With regard to depression, the world seems to have two groups: those that have or are experiencing depression, and those that have never been depressed.

Depression is a total mystery to those fortunate enough to have no experience with it. For them, it can seem real simple: just stop being depressed, what’s the big deal? If you know something about the experience of depression, you know it isn’t that easy. Willpower won’t magically cure it.

Depression has many forms and many triggers, of course. Some depression is situational and once the situation improves, the depression improves right along with it. Some depression is chronic and maybe comes with a family history of depression.

Maybe you only get depressed in the winter time when you get less sunlight. Maybe your depression is hormonally based and your depression comes and goes along with certain phases of your reproductive cycle or maybe it is classic postpartum depression.

Many different therapies have been tried over the years for depression, from talk-it-out therapy and various medications to even more aggressive approaches, most of which have fallen out of favor over the last few decades.

Self treatment is important, as it improves your feeling of control. Many depressed people feel trapped, and even taking simple lifestyle steps can empowering.

Some typical self-help steps include regular exercise, proper nutrition, adequate sleep, a solid social network and active stress reduction.

Exercise doesn’t have to be excessive to be helpful. Many people find that a half hour walk each day can make a big difference. If you can’t walk, find some exercise you can do like water aerobics, stationary bike or an upper body cycle, for example. Adding a few minutes of weight training 2-3 times per week can help, too.

Your brain needs a stable blood sugar environment to process energy properly. If you live on junk food, how do you expect your brain to work correctly? At first, you will need some willpower to begin a dietary change; high sugar and high fructose corn syrup intake can cause serious metabolic problems that increase the cravings for the very foods that are causing the problem. We have also noted that many people who have brain issues do better on a gluten-free diet. Antibodies related to gluten can alter some enzyme activities in the brain and make ideal brain function much more difficult.

Too little sleep and too much sleep have been linked to many problems, including an increase in depression. Develop good sleep hygiene – meaning going to sleep at the same time each night and trying to keep your room as dark as possible. Sleeping with the TV on might seem like a good idea, but over time it will interfere with your sleep patterns.

Work to maintain your social connections with family and friends and community groups. Depressed people often feel like withdrawing. Resist that feeling. It won’t help you. When you are making these social connections, it won’t help to tell everyone how depressed you are. Make an effort to be cheery if possible.

Examine your life for stressors. Begin to work on eliminating the ones you can. Some sources of stress can be changed and some can’t. Work on the ones that can be changed. It might take months or years, but you have to start somewhere.

Over the past 12 years or so, we at OVitaminPro.com have been working with neurotransmitter support for those with low mood problems. We can’t be your primary doctor and diagnose and manage your depression, but we can often help.

We use a neurotransmitter test to give us idea of your body’s ability to maintain an ideal profile. Dr. Kellerman of NeuroScience discovered many years ago that people without depression, anxiety, insomnia or migraines etc tended to have very similar urinary neurotransmitter profiles. Using amino acids and herbs, bringing the neurotransmitter profiles of people suffering from any combination of the above problems closer to ideal resulted in those people feeling and functioning better.

We use urine and saliva samples to get a snapshot of your neurotransmitter landscape. That gives us important clues as to with amino acids and herbs we can use to give your body the raw materials it needs to normalize some of these pathways.

We recommend that you see your family doctor to rule out any serious problems that may be triggering your depression. If all is clear on that front, we can then run the neurotransmitter profile and begin giving your brain some help to work better.

When we run a neurotransmitter profile, we will pay close attention to serotonin levels. Low serotonin has been long known to be associated with depression. Whether a person becomes depressed due to some event that lowered their serotonin or low serotonin is the effect from depression is somewhat academic. The majority of people that we have worked with feel better once their serotonin levels come back up into a more ideal range.

Fortunately, we can use natural products like the amino acids and herbs mentioned before to give your brain the means to produce more balanced serotonin levels.

The cost of depression is tremendous. Your productivity takes a serious hit in the lives of most depressed people.

Give us a call at OVitaminPro.com. In most cases, we can help.