Table of Contents
A. What is depression?😥
Depression is often marked by a sustained low energy state, where one feels bored, and uninterested even in day-to-day work, with a profound loss of self-esteem, and self-confidence, where nothing in the world appears interesting and life appears to have no meaning. Many times depression occurs with paranoia, repeated suicidal thoughts, mania, and so on.
Depression is considered to be one of the most epidemiologically growing mental health disorders. It is very important to know that depression is not a personality disorder, but rather a neuroticism like anxiety. Therefore depression is the outcome of neither any behavioral anomalies nor false beliefs. This is a disorder where the body simply has less energy because the brain is exhausting too much energy.
Let us remodel depression beyond a mental health disease and call it an energy-mismanagement lead nervous system disorder.
- Depression is a metabolic syndrome(not a mental health disorder) of either of the two cases:-
a) Body and mind have insufficient energy to function.
b) Body and mind have excess energy that is unused. - Depression is a neurotic disorder and not a
psychosis. - Any neuroticism is a disorder of autonomic(sympathovagal) system impairment (neither central nor peripheral neuropathy).
Having modeled depression from a different dimension, than how it is been seen today, we have a better chance to look at depression from a bird-eye view.
When you have to see the entire ocean, you can not do that from a submarine. You have to come out of the ocean, go higher in a plane and then look into the ocean. That is exactly what we are doing here to understand why depression becomes an addiction!
B. Symptoms
Even though we discussed the symptoms in section A, let us revisit the symptoms again.
- Feeling low and sleepy all the time.
- Unwillingness to socialize and talk to people.
- Affinity to stay away from the sun, restrained in a room and alone.
- Desire to simply eat, just eat, and keep eating, junk and juices, and everything.
- The feeling of worthlessness.
- Repetitive thoughts of suicide.
- Low mood. Tiredness, fatigued, no interest in doing even the basic activities of the day.
- Total loss of sexual desire and paraphilia.=>Increased desire for pain and hurt.
- Pathological boredom. (Depression at times also appears like a sad boring life)
Because in depression one loses interest in day-to-day activities, one of the commonest traits that is been observed amongst the patients with depression is not bathing, and a disorganized environment.
C. The Science:🔬
- The Amygdala of the brain is responsible for sensing hormonal variation and then taking the flight-fight response. Under depression, it takes a “freeze” response.
- Amygdala and Thalamus control the sympathetic branch of the autonomic system. The sympathetic branch is the ON switch of the organs. Because the ON switch is turned off in depression, all organs slow down.
- Hence liver function is down-regulated. The liver is a major energy producer. Hence you feel low energy. The liver is also a major hormone producer which is also downregulated. So, you feel dead.
- Low energy makes the brain “feel bad” and therefore hormone dopamine(our pleasure hormone) gets low significantly.
Whenever there is low energy in the limbic brain, the brain gets angry and irritated. Therefore anxiety and aggression are often seen commonly in depressive patients. (It is important to note here that individuals with depression have passive aggression, rather than expressive anger outbursts).
Because this entire condition is a threat to survival, our threat-handling limbic brain center amygdala gets overactive in depression. Whenever anything(behavior, action, work) involves a frequent limbic system, the brain encodes the physiology, and the behavior into the basal ganglion and that becomes a habit. The brain does so to minimize putting energy into decision-making.
Because persistent depression, associated physiology, and symptoms get encoded into our habit brains, depression may easily become a habit.
However, let us not jump to any conclusion yet and go further up and see depression as an ocean from greater heights.
D. Pathological Markers💉
- Hba1c++
- T3++.
- RBC Count–
- Esonophills++
- GGT ++
- Creatinine-
- Tgl++
- BP–
- Heart Rate++
- Testosterone—
- Estradiol++
- Cortisol–
- HDL-, Vitamin D–
It is important to know that anything that becomes a habit over a period of time causes changes in our pathology. Because several depression symptoms can also be observed in several of the pathological conditions, it becomes difficult at times to differentiate depression as a mental health disorder from depression due to pathological conditions.
E. Habit
We have already understood how depressive behavior, thereafter the symptoms, and thereafter the physiology, and finally psychology becomes a habit.
- Amygdala<>Basal Ganglia forms our habit brain.
- So you will repetitively go back to this state.
F. Intervene.🛑
There is a compensation mechanism present right in your body for all problems. In depression, you have to simply upregulate metabolism. GH(growth hormone)+Oxytocin together act as a metabolic regulator. (You need to know only this).
So,💡
- Whenever you feel depressed, just go out of the home and start walking.
- Stop by a t-shop and start talking with whomsoever doesn’t matter.
- Take a bath and force your body to upregulate your metabolism.
If depression was so easy, then why would so many get depressed? This doesn’t make any sense, does it? Besides, there is a whole industry of diagnosis, monitoring, medicines, and treatments around depression. This appears unmanageable.
All of the above concerns seem true, not necessarily because they are true, but because of the habit brain. Anything that gets encoded into a habit also gets encoded into our belief system.
For example, when you learn cycling, everytime you pick up a cycle(even after two decades of never cycling), you still can cycle, because your brain knows how to cycle and it believes that it can cycle. If you try to forget cycling, it is extremely hard(nearly impossible) for you to forget. The same way when you try to come out of the depression, brain finds it nearly impossible to forget that you are being depressed.
G. Work:⏲
We have already seen that depression is essentially a metabolic syndrome that becomes an addiction and then a habit over a period of time. We also now know that depression is a low dopamine state of not feeling good, and therefore interest in working also reduces.
Above is the key theory that you can use at the early stage of your depressive symptoms. If you are not interested to work, or if you do not find interest in even regular activities, and if life appears boring, then you can not suddenly push yourself out of the situation. This is a habit, and do not forget that you can’t forget cycling.
What you have to do instead is remember that the body produces low energy when it doesn’t need energy, but the same body starts producing more energy when it needs more energy. So your focus will not be to change the habit but increase the energy in the body. The amount of energy is proportional to work. So you increase your work timing and put hard work into whatever you do. Your objective would not be to think about the outcome(as your brain will trick you and ask you what is the point of working so hard anyways?), but your objective will be to work more simply because you want to have more energy.
- Men must work 12-15 hours a day with at least 3 hours of physical stress.
- Women must work at most 4-6 hours a day and must take no more than 2 hours of stress.
H. How long will it take to come out of depression?
- Minor genetic changes will take 3.5 years, and major inheritable genes will change over 7 years. So good luck if you think you will take antidepressants and get well soon.
It is very important to know that you are not working against the tide of the world, or an unfair world when you are trying to deal with your depression. You are rather fighting against your own brain. The problem is no one wins against their own brain. So in all cases, you will fall again and again, and even if you appear to heal for a few days or months, you will again collapse into depression.
Therefore the idea is not going to fight your own brain. But make your brain busy with better things, which is fighting against the odds, putting up excess had-work and making more energy.
As your energy increases, your brain feels good. Therefore dopamine increases. The brain always loves high dopamine. So your inspiration would now become feeling good at the end of the day with your high energy and nothing else. Even when you have a depressive event, you are going to wake up again tomorrow and thrive for getting more energy by putting in more hard work.
👉🏻Final Note:
STAY AWAY FROM SYMPATHY-SEEKERS AND GIVERS if you want to live.
“Sometimes we are under the impression that we are depressed while we are just lazy and uninspired”
Harshit Gupta