Is depression a kind of allergic reaction?
..depression is a kind of allergy to modern life – which might explain its spiralling prevalence all over the world as we increasingly eat, sloth and isolate ourselves into a state of chronic inflammation.
In between five to 10 years, says Carmine Pariante, a psychiatrist at Kings College London, there may be a blood test that can measure inflammation in people with depression so that they can be treated accordingly. Researchers have already come up with a simple finger-prick test that reliably measures inflammation markers in a single drop of blood.
This is not the first time that depression has been linked to a physical phenomenon, after all. A recent survey found that despite wider awareness of the theory that “chemical imbalances” in the brain cause depression, this has done nothing to reduce stigma; in fact, it seemed to make matters worse.
you are enough. stay alive.
what depression looks like:
ie: interview 2016
It’s not that people have a genetic predisposition towards depression; it’s that they are more sensitive so they are more affected by what happens. The more affected you are, the more depressed you are going to get. Depression is a response to what happens.
This is how we want to parent children, and it doesn’t matter what predispositions a child has, if they get these conditions of love and respect in their childhood, they’ll never be addicted, they’ll never get depressed and they’ll never be anxious—not in terms of the medical diagnosis of those conditions.
Any person might experience anxiety at some time or sadness. I’m not talking about that, but in terms of the so-called illnesses, they will never happen. It doesn’t matter what we know about our children’s predispositions. The question is, what kind of childhood do human beings require to be healthy, self-realized creatures? Look at all of the characteristics that I listed.
The question is, why the disease focus? Your question is very disease-focused. How do I prevent a disease? That’s not the right question. That’s already coming out of fear. You don’t want to parent out of fear. The right question is what does a human being need, any human being.
ie: interview 2017 – sounds true – healing (roots of):
56 min – Now depression—if you actually look at the word “depression,” what does it mean to depress something? Pushing it down, right? Remember I said that
it all begins as a coping mechanism?
Let’s go back to the hypothetical example of the two-year-old who throws the tantrum whose parents can’t handle the anger. What will the child do
to maintain a relation with the parents? Is to repress the anger, to push it down
Depression is largely about the suppression of negative emotions or emotions we are afraid to feel because if we did, it would be in to conflict with our early environment.
57 min –
depression is not an emotion, it’s a state of mind in which emotions are actually repressed.
we can look on depression as just a medical disease to get rid of. Or we can look at it as a teacher that guides us closer to ourselves.
58 min – In case of depression you might say, “Well what have I been pushing down? And what have I learned that I had to push certain things down? And how do I relate to that depression now? Do I relate to it as an enemy to be [gotten] rid of? Or as a condition to be medicated? Or as something that’ll instigate an inquiry into how I live my life and my relation to myself?
Having said that, I really want to emphasize that I’m not against medications, I’ve taken them myself. Sometimes I think they’re essential for some people. As long as we recognize that they are not the answer to anything. They help, they can provide relief, they can provide—when you’re caught in a swamp and if you lift one leg, the other one sinks deeper into the muck, you want to be put on dry land. Medications, for some people, can put them on that dry land where they can start walking, but you still have to walk. So the medication will not get you where you want to go. But sometimes in some situations, they can put you on dry land.
59 min – But..the unfortunate problem is that most of psychiatry is based on this biological view of human beings that if you’re depressed, there’s not enough serotonin, let’s give you a drug to elevate serotonin levels—and that’s it.
The average medical student, the average psychiatrist, their mind is not trained in trauma, they don’t even hear the word “trauma” in all their years of training. And they don’t learn about brain development, they don’t learn about childhood development, they just learn about physiology and anthropology. So they have no holistic understanding of human beings. Which is why people find it so difficult to get help.
depression via Maria:
(video – ted ed ) – over 10 yrs to ask for help
convos about depression help reduce stigma
high functioning depression:
shared by Graham on fb:
The thing most likely to kill me is me
added on cancer page (because of doc i put there on – forbidden cures):
mushrooms for depression
ecstacy for ptsd
fb share by jason silva
a woman in Tübingen who was hospitalized for depression and claimed that she normally kept her symptoms in check by taking all-night bike rides. He subsequently demonstrated in a group of depressed patients that a night of complete sleep deprivation produced an immediate, significant improvement in mood in about 60 percent of the group.
Of course, total sleep deprivation is impractical, to say nothing of the fact that you will crash back into depression as soon as you catch back up on sleep…
One theory is that depressed people have something wrong with their circadian rhythm. Their bodies tend to release melatonin — a hormone that regulates sleep — earlier in the evening than non-depressed people, and they tend to wake up earlier in the morning.
The clock in your brain doesn’t just take cues from light, but from the hormone melatonin as well. Every night, about two to three hours before you conk out, your brain starts to secrete melatonin in response to darkness. Taking a melatonin supplement in the evening will advance your internal clock and make it possible to fall asleep earlier; taking it in the morning will do the opposite.
Studies show that it is possible to make wake therapy even more powerful by incorporating two additional interventions: early morning light therapy and what’s called sleep phase advance, in which the patient goes to bed about five to six hours earlier than usual and sleeps for about seven hours. This combination of treatments is called triple chronotherapy, and the typical course involves one night of complete sleep deprivation followed by three nights of phase-advanced sleep and early morning light.
Whether chronotherapy will prove as widely effective as conventional antidepressants for serious depression is still unknown. But there is no question that we can relieve everyday problems like jet lag and insomnia simply by better aligning our circadian rhythms with the world around us.
“They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better, there was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again, there was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy, there was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again.”