Better Mental Health with Natural Remedies

Is serotonin deficiency causing your depression or anxiety ?

You can use the questionnaire and description of the psychological characteristics of serotonin below as a guide to see if it looks like a lack of serotonin activity in your brain is relevant to your depression, anxiety, OCD, poor sleep anger or a lack of impulse control. If it does, then you can try some personal experimentation with natural remedies that boost serotonin to see if this really is a part of the problem. Before you take any remedies to boost serotonin you must read this 1^st, if you take tryptophan or 5 HTP to boost serotonin levels without the right nutrient cofactors or if you have hidden background inflammation in your brain from overactivity in your stress HPA physiology you may end up poisoning your brain and worsening your symptoms. See Don’t Take Tryptophan or 5 HTP until You’ve Read This 
 

Blood and urine tests are a waste of money

Do not waste your money on neurotransmitter urine or blood tests; they cannot tell you how your neurotransmitters are being used inside the trillions of microscopic synapses in the brain. see Neurotransmitter Tests Are a Waste of Money
 

Serotonin Deficiency Questionnaire

 

Is there a history of depression in your family?	2
Do you have a history of sleep problems, either waking up early and not being able to get back to sleep, being a light sleeper or having difficulty falling asleep?	3
Have you had IBS or do you often experience bloating, loose bowels, constipation, or other gastrointestinal distress?	3
Do you have a history of anxious depression, i.e. feeling anxious or nervous at the same time as feeling down and depressed?	4
Have you had depression that started because of a bad experience but seemed to last much longer than was appropriate?	4
Have you had painful depression that came on with no apparent reason?	7
Have you ever taken and gotten relief from your symptoms with prescription antidepressants such as Prozac?	10
Have you ever taken and gotten relief from your symptoms by taking 5-HTPor tryptophan?	10
Is alcohol your drug of choice, do you use alcohol to manage your mood?	3
If you use marijuana does it have a relaxing effect?	2
Do you have a regular pattern of unexplained, inappropriate rages or explosive, angry outbursts?  Especially around the times you may have had depression.	3
Have you had suicidal thoughts during your life?	5
Have you had thoughts or behaviours of self-destruction?	4
Total of points you circled

 
If you score more than 15 points it would be worth trying increasing your serotonin levels with the remedies discussed in this chapter.
 

The Nature of Serotonin

Serotonin influences our mood, it’s the primary neurotransmitter in the structures and circuits in the brain that creates happy, positive and optimistic psychology; with adequate levels of serotonin activity in the brain one feels balanced, optimistic, happy, tolerant, less impatient, less angry, less impulsive, forgiving, accepting and calm; serotonin is also vital for good quality sleep and our sleep/wake cycle.
 
When people take the recreational drug ecstasy or MDMA it literally floods the serotonin synapses with serotonin-producing the characteristic feelings of happiness, diminished aggressivity and increased empathy, that is until it wears off and then the serotonin carrying synapses and neurons are exhausted producing the characteristic come down with a low mood and irritability.
 
Regarding depression too little serotonin activity in the brain will cause a depression characterises by painful thoughts and feelings, anguish, pessimistic thoughts and feelings, feelings of worthlessness, may be suicidal thoughts or ideation and insomnia particularly characterised by waking early with feeling anxious. Low serotonin depression may also be accompanied by feelings of anxiety or agitation.
 
Serotonin activity in the frontal lobes of the brain is involved in giving us the capacity to have control over our impulses, and a lack of this activity in the frontal lobes can cause a lack of impulse control which may manifest as increased aggressivity, poor emotional control and also difficulty controlling the impulse to take drugs.
 
Imbalances in serotonin may also be involved in:-
aggressive behaviour,
learning disabilities,
obsessive-compulsive disorders,
eating disorders (dopamine may also be involved in this),
irritable bowel syndrome and
increased sensitivity to pain. 
 
You can think of serotonin as the mind's natural painkiller or anaesthetic that anaesthetizes painful thoughts, feelings, memories and the stresses of life.  Without adequate serotonin activity in the brain, one can feel the full brunt of one’s painful memories, the pain and suffering in the world and mental pain for no reason. It can be remarkable how restoring healthy function to the serotonin systems of the brain can release you from the grip of this painful psychological condition, it may not necessarily make you feel positively happy. 
 
Related Reading:- 
Serotonin Dependnt Depression