About Depression and Low Mood

Depression is a complex illness and can look different from one person to the next. It is incredibly common and can range in severity but even the milder forms can have a huge negative impact on daily life.

Depression Symptoms

Depression can include symptoms such as:

• Feeling down, depressed or hopeless
• Little interest or pleasure in doing things
• Fatigue
• Slowed down physically or the opposite agitated
• Trouble getting motivated
• Social withdrawal
• Negative thoughts
• Feelings of Overwhelm with decision making
• Appetite changes–eg craving carbs or the opposite–having no appetite
• Low energy
• Sluggish thinking, poor concentration
• Feelings of excessive guilt or worthlessness
• Disrupted sleep-sleeping too much or waking up in the early morning
• Suicidal thoughts or acts

What Causes Depression

The reasons for why someone gets depressed are multifactorial and complex and slightly different for each person but involve cognitive brain neural networking, genetics, environment and physiological factors such as hormones, inflammatory chemicals and sleep wake cycle regulation. Lifestyle factors such as sleep, exercise and diet can also play a role. The role of stress and its relationship to affecting our microbiome is another emerging factor in depression etiology.

Kindling in Chronic Depression

Often as the lead up to the initial episode, significant stressors are involved and in recurrent depression, vulnerability to repeats seems to increase due to a brain-driven process called kindling, involving central nervous system dysfunction and brain networks, decreased neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to build new cells and adapt) and more sleep dysfunction such as decreased slow wave sleep.

Chronic Illness & Depression

If you suffer from a chronic illness or chronic pain, these conditions can also cause depression as a result of your illness or illness experience or make existing depression worse. Conditions such as chronic pain from any source, neurological disorders, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome/ME all increase the risk of depression and can go and hand in hand.

Our Approach To Depression

A personalised holistic approach to treating depression is the most effective way to recover, since two people with the same diagnosis of depression may respond to different things including medicines, nutritional medicine, mindbody, microbiome and lifestyle interventions tailored to them specifically. Novel medicines can be incredibly helpful in those who suffer with what is known as ‘treatment resistant depression’ where the standard medications and psychotherapy approaches have not been effective and can also help with fatigue, sleep disturbance, anxiety and motivation.

• Diet for Depression – Although depression is not a straightforward nutrition illness, certain types of diets may influence and improve depression symptoms according to emerging research, due possibly to the mood effects of altering the microbiome as well as affecting neurotransmitter levels. Although not a cure, personalizing the dietary approach appears to be important and combining any dietary intervention with other treatments.
• Mindbody treatment for depression – Because many people with depression also suffer from anxiety, relaxation response techniques can help lower stress and anxiety levels which may also help depression indirectly where other techniques have ben shown to have a direct antidepressant effect. CBT can be very helpful, especially for certain subtypes of depression known as ‘cognitive affective’ type but does not work for everyone. Specific forms of exercise can also help too by stimulating endorphin release. To be most effective, the mindbody techniques should be tailored to each patient using a holistic approach and combined with other treatments.
• Functional Medicine Testing for depression – From stress tolerance and resilience testing to looking at the gut microbiome for mood related markers and looking at inflammatory biomarkers and circadian rhythm dysfunction, functional medicine testing can also play a role in our approach.