Change Your Brain Every Day - Why Are 23% of Women on Antidepressants?

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

With a staggering 23% of women taking an antidepressant medication, there’s clearly a need for interventions. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the reasons why so many women struggle with depression.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. So we are back. And today we're going to talk about something that we hear a lot about. In fact, something that affected me personally, it's women and depression. Why are women so much more affected by depression? Now we say that, but I know a lot of men who have been

severely affected by depression. And when they are, it's usually pretty bad. Most of this will apply to men as well, but 23% of women are taking antidepressant medication. Dr. Drupinski and Dr. Mehmet Oz and I did a program on the Dr. Oz Show about this. And we've known for a long time, women have twice the risk of depression as men. And part of the reason is women have less serotonin than men. Right, naturally. According to one study, women have 52% less serotonin than men. And that's if they're not doing something to diminish their serotonin, correct? That's just naturally.

Well, that's overall. Right. And one of the reasons for that could be birth control pills. Right. So some of the things that decrease serotonin, birth control pills dramatically can decrease serotonin. Drinking alcohol can decrease your serotonin. Taking Advil.

So if you've got severe period cramps during your menstrual cycle, you've got fibroid tumors and you're taking a lot of Advil, can decrease your serotonin because it's killing gut bacteria. Anything that kills gut bacteria can actually decrease your serotonin. If you're eating a really bad diet and you're increasing inflammation, you can be affecting your serotonin because you're affecting gut integrity. So a lot of things. And women's bodies, because of the way we're designed with periods and things like this, we end up doing things because of pain. So that might be affecting it. Well, and there are 62% of women of reproductive

age are currently using contraception of one form or another. And birth control pills are the most common. And if they decrease serotonin... They do something else though too. They dramatically decrease B vitamins, which can also be a big culprit when it comes to depression, can't they? Yes. And magnesium. Right. And so women can be more anxious. And also what a lot of women don't know is their progesterone levels drop about 10 years before they go to menopause. And when progesterone drops, women get anxious and negative. So they're more likely to get divorced because their partners may be unhappy with the crankiness

and they may start drinking more. So if you just begin to look at the stacked trauma or the stacked causes from naturally lower serotonin levels, so naturally higher incidence of depression, birth control pills that can deplete serotonin further, the chronic stress that women are under in the United States. So when I was growing up, there were not very many two-parent working homes. Now that's 90% percent of the population because of how society has shifted. And even though 90% of mothers are working outside of the home, they're still primary caretakers for children. They're still primary caretakers for the home. That's a lot of stress.

So they're under chronic stress. They're not sleeping as well. And all of those things contribute to it. It's amazing. And this is slightly, slight detour, but that study, well, actually the survey from the NIH where they actually surveyed 2,400 women and what they discovered is childhood trauma connected to chronic pain. So the depression part of it, I'm trying to connect the depression to chronic pain as well. It can lead to chronic pain. So often. And some of the antidepressants, particularly Cymbalta and the supplement SAMe, have been found to decrease depression and decrease pain.

And what they're finding is because women, what's really interesting is they found that it was more common with women. And women, boys certainly go through childhood trauma. In fact, probably fairly close. But for whatever reason, women are more likely or girls are more likely to be sexually abused, I guess, when they're younger and go through a lot of trauma and child abuse. And so women were more affected. And that chronic childhood trauma actually, or the childhood trauma was actually affecting their chronic pain later because they were processing it emotionally. So let's talk about five things women can do if they struggle from depression. Now, so you have personal experience with this.

What are some of your top suggestions? Okay. Well, I had no idea that my thyroid was affecting it. So I'm going to tell you to start by actually going to someone who knows what the heck they're talking about, like an integrative doctor who will check all your numbers. Know if your thyroid's off. Know if you have Lyme disease. Know if you've got these issues like vitamin D deficiency, because it matters. It will make you feel terrible if you're on birth control. And then change your brain, change your life. Brain Warriors Way and Memory Rescue, there's charts on how to know which important numbers you should test for and do that. You can't change what you don't measure. Right.

