Posts Tagged mood disorders
Sleep and Mood
Drugs, stressful situations, and even excessive noise can affect daily body rhythms and moods. An irregular living schedule can aggravate mood disorders. The old-fashioned sanitarium rest cure was effective with the “nervous” because it put the patient on a regular schedule of sleep, activity, and meals. Below are some kinds of sleep disturbances that can make mood disorder worse.
Insomnia
A person suffering from insomnia has difficulty initiating or maintaining normal sleep, which can result in non-restorative sleep and impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia includes sleeping too little, difficulty falling asleep, awakening frequently during the night, or waking up early and being unable to get back to sleep. It is characteristic of many mental and physical disorders. Those with depression, for example, may experience overwhelming feelings of sadness, hopelessness, worthlessness, or guilt, all of which can interrupt sleep. Hypomanics, on the other hand, can be so aroused that getting quality sleep is virtually impossible without medication.
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Role of Vitamins in Mood Disorders
Mood disorders are also called affective disorders. Mood disorders have a major economic impact through associated health care costs as well as lost work productivity. A mood is an emotion or feeling that lasts a long time. Moods affect how we act. Your mood also affects how you feel about yourself and life in general. Mood disorder problems may be caused by changes in your life. Chemical changes in your body can also cause a mood disorder. Moods range from feeling sad to feeling happy. Women who have a mood disorder are more likely to get depressed than men. Signs and symptoms of mood disorder start very slowly. Other people may see changes before you see or feel them. However, sometimes depression can occur due to another disorder or as a drug side effect, and in these cases it is known as secondary depression. The effects of exercise in improving the symptoms of depression are well-documented. Inadequate intake of zinc, vitamin B6, iodine, vitamin B12 and folic acid during early life may impair nervous system development and permanently alter function and behavior.
Having a mood disorder can affect your ability to function at work and at home. Treatment of mood disorders such as depression is a complex process and may involve psychotherapy and drug treatment. Where there is no clear physiological cause, the disorder is known as primary depression and it seems likely that the disorder will have several contributory causes. Research has focussed on biological factors such as heredity, hormonal abnormalities, medication side effects, disease-related effects, nutritional deficiencies and psychological and social causes. Drugs which have antidepressant effects usually alter levels of neurotransmitters, serotonin and noradrenaline, which are involved in the transmission of nerve impulses in the brain. An appropriate exercise program is an important part of any treatment of depression.
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Probiotics to Treat Mood Disorders
According to A. Venket Rao of the University of Toronto, a recent study conducted on the impact of probiotics has opened the door to a whole new field of study between the relationship of gut micro flora and many disorders, including mental disorders. This is great news for people who would rather not take medicines that can create unwanted side effects and instead be able to manage symptoms with easy and safe probiotics. Commercially available probiotics include RGarden’s L. Salivarius and Inner Garden Flora.
Fueled by years of treatment by doctors who routinely prescribe antibiotics as treatments for far too many illnesses, the average person usually only associates internal bacteria as a bad thing, but that is not the case. Our bodies – like our planet – are living, finely balanced eco-systems that have been structured by nature with self regulating systems and one of them is the necessary presence of good bacteria to ward off the more toxic and harmful bacteria that can build up and cause illness.
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