and Vitamin B1 may also be valuable according to some nutritionists. You can add these vitamins in food or in supplement form. In the rest of this article, however, well look at behavior-based remedies for coping with anxiety.
Have Healthy Coping Strategies
Its no secret that much of our modern lifestyles are not congruent with our biology, let alone supportive of mental health. One of the biggest predictors of longevity is psychological resilience, or your ability to adapt to different challenges. So its important to evaluate your life, make changes where necessary, and discover healthy coping mechanisms.
This looks like strengthening healthy thought patterns, having a mindfulness journal, meditating, or practicing controlled breathing exercises. Theres an infinite number of options, and most are completely free and offer great benefit to your mind and body.
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Take Time To Meditate
When it comes to holistic ways to treat anxiety, meditation can be very effective. Meditating involves sitting quietly, breathing evenly and becoming more aware of your surroundings. It helps you focus on the present moment, not something in the future thats making you worry. Try starting out with 10 minutes of meditation a day.
What Are The Alternatives To Antidepressants
If you don’t want to take antidepressants, there are lots of alternative treatments you can try. In fact, if you are diagnosed with mild depression, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines for treating depression recommend that doctors offer you other treatments ahead of medication.
If you are taking antidepressants, you may also want to use other options for treatment and support, as well as your medication.
This page has information on some of the common alternatives to antidepressants. You may find these helpful to use instead of your medication, or alongside it:
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The Gut + Brain Connection & Mental Health
Psychological, behavioral, and emotional symptoms can be triggered by an unhealthy gut.
For example, Candida albicansor yeastovergrowth can cause anxiety attacks, mood swings, depression, brain fog, crying spells, and depression. Integrative doctors estimate that Candida overgrowth is likely massively underdiagnosed. Due to a high sugar and refined carb diet, low vegetable intake, and high stress, candida can quietly proliferate and take over the gut without its host knowing.
In addition, your main neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of well-being and satisfaction, serotonin, is produced in the gut. Enzymes and friendly bacteria in the gut help convert amino acids to serotonin, which then makes its way to your brain where it stabilizes your mood.
Without proper digestive function, the brain lacks access to important chemical signals that keep us feeling optimistic, motivated, and at ease. Integrative and internal medicine provides a safe and natural way to restore this access.
An Introduction To Herbal Remedies And Supplements
Herbal remedies come from plants. If possible, choose a remedy which has been standardised, i.e. the contents are approximately the same in each bottle or tablet you buy.
Plant remedies are not always safer than ordinary medicines. All of them can have side-effects and interact with other medicines.
Supplements include vitamins, minerals and animal and plant products, such as cod liver oil. They can also have side-effects and interact with other medicines.
Some people take supplements, like vitamin C in high doses, but this can damage the liver or kidneys. Many supplements have a recommended daily intake , or allowance .
Do not go beyond this dose without talking to an experienced health professional.
These are called ‘cognitive enhancers’ and can improve concentration. They include:
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How Does Depression Work
Being depressed is more than feeling blue for a short period of time. People often say things like I feel so depressed or thats depressing, but the truth is that depression is a well-defined disorder, including nine symptoms:
If youve experienced at least 5 of these symptoms for at least 2 weeks, you may be diagnosed with depression. Read more about depressive symptoms here: Am I depressed? Learn about criteria and take an online depression test.
That is how depression works. Its never about laziness or being unambitious, its depression. Luckily, you can reverse this vicious cycle once you understand it. Take a look at this 3.5-minute video about the cycle of depression:
Home Remedies: Anxiety And Stress
Stress is something that just about everyone knows well and experiences often. Its that feeling of pressure, typically a result of too much to do and too little time to do it in. In a busy life, stress is almost unavoidable. Stress is caused by events that are positive new job, vacation or marriage as well as negative job loss, divorce or death in the family. Stress is not the event itself but rather, your psychological or physical reaction to the event.
