How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs

[andrewducker]

Fascinating paper here.
Some of the ideas:

• Self-induced changes in mood can influence serotonin synthesis. This raises the possibility that the interaction between serotonin synthesis and mood may be 2-way, with serotonin influencing mood and mood influencing serotonin.


• Bright light is, of course, a standard treatment for seasonal depression, but a few studies also suggest that it is an effective treatment for nonseasonal depression and also reduces depressed mood in women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder and in pregnant women suffering from depression.


• Exercise improves mood in subclinical populations as well as in patients. The most consistent effect is seen when regular exercisers undertake aerobic exercise at a level with which they are familiar.


• Diet. But be careful - some of the things you may have been told increase serotonin in the brain don't actually...

Comments

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

That first point sounds like a no-brainer, though - you can increase seratonin with exercise and all sorts. And obviously, since it's a mood-related chemical, the relationship goes both ways.

[andrewducker]

As it says in the article "The study by Perreau-Linck and colleagues is the first to report that self-induced changes in mood can influence serotonin synthesis." - referencing a study from 2007. So it clearly wasn't a no-brainer to everyone, and it was proved remarkably recently.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

However purely on a physiological basis the neurotransmitters return to normal levels reasonably quickly after exercise.

And as far as I am aware, changing you diet will only help if you are deficient in particular areas. Tryptophan essential as the precursor to serotonin and also particularly important for absorption of tryptophan, vitamin B.

Also important are achieving small goals and doing things that make you happy.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

I didn't know this was recent research. That seems peculiar - everybody who has some sort of a mental illness that includes depressive periods has heard all this to death. "Smile! Eat chocolate! Go outside for a walk!" While these things do in fact have benefits, it gets *old*. Not to mention patronising, and failing utterly to take a lot of things into account.

[nb, none of this aimed at you :-)]

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Sorry to leap in, I'm kinda curious.

If you think that people who have depressive periods are aware of the advice, do you think first of all that they take it?

Secondly if they don't, why not?

(Thirdly, if they do do these things, would this be "managed depression" in the way other conditions like asthma are managed by the individual?)

[andrewducker]

It's not recent research that increasing serotonin makes you happier - but it is recent research that making you happier increases your serotonin.

(I think an awful lot of people assumed it anyway)

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I don't know the physiological mechanisms, but I've read in a number of fairly convincing places that regular, reasonably intense aerobic exercise will tend to boost mood on a pretty long-term basis. Could be wrong, though.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Have spent 10 mins trying to find a paper but going to stop for now as I'm working on something else. To the best of my memory there is a rise during exercise and then it tails off once you stop.

However there are other reasons for why exercise works. Firstly, giving a person some attention, putting them in a study will give rise to the placebo effect. Secondly different things happen when a person does exercise. They can feel a sense of achieving something. They can develop better attitudes to their bodies, and then feel better about the world around them because they don't feel they're being judged They might develop structure in their lives that they didnt have before, by actually going somewhere.

I think humans need to move around a certain about, we have these physical, biological bodies, it makes sense that they're intended to be locomotive... not blobs which take over the sofa.

As well as the reasons I listed above, the can be a social element to exercise which is what my research is looking at.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

No doubt I'll wake up at 4am, a researcher in mind and find a paper before posting it and falling asleep on the laptop :)

[andrewducker]

I shall look forward to that :->

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Although a recent paper in 2007 by Blumenthal et al suggest that Exercise efficacy is comparable to anti-depressants effect. However, placebo response rates were high,, implying a lot of the therapeutic benefits are actually to do with "patient expectations, ongoing symptom monitoring, attention, and other nonspecific factors".

http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/PSY.0b013e318148c19av1

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

I'll see if I can pull up the references. (Hadn't realised this was your area of study - interesting!). They weren't in an academic book, but I think there were footnotes to more academic sources.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Just a quick point, I'm off to read the paper, the article you linked to cites a study from 2000 that says exactly the same thing just without directionality. Once I've read the other paper I'll be back.