Mood

The brand new, 2,400-years-old Science of fighting Depression

A couple of days a go, I stumbled upon two TEDx talks by clinical neuroscientist Stephen Ilardi (University of Kansas). He shares how we can “naturally” (without taking antidepressants) fight depression. The talks are instructive and entertaining, yet pretty similar to each other – so if you´re short on time, it´s probably sufficient to watch only one of them. Here´s the summary:

We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially-isolated, fast-food-laden, frenetic pace of modern life.

Accordingly, among the most potent remedies for depression are:

  • going outside (daylight);
  • moderate exercise;
  • eating healthy food;
  • getting enough sleep;
  • and spending time with the people you love.

And while I´m happy and impressed that these recommendations are now being backed by “hard science”, I guess we should have known all along. Here are some quotes by Greek physician and “father of Western medicine” Hippocrates (460 – 370 BC).

If you are in a bad mood go for a walk.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy.

It´s always a crime to divorce a Wittgenstein quote from its context – but I´ll do it anyway:

Wittgenstein - HappyWhat we can definitely say today is that happy people see the world differently – and I mean literally, not metaphorically. When looking at the same visual information, happy people seem to see more of the scenery, they have a different scope. And this scope, in turn, seems to enlarge their mental scope, thereby transferring the broadening quality to the metaphorical level – which, at the end of the day, makes happy people e.g., more creative. If you´d like to know more, please have a look at these articles.