is actually quite amazing there is zero evidence that depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain involving serotonin despite years of selling massive amount of drugs the amount of money that these drug companies made on this theory is astronomical it's only a theory and there's no evidence that increasing or decreasing serotonin in the brain does anything for depression it has been found that ssris selected serotonin reuptake Inhibitors based these are medications to block the re-uptake or the absorption of Serotonin so you'll have more serotonin in the brain they have found that when you give someone this drug it does increase at least temporarily the available serotonin in the brain the drug trials on ssris showed that these antidepressants are barely indistinguishable from the actual drug and the placebo in treating depression but they come with a package a lot of side effects including something called a black box warning in fact all psychiatric drugs have a black box warning which means they have a high risk of suicide thoughts and behaviors but on top of that there's some serious side effects involving the sex organs talking about lack of orgasm penile and genital anesthesia which is the loss of feeling of your private parts erectile dysfunction premature ejaculation so it's just bizarre to me that we have all these high risk for side effects yet we don't have any evidence on this theory that it actually will work for you there's even some research that shows that it's the elevation it's the high levels of Serotonin that causes depression not low levels and in other experiments where they actually tried to lower serotonin they did not find that a person gets depressed when you lower their serotonin so as far as the treatment of depression with Pharmaceuticals you really need to think twice and three times and four times and evaluate all the risks and the benefits as well as understanding the mechanism of what happens when you're taking a uh a drug to manipulate the neurotransmitter so neurotransmitters are communication particles and they go from one neuron to the next very similar to hormones that work in your blood yet neurotransmitters work within the nervous system and there's quite a few neurotransmitters I think there's over a hundred and they create all sorts of effects but when you artificially try to manipulate these neurotransmitters you kind of screw up the whole communication within the neurons itself and when we talk about depression does depression cause body problems okay or is it body problems causing depression is the chicken or the egg well I think it's both because you can have a stress event you can have a severe loss and be depressed and have that depression severely affect your physical Health but on the other hand you could have certain types of physical health problems and deficiencies that can directly cause depression and that is the area that I want to talk about so there are four main things that I think cause a physical reason why a person is depressed the first one is insomnia okay insomnia increases the risk of getting depression by a factor of 10 x that's a thousand percent increase okay that's pretty significant and when someone can't sleep they usually have a problem with this neurotransmitter called acetylcholine okay acetylcholine is the neurotransmitter that the vagus nerve operates with and the Vex nerve is all about uh countering stress as far as it being the parasympathetic nervous system opposing the sympathetic which is a flutterified the parasympathetic is all about rest and digest and this is why if you're deficient in acetylcholine boy you have problems with digestion you can't make hydrochloric acid you can't release bile you can't release enzymes your peristalsis the ability of your stool to go through the tubes through the digestive tract are inhibited so acetylcholine is very very important in digestion but also equally important in rest so there are several things that can help increase acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter having enough vitamin B1 very important having enough choline on my DNA test one of the problems I had genetically is I have a difficult time absorbing choline so I have to take more choline and the foods that are highest in choline are number one egg yolks okay egg yolks are very high in choline beef liver which a lot of people don't like so I'd recommend doing egg yolks and fatty fish another vitamin that can greatly help increase your acetylcholine is vitamin D okay I would take at least 10 000 I use before bed it helps a lot of people with insomnia and you might even need to take a little bit more because so many people are deficient in vitamin D and also getting out and having enough sun is also uh even a better choice if you have the option but just don't let yourself get burned but with the sun you not just get vitamin D you also get melatonin okay which it comes from the infrared over 50 of the sun's rays are infrared and it penetrates even to your clothes even through a hat so you can get the benefit of the Melatonin increase as well through the Sun but vitamin D is very very important vitamin B5 is also very important vitamin B5 is very easy to get from pretty much almost all food so that's usually not the problem and then another thing that can also help increase acetylcholine is magnesium and the type of magnesium that I would recommend for insomnia would be magnesium threonate that's the one that penetrates the blood-brain barrier and can greatly help that neurotransmitter and help you sleep how does someone end up with lower amounts of acetylcholine one big one is high carb diets sugar insulin resistance okay that blocks these neurotransmitters especially acetylcholine all right so number one is insomnia number two is the thing that you get as a side effect from insomnia chronic fatigue right you're going to be tired if you have insomnia so chronic fatigue can definitely cause someone to be depressed because they don't have the energy and it could be a dysfunctional mitochondria okay the energy Factory because the person's missing something like coenzyme Q10 or even B1 also a person could be chronically fatigued if they have a virus okay I'm talking about one of those viruses that can go in remission and out of remission like the Epstein-Barr virus which a lot of people have a problem with and then they can become chronically fatigued and then they can become depressed and you just have to find out why you're chronically fatigued is it your diet is it the lack of sleep is it a viral infection which actually it's very common to have a viral component because of the next thing number three stress especially chronic stress can reactivate a virus and cause chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and so chronic stress is another huge factor of why people can become depressed that chronic stimulation of cortisol which directly will cause insomnia a lot of people who have these viruses that are coming out in remission it's usually always after some stress event so this is not a little thing it's a big thing so if you are chronically stressed find out whatever stressing about and see what you can do to improve it and number four nutritional deficiencies can directly cause depression the big one is a vitamin D deficiency now do you see how they cross over from not having enough sun or enough vitamin D or even the stress factor can deplete you of vitamin D but a vitamin D deficiency can directly make you depressed I mean think about what happens during the winter months so many people get the blues it's a vitamin D minimally 10 000 IUS but I would usually if someone is depressed recommend like twenty thousand to thirty thousand I use every single day and uh if it's going to work it's going to work within a few days and you'll feel much better the next efficiency that can cause direct depression would be a B12 deficiency this can usually come from a person being on at acids or they have inflammatory problems in the gut or they're a vegan and don't consume animal products or they had gastric bypass or they're getting older and they just don't have enough hydrochloric acid in their stomach so there's many different reasons a vitamin B1 deficiency which usually comes from consuming too much sugar coffee tea chocolate um mainly though too many carbs can cause depression but most of the time it starts off with anxiety and worry and then that can lead to depression so anxiety is a lot of worry and stress depression is kind of like I give up I'm hopeless or I'm sad if someone has a magnesium deficiency they can also be chronically fatigued or they can be depressed because the influence of magnesium on the energy generation of ATP they can just have not enough energy and they're going to feel very very down and sometimes depressed or exhausted I mean when you think about it can you actually be depressed if you have a lot of energy it's kind of hard and the last point about depression as far as a nutritional efficiency is the omega-3 DHA because that makes up a good portion of your brain and if you're deficient in that because you don't consume DHA that can create depression so those are the four factors I do want to add one more thing okay it's exercise and the lack of it the more you exercise the less depressed you're going to be you're going to build up your mitochondria you're going to generate energy it's going to help you reduce stress it's going to help you sleep better so don't forget about exercise now there's a bit more information on insomnia that I want you to know about from this video right here check it out