How is depression sometimes overcome without medicine?

Question

How can the brain heal itself and rid itself of depression biologically.

In: 3

Answer 1

We don’t know the biological nature of depression. We do know that depression can be treated with exercise, good diet and good sleep. For your brain to work properly you need to be concentrating on these. If you aren’t doing the basics to keep your brain healthy, it’s no surprise you will get mental illnesses like depression or eventually dementia.

Your question also suggests that depression can be overcome with medicine. The most common medicines SSRI’s probably help mask the symptoms rather than fixing the fundamental issue. They are like painkillers, they help mask the symptoms rather than fixing the underlying issue.

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>The diet may have a significant effect on preventing and treating depression for the individual. A diet that protects and promotes depression should consist of vegetables, fruits, fibre, fish, whole grains, legumes and less added sugar, and processed foods. In the public health nurse’s preventative and health-promoting work, support and assistance with changing people’s dietary habits may be effective in promoting depression. From [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084175/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084175/)

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>Current evidence supports the finding that omega-3 PUFAs with EPA ≥ 60% at a dosage of ≤1 g/d would have beneficial effects on depression Https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0515-5

Sleep is really important, if you aren’t sleeping properly you have have a tenfold higher risk of depression,

>People with insomnia , for example, may have a tenfold higher risk of developing depression From [https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/depression-and-sleep-understanding-the-connection](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/depression-and-sleep-understanding-the-connection)

Finally studies show that exercise is just as effective as medicine.

>Four trials (n = 300) compared exercise with pharmacological treatment and found no significant difference (SMD -0.11, -0.34, 0.12). From [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/)