The Link between the Brain and Your Happiness and Health

Don’t worry, be happy!

We’ve probably all heard this before, and it sounds simple, doesn’t it?

However, having that sense of happiness does not always come easy.

In this article, we are going to take a look at different mood disorders and conditions, including anxiety and depression, that affect many people.

Debunking the Myth : Understanding the Brain

Mood disorders, including anxiety and depression, are not conditions you can just tough it out. They are real conditions with physiological consequences. The longer it takes for an individual suffering from major depression to get into remission, the longer it may take in the future to get into remission with new episodes.

Are you aware that the longer an individual spends in a major depressive episode, the more likely it is that he or she will suffer a recurrent episode? Also, future depressive episodes can be brought on by stressors that typically wouldn’t have resulted in such a significant depressive response.

If you have had persistently sad emotions for weeks, particularly if they are connected with emotions such as worthlessness, hopelessness, sleep or appetite changes, and if you have had suicidal thoughts, you should not hesitate to speak to your health practitioner.

Depression is common, and it is something manageable using holistic approaches such as hypnosis, counseling, regression therapy and micro-current frequencies. The sooner you recover the better your long-term prognosis.

The Brain Structures

The limbic system functions as the core of the brain that stores some mood-active structures. The amygdala, located in the limbic system, is the area for emotionally-charged memories as well as prolonged depressing emotions. It is activated during depression, anxiety and stress. It is situated beside the hippocampus, the section of the brain that serves long-term memories. The hippocampus is firmly attached to the hypothalamus, a significant part in all forms of body regulations. When you find yourself depressed, anxious, or stressed, the hypothalamus informs the pituitary gland to notify the adrenal gland to produce cortisol, which is responsible for regulating the body’s responses to stress.

Brain Chemicals Associated with Emotions

Neurotransmitters are chemical substances in the brain that are discharged from a single neuron to the next. The major neurotransmitters in the brain are glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Glutamate is vital for learning; however, if the level becomes excessive, it attacks and even destroys neurons.

GABA is essential too. When individuals have a poor GABA level, they feel apprehensive. The relief you experience after a good workout happens to some extent because your GABA levels increase during workout. It is essential to keep the proper balance between GABA and glutamate.

What happens during depression?

With depression, dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine levels drop and glutamate levels rise. Perhaps more importantly, the level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) drops. This chemical is crucial to cell survival and for new neural connections. When BDNF levels decrease, nerve cells start to atrophy and die. With increased BDNF levels, nerve cells thrive and grow nerve fibers that branch out to connect with other surrounding nerve fibers.

In conditions of depression, chronic pain and chronic stress, BDNF levels drop. When this happens for an extended period of time, the frontal cortex and hippocampus may shrink. The good news is that this process can be reversed by lifestyle changes and through a variety of holistic therapies as well as micro-current frequency therapy.

How to increase brain-derived growth factor and improve hippocampal recovery?

Exercise!

Just like antidepressants, exercise raises serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine and BDNF levels. Exercise has a tremendous influence on your brain chemicals and mood. It will aid in lifting your mood, elevating your level of neurotransmitters, boosting your BDNF level, stimulating brain growth and quickening remission while preventing future relapses. Whichever way you increase BDNF levels, your brain still needs to be told where to lay down new neural networks. This is where counseling and other therapies will be of value. 

The Role of Counseling

Determining why you do what you do and how you might respond can make all the difference when it comes to treating anxiety or depression. Combined with BDNF, new ways of thinking can create new pathways to serve as alternate routes for processing information and influencing what happens in the limbic system.

The limbic system reaches out and connects to the cerebral cortex. They communicate with each other. The same situation is experienced one day as gloomy, yet on another day it is seen much more positively. That change in perception is due to the changing conversations between your limbic system and your cerebral cortex.

With Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), dopamine levels are low. Your dopamine level affects, amongst others, memory, mood, attention, behavior and cognition. Some people create all kinds of stressors in their lives or resort to risk-taking ways to deal with chronically weak dopamine levels. Others procrastinate before deadlines because they have learned that last minute stress helps them focus.

Ask a professional for advice on how to regain your mental and emotional wellbeing. 

References

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-face-adversity/201302/the-role-the-brain-in-happinesshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3008658/