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I have five rules I have developed over the years that help keep my depression at bay. If I break any one of the rules, I’m at risk of having a depressive episode — and for me there is nothing at all in life that is worse than one of these episodes or even compares to how low these put me on the mood scale. And, they have seemingly gotten deeper and more painful if and when they occur over the years, so they scare the crap out of me ( I’m 51 and only got myself into treatment at age 45). The five rules are, in order of priority:
- Take all my prescribed meds. Don’t mess around with the dosage thinking I know what I am doing.
- Have a master plan. That is to say, have something to live for. It can range from repairing certain family relationships to starting that business you have always wanted , to studying for a degree or certificate for some field of work you aspire to get into. In my opinion, the bigger the plan, the better. And the less the plan depends on somebody else, the better, because you can’t control other people’s actions and that means they can screw up your plan. It all boils down to this — if you are living each day just to fight off depression or just to stay sober, in my opinion that’s a pretty boring life. You are not going to wake up each morning greatly excited about either of those things. There is a difference between congratulating yourself for “not doing something wrong”, vs congratulating yourself or feeling good about adding something to the world that you could call a “forward motion accomplishment”. I explain this in the next article
- Get sleep. It is easy for me to get wound up about something or become compulsively set on finishing a project on the computer no matter how late it is. Lack of sleep has dramatic effects on your brain which I won’t go into here, but the effects are not positive.
- Exercise. This sounds so easy to some people but for me it was the hardest rule to follow with any kind of discipline. Many anti-depressants cause wait gain, and I went from a hefty 195 to an overbloated 245 at one point. My waist went from 36 to a tight 40. I finally told my shrink that I was more depressed about my appearance than anything else, so once again he had to change my meds. Starting to exercise when you are that heavy was next to impossible, and it took me a year to get going on a regular basis, in combination with a Nutri System diet. In 6 months I got from 240 to about 215, and my physical self confidence began to return. More importantly, you enable the production of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the brain.
- Eat right. The way we metabolize different foods can also have dramatic effect on the brain. It is easy when you are depressed to eat alot of high carb, high sugar food as your brain is looking for “kick”. In fact, this is another addiction we can fall prey to, so beware. Having no appetite at all can be the other side of the coin, and here you are starving your brain to death and making it much more difficult to “get balanced”. Force yourself to eat fresh fruit and veggies, and try eat a steak at least once every week. We are, by nature, meat eaters, and sometimes I can feel the “lift” red meat gives me the next day.
These sound like basic, easy notions to follow but again, anybody who is depressed can have a difficult time with these seemingly simple recommendations. It has taken me several years to follow my own advice, but NOT being depressed is such a joy that all these things are gifts to yourself.
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