II. Helping Yourself Through Science

Science is limited to those things that can be proven by using the scientific method of direct observation, controlled environments, and repeatable results. In the mental health field, these areas are confined primarily to psychology and psychotropic pharmaceutical drugs, psychoactive herbs and dietary supplements, and exercise and fitness.

Several of these things have only been discovered recently. For instance, the "runners high" has long been discussed by psychologists. But no one really understood why this was – until they started looking into the way epinephrine affects the brain. It turned out that similar chemicals were released with physical activity, and running was a very effective way of releasing positive brain chemicals.

In diet, medical psychology has found that we truly are what we eat. Heavy meals are not just calorie heavy – they make our thought processes more ponderous and bulky as well, slowing us down. This is because of the way the nutrients in our bloodstream affect the processing of the brain. Diabetics get sluggish when their sugar is out of balance; in the same way, all of us suffer effects to a greater or smaller degree when we eat the wrong foods. A graphic demonstration of this was shown in the movie Supersize Me, when Morgan Spurlock, the self-inflicted victim, found that eating high-calorie, high-fat, high-sugar fast food for every meal made him depressed, tired, and irritable.

But we can take in things that are good for us, too. One of the most exciting things in psychopharmacology right now is the rediscovery of old herbal remedies. Country doctors and wisewomen for years gave St. John's wort to women suffering from depression, particularly postpartum depression. Today, we know that St. John's wort is so effective in combating depressive symptoms that most psychotropic drugs have a contraindication against using it with the drug.

Depression and lethargy, two of the most common psychological complaints, are most often caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and body. Even when caused by external occurrences like a death of a loved one, depression is chemical in nature. Serotonin in particular is decreased in the brain with depression of any type, and most drugs that act on depression use a variety of methods to increase the level of serotonin. Some are called uptake inhibitors, which means they prevent serotonin from leaving the parts of the brain it acts upon, while others encourage the synthesis of serotonin in the brain.

The more we find out about the brain, the more critical serotonin levels seem to be to the healthy activity of the mind. Many of the nonmedical interventions that improve mood, like exercise and light therapy, actually increase the level of serotonin and associated chemicals in the brain.