Anxiety is a tense feeling that often accompanies stress. Its typically directed toward the future toward something that may happen soon. Some Anxiety can motivate you or help yo respond to danger. However, if you have ongoing anxiety that interferes with daily activities and makes it hard to enjoy life, then anxiety can be a problem.
Lifestyle and home remedies:
Art and music therapy can be helpful. You can use drawing, painting, clay and sculpture to express you inner thought and emotions when talking about them is difficult. The creation and interpretations of art is thought to therapeutic. Listening to or playing music even during medical procedures a]has also been shown to have relaxing and calming effects.
To cope with an anxiety disorder, here are things to consider:
Prevention:
Theres no way to predict for certain what will cause someone to develop an anxiety disorder, but you can take steps to reduce the impact of symptoms if youre anxious:
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Inclusion And Exclusion Criteria
Only randomized controlled trials were included in this review. Meeting abstracts, comments, review articles and case reports were excluded. Studies involving St. Johns Wort were also excluded because it has been extensively researched, revealing many potential interactions with drugs that are P-glycoprotein and/or CYP3A substrates . Also, the large body of literature merits a separate review.
Details of our screening selection process are provided in Figure 1.
Overview of study selection
How Meditation Works For Depression
The most helpful type of meditation in Goyals study was mindfulness meditation a self-awareness practice that involves focusing on the present moment and gently refocusing, without judgment, whenever attention wanders. The theory: Meditation may ease depression by stopping, for a while, the ever-churning worries and fears that can fuel it.
If Im depressed about a life change like divorce or losing a job and keep thinking about it, I may become more depressed. And the churning thoughts can cause a cascade of symptoms that lead to feeling debilitated, Goyal says. One way mindfulness may help is by causing you to pause and react less to whatever is bothering you. This process can reduce the symptoms, making them less bothersome, and over time can become second nature with more meditation practice.
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The Holistic Treatment Approach To Anxiety Is Well
According to the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, the holistic approach to medicine encompasses all safe and appropriate modalities of diagnosis and treatment. It includes analysis of physical, nutritional, environmental, emotional, spiritual and lifestyle elements. Holistic medicine focuses upon patient education and participation in the healing process.
- Complementary therapies. Sometimes known as alternative therapies, this involves the use of treatments such as acupuncture, chiropractic care, homeopathy, massage therapy, naturopathy and others.
- Pharmacology. Judicious use of drugs, such as antidepressants and mood stabilizers, may be necessary to treat severe symptoms so that progress can be made in other areas of treatment.Nutritional wellness. Dietary changes or supplements can have a profound effect in alleviating symptoms or treating conditions such as insomnia.
- Lifestyle changes. Staying active through an exercise regimen or learning relaxation techniques or meditating are proven effective for overcoming many types of anxiety and depression.
- Psychotherapy. Three of the more common methods used for treating depression include cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy and psychodynamic therapy. A blended approach may be used to teach practical techniques to reframe negative thinking and change behaviors.
Avoid Alcohol And Nicotine
Some people use alcohol and nicotine to relieve symptoms of anxiety. This relief is only temporary, though. Alcohol and nicotine can make the symptoms of anxiety worse and more frequent.
A involving teenagers suggests the use of alcohol and nicotine was associated with higher instances of mental health conditions. Those who used alcohol and nicotine were in more distress than those who did not.
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What Talk Therapy Can Do For Depression
Talk therapy, or psychotherapy, is another valuable tool to combat depression. Two kinds of therapy — cognitive-behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy — have been found to be especially useful in treating depression. Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps you look at how negative thoughts and behaviors may be contributing to your depression. CBT teaches you how to make positive changes in how you think. Interpersonal therapy can help you improve your relationships with family and friends, so you feel better.
Talk therapy can last anywhere from several weeks to several years and can be one-on-one with a therapist or in a group. Many people combine therapy with other treatments, such as medication or exercise.
