The scientists who performed the study suggest that this area of research is clinically relevant for conditions that involve excessive rumination — like depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and anxiety disorders.

I have to agree with them on that point. People who learn to let go of their thoughts, who are quicker at releasing them, are much less likely to be held ransom to their demands.

Unfortunately, at this point in time, though we’re becoming aware of how meditation can be used to counter these conditions, we’re still not entirely aware of why it works. More research is needed before psychologists are able to devise a foolproof therapy which incorporates meditation — though, mindfulness based cognitive therapy comes close.

For now, we know this zen study shows that daily meditation creates a swifter, quicker brain. I can’t see many down sides to that, so for people who have the time, I would recommend taking up a zen habit. At the very least, in a few years, you’ll be better at managing your thoughts.

Zen isn’t a cure-all

Zen meditation is, of course, not a cure-all for depression, or other mental disorders. This story of a woman who turned to zoloft after failing to find peace through Zen testifies to that fact.

However, it’s another tool in the quest to wrest control of our minds away from the devils that often plague it. It won’t save people from depression on its own, but it might make the process of being saved easier.

How to practice zazen

For those of you who would like to start practicing zen meditation, otherwise known as zazen, this following ten minute clip from teacher Gudo Nishijima will show you the basics.

A recent study of 123 depressed patients shows that MBCT is just as effective as medication in preventing relapses in the depressed, and more effective in improving their quality of life.

The simple act of practicing a few mental exercises a week can radically alter the way people experience the world. MBCT shows us how potent our mental habits are. Change those habits, and you change your reality.

The great thing about MBCT is that it provides people with an easy, simple alternative for taking back control of their lives. I’m a strong supporter of psychotropic therapies, however I believe that they should only be turned to after having exhausted more natural alternatives.

If you’re interested in learning about the neuroscience of mindfulness meditation, and how the practice can be used to improve the lives of those suffering from anxiety and depression, I recommend watching this video from the Google Tech Talks series. In it, Philippe Godin, a scientist that heads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience group over at Stanford University, discusses the research that’s been done on the subject.

SAD Symptoms

Not everyone experiences SAD in the same way. Some symptoms are more pronounced in certain sufferers than they are in others. Personal genetics and environmental factors play a role in shaping how people experience seasonal affective disorder. With that out of the way, the following list of symptoms will give you an idea of some of the things SAD sufferers might experience:

• Unwanted weight gain
• Constant fatigue
• Lethargy
• Feeling irritated
• Carbohydrate cravings
• Decreased interest in sex
• Mood swings
• Feelings of apathy and depression

Getting Diagnosed

Considering how recent many of the studies on seasonal affective disorder are, no simple method has yet been developed to diagnose the condition. The Seasonal Pattern Assessment Questionnaire (SPAQ), is considered useful for screening patients, but studies suggest it isn’t specific enough to be a diagnostic tool. The Seasonal Health Questionnaire, a more recent invention, is considered to be more accurate than SPAQ. Researchers are still working on figuring out how to easily and efficiently screen and diagnose the disorder.

For a proper diagnosis, you’ll want to contact a mental health professional and undergo a clinical interview. However, before you do that, you might want to take the following online tests.

First, gauge the health of your mental state with the AutoSIGH test. It’s a useful survey that can help you track the level of your depression. Next, take the Personal Inventory for Depression and SAD. This test will help you figure out if you might be suffering from seasonal affective disorder. It’s not a self-diagnosis tool, but a way of assessing the timing and severity of certain symptoms of depression. You can print out the results to share with your doctor.

What Causes Seasonal Affective Disorder?

A lack of sunlight during the winter months seems to be responsible for the disorder, though we still don’t understand why this lack of sunlight causes people to feel down. Some scientists have suggested that a lack of serotonin, an important chemical messenger in the brain that helps regulate our emotions, may be the culprit. Studies show that our bodies produce less serotonin during winter months. Other scientists suggest that an increase in daytime melatonin, a chemical that helps regulate sleep, is to blame. SAD sufferers have been shown to have more melatonin in their system then healthy people. Our pineal gland produces melatonin when it’s dark, as light inhibit its creation. This increase in melatonin messes with our circadian rhythms.

