HealthyGamerGG - Depression QnA

Episode Date: January 4, 2020

DrK answers some community questions regarding depression, specifically on how diet and relationships affect it. Watch the video on our YouTube page (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylCmKnpw9Aw) and catch Dr.K live on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/healthygamer_gg) - Wednesdays & Fridays at 3PM EST and Sundays at 6PM EST. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, think about when you have the flu. When you have the flu, what do you feel like doing? Absolutely nothing. And do you think that is psychological? No, obviously it's not. So why do you assume that when you wake up in the morning and you don't feel like doing anything, why do you assume that is completely psychological? It's an incorrect assumption.

How can I help a friend who went through therapy and medication and find it isn't helpful? So, okay, so like you guys have to understand. that, you know, as a friend, you guys are not responsible, like, for someone else's mental health, right? So, like, you shouldn't be, there are buckets, like, in terms of what therapy and medication are supposed to be helping, you should not, like, put yourself in that same bucket. So the support that you can provide a friend is the support that a friend provides and shouldn't be a substitute for therapy or medication. Practically, what you can try to do is maybe help them find, like, a different.

therapist or psychiatrist or psychologist. So you can help them in terms of like, you know, like helping them find help and being supportive and baking them cookies and calling them when they're feeling down and talking to them and hanging out with them, getting them out of the house, visiting their Twitch stream and telling them to meditate when they get upset. These are all of the things that you can do, which means a lot. Like a lot of times, you know, when we think about when I deal with people who are suicidal, it's not like the most common. reason why someone who wants to kill themselves and doesn't kill themselves is because of the other people in their life. It's because there are people that matter to them. They themselves are willing

to kill themselves for their own sake. It's just the other people in their life that are important to them that they don't want to hurt that keeps them struggling and wanting to live. So that's your job. Your job is to be their friend. Your job is to tell them that you care about them, you tell them that you love them. Like, that's not something that their psychiatrist or therapist is going to tell them. I mean, they can sometimes. Sometimes I say that to my patients. But, and, and so, like, you,

like, they're not, therapy and medication isn't going to give you a sense of love. I mean, it depends on, yeah, it's not. But you can. So you can, you can be their friend. You can hang out with them. You can, like, get them out of the house. Like, you guys can go work out together. Y'all can go meditate together, all those things. And that's your job. so you can't help but just don't think that you should be a substitute for therapy or medication

because you're not okay why does my depression get worse when I find out someone who I don't know dies such as juice world today who I'm not a huge fan of and a girl from my hometown I mean the short answer is that I don't know but what I would say is that like much like gork so if we think about gork's problem is like he has a certain belief that's internal and when the rest of the world hops on to that belief like he's totally fine with it, right? Like, so he, when his Twitch chat gets angry at him,

he like, that affects him. So like, it's kind of like you have certain vulnerabilities that the rest of the world is going to kind of tap into. And so I would say that in your case, you know, you have some vulnerability about the world being like full of, you know, like, is like a hopeless place. it's not just about you, but that there's like sadness in the world or something like that. And anytime the world kind of corroborates that message, the feelings within you return.

So I want you guys to think about depression a little bit like PTSD in the sense that, you know, there are certain things that trigger PTSD and there are certain things that can trigger depression. And triggering isn't just a part of PTSD. It's just a part of the way that the mind works. like when I walk into a bathroom so I don't know if you guys have ever had this happen to you but when you really need to use the bathroom and you walk into the bathroom like if you're in a public place and all the stalls are occupied

your need to go to the bathroom gets way way worse it's like you could hold it in but the second you get into the bathroom you need to like really really really go right so it's like your body and your mind are responding to the external world and they're triggering you to need to pee

So in this person's case, his question is, why does my depression get worse when I find out someone who I don't know dies? It's because there's something about the way that you view the world or that you view other people that's getting triggered by like these random deaths. And then you get depressed. So like that that has more to do with the way that your mind. It's like a bias. It's like a way that you look at the world. So I don't know where that comes from. But the question is like, why does it matter to you, you know,

Let me think about this. How would I ask this? Yeah, like, what are your general thoughts about the world? How do you find mental problems are caused by physical illnesses like diabetes and blood pressure? Okay, that's a great question. So mental problems are not caused by physical problems like diabetes or blood pressure. Well, sometimes they can't be. But you guys have to understand that the mind is connected to our body.

