10 HIDDEN Signs You Are Depressed

Hello Health Champions.

Depression is one of the most devastating conditions a person can have and it's one

of the most important issues of our time but it's critical that we clear up some of the

misconceptions around it rather than just label it and classify it and medicated if

we understand what depression is and what causes it then we have the power to do something

about it whether it's for yourself or for a loved one coming right up Hey.

I’m Dr. Ekberg, and if you want to truly master health by understanding how the body

really works make sure you subscribe, hit that bell and turn off all the notifications

so you never miss a life-saving video.

Depression affect over 18 million people in the United States any given time that's one

in 10 adults and it's one of the most common prescription is for depression around the

world is over 300 million people who have depression this is regardless of culture age

gender religion etc etc If we look here they say depression is both a brain disorder and

a state of mind so this was two different components even though they're related one

is a brain that's the tangible physical tissue it has biochemistry it has nutritional and

physical needs the mind is the abstract aspect of it is how we use the brain is how we wire

the physical tissue through our habits in our thoughts and other than quality of life

here's one of those devastating things about it.

Depression is the primary cause of suicide every 13 minutes somone kills themselves because

they feel so bad that's over 41,000 people a year in the United States depression is

further the leading cause of disability worldwide and a major contributor to the overall global

burden of disease so this is not a small thing this is huge at the core of everything that

makes people sick.

Some of the signs and symptoms of depression have to do with mood and mental change So

if you have a persistent sad mood not just once in awhile but a lot of the time or even

most of the time if you're feeling hopeless if you have feelings of guilt of helplessness

or worthlessness if you notice that certain things that you used to enjoy you don't have

any interest in them anymore or even worse if you have thoughts about suicide there is

over 11 million people in the US who consider contemplate suicide every year even though

only 41,000 succeed let's go back to this slide and look at the language because when

we say that depression is a brain disorder that's very strong language it already puts

us in a certain state of mind and makes us assume certain things when we say that depression

is the leading cause of disability then again we're assuming a lot of things so rather than

calling a disorder I would say it's an imbalance and adaptation the body is constantly changing

it’s adapting, it is changing, the cells of turning over your changing into certain

states into certain skills and if you understand that you're changing into it you can change

out of it.

it's not something that you have it's not something wrong with you and when we it is

the leading cause we're assuming a certain thing it's not the cause it's an association

it's a correlation people that have a lot of depression also have a lot of disability

and other disease but it's not the cause.

Because when we say it's the cause now we're implying that depression in itself has no

cause it happens for no reason so let me be very clear about something I'm not taking

this lightly I'm not saying that this is just negative thinking not saying it's just in

your head or that it's not real what I am saying is that have to understand that there

are causes that we can do something about and once we understand that it gives us a

sense of hope and it gives us a little bit of power back.

When we understand that there's physiology and biochemistry that we can change and when

we understand that we have developed certain habits then we can change those habits.

I'm not saying it is easy but once we start understanding it we have the possibility to

do something about it so habits are really momentum that it's not just what you're thinking

in this moment but anytime that you create a habit it's builds a certain momentum you

get better and better at doing that and the way this works in the body is something called

neuroplasticity.

Well, what is that?

Anytime that you're feeling bad then you are creating synopsis your body always making

new synapses is making millions of synopsis for second to adapt to your environment and

make you better at doing what you're doing and this sounds really weird why would you

want to get better at feeling bad.