The truth is probably a combination of both theories with a little genetics thrown into the mix. We know, for example, that the 5-HTTLPR gene, a gene that’s involved in the creation of serotonin, has been found to express itself differently in SAD sufferers. The 5-HT2A gene, also involved in the creation of serotonin, seems to be linked to SAD as well.

Scientists are busy learning more about seasonal affective disorder. Our understanding of the condition is unfinished, but at least it’s contours have been drawn out.

Treatments for Seasonal Affective Disorder

1. The most popular treatment for seasonal affective disorder is light therapy. Exposing yourself to a powerful light box at specific times during the day for periods of up to thirty minutes has been shown to alleviate the symptoms of SAD disorder in most sufferers. To help schedule the best time for your light therapy sessions, you might want to take the AutoMEQ test, which help determine your circadian rhythm type.

2. Dawn simulation is another form of therapy. It involves gtiming lihts in your bedroom so that they come on gradually over a period of time. Many SAD sufferers benefit from this artificial sunrise.

3. A less common treatment involves changing your diet so that it includes foods rich in vitamin D, like smoked mackerel or sardines. Vitamin D is produced when our body is exposed to the sun. Less sunlight, less vitamin D. At least one study has suggested that Vitamin D is better at treating SAD then light therapy, though more research is needed to confirm this.

4. A study from 2006 suggests that taking melatonin can improve the mood of people afflicted with SAD disorder. A person’s circadian rhythm type determines when they should take the melatonin. Melatonin, as we’ve seen, regulates when we sleep, so these supplements help kick our body back into order.

5. Some studies suggest that negative air ionization can help fight seasonal affective disorder. Negative ions are molecules of air that occur naturally in our environment. Negative ions are more common during summer months than they are during winter months, and some evidence suggests a link between negative ions and the production of serotonin.

6. Finally, SSRIs are often prescribed by doctors for helping patients deal with SAD. Drugs like Prozac and Zoloft have all been shown to help.

The Biggest Challenge

It wasn’t that long ago that people laughed about seasonal affective disorder. Some people still do, but nowadays it’s taken much more seriously. New research is constantly being conducted on the subject, and new treatments are constantly being thought up.

Currently, the biggest challenge most SAD sufferers face is ignorance about their own condition. Many people simply don’t realize that they’re afflicted with it, and this prevents them from seeking out readily available treatments. Changing this situation requires us, as a society, to take a more open approach to mental health.

Dreams, according to this theory, help people act out undischarged emotions. The more emotions we haven’t acted on, the more intensely we dream.  Eventually, if we’re not careful, we end up with a backlog of unresolved emotions that our subconscious simply can’t cope with. We wake up feeling tired because our minds have spent a good chunk of the night trying to resolve issues we didn’t take care of during the day.

That of course, is my spin on the subject. I haven’t read the book yet, but I find the ideas discussed in the video fascinating, and I look forward to learning more about them.

A total of 671 women with no history of major depressive disorders were studied. Of the 87 women who were smokers, 13 (15%) went on to develop major depressive disorder.

However, among 584 non-smokers, just 38 (6.5%) developed major depressive disorder during a decade of follow-up.

Heavy smokers, those who smoke more than twenty cigarettes a day, are twice as likely to become depressed than more moderate smokers.

An older American survey that included men also showed that smokers were nearly twice as likely to have suffered a major depressive episode at some point in their life than were non-smokers.

There is evidence which suggests that smoking itself can compound mental health problems. The connection between smoking and depression isn’t clearly understood, but it does clearly exists. And unfortunately, more and more studies are coming out which point to smoking contributing to the onset of depression, rather then depression leading to the habit of smoking. In one study, pregnant mothers who smoked were found to have children who were more susceptible to depression.

Obviously, smoking and depression have a rather intimate relationship with one another. If you want to quit them both, it could require a lifestyle overhaul. Quitting smoking can be especially difficult for the depressed, since smoking does seem to have certain qualities in common with restricted anti-depressants. The New York Time provides a good overview of some of the ways the depressed
can help escape their cigarette cravings. You can quit the smoking habit. It just takes a little effort.

Everyone has a different genetic profile, and these profiles are a bit like canvases on which mental states are painted. The genetic qualities of the canvas determines how certain colors — like the dark hues of depression and anxiety, or the warm tones of happiness — are expressed in a person’s life. Some people have canvases that favor darker colors, other people have canvases which favor lighter colors.

