Boost Serotonin

Serotonin is an important brain chemical that helps to elevate your mood and stop you from feeling down or depressed. While there are chemical ways to increase your serotonin levels, there are also numerous natural ways too. Below is a discussion of some of the natural ways that you can boost your serotonin levels to get feeling happy, fulfilled, and energized again.

Steps

Boosting Serotonin Through Diet

1. Understand the serotonin/food myths. Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths surrounding food and increased levels of serotonin. These myths include:
   • Foods rich in tryptophan automatically boost serotonin. This is false. Most foods that contain tryptophan, an amino acid, compete with other amino acids to be absorbed by the body's transport system. Eating a lot of turkey, which is rich in tryptophan, will not automatically give you more serotonin.
   • Eating a lot of banana will automatically boost serotonin. Bananas do contain serotonin. That serotonin, however, is unable to cross the blood-brain barrier and be absorbed by humans.
2. Shun the simple carbs and embrace the complex carbs. Complex carbohydrates are absorbed by the body differently than simple carbohydrates. Simple carbs raise your blood levels quickly, causing a spike in insulin, which drops after a while. Complex carbs are absorbed more slowly by the body and therefore avoid the massive peaks and troughs brought upon by simple carbs.
   • Complex carbs include:
     • Legumes like peas and lentils
     • Whole grain breads
     • Whole grain pastas
     • Brown rice
     • Starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes and parsnips
   • Simple carbs include:
     • Yogurt
     • Fruit juice
     • "Normal" pasta
     • Cakes, candies, and other refined sugar products
     • White bread and white rice, while not technically simple carbs, are absorbed by your body in a similar way.
3. Avoid caffeinated foods, especially energy drinks. Caffeine suppresses serotonin, which could also help explain why it's a hunger suppressant as well. Energy drinks contain large amounts of sugar, which the body processes quickly, but which produce an energy-zapping low after the insulin has finished surging. If you have to drink caffeinated products, wait until after you've eaten, doctors recommend.
4. Eat healthy fats, such as omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids are hypothesized to affect the functionality of serotonin in the brain. People with low serotonin levels commonly have low DHA levels, which is an essential building block in the brain, and which needs to be replenished with foods such as fish oils, which are high in omega-3 fatty acids. Look for omega-3 fats in:
   • Fish, such as salmon, and fish oils
   • Nuts, seeds and seed oils, such as flax seed oil
5. Eat dark chocolate. Eating dark chocolate improves serotonin levels partly because of resveratrol.Resveratrol boosts both endorphins and serotonin levels. Remember to reach for dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate, as milk chocolate contains far less cocoa (the stuff that produces serotonin) than dark chocolate.

Boosting Serotonin in Other Ways

1. Exercise regularly. Exercise is a great way to boost your serotonin levels. The results are clear: exercise causes an increase in tryptophan, which is a precursor to serotonin. The tryptophan persists well after exercising is finished, suggesting that mood elevation may be present for hours after the exercising has finished.
   • Work out in at intensity levels with which you are familiar. Consistent serotonin release is linked with exercise that people feel comfortable with, not exercise that pushes people off the edge, an English study has found.
   • If you can't find the time to exercise regularly, try walking or 30 minutes to an hour per day. At the very least, this moderate exercise will help burn calories and boost tryptophan levels, causing an increase in serotonin.
2. Get enough light. Light probably helps serotonin synthesis. Research has found a positive correlation between serotonin synthesis and total hours of sunlight during the day. In postmortems of humans, serotonin levels are higher during the summer months than the winter months. Getting a better mood could be as easy as opening the curtains in your otherwise dark room.
   • Get natural light during the day, not artificial light during the night. Natural, daytime sunlight is better at giving you serotonin than artificial LED, fluorescent, or UV light. Getting artificial light, especially at night, has the added disadvantage of blocking melatonin production, which helps your body get a good night's sleep.
3. Invest in massage. Several studies show that massage therapy helps cut down the stress hormone cortisol while boosting serotonin levels and increasing dopamine. This double-pronged benefit makes massage particularly valuable.
4. Understand that stress may interfere with serotonin. Prolonged periods of stress can deplete serotonin levels. Serious and systematic stress can have an impact on the body's ability to produce and synthesize serotonin. This means that you should stay away from stressful situations as much as possible, and find healthy ways to deal with stress once it comes your way.
   • If confronted with lifestyle stress, try practicing:
     • Yoga
     • Meditation
     • Deep breathing exercises
     • Self-expression (art)
5. Relive happy memories. Though it may sound corny, reliving happy times may be enough to give your brain a serotonin boost. This may directly increase serotonin levels and keep you from fixating on less happy times, if you are prone to depression. The inability to think of happier times is called "state dependent recall." If you can't think of happier times, try talking to friends or family and looking at old journals or pictures.

Tips

• Eating healthy, exercising, and maintaining an optimistic outlook can do wonders for boosting your serotonin. You don't necessarily need drugs to boost serotonin.

Warnings

• Talk to your doctor if you are seriously depressed or inexplicably saddened. You may have a serious condition that needs medical intervention and/or drugs.

Sources and Citations

See also

• Stay Away from Junk Food
• Choose Low FODMAP Foods As a Vegetarian
• Count Macronutrients
• Eat Properly
• Stop Being Hungry Quickly
• Develop Healthy Eating Habits
• Make Yourself Less Thirsty
• Avoid Food Triggered Seizures
• Cut Down on Junk Food
• Add Flavor to Quinoa

Read more ...

What links here

• Decrease Your Brain Age