Sunshine is a good medicine for depression.

Doctors in Italy believe that if you walk for 30 to 60 minutes every morning and bathe your face in warm sunshine, your depression will disappear. The doctor's research confirmed that sunlight is an excellent natural antidepressant, and the sunshine in the morning has the best effect. Patients who lie in wards with windows facing east will recover several days earlier than those who lie in wards with windows facing north without taking medicine.

"Sunshine therapy" is the most suitable treatment for seasonal depression. Many people's illnesses develop during the season change, showing indifference, depression, listlessness and decreased work efficiency. These symptoms will gradually disappear in the sun.

Exercise is the best antidepressant.

People's Network News According to the runner-up report of Washington Watch Weekly, Dr. Stephen Herman, a professor of psychology at Duke University, reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine that he tested three treatments for depression in a six-month follow-up study: the first group took Zoloft, the second group took an exercise program, and the third group was a combination of the two. In this study, 156 experimental participants recovered between 60% and 70% after four months of treatment. Herman found that members of the exercise group were less likely to have a relapse of depression than the other two groups.

A large number of recent studies in the United States show that exercise, especially aerobic exercise, helps to eliminate mild depression. Chuck, 76, insists on playing basketball with people half or younger than him every day. He said, "If I don't exercise five times a week, I will start to get tired of life. The perseverance I have gained from sports makes me optimistic about life. "

"When we accomplish something by ourselves, we usually feel good about ourselves," Herman explained. This discovery is exciting for those who can't take it with antidepressants or have no effect after taking it. Herman didn't suggest using exercise instead of taking medicine to treat depression. He said: "Various studies have continuously proved that exercise as a reasonable alternative therapy is worthy of respect.

Try four ways to treat depression.

Depression is a common mental illness. The incidence rate of women is two to three times higher than that of men, and patients suffer greatly. Here are four kinds of self-therapy:

Exercise therapy?

Exercise can give people a sense of relaxation and autonomy, which is conducive to overcoming the loneliness of depressed patients. However, exercise must have a certain intensity, duration and frequency in order to achieve the expected results. Take doing aerobics as an example, including running, skipping and fitness dancing. , at least three times a week, each lasting 15 to 20 minutes. Walking can also achieve the same effect as running. Experts advise patients to walk 1500m every day, and strive to walk within 15min. Then gradually increase the distance until you run 4500 meters in 45 minutes. When you start exercising, you must get the doctor's permission. ?

Nutrition therapy?

Many doctors believe that vitamins and amino acids contained in food have an important influence on people's mental health. Some experts believe that paranoid people can also cause depression if they lack a single nutrient, so he suggests that people eat more foods rich in vitamin B, such as coarse grains and fish. He also asked patients to take a certain dose of vitamin B complex. He thinks these are vitamins that people are easy to lack. ?

Psychotherapy?

Hypochondriacs often look at the world and themselves with colored glasses. In order to change this misconception, Gary Elmer of the Los Angeles Psychiatric Center put forward the "three A methods", that is, understanding, answering and acting. Because the English letters of the three words all start with a, they are called. ?

Understand: first admit that you are depressed; Secondly, we should pay attention to our emotional changes, whether there are abnormalities in words and deeds, and the differences between feelings, thinking and physical reactions. ?

Answer: Learn to identify and record mistakes in time when they occur. Write down your wrong ideas first, and then write a more practical choice answer, in order to test your ideas in practice. After writing, ask yourself, "Can this be true? \ \ "and then ask yourself: \ \" How to look at it from another angle? \\"?

Action: If you don't feel valued, you should adopt a new way. If you are uncomfortable at work, you should take a course to improve your skills or find a new job. Plan more activities to make your life regular. ?

Communication therapy? Research shows that people who are good at making friends with others are much happier in mental state than those who like to be alone. A mental health laboratory in the United States recently launched an activity with the slogan "Friends are good medicine". They think that social support can even make people live longer.

Depression is a kind of brain disease, which has its own occurrence and development law. For many years, the study of depression and antidepressants has been an important research field of contemporary psychiatry. Although the etiology and pathophysiology of depression are still unclear, it does not hinder the effective treatment of this disease.

There are many treatments for depression, such as psychotherapy, sleep deprivation therapy, phototherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, etc., but at present, medication is the main treatment, supplemented by psychotherapy. It should be pointed out that people with depression often have negative and pessimistic thoughts, and in severe cases, they have suicidal tendencies and world-weariness Doctors should be on high alert and warn their families to take strict precautions. If conditions permit, it is best to be hospitalized. Electrospasm therapy has direct resuscitation effect and should be used decisively and quickly.

Antidepressants are a large category of many psychotropic drugs, which are mainly used to treat depression and various depressive states. Here are only two drugs with definite curative effect and generally recognized:

1, the first generation of classic antidepressants: including monoamine oxidase inhibitors (maoi) and tricyclic antidepressants (tca).

2. The second generation of new antidepressants: Due to the rapid development of new drugs, new drugs emerge one after another, such as venlafaxine and nafazodone. However, selective serotonin (5- HT) reuptake inhibitors are still the main drugs, and these drugs are also the most widely used in clinic. However, the antidepressant effects of some antipsychotic drugs, such as sulpiride, alprazolam, roller, buspirone and methylphenidate, are still controversial, so they are omitted.

There are two kinds of classic antidepressants in the first generation, namely monoamine oxidase inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants.