Your personal biology, your unique blend of genes, provides you with the form and quality of your canvas. However, environmental factors will bend, twist, break, and mend this canvas into different shapes. It’s this combination of nurture and nature that will ultimately determine the quality of your experiences.

Depression will be painted differently depending on the canvas it finds itself on.  There is no single image of depression. That’s one of the reasons why different drugs work differently on different people.  Despite the symptomatic similarities that depressed people share, each case is unique, because each canvas is unique.

Let’s consider five factors that will help determine the nature of your depression. These five factors can also shed light on different mental states, like happiness, anxiety, and anger. Each of them twists your canvas in a different direction, leaving you with different experiences.

1. Genetic factors

The genes you inherit play a large role in determining the experiences you have.  Some genes that may play a role in regulating depression are 5-HTT, monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene, and COMT. In time, we’ll have a fuller understanding of these genetic variables.

It will be years before we have an understanding of how our genes combine to create our human experiences.  Despite the existence of genetic profiling services like 23andme.com, we are still a long way off to understanding the very building blocks which predispose us to conditions like depression. For this reason, though genetic factors are perhaps the most important in causing depression, they are also currently the least understood.

2. Relational factors

The people in your life and the way you interact with them can play a large role in the quality of your experiences. We’ve already covered how people can explicitly elicit memories which alter your behavior in subtle ways. We have yet to cover how these memories can be elicited by more indirect manners. Sometimes, all it takes for someone to change your behavior is their presence. Most of us have met men and women who become radically different around specific people.

The experiences we’ve shared with a person, the unspoken rules that regulate our interactions with them, even their pheromones can help determine the way we feel.

For these reasons, it’s important to be mindful of who you surround yourself with. You do not want to spend time with toxic people. You may even want to reconsider surrounding yourself with people who make you lose control — no matter how much you enjoy their company, if you’re not in the drivers seat, if you’re not firmly in control of your own experiences, you can find yourself in some very unpleasant situations.

Many people become depressed as a result of the people in their lives. Perhaps they’re surrounded by negativity. Perhaps they’re in an abusive relationship. Perhaps they’ve just suffered loss and are having trouble coping with it. Perhaps their social anxiety makes it impossible for them to create healthy relationship, contributing to a sense of isolation and loneliness.

Many relational factors can contribute to depression. On their own, they are unlikely to cause depression, but when combined with other factors, they can push you towards that dark abyss of hopelessness.

3. Physical Factors

Your body is a sacred temple, and it requires a great deal of balance in order for you to feel at your optimum.  If you don’t take care of your body, it may choose  to rebel against you by sucking you dry of your energy, your hope, your ability to cope with the miseries of life.

Your diet is instrumental to your well-being. Certain foods can contribute to low vitality. If you don’t exert control over the food you put into your body, you may lose control of the thoughts and feelings which arise in your mind. Gandhi may have been right when he said that the control of the palate was essential to the control of the mind — so if you feel your thoughts have taken on a life of their own, you may want to exercise some restraint over your diet.

Sloth and inactivity are also contributors to depression.  Though “voluntary exercise” may not help with depression, a healthy and active lifestyle does.

The rhythms of your body are also important to be aware of. Your feelings aren’t constant, they move in accordance with various factors. You have daily high points and low points. Knowing your own circadian rhythm (largely genetic in nature) can help you understand how your feelings might fluctuate through-out the day. Eating certain foods at certain times, seeing certain people at certain times, all of these can influence your emotional and mental states. Your bodily rhythms play an important role in determining your mental and physical health.

Other physical factors that can lead to depression include medical conditions, debilitating illnesses, and giving birth. Anything that changes our bodies, that upsets its balance, can make our lives a little bleaker.

4. Environmental Factors

A recent study suggested that culture may play a role in depression.  The values of our environment influence us in ways we aren’t always aware of. It’s something to keep in mind. Other environmental factors to be aware include the weather, pollution, noise, even the scenery.

The world shapes us in ways that are hard to fathom. A beautiful environment is much more conductive to a beautiful mindset then an environment full of grief and ugliness.

5. Internal Factors

Internal factors involve the way we use our mind, the things we choose to focus on and to dwell upon. Most people have very little control over their internal processes. Cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, grew out of a need to teach people how to control their minds so as to not fall victim to certain mental traps.

