Answer: they might have something to do with whether or not you experience high or low serotonin levels.
And what is serotonin? The New York Times yesterday had a good article about it:
[S]erotonin in the brain has a basic personality. “It’s a molecule involved in helping people cope with adversity, to not lose it, to keep going and try to sort everything out,” said Philip J. Cowen, a serotonin expert at Oxford University and the Medical Research Council. In the fine phrase of his Manchester University colleague Bill Deakin, “it’s the ‘Don’t panic yet’ neurotransmitter,” said Dr. Cowen. Given serotonin’s job description, disturbances in the system can contribute to depression, anxiety, panic attacks and mental calcification, an inability to see the world anew — at least in otherwise vulnerable people.
Dr. Cowen emphasizes that serotonin disruption alone does not directly cause depression. Experiments have shown that if you shut down serotonin production in normal people by subjecting them to an extreme tryptophan-free diet, they may not notice the difference; those with a history of depression, however, may well fall back into their gloom.
Prozac, Zoloft and other so-called serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors seek to enhance serotonin trafficking by blocking the serotonin transporter, thus allowing the neurotransmitter to linger longer in neuronal vestibules and keep supplying its stimulus package to any shovel-ready receptor that will have it.
And if you’re not a fan of Prozac or Zoloft, there’s a new drug in the serotonin enhancement pharmacopia: Vilazodone. It’s described by the New York Times reporter this way:
A newer class of antidepressants goes further, aiming not only at the transporter, but also at one or more of the 15 different serotonin receptors, an approach that may heighten the effectiveness of the drug while limiting the spillover side effects. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration approved one of these pharmacological novelties, an antidepressant called Vilazodone, which is said to be reasonably free of some of the most vexing side effects seen in the standard transporter-only drugs, notably weight gain and sexual difficulties.
And:
Much of the new serotonin research focuses on the molecule acting not as a neurotransmitter, a conveyor of information, but as a hormone, a shaper of tissues.
From what I can gather, bananas, turkey, salmon, dark chocolate, sunlight, and exercise might also help elevate serotonin.
And if we need to panic and everyone has their fight/flight drive switched off? Fear and anxiety has kept us alive by keeping us focused on various dangers. And how would the music of Verdi or Schubert sound if they had antidepressants back then?
And I wonder how many taking these pills are getting into accidents? But there is no research on that because there is no product to be sold from such research.
That said, I love chocolate : )
Paradigm,
If we don’t have a soul, and if everything going on in us is neurotransmitters transmitting chemicals around, then I guess we’re in the realm of “better living through chemistry.”
In other words, if you can’t achieve Stoicism or equanimity via reading Marcus Aurelius or doing yoga and meditation, you can take the soma.
And it’s easier, I suppose, to manage the chemicals in your head than to manage the whole world (making it go the way you want it to).
—Santi
I am looking forward into trying these kinds of foods.
Right now I am very interested in getting dark chocolate possibly 70% or higher.
I suffer from Anxiety/Panic Attacks and Agoraphobia. So I am changing the way I eat, and I am yet to try exercise…and go out into the sunlight. I only go out when I take out the trash, or check the mail for my mother. But I am willing to try this.
I really appreciate your blog, but I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. While not everyone who experiences hard times should be on antidepressants, people with serious mental illness need medication in order to even take advantage of sunlight or exercise or yoga. Medication doesn’t fix everything, there is still a responsibility to take care of yourself and/or deal with existential issues. And medication doesn’t have to block the creativity or uniqueness of someone’s mind, but it can keep them alive to be able to use their gifts.
thanks. I continue to go off my antidepressants with the idea that if I do my yoga, meditation and eat right I will not need medication. It doesn’t work for me. I cry all day. Feel hopeless and suicidal. I struggle to get thru each day. I need to stay alive for my children. Im calling my shrink today. I have to go back on and somehow i feel like a failure.
I’m just curious about understanding the serotonin issue as it relates to mood, not offering medical advice of any sort. I’m not opposed to medications. Why would I be?
—Santi
Anon, I’m glad if what I said was helpful. Choosing to stay healthy is not a failure. It’s doing what’s right for you and your family regardless of the ignorance of others.
Santi, (first to clarify, I’m not calling you ignorant in the sentence above, there are people who claim to KNOW what the right answer is for other people, even while lacking information and experience, and they say it in ways that are disrespectful, I read your blog a lot and I’ve never seen you do either of those things). While re-reading your blog post I can see if (interest in serotonin) was your original intent, but my reaction came especially from the first comment and your response to it. I took it that you were questioning if medications were the “easy” way out of dealing with life stresses or by not trying natural or spiritual or intellectual remedies. For those with serious mental illness, that’s not the case. But I well may have misinterpreted what you meant.
Just as a general comment, so many people seem to have an anti-med agenda that it’s easy to assume that’s where people are coming from. Like people who oppose meds on a spiritual level because they think that accepting that brain function can be faulty for biological reasons means accepting that we’re chemically based robots (I don’t think it needs to). People WITH mental illness who assume that the way they’ve dealt with their illness is the way everyone should deal and look down on others who choose meds. People who think taking meds is a weak and lazy way to deal with the stress that everyone faces. People who eye anything “unnatural” with suspicton. People who think that Big Pharma is a Illuminati-type conspiracy. People who jump the gun and think just because we haven’t YET pinned down the exact science on why mental illness occurs that we should scrap the whole biological model. People who yearn for a past time when suffering was magically transformed into beautiful art like straw into gold. Obviously I’m oversimpifying these positions, but I feel they oversimplify the pain that people with mental illness live with. When someone has a serious mental illness, when they’re already down and hurting and blaming themselves, they should be supported in the things that will get them healthy, not be given the message that they’re not trying hard enough because of erroneous information or superstition, it can cause a lot of damage.
Anyways, I appreciate that you post about the subject to begin with, it certainly is interesting from many angles. Big fan of the blog
iI AM TRYING TO HELP MY WIFE GET PAST THE PANIC AND STRESS SHES EXPERICEING BY GIVING HER ST JOHNS WORT, FISH OIL, MELATONION,VIT. D,B COMPLEX, AND DARK CHOCLATE, IN THE DAY TIME ONLY…THE VILAZODONE SCRAES THE HELL OF OF US, AND DON’T TRUST IT…USE NATURAL MEANS TO RAISE SERATONION LEVELS, LIKE SUN SHINE AND EXEERCISE……JERRY; I LET YOU KNOW HOW IT WORKS OUT LATER