Your physique is chock-full of useful messengers often called hormones. These substances journey to your tissues and organs, the place they preserve important processes buzzing alongside. One hormone that assists with many key capabilities is serotonin.
Right here’s what you could find out about this important hormone.
WHAT SEROTONIN DOES AND WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LEVELS GET TOO LOW
Serotonin performs a significant position in regulating temper, urge for food, reminiscence and sleep. It additionally takes half in lots of different processes in your physique, like coronary heart operate, digestion and bladder management, in accordance with a 2018 overview.
Getting older, lack of train, main life occasions (e.g., a loss of life within the household) or a poor weight-reduction plan can all throw hormones like serotonin out of whack, says Annette Nunez, PhD, licensed psychotherapist and founder and director of Breakthrough Interventions, LLC. When serotonin ranges run low, you could really feel unhappy, irritable, anxious and have bother sleeping. “However the primary one is melancholy,” Nunez says.
One method to treating melancholy is to take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a kind of prescription treatment that works to extend serotonin operate within the physique. Frequent SSRIs embody fluoxetine, sertraline and citalopram.
Low serotonin ranges might also result in modifications in urge for food, “the place you’re both overly hungry, or you haven’t any urge for food in any respect,” Nunez says. Whether or not you eat an excessive amount of or too little could depend upon different components, like temper modifications and any emotional responses to meals (e.g., stress consuming).
NATURAL WAYS TO INCREASE SEROTONIN
There are methods to extend serotonin and not using a prescription.
1
STOCK UP ON SEROTONIN-BOOSTING FOODS
Consider it or not, consuming sure meals could assist improve serotonin ranges within the physique. Particularly, meals wealthy in tryptophan, an amino acid that will get transformed to serotonin within the mind, in accordance with a 2016 overview.
Discover tryptophan in protein-based meals, together with meats (turkey, salmon), tofu, dairy (eggs, cheese), nuts and seeds, Nunez says.
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GET REAL EXERCISE
Bodily motion is big for enhancing each temper and serotonin. “In case you can train no less than 20–half-hour a day, that may assist with releasing the hormone and growing your endorphins,” Nunez says. (Endorphins are feel-good hormones.)
Actually, train could also be simply as efficient for treating signs of melancholy as prescription medicines and discuss remedy, per a 2013 overview.
The kind of train you do doesn’t appear to matter, Nunez says. So, discover actions you get pleasure from and attempt to do them frequently.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SEROTONIN LEVELS GET TOO HIGH
Whereas Nunez sometimes encounters folks whose serotonin ranges are too low, there are situations the place ranges can get too excessive. This is called serotonin syndrome.
Serotonin syndrome is a probably life-threatening situation that may happen once you take medicines that improve serotonin operate, like SSRIs. An excessive amount of serotonin could cause delicate signs like shivering, sweating, confusion, complications, hypertension, and diarrhea, in accordance with a 2013 overview. One of the simplest ways to keep away from this syndrome is to keep away from taking a number of serotonin-containing medicines, the authors be aware.
THE BOTTOM LINE
In case you’ve been feeling depressed, irritable, anxious, or are experiencing different signs of low serotonin ranges for a month or longer, it’s necessary to hunt skilled recommendation. “Decrease ranges of serotonin can result in actually extreme bouts of melancholy and ideas of suicide,” Nunez says. A psychological well being skilled could possibly prescribe a medicine to assist improve serotonin ranges.
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