Well it works both ways but your brain doesn't judge you, it doesn't say this is bad behavior

it says this seems to go on a lot less wire it so you can do it better so every time you

have a thought you making new synapses your hardwiring new pathways and the more you spend

time and feeling bad the more of those pathways you create so that later you get better at

doing that and I know that sounds crazy but like I said your brain doesn't judge you it

just makes you better at doing things you do a lot and fortunately it works in reverse

anytime you're feeling good then you're also wiring you're making new pathways that are

replacing the other pathways but if you have a lot of momentum if you have very strong

habits then you're going to create a lot of neuroplasticity toward that habit so again

if she's feeling good then it helps you to feel better but the question is where do you

spend the most time and in order for you to know that the first thing I have to do is

to notice how you feel have to have a certain mindfulness it has to become important to

notice how you feel so that you can change it if you find yourself up here so neuroplasticity

really means two things its plasticity means the ability to change that it's plastic it's

changing these pathways are always changing but it also means that as you're laying down

new pathways you have a tendency to create permanence you have a tendency to create habits

and momentum whatever you do more of you get better at and the key to understand here is

that once understand this now you have some control there is some hope and that's very

different than the standard approach this is typical of what you're going to find if

you search for information this is from PsychCentral top 10 signs and they're saying feeling blue

unloved or hopeless sometimes it normal right it is not normal it is very very common, and

they're saying that there's nothing wrong with you.

I completely agree you should never beat yourself up there is nothing wrong but that's not the

same as saying that it's normal it is common, but it's not normal to feel bad and if you

notice that you're not feeling bad then you can do something about it.

Here they say depression comes about absolutely no reason whatsoever that is not my experience

that's not the world view I that I have I think things happen for a reason and if we

understand that we have some part in it we can do something about it.

It can hit someone like it jumps on you from the outside and you're just living your life

with just going on with your business doing your thing and it hit you and there's nothing

they can do to stop it see this is the ultimate victimization and I don't know that the necessarily

doing it on purpose but it becomes a victim model and then they go on to call it a mental

disorder and of course it can be treated with medication and psychotherapy. and again the

big problem here is if you buy into this way of thinking then there is nothing you can

do about it for yourself and here are some of the causes that are often quoted they say

it's about biochemistry that there are comorbidities causing it again it's not a cause the comorbidity

is another mental issue and they're just saying if you have one type of problem you're more

likely to have another type of problem and that's because things are not working the

way they are suppose to.

They're talkin about environment which can be stress, huge portion, it can be emotional

trauma, it could be hormonal changes and again I'm not saying that these are not real but

the way they're presented is usually in a fashion that these things happened to you

there's nothing you can do about it and here's the clincher genetics and being female like

how is that for ultimate victimization.

you look at that, you're feeling bad and then you go oh female now what am I supposed to

do about that right now let's redefine this.

Let's take a brand new approach that is based on physiology and science and what's actually

happening in the body first thing we have to understand he is this red thing up here

in the front of the brain that's called a frontal lobe or the prefrontal cortex and

this is the portion of the brain that makes humans human this is how would different than

other animals because we have a much larger frontal lobe with a much larger surface area

and that is how we can do things better such as abstract thought and we can think about

things we have motivation we have forward planning all of those things are more or less

unique to humans but the way that the brain create balance in your life and this is super

important if you don't get anything else out of this remember this 80 to 90% of the brain's

activity of the frontal lobe activity is to turn things off it is not sitting there idle

waiting for something to happen and then it issues a command to turn something on know

it's constantly monitoring monitoring billions of pieces of information and then it create

stability by turning things off by turning off things that you're not supposed to pay

attention to that are not important to you in this moment so one of the most important

things that turns off his stress stress is not a bad thing we have to understand the

difference between a stressor and a stress response.

A stressor it's something in your environment it's an event it's something that happens

that gets your attention and the stress response is your brain paying attention it is absolutely

necessary because otherwise you are a sitting duck.

But the key here is to understand that the stress happens, you have a response to it

and then your frontal lobe turned off the stress by being eighty to ninety percent inhibitory

that's what the brain does.