We all speak to ourselves in our heads, we all see things in very specific ways, and few of us are aware of how potent these internal actions are. The words we use, the tones we use when speaking them, the pictures we imagine, the thoughts we have, and the thoughts we don’t have. These all contribute to our mental state.

Few people have ever taken the time to properly examine the way they represent the world to themselves. They’ve never asked themselves if they could change the tone of the voice they use when thinking. For example, people who have weak, soft, squeaky internal chatter are less likely to be confident than people who speak to themselves in loud, boisterous tones.

The memories, dreams, and fantasies that people dwell on also contribute greatly to the way people live in the present. When people focus only on the negative, when they focus on failure, weakness, and hopelessness that will have serious, unfortunate consequences on their mental health.

Internal factors then, are focused on what people think and how people think.

On Their Own, These Factors Won’t Lead To Depression

People are more likely to experience depression when several of these factors are in play. On their own, they’re unlikely to be potent enough to break a person down, but when they act in concert with one another things can get messy.

Attacking a single factor is often enough to break the hold of depression. It can set off a cascade effect, causing other aspects of your life to improve. For example, changing your environment to a more positive one might push you to take better care of your health and the benefits might carry over to your relationships. Feeling more positive, you may find yourself less likely to focus on things that bring you down. However, this isn’t guaranteed. Often times, you’ll have to focus your efforts on fixing several things at once.

We all have to be aware of the different factors which contribute to depression. There are no single causes here. In order to treat the condition, we have to be thorough. Since no two depressions are exactly alike, each case needs a unique solution.

In three experiments, the authors asked participants to either describe a situation where they had power over another person or one in which someone had power over them. Then the researchers showed them items and asked how much they would be willing to pay.

After recalling situations where they were powerless, participants were willing to pay more for items that signal status, like silk ties and fur coats, but not products like minivans and dryers. They also agreed to pay more for a framed picture of their university if it was portrayed as rare and exclusive.

One lesson to gleam from these experiments is that our feelings are very much context dependent. The researchers were able to elicit a state of social insecurity in their subjects only through asking a few carefully designed questions.

How can this be of use to you in a day to day setting? You want to be mindful of the states people elicit in you through the things they say. Their words can and will change your behavior, and these changes are often so subtle that you won’t consciously pick up on them.

Simply being reminded about the past can alter the way you behave in the present.  You don’t want to focus on memories that make you feel weak, since that can be a very costly proposition for you. The moment a negative memory is brought to your conscious attention, you’ll want to do whatever you can to neutralize whatever negative influence it might have over you.

You can do this by reframing the memory in a positive light, by quickly changing your focus to something positive, or by clearing your mind and getting grounded in the moment, choosing to invest your awareness in your immediate surroundings. Breathing exercises can help do that.

There are many ways to escape the grips of a dangerous memory. Your mind is a powerful tool, and it’s  irresponsible to let it get the best of you.

Now that you know that thinking about being weak makes you more likely to spend money on silly status symbols, you’ll be able to stop yourself from making stupid purchases. For example, I know a man who once bought a ten thousand dollar television set after getting dumped by his girlfriend. His actions are an example of the stupid things we do when we feel our status take a hit.

Self-awareness can stop us from making decisions that are against our best interests. The memories we choose to focus on end up shaping the way we view ourselves, and thus the way we interact and engage our environment.

People who suffer from depression often focus on their weaknesses while ignoring their strengths. This is a mistake. You want to focus on both of them. This is a positive, healthy middle ground that few people ever reach. Most people, after all, ignore their weaknesses while overestimating their strengths.

I’m here to argue for the middle path — the path where you have a realistic understanding of what you’re capable of, where your understanding of the world is well grounded, and your self-image is neither dismal nor angelic.

Don’t let your memories trip you up while walking down the middle road.

Burning incense is a common religious practice in many parts of the world, and this study provides some insight into how the practice might actually rally our spirits in a physical sense. It also provides us with one more technique for improving the quality of our lives.

From the article comes this quote which is particularly revealing:

“We found that incensole acetate, a Boswellia resin constituent, when tested in mice lowers anxiety and causes antidepressive-like behavior. Apparently, most present day worshipers assume that incense burning has only a symbolic meaning.”

