Probiotics May Help With Depression

More research is needed, but the results of initial studies are very promising. In the meantime, probiotics are at worst totally harmless, so why not? I’m going to try it. You can learn more about it here: https://www.healthline.com/health/probiotics-depression

I am a little uncomfortable writing about this, but am doing so in the hope that maybe it will help someone. I am doing well, but I have been at least a little bit depressed for as long as I can remember. Most of the time, I dealt with it pretty well, sometimes I didn’t, but being a little bit depressed is kind of my baseline. That does not mean that I have been unhappy all of my life. I can only speak for myself, but in my experience, it is totally possible to be depressed and happy at the same time. This may be impossible to explain, but imagine that you are very happy with your life, but you have a headache that never quite goes away. Sometimes, it’s mild, sometimes, it is intense, sometimes it’s somewhere in between. That is basically how I experience depression. Not that I am always happy-no one ever is-but even when I am very happy, the depression is still there. I have tried therapy a million times, and have at this point totally given up on it. In my experience, most therapists will tell you that you are depressed because you have low self esteem (I do not have low self esteem) and they will blame everything on your parents. I have wonderful parents, and I definitely do not blame them for my depression. The few therapists who won’t blame everything on your parents will blame it all on you, and they will tell you to stop feeling sorry for yourself.

I don’t feel sorry for myself, or at least, I feel a lot less sorry for myself than I feel for a lot of other people. I know how fortunate I have been in life: I know that I am far more fortunate than most people. But still, the headache of depression remains.

When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I got the impression that depression was seen as something to be ashamed of. I never spoke about it with anyone, because I was afraid that people would look down on me if they knew about it. I was saved in my late teens by becoming friends with a guy who was not afraid to talk about his depression. Up until that point, I had thought that depression made me a loser, and that it was something I could never tell anyone about, or else everyone would know what a loser I was. But my friend was obviously not a loser: he was good looking, quick witted, very funny, the life of every party, an incredibly talented artist, and he could also take anybody in a fight. He was actually the happiest person I had ever met. He was both happy and depressed: he was usually in a great deal of pain, but he had an amazing ability to laugh and have fun despite the pain. The more I hung around with him, the more I realized that I had the ability to laugh and have fun despite the pain too, and being happy in spite of depression became much easier when I wasn’t constantly beating myself up for being depressed. It has to be stressed: I can only speak for myself and describe what I observed in my friend. I cannot and do not speak for all depressed people. Once before, I tried to explain this concept of being depressed and happy at the same time, and a bunch of depressed people jumped all over me and told me that it was impossible. Some depression is obviously a lot more severe than others. I have been fortunate in that most of the time, my depression is mild and not debilitating. It’s like having a mild headache: nobody wants one, but if it isn’t that bad, you can still enjoy life and love and experience joy even if you are in pain-and sometimes those in pain manage to appreciate and enjoy life more than those who are not in pain. But if your depression is more akin to a severe migraine, that will make happiness extremely difficult. Everyone is different. If you are grappling with severe depression, please seek treatment, by which I mean, you should probably be taking anti depressants.

If you are reluctant to go on drugs, that is totally understandable, but consider this: severe depression, if it goes untreated and gets bad enough, can lead to a psychotic break. Even if you are strong willed enough to just bite the bullet and try to tough your way through it, your mind may not cooperate. I know whereof I speak, because I had a psychotic break after years of experiencing severe depression and refusing to take drugs for it. There is no way of knowing if antidepressants could have prevented it, because I never took antidepressants. I wish that I had. It is very possible that I could have spared myself and my loved ones incredible grief. As it is, I have been on a low dose anti-psychotic for 20 years. If I could go back in time, I wish that I had taken anti depressants. Maybe it wouldn’t have prevented the psychotic break, but it very well might have.

There are people who are looking for a happy pill: anyone who has been in a psych ward has encountered them. They are often on 10 or 12 different drugs, they are always begging the psychiatrist for more and better drugs, and they spend their whole lives playing around with drugs hoping that at some point a pill will solve their problems: such people exist, but if you are severely depressed and you are refusing to try any medication at all, you are not one of those people. If you are severely depressed, please go on antidepressants. And also, try probiotics, but please don’t rely totally on probiotics. Please seek treatment.

I am not grappling with severe depression. I am just experiencing the same mild headache I have almost always had, and I am going to try probiotics. The research seems to indicate that bacteria in the gut has an effect on mood: it seems that the gut and the brain are connected in ways doctors are just beginning to understand. In the studies so far, those who took probiotics did much better than those who took a placebo, in terms of depression. It is very important to realize, though, that only some probiotics seem to affect mood: there are lots of different probiotics, and apparently, it matters which ones you take, because only some of them will have an effect on depression. This is the one I am trying: https://www.vitaminshoppe.com/p/dr-formulated-probiotics-mood-50-billion-60-vegetarian-capsules/gu-1278?mr:trackingCode=E05F8996-0DBA-E911-8102-00505694403D&mr:referralID=NA&s. I will report back in a couple of months.

Of course, there is always the possibility than any improvement I experience is all in my head, but I’m ok with that 🙂