It turns things off at the appropriate time next thing it turns off is distractions so

if you're paying attention right now and somebody snapped her fingers and you look over there

then you lost your attention you had attention deficit in order for you to keep paying attention

to what you want your brain has to turn that distraction off that has to inhibit that distraction

that improves your focus and if you don't have that focused now you have ADD every little

thing gets your attention Now for our purposes why this is important is because it also turns

off unwanted thoughts because unwanted thoughts are a form of distraction is something that

the frontal lobe needs to Monitor and of course a huge part of this are negative thoughts

and distracted thoughts or any kind of thought that we just can't turn off generally makes

us feel stressed and anxious and depressed so now let’s define depression now that

we know what the frontal lobe does now think of the frontal lobe as a lightbulb if we have

a hundred watt light bulb it has plenty of power plenty of energy to turn off these things

appropriately but what if this light bulb dims what if it goes down to 80 watts and

it doesn't shine so brightly now we just lost 20% of the ability to turn these unwanted

things off and if it dims further now we have less and less and less ability for the frontal

lobe to monitor and create stability and peace in our lives and now a lot of these signs

and symptoms make a lot of sense if you have fatigue will the frontal lobe and motivation

is what's going to give you a lot of energy if you lose that motivation you also don't

have a lot of energy poor focus and memory again distractive thoughts not being turned

off if you're sleeping more it's probably because you don't have any energy it's just

sleeping less it's because you can't turn those annoying thoughts off if you're irritable

again it's the inability to turn off the things you don't want and weight loss of weight gain

if your depressed often times you will have no appetite your sort of unmotivated to do

anything or it can work the other way that the only way you can find to change how you

feel is to eat something and then eat a bunch of sugar and comfort food and you gain.

So once we start understanding that there's an organic, there's a biochemical basis for

this that the brain does these other things so you can go back and look at the first five

and you'll be able to make sense out of those also now we can do something about it.

Now let's look at the real root cause it was set on the first slide that the two aspects

one is the tangible the physical brain the second is the abstract state of mind how you

using and wiring the brain.

if the brain is toxic then if it has chemicals or metals or inflammation then that's going

to short-circuit some of these connections.

It's going to get in the way of the normal brain activity and it's going to make it more

difficult for the brain to do what it does.

Your brain is 2% of your body weight that uses 20% of all your body's resources 20%

of your calories 20% of your oxygen and therefore it has very very high demands on the resources

are nutrients if you're deficient if your brain doesn't have steady fuel supply if it

doesn't have steady glucose and ketones if it doesn't have essential fatty acids for

proper building blocks to make these cell membranes have the proper integrity.

If you don't have electrolytes if you don't have trace minerals then you're deficient

you don't have the necessary substrate for the brain to do its job if you don't use it

and we did a video recently on what happens to your brain if you never exercise then if

you don't stimulate your brain properly it will be generate use-it-or-lose-it just like

any cells in your body brain cells will regenerate and stress is devastating stress changes how

your body prioritize its resources and stressful also affect the physical brain because when

you have a stress response your brain changes its priority instead of paying attention to

digestion and thoughtfulness and creativity your brain goes into a defense mode and it

shifts the blood flow from the frontal lobe to the more primitive survival centers of

the brain that you have a lot of chronic stress then you're depriving your frontal lobe of

fuel on a chronic basis and what amount the state of mind well the state of mind first

of all depends on biochemistry so everything that we just talked about over here is going

to influence your state of mind but unlike the standard explanation where by chemists

and just happens to you now you understand this is something you can effect this is something

you can influence and then neuroplasticity this is the most devastating and the most

empowering principle that you have because it will work for you and it will work against

you like we said when you think things on a regular basis when you have habitual thought

then the brain will create patterns to make you better at doing that and in functional

neurology we called it cells that fire together wire together.

So if you have certain habits if you move through certain patterns that you have certain

posture and certain thoughts and you look at certain things then all of this is going

to wire all of those associations together so that everything in your environment start

triggering the same kind of thought your brain starts associating these things so what you

want to do then is to change those patterns once you understand that this is wiring then

you can wire it differently and now that you understand that here is your bonus you probably

heard of the saying practice makes perfect well now that you have an enhanced understanding

that is no longer true practice does not make perfect practice makes permanent only perfect

practice makes perfect.

Enjoy this video and you'd like to learn more about how the body really works on a really

check out that one next thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next video.