And along those lines, we just talked about birth control. Now, we're not here to tell you to stop taking birth control. If there's an alternative one, you can take, great. And if not, know what it's doing so that you can start to replenish. So that there are natural ways to boost serotonin. Light is one. Exercise. In the new book I'm working on, Feel Better Fast and Make It Last,

I came across a whole group of research studies on light and vitamin D increase serotonin. Right. So you can take vitamin D. So that can help you be more flexible. Exercise. Exercise boosts serotonin. Now, the tricky part of diet and serotonin is getting a sugar burst increases serotonin. So let's take healthy carbs.

People get happy with cupcakes. Right. So let's think about healthy carbs because you can still get that boost by eating some healthy carbs. So healthy carbs that are not simple, don't turn to sugar so quickly. We actually, again, write about that a lot. So sweet potatoes. Right. Sweet potatoes with the skin on especially. So lots of tips like that in the Brain Warriors Weight Cookbook will help you. But be thinking smart carbs.

Smart carbs can be really helpful. Exercise, smart carbs, know your important numbers. Don't drink too much because that's going to decrease your gut bacteria. So you don't want to do anything to harm your gut bacteria. And some probiotics have actually been found to help support your mood. Obviously, learn how to kill the ants, the automatic negative thoughts that steal your happiness. Meditation, absolutely. But, you know, I think exercise is just one of the most important things you can do. And people go, well, I don't have time to exercise. Neither do I. It's

where I wear my Fitbit. So you can park far away at work. You can walk at lunch rather than take your car. You just want to move your body. And I'm going to push back on that. I'm going to push back on that because I am one of the busiest people I know. I am just on the go constantly. And because I'm so busy, I don't have time not to. So that's one of those ants. And I'm just an, I'm an ant squasher. So you need to flip that in your head because if you are that busy and you feel that bad, you really need to be doing it. So even if it's not for an hour and a half a day or an hour a day and you get 30 minutes of sort of intense exercise, that's going to help you. So you don't have time not to figure out some way to carve that out and cut something else out. It just is what it

is. Do a meeting on the phone, like on your phone and walk. I don't know, but figure it out. Wow. Wow. You're so intense. I am. Because I have suffered. I'm not going back, so. Also, keep a mood log.

So helpful. I have my patients do that. And that way you can track, is it related to your cycle? Right. And then there's things you can do about that. And how long before? What a lot of people don't realize is there's a pattern. How many days before your cycle it starts? Well, and one of my favorite nutrients is saffron. And saffron has actually been shown in multiple studies to help mood, but also PMS and also memory and sexual function.

So if you think of some of the antidepressants, you know, they may help your mood, but they don't help PMS or they don't help your memory. They may actually make it worse and they may make your sexual function worse. I'm just, I'm a huge fan of saffron. So there are lots of things you can do to enhance your mood. If you struggle with it, it's critical to take care of it because if you suffer with depression, you actually have a higher risk of getting divorced because of the negativity that goes along with it. Right. So maybe you can answer this question. So women tend to suffer more from depression than men do.

But I've heard that men are more likely to commit suicide if they're depressed than women are. Why is that? So women actually try to commit suicide a lot more than men. Really? But men are much more successful at it because men tend to use more violent means. More extreme. And women, when they try to kill themselves, it's often a cry for help, but because men

have trouble crying and crying for help, they are often more effective. Oh, interesting. I thought it was just because they were... And never forget that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary feeling or a problem. It almost always goes away and growing up Catholic I am not above using guilt. You kill yourself it radically increases the chances that your child will kill themselves because that's how they learn that people solve problems. Well, and it's so hard to imagine when you're in that place. I've been in that place.

You can't see beyond yourself. You can't see beyond your pain. I couldn't see beyond my bed that I couldn't get out of at the time. It was horrible. That's why I get so intense about telling people they have to do it because it was so terrible. It was so terrible. I know how awful it is. You can't see past it, but I promise you, I promise you, there are so many ways people can help you. There are so many answers beyond that pain. If you can just step outside of it, just to reach out for help. There's so many things,

so many tools in our belts that we can use to help people. You just gotta be able to take that step to get help. So there's always a solution and it's not taking your life. Depression, one of the most highly treatable disorders. Get the help you need. Stay with us. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com

or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.