In today’s society, almost everyone is on, or knows someone who is on antidepressants, but these medications only treat the symptoms of depression – not necessarily the causes. There are several Bulletproof ways to treat the causes of depression so that you can avoid those miserable moments altogether.
1) BE HAPPY.
If you actively choose to focus on the positive in the situation (even when the negative is bogging you down), your serotonin levels naturally increase – which is exactly what many antidepressants try to make happen.
2) GET OUTSIDE MORE.
All the exposure to light can also increase your serotonin levels. At the very least, have bright halogen lights in your workplace if you have to work indoors.
3) EXERCISE.
While the Bulletproof lifestyle doesn’t push for over-the-top amounts of exercise, there is a healthy balance. Studies show that exercise can be just as effective as antidepressants, and without all the annoying side effects.
4) ADJUST YOUR DIET.
The foods you eat are determining factors for your mood and irritability level. The Bulletproof® Diet is high in the fats that boost your mood, low in fats that make you feel crappy, and has a just the right amount of protein to keep you feeling your best.
If you’re like most people, some days just rock. Sometimes you feel superhuman, other times it can just feel like something is just missing.
Most people go through these times and rationalize them away as something that’s just part of life. Instead, bio hackers learn to reject the idea that most of these “normal” things are unexplainable, preferring instead to find solutions rather than suffer from the same problems over and over.
For example, most people know that low amounts of sleep make them perform poorly, and that’s just a part of life, or they believe that in order to be thin, you should just get used to being hungry all the time. We’ve seen how those ideas stand up to bulletproof methods.
Sadness and depression are no different. It is normal to have small amounts of sadness or depression, and they manifest themselves in different ways. Or maybe you’ve experience a loss and it’s totally normal to feel sad and grieve. In those cases, if you don’t feel sad, you’re probably not processing an emotion so you can let it go.
However, sometimes sadness and depression are there for no good reason. When this happens, some people feel lethargic, others tearful, or maybe you just lack your normal level of motivation. Or maybe it manifests as irritability or even numbness. Whatever it is, at the end of the day, it saps your performance and makes you feel less bulletproof.
So maybe it’s not full-blown depression, but hey, what if you could avoid those little grumpy moments that make your kids stay away from you, or those times your co-workers get coffee from a different floor instead of the coffee bar next to your office? What if you could build your resilience and even prevent it before it starts?
This post will give you some ideas to help transform the type of mild depression that sucks your energy into simple feelings you can work through and release, bringing you back to full strength.
The traditional approach to treating depression is to balance certain neurotransmitters with drugs. Drugs have their place, but many of the ones targeting depression are failures. They often work only as well as placebos, and they have a lot of unwanted side effects. Just like statins, these drugs don’t target the real cause of the disease – just the symptoms. They might help in the short term, but to really solve the problem you need to fix it with a more holistic systems thinking, Bulletproof methods.
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