Prescribed antidepressants are not the only way to treat depression. There are many natural and effective ways to cure it.
Steps
Step 1. Use herbs
Throughout history, herbs have been used as ancient remedies to treat diseases and conditions, including depression. If you want to avoid taking classic medications (like antidepressants), herbs offer an alternative remedy for both depression and stress.
The herb most commonly used to treat depression is St. John's wort. However, there are dozens of other herbs for treating depression that work just as well
Step 2. Exercise
Often, depression causes feelings of despair that lead to apathy and therefore the last thing you want is to move. However, studies show that regular and moderate physical activity can improve depressive symptoms like some medications.
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Physical activity acts on the brain in different ways. It can break the mental pattern of negative thoughts that lead nowhere and help restore the previous level of activity. Movement produces emotion.
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Often physical activity alone can induce an increasing flow of emotions and energy, prompting you to work and interact with friends and family again; ultimately, it gives you the motivation to go in the right direction. These interactions are essential for fighting depression.
Step 3. Supplements for depression
Supplements for depression usually consist of a combination of several herbs and vitamins that treat the condition. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not regulate supplements for depression and therefore beware of looking for safe and valid products.
However, just because these supplements are natural doesn't mean you can go overboard for that alone. Particular attention should be paid if you want to take supplements at the same time as classic medicines. It is very important to ask your doctor if it is safe to take supplements and conventional medicines at the same time
Step 4. Diet to combat depression
We know that food calms us. Although diet alone does not cure depression, it can certainly lift your mood and provide a lot of energy needed to fuel your motivation.
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To make a diet suitable for treating depression, you need to:
- Balance each meal with a correct intake of complex proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
- Eat foods containing lean proteins such as fish, poultry, legumes, nuts, and seeds.
- Try to include at least five servings of fruit and vegetables in your diet each day.
- Choose 'fresh' food rather than preserved or frozen.
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Furthermore, for an antidepressant diet one must:
- Avoid or reduce alcohol, sugar and caffeine (including soft drinks).
- Avoid fast food and other nutrient-poor 'spacing foods'.
- Avoid or cut back on sugar and artificial sweeteners.
Step 5. Hypnosis
The treatment of hypnosis or "hypnotherapy" teaches you to mentally fight and reject the negative and pessimistic thoughts that often fuel depression. Using deep breathing together with imagination and suggestion, the procedure imprints new behavioral strategies directly into the subconscious. All of this mentally conditions you to reject negative and depressing thoughts to produce new, soul-strengthening thoughts.
Hypnotherapy can be very effective in treating depression, especially when combined with other antidepressant treatments
Step 6. Meditation
The ancient discipline of meditation is increasingly used by classical medicine as a powerful healing tool. Meditation has been shown to bring various benefits from a medical point of view, including lowering blood pressure and stress levels. The most useful and least demanding meditation technique to combat depression is that of repetition, done silently or aloud, using a word, a sound, a symbol, a mantra, a prayer, a movement or a type of breathing. Any practice that can cause relaxation brings a benefit, as long as it is repetitive.
The relaxation response produced by meditation helps slow metabolism, lower heart rate and blood pressure, slow breathing and brain waves. This leads to less stress and anxiety
Step 7. Light therapy
Light therapy (also called phototherapy) consists of exposing yourself to sunlight or a light with a specific wavelength using laser, LEDs, fluorescent lamps, halogen or very bright lamps, full spectrum light, for a certain period of time and, in some cases, at a certain time of day. Giving very bright light to the eyes treats some psychiatric conditions such as depression. A meta-analysis of this type of therapy commissioned by the American Association of Psychiatry found that it is much more effective than a placebo - usually a soft light - for both seasonal change-related affective disorders and non-change-related depression. seasonal, with magnitude of effect similar to that induced by conventional antidepressants.