So there are lots of studies that show that, for example, when your depression gets worse, that your arthritis gets worse. That when people feel anxious, their GI system gets messed up. And there's a lot of fascinating research, for example, on the gut-brain axis. Our bodies and our minds are connected. And there are a lot of mechanisms through which these are connected. So I think my favorite exploration of this is the field of psycho-neuroimmunology, which is the effect of our mind, or the connection between our mind, psychology.

are brain, neuroscience, and immune system immunology, psychoneuroimmunology. There are studies that show that if you're depressed, for example, your body's response to a vaccine is blunted compared to like when you're not depressed. So your immune system and your mental like system or actually like your mind are very closely linked. There are also studies that show that people who are grieving are more susceptible to viral illnesses. So when you lose a loved one, your immune system isn't functioning the way that it used to. So the body and mind are intrinsically connected. I think for you guys, the most important thing to think about is circadian rhythm and cortisol. So when your circadian rhythm is off, your immune

system tends to get off. You tend to get into like a pro-inflammatory kind of state. And when you're in a pro-inflammatory state, you kind of feel shitty. This is just like not a good word for it. You just feel shitty. Like, your capacity to do things that you know you should do just feels worse, right? And like, you're like, oh, man, like, I should work out, but I just don't feel like it. I just don't feel like it is actually a very complex physiological, neuroscientific and psychological response. There are lots of things that result in you feeling like doing stuff. So you kind of say, like, oh, I just don't feel like it today. Well, think about when you have the flu. When you have the flu, what do you feel like doing? Absolutely nothing.

And do you think that is psychological? No, obviously it's not. So why do you assume that when you wake up in the morning and you don't feel like doing anything, why do you assume that is completely psychological? It's an incorrect assumption. If the flu can make you not feel like doing stuff, what other physical things can make you not feel like doing stuff? So you should understand that if you're in a generally pro-inflammatory state, you're not going to feel like doing stuff. So what can you do to get out of a pro-inflammatory? inflammatory state. You can do things like yoga or exercise. Yoga is superior to exercise in this, by the way. But let's remember that the problem here is that you can't do anything. So you're probably not going to be able to do yoga. So what you should do is eat anti-inflammatory foods. So like anti-inflammatory foods at the top of the list, berries, leafy greens, not iceberg lettuce, but stuff like arugula spinach, cruciferous vegetables. broccoli, cauliflower, cruciform. The vegetables that look like they like bud out.

So all of those things will help sort of reduce your inflammatory burden and have limited evidence to improve like inflammatory conditions. So someone is joking about downing a fuck ton of Advil. There's actually a study. So you guys really ready for research, Andy? So you jest, this is not the paper that I'm looking for. I have a better one. I just can't find it.

but that's a meta-analysis. It's just old. There's a recent study. I don't know when. There was a very good study that came out within the last year showing pretty good effects of using anti-inflammatories

to treat depression. Right? But absolutely. So I don't think you should take Advil if you're depressed. But it's ibuprofen. Did stream die for a second? I don't know.

Okay. So in your case, eat crucifers. vegetables, think a little bit about, you know, physically what you can do if you don't feel like you're, like, doing stuff. And the mind and the body are fundamentally connected. So physical problems are going to make your mental state worse, and mental problems are going to make your physical state worse. And the cool thing is that since both of them are connected, you can do meditation to improve your rheumatoid arthritis, you can do meditation to improve your

blood pressure, and you can do physical stuff to improve your depression. You can eat different things. So that's like, that's cool, right? Like, you don't have to actually just, you don't have to like combat, you don't have to fight the depression in the mental realm alone. You can actually just do physical stuff and your depression will improve. Your anxiety will improve. Okay. What's the difference between a psychiatrist versus psychologist versus therapist? So psychiatrist is a medical doctor. So I went to medical school and you learn about the physical body. So like, as part of becoming a psychiatrist, I worked in the ICU of a hospital. So I deal with people who are like, you know, have septic infections and have heart attacks, strokes.

You learn how to treat diabetes. You learn how to treat high blood pressure. You learn how to treat physical stuff. So you're a medical doctor. You even spend time in an operating room, like doing surgeries. So that's a medical doctor. So a medical doctor who specializes in the organ of the mind. So remember that medical doctors specialize, or many of them do.

