Exercise combats depression

In a society where medication for depression is becoming an epidemic, it is great to see more research coming out showing there are drug-free ways to achieve good mental health and help those who suffer from depression.

We all know that exercise can make us feel better, the more the heart rate goes up the more endorphins are released. These make us feel happy, and the impact of them lasts for days. So it makes sense that exercise would be a great thing for depressed people, but just how much impact does it have? Well it appears a lot!

An American university research group looked at the impact of exercise on depression. The university split clinically depressed people into 3 groups: exercise only; exercise plus anti-depressant drugs; and anti-depressant drugs only, to see what treatment best treated depression.

They thought the best outcome would be those who were in the combined exercise and drug treatment group, but in fact ten months later, it was the exercise-only group that was most successful in maintaining wellness!

The final results showed that 30 minutes of brisk exercise three times a week is just as effective as drug therapy in relieving the symptoms of depression.

They also followed up the group in six months, and found that patients who continued to exercise after completing the initial trial were much less likely to see their depression return than the other patients.

So what kind of exercise? Well any kind really as long as you get your heart rate up 3x a week for 30minutes.   Walking is the perfect exercise, as long as you make it more than a gentle stroll, but walking and yoga would be even better!

What you might consider a relatively low impact exercise like Yoga can help reduce depression too - it's not just a gentle stretching for aging hippies you know.

It's common knowledge that yoga improves mood and shrugs off stress, but until recently, we didn't know why. A recent study from Boston University School of Medicine discovered that the reason Yoga enthusiasts tend to be happier is that it may be because of yoga's ability to increase levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), an endogenous antidepressant neurotransmitter present in the brain.

They followed several healthy individuals who were divided into two groups. The first group practiced yoga over a 12-week long period, while the participants in the other group walked for the same period of time. At the end of the study, researchers evaluated psychological state of both groups and found that subjects who practiced yoga experienced a greater decrease in anxiety and more significant improvements in mood than those who walked.

So it seems these findings certainly indicate that a modest exercise program is an effective treatment for patients with depression, and also just to help lift your daily mood.

But always remember if you are taking anti-depressant medication always discuss with your doctor or health care practitioner before coming off them.

The website www.depression.org also has a lot of great advice on how to help with depression.

Sugar and Stress Reduce Immunity

Keep sugar to a minimum as the higher your intake of sugar the lower your immune function. This is very important!!!! This also includes store bought fruit juices. 

A mere 100gms of sugar can inhibit your white blood cells ability to engulf foreign bacteria by 50%! This immune suppression is immediate and acts like this for around 2 hours but continues for 5 hours after ingestion.


Think that sounds like a lot? It’s not really....

• A can of coke contains 39 grams of sugar – that is nearly 10 teaspoons of sugar 
• A glass of Just Juice Apple and Orange contains 26gms of sugar – 6.5 teaspoons of sugar. 

One of the reasons that sugar supresses immune function is that it closely resembles the vitamin C molecule and can competitively inhibit vitamin C for entry into the white blood cell. That means the more sugar you eat, the more vitamin C you need. (See below for more information on Vitamin C.

Stress and Immunity

Stress is particularly detrimental to our immune systems. Not so much short term stress, but the ongoing day to day stress that we never get a break from.

This has the ability to create havoc in so many ways, but is directly attributable to lowering your immunity in several ways.

The release of all the stress hormones like adrenaline, have a huge impact on your body. Long term they actually suppress the production and activity of many of our white blood cells.

It reduces levels of good gut bacteria, which are essential for good immunity, it leads to hormonal imbalances which impact inflammation. It can make allergies get worse or appear when you've never had them before.

Try to recognise if you are under constant stress and put some measures into place to reduce it, or include things in your life that will help you deal with it better. Walking is ideal, yoga, meditation - these are not just new age hippy things any more. If you can incorporate them into your life you will find your immune system will be so much stronger.

Excessive Sweating

Since it's winter (well spring now) so you wouldn't think you would have problems with excessive sweating.

But some people have real problems with excessive sweating which can be uncomfortable and embarrassing especially at work - you don't want to be the person giving the presentation with big sweat marks under your arms.