I think it’s safe to say that many religious rituals carry some kind of physical benefit to those who practice them. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s unlikely that people would continue behaving in certain ways, generation after generation, unless those behaviors conferred some kind of survival benefit on to those who did them.

There’s a fair amount of research which points towards the health benefits of certain religious rituals, such as prayer and meditation. Now we can add burning incense to the mix. For those of us of a more secular bent, we can still benefit from these practices without having to invest them with a specific ideology.

In time, scientists will develop a new class of drugs based on the properties of frankincense, but for now, burning regular incense remains an affordable and healthy way of raising spirits — one that doesn’t require a prescription.

Now there’s a rising chorus of psychologists who claim that the root of so many of our mental conditions can be found in this disconnect between how we’re meant to live and how we’re actually living.

In one interesting article from the Toronto Star, evolutionary psychologist Dr. Stephen Ilardi talks about a form of therapy he’s developed to help people manage their depression. This treatment involves group therapy sessions and life-style changes that bring patients closer to living the kind of lives humans used to have before we became city-bound. That means better nutrition, better sleep,  more exercise, more light, more activity, less rumination, and more positive social interaction.

Read the results of his treatment for yourself:

The results of the 14-week regimen so far have been encouraging. In a continuing study of 79 patients, with two-thirds assigned to his therapy and the rest to a control group treated mainly with antidepressant medication or traditional psychotherapy, Ilardi reports a 74 per cent favourable response, compared with 16 per cent for the controls.

In other words, people were nearly five times more likely to respond favourably to his evolutionary inspired treatment than they were to medication and traditional psychotherapy.

Adjusting to a sick world won’t make us healthy; the only way to prosper in our society is by rejecting it’s demands and listening to those of our bodies.

Some people will prosper in a society such as ours; the people at the very, very top do incredibly well. And in terms of breeding , there does seem to be some real advantages to the way we live. However, in terms of quality of life, in terms of personal satisfaction, we have taken a remarkable step backwards in some respects. We don’t have to tolerate these retrograde arrangements, though changing them may prove difficult since some powerful sectors of our society benefit from the very things which make so many of us sick. This relationship, in which the few benefit from the suffering of the many, isn’t set in stone. It can be overcome.

Evolutionary psychology and the field of pharmacogenetics will make managing our mental states a much easier prospect, yet we shouldn’t use these sciences to help us cope with the negative mental conditions that our society creates, instead we should use the knowledge we gleam from these fields to help us make society more accommodating to the human condition.

Misery and depression are adaptive responses; we’ve adapted them in order to help us survive in our current environment. If we want to get rid of them in a permanent manner, we need to get rid of the environmental factors that lead to their creation.

Instead, genetic factors might better explain the relationship between the two.  When tracking genetically identical twins, scientists found that when one twin exercises, the other twin was less likely to show symptoms of depression and anxiety. This wasn’t true for fraternal twins, who aren’t as closely matched genetically.

This study was about voluntary exercise, which isn’t the same as being on a training program overseen by medical professionals. In other words, if you’ve never been a busy body and you’re depressed, a structured exercise program might help you.

As the press release mentions:

The results do not mean that exercise cannot benefit those with anxiety or depression, the authors note, only that additional trials would be needed to justify this type of therapy. “Only voluntary leisure-time exercise is influenced by genetic factors, whereas the other type of exercise [directed and monitored by someone else] is environment-driven. The absence of causal effects of voluntary exercise on symptoms of anxiety and depression does not imply that manipulation of exercise cannot be used to change such symptoms,” they write. “The antidepressant effects of exercise may only occur if the exercise is monitored and part of a therapeutic program.”

Two points to take from this study:

1.  It’s becoming increasingly apparent that genetics plays a strong role in determining the kind of mental states we’re likely to have.

2. Scientists are still mystified by this role, and are decades away from fully understanding it.

No matter what plan of action you take to manage your depression and anxiety, realize that part of the issue has to do with who you are on a genetic level. I still think, to a very large degree, that your environment, the society you are born into, will end up shaping the way your genes manifest themselves.  Depression has it’s environmental factors.

In future posts, we’ll cover the matter of epigenetics, which may account for why people who share similar genes don’t always share the same genetic conditions. Epigenetics undermines the fatalism that’s been a hallmark of genetics for the last few decades. It’s a very new field and, like pharmacogenetics, it will almost certainly alter the way we practice medicine.