âTalk therapy gives you skills to help deal with your depression long term,â says Christensen. âA therapist can work with you to give you strategies to help fight your depression and ways of handling your depression so you have more control. This helps you stay feeling better in the long run.â
Cut Down On Drinking As A Natural Depression Treatment
As you can imagine, alcohol and depression in combination easily trigger a vicious cycle. Drinking alcohol frequently increases the risk of depression and depression increases the risk of alcohol abuse.
So, what does drinking frequently mean? How much alcohol is too much?
Well, according to the NHS, drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week is considered high-risk drinking. Less than 14 units is low-risk .
14 units = 6 pints of average-strength beer or 10 small glasses of low-strength wine.
Also, you shouldnt drink more than 3-4 units on the same day.
So, be careful not to drink too much when going through depression, especially not late at night as it will affect your sleep quality. This video will tell you more about some common sleep villains who disturb your sleep and increase the risk of depression:
If you need help with cutting down on drinking, visit this NHS page: Alcohol Support.
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What Is The Prognosis For People Who Use Alternative Therapies For Depression
Scientists have yet to agree about the effectiveness of the alternative therapies listed here. It is difficult to predict a prognosis. Part of the journey of using alternative therapies is that you will have to do some experimentation to figure out what works and what doesnt work for you. Some people who have used alternative therapies have had success, and others havent. Stay in contact with your healthcare provider while you use these therapies.
How To Treat Depression Naturally
1. Consider why you might feel depressed. Sometimes depression is a symptom of something circumstantial in your life, rather than biochemical imbalances. Does your job require you to sell out your integrity every day? Have you been unable to admit that you need to end your ? Are you feeling spiritually disconnected or sexually restless? Are you suffering from creative blocks? Is your body failing you? Are you facing financial ruin? Be honest with yourself about what might be off-kilter in your life, and make an effort to get to the root of why you might be feeling depressed.
2. Move your body. Exercise releases happy-making endorphins, which act like natural antidepressants. Runner’s high, anyone?
3. Never skip a meal. Keeping your blood sugar stable reduces mood swings.
4. Eat a serotonin-enhancing diet. Many antidepressants like Prozac act by inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin by receptors in the brain, thereby increasing serotonin levels. But you can increase your brain’s serotonin levels by eating foods that boost your serotonin levels naturally. Serotonin-enhancing foods include:
- Foods high in omega-3 fatty acids
- Healthy fats like coconut oil
- A high-protein diet, especially proteins high in tryptophan, like free-range turkey
5. Avoid caffeine, which reduces serotonin levels. If you need an energy boost, supplement with L-Tyrosine .
7. Try mood-enhancing supplements.
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Learn To Recognize Negative Thinking
Sometimes these thoughts can be obvious, such as times when you berate or criticize yourself. Other times, they can be more subtle. You might find yourself engaging in things like catastrophizing or all-or-nothing thinking.
Catastrophizing involves always anticipating negative outcomes. All-or-nothing thinking means that you think of things as either successes or failures with no in-between. Once you get better at recognizing these cognitive patterns, you can start working on some healthier replacements.
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Add Greenery To Your Home Or Office
You may also find it helpful to add indoor plants to your home or office environment. Natural settings are associated with improved mental well-being, so it makes sense that bringing the outdoors in might help improve your mood.
Studies have shown that adding indoor plants to your home or office can help in a variety of ways, including:
- Improving the workplace: Research has shown that office spaces enhanced with indoor plants improve worker concentration and workplace satisfaction.
- Reducing stress levels: Another study found that actively interacting with indoor plans by caring for them can reduce both physiological and psychological stress.
- : Research has found that students who spent most of their time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic had better mental health if they were exposed to more green plants. While about a third of the participants reported symptoms of moderate depression, those exposed to more greenery had lower levels of depression and anxiety.
Choosing certain plants may provide additional benefits. For example, research suggests that the scent of a lavender plant can help people feel calmer and more relaxed. No matter what type of plants you choose, greenery can be a great way to beautify your surroundings and potentially improve your mood.
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