Excessive Sweating is not just a problem that affects menopausal women but can affect people of all ages and both sexes. It is important to note that the hot flushes women experience with menopause will need extra hormonal focussed help to get on top of it - but they will also benefit from some of the suggestions I have below to reduce the excessive sweating.

So if you find yourself in an air-conditioned cool office and are still sweating too much and it is causing you problems then there are a few things you can consider to help reduce the problem.

So lets think about what might be happening in your everyday life that could be aggravating the problem...

Stress and lifestyle causes

The first two possibilitities relate to your adrenal glands and what happens to you when your body releases adrenaline - so it is worth talking about this as overworked adrenal glands are often the cause of excessive sweating.

When you are under stress your adrenal glands make adrenaline which is released into the blood stream. This hormone has a remarkable effect on the body and causes your heart rate and blood pressure to increase, your digestive function slows down and your blood is shunted out to your muscles, your pupils dilate and your heat up - thus you will perspire more!

If you are under long term low stress you may not notice these effects so much but they are still happening!

1. So the first thing to try to get under control or acknowledge is whether Stress causing your excessive sweating - when you are about to give a presentation or go to a performance review or an important meeting you will often find you sweat more. Sometimes you might find yourself in a job where stress is a daily occurence and almost becomes normal - in this situation you will be releasing above average levels of adrenaline and thus excessive sweating.
2. The second thing to consider is the amount of caffeine you are consuming - especially where caffeine is released quickly into the blood stream with coffee and cola drinks. Caffeine stimulates the release of adrenaline into the bloodstream which increases body heat. In this way it will increase sweating in the same way as stress - so if you are stressed and drink excessive caffeine you have double the effect.
3. Bad elimination – perhaps your bowels, overall digestion or liver aren’t working properly or are overloaded with excess bad food, alcohol and chemicals. One major way our body eliminates it's waste is through the skin so if you are clogged up and toxic in your other elimination channels your body will try to get rid of it's wastes through your skin. A sign this might be a problem for you is if you find your perspiration and/or urine is deeply yellow coloured or excessively smelly.
4. An imbalance of minerals – you might need some mineral therapy with the correct balance of sodium and potassium – an imbalance can cause fluid imbalances leading to excessive sweating.
5. There are a lot of medications that can have the side effect of excessive sweating so check your medications carefully.  Even common ones such as pain relief, nervous disorders, antacids and cold and flu medications can cause this problem.

Helpful natural treatments

• Sage tea!  Sage has been shown in many studies to help reduce excessive sweating - it is what is called an anti-hydrotic herb. (if your sweating is likely caused by menopause then try my Hormone Help blend - this has sage in it).

• To improve help your body cope with stress you should focus on B Complex Vitamins and Magnesium in supplement form.  These nutrients help the adrenal glands to function and also give you energy.

• Try a herbal tea with calming and relaxing herbs.  The tea should contain adrenal tonics too such as licorice root which will help restore adrenal glands that are tired and worn out.  For more information on this click here to see information on my Destress-me healing herbalist blend.

• If you think you need some detoxing then a really easy thing to do is to squeeze half a lemon into warm water and drink this first thing in the morning. It acts as a bitter and stimulates your digestion.  Also look at liver function herbs such as dandelion root or milk thistle.  A tea is a good way to get detoxing going as you will also drink lots of fluid that increase the detox process through your kidneys.   Try my Detox-me blend which has a gentle detoxing effect so you can take it on a daily basis.  It has no harsh laxatives and it tastes great!  Or another option is to take Milk Thistle tablets daily - it doesn't taste so great as a herb so you are better with tablets.  My favourite is Blackmores Milk Thistle as it contains clinically trialled doses and is good quality.

• If you want to still get some caffeine - and I would say it is ideal to come off caffeine completely for a while - but you could start by switching to tea instead of coffee.  The levels of caffeine are less and what caffeine there is is released slower into the blood stream so it is easier for the body to process.  Tea also contains a compound called L-Theanine that reduces stress but keeps you alert!

Try some of these suggestions, herbs and nutrients and you should notice a benefit.