Right? So you have like pediatricians who specialize in kids. you have obstetricians or gynecologists who specialize in pregnancy and female health. You have surgeons who specialize in surgery, and then you have psychiatrists who are doctors who specialize in the mind. A psychologist is someone who studies the mind exclusively. And the training for psychologists oftentimes have a lot more research involved. So they learn a lot more about science and research methodologies, at least in the U.S.

because it's a doctor of philosophy, usually. So it's a PhD, and that's like a research degree fundamentally. You can get a PhD in psychology, or you can get a PhD in, like, electrical engineering or computer science. So it's an academic degree with a particular focus in the mind. So a therapist can be, at least in the United States, can be many things. So a psychiatrist can be a therapist is someone who does therapy, or presumably psychotherapy, because you also have physical therapists, right? So a therapist is someone who does something called like psychotherapy usually. They're like a counselor or a therapist.

And they can have a variety of training background. So a social worker in the United States can be a therapist. A psychologist can be a therapist and a psychiatrist can be a therapist. The difference is that their training is different. So as a psychiatrist, I trained, I went to four years of medical school and then four years of psychiatry training. a psychologist usually trains for between five and seven years with like a one-year postdoc. It depends on how much research that they do. And a social worker trains for like two years in the United States.

So their training levels are going to be different. Their backgrounds are going to be different. You know, a psychiatrist can prescribe medications. Most of the time, psychologists cannot because medications are like a physical substance that you put in your body and may interfere with other medications. So that's the difference. Okay, so what exactly? I see a couple questions about procrastination.

Quick question, how often do you plan to do retreats and will you do retreats outside the U.S.? How often do I plan to do retreats? I don't know. We've had one retreat. That sort of happened like last minute. I was just like, hey, we should have a retreat. And our community was pretty small then. It was like maybe 100 people or 150.

And about a dozen people showed up. And it was great. Like we had about 12 to 15 people who regularly showed up on our discords for like group, like we would work through stuff together. and so like half of them came to the retreat. And so really our active community was like 15 people. When are we going to do another retreat as soon as possible? And will we do retreats outside the U.S.?

I certainly hope so. So all that stuff takes like money and funding and time. So I can pay for, you know, one retreat a year, like out of my own pocket. But as we make money on stream and as you guys like sub and all that kind of stuff, like that's all going to go to the retreat fund. And we're probably going to do another retreat in the U.S. but it sounds like we need to do a retreat somewhere in like Northern Europe or Scandinavia. Because half the people on stream are from like the Netherlands or like Denmark or whatever.

Like Finland. So yeah, send us your Amazon Prime subs. So we, yeah, we want to do more retreats for sure. Just already I'm thinking if we do one internationally, it's probably going to be somewhere in Europe. Okay, so there's something about expectations, procrastination, long term. So this is a question that I get all the time on stream. What are your thoughts on using hallucinogenic drugs to treat mental illnesses?

So I think that there's preliminary evidence that is promising that some substances when used in a controlled fashion can be therapeutic. But don't take, like, I don't think people should just start doing LSD or MDMA, like, just because some studies show some promising stuff. Like, these are very small studies, like 20 people, 50 people. and I think it's like, you know, if the evidence supports it, I'm open to it, but I think that it's too preliminary to really tell what's good or what's safe or what's reliable. Okay. Oh, this is a cool question. I like this question.

Okay. With ADHD committing long term. Okay, what do I think about gene site? That's a very specific question. So let me just ask this one. Then we're going to switch to meditation, okay? So last mental health question. Let me just scan real quick.

Actually, there's a quick question. Can you make the stream more EU-friendly? It's pretty late, and I don't want to miss it. Yeah, so, like, I think we stream from three to five Eastern, which I think is like 9 to 11 in some parts of Europe. And I will do my best to make the stream as EU-friendly as possible, but I have a job and have two kids and things like that. So, like, there are some, you know, restraints on my time.

Yeah, I know it's 3 a.m. like where you guys are in in Europe right now. But we have a stream that normally starts five hours before now. So 2 a.m. means that it'll be like 9 p.m. your time, right? So, and I'll try to stream earlier in the day. Like, I'll keep that in mind.