1, single oxidase inhibitor

Isopropylhydrazine is the first antidepressant that came out in 1950s. Isopropylhydrazine is an anti-tuberculosis drug. 65438-0957 has been successfully tried in patients with depression because of its central excitatory effects such as talkativeness, hyperactivity, insomnia and euphoria. Animal experiments show that it can reverse the apathy and inactivity caused by reserpine, and at the same time increase the monoamine content in the brain. It is speculated that its central excitatory and antidepressant effects are due to the decrease of monoamine degradation caused by inhibition of brain singleton oxidase, which leads to the increase of singleton content in the sudden release gap. Therefore, the relationship between animal behavior and brain receptors is put forward, which has important theoretical and practical significance and lays a foundation for the study of psychopharmacology and etiology of mental diseases.

Also included in this category are isocarbohydrazide, phenelzine and amphetamine. These drugs used to be widely used, but they were soon eliminated because they interacted with certain foods and substances to produce serious adverse reactions such as hypertensive crisis and acute yellow liver atrophy.

In the late 1980s, a new generation of half-day oxidase inhibitors appeared, which is a subtype of reversible monoamine oxidase (mao-a). Its characteristics are: 1 has high selectivity to mao-a, but low selectivity to another isoenzyme mao-b, so it can still degrade coolamine in food, thus reducing the risk of hypertensive crisis. The inhibitory effect of 2 on mao-a is reversible, and it takes only 8- 10 hour to restore the enzyme activity, while the inhibitory time of old amine oxidase inhibitor is as long as 2 weeks, which reduces the risk of interaction with food. The main product is moclobemide, the dosage is 150-450mg/d, and it is taken in batches. It is said that the efficacy is equivalent to tricyclic antidepressants.

Although it is safer than the old half-day amine oxidase inhibitor, we should still pay attention to postural hypotension and the potential interaction between food and drugs, which are generally not the first choice.

2. Tricyclic antidepressants

It is another kind of antidepressant after monoamine oxidase inhibitor, represented by imipramine.

Its chemical structure is similar to chlorpromazine. People think that it may be a new antipsychotic drug, but the clinical trial results are unexpected. This drug has no effect on schizophrenia, but it can improve depression. Later, it was confirmed by a large number of double-blind placebo-controlled studies that replacing monoamine oxidase inhibitors became the first choice for depression treatment, monopolizing the antidepressant market for 30 years.

There are 10 kinds of tricyclic antidepressants. In addition to imipramine, there are amitriptyline, doxepin and clomipramine in China. Although maprotiline has a tetracyclic structure, its pharmacological effects are consistent with tricyclic antidepressants. The indications of tricyclic antidepressants are various types of depression, the effective rate is about 70%-80%, the onset time is 1-2 weeks, the dosage range is 50-250mg/d, and the dosage is slowly increased and taken in batches. Because of its strong sedative effect, the dosage should be large at night. The plasma concentrations of imipramine and amitriptyline are 50-250ng/ml.

Tricyclic antidepressants have been used for the longest time in clinic, and their pharmacological effects have been studied most and fully. In short, their main pharmacological effects are: 1 blocking the reabsorption of monoamine transmitters (mainly adrenaline and 5-ht), increasing the content of synapses and producing antidepressant effects. Blocking a variety of transmitter receptors has nothing to do with the therapeutic effect, which is the main cause of many adverse reactions, such as acetylcholine M receptor stagnation, which can cause dry mouth, blurred vision, sinus tachycardia, constipation, urinary retention, glaucoma aggravation and memory dysfunction; Blocking adrenaline a 1 receptor can enhance the antihypertensive effect of prazosin, causing postural hypotension, dizziness and reflex tachycardia. Yin stagnation of histamine h 1 receptor can strengthen central inhibition, sedation, drowsiness, weight gain and blood pressure reduction; Yin stagnation of dopamine d2 receptor may lead to extrapyramidal symptoms and endocrine changes.

If the side effects of antidepressants are serious, they should be reduced, stopped or switched to other drugs. Generally speaking, the combination of two or more antidepressants is not recommended. Because of the high recurrence rate of this disease, treatment should be maintained for 4-6 months after the symptoms are relieved to consolidate the curative effect and prevent recurrence.

Common treatment methods of depression

Depression is an easily treatable disease. After proper treatment, almost 80% patients with depression can return to a normal and happy life. The following are common treatments:

(1) drug therapy: used to change the imbalance of neurochemicals in the brain, including antidepressants, sedatives, sleeping pills and antipsychotics.

(2) Psychotherapy: it is mainly used to change inappropriate cognitive or thinking habits or behavioral habits, and can fundamentally solve problems. Psychotherapy, if the problem is minor, you can get help through telephone consultation or psychological consultation institutions.

(3) Sunshine and exercise: Accepting more sunshine and exercise is beneficial to patients with depression; Doing more exercise can make your mood relax unexpectedly; Ultraviolet rays in the sun can improve a person's mood more or less.

(4) Good living habits: A regular and stable life is what depression patients need most. Go to bed early and get up early, keep your body and mind happy, face every day with a cheerful mood, and hold a positive and optimistic attitude in everything, so as to increase the color and brightness of your life. Depression is one of the most common mental disorders in modern society. The World Health Organization has pointed out that depression is the leading cause of illness and death in women. In developed countries, this disease affects 20% of the female population. American research shows that 12% of women have suffered from severe depression in their lifetime, and this situation accounts for 6% of men.