Depression and Breathing

"Depression is a chronic, disabling lifelong illness that requires a well-tolerated treatment that provides both acute symptom relief and continued benefits."

-- Harold Sackeim, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Radiology
Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and
New York State Psychiatric Institute

Pregnant women who exhibit depression in their last trimester (high cortisol, high norepinephrine, low dopamine levels) gave birth to infants who also exhibit atypical norepinephrine and dopamine levels. The infants born to depressed mothers also showed inferior performance on infant tests for orientation, reflex and excitability. Lundy, et. al. Infant Behavior & Development, 1999, vol 22(1), 119-129.

From Mike:
Moral? Deal with it now lest it be passed on to children. I think of depression as a "depressed chest," one that has been compressed inward or held back from expanding. When someone feels "down," this is a metaphor for downward compression of the chest. I believe it is largely the breath (not oxygen alone) that lightens up the entire body and opens up the mind-body-spirit interaction to address the negative states of being (depressions). There has never been a depression that I cannot facilitate lifting using enough breath.

#176 Rapidly Improving Your Breathing Video

Factors contributing to depression include:

• Diet

• Hypothyroidism

• Estrogen can block the activity of vitamins B6 and B12, forcing them out of the body. Low B6 and B12 cause low energy. Low energy causes and exacerbates depression.

• Hypoglycemia is exacerbated by low energy caused by estrogen. Learn about hypoglycemia in the #191 Secrets of Optimal Natural Breathing.

• Women who take estrogen in the form of oral contraceptives often get depressed. "Estrogen can also cause breathing difficulties...The risk of contraceptive drug side effects increase if you have asthma." Pill Book, 10th edition.

  From Mike:
  Well, what about nearly asthmatic and not yet diagnosed? There is much more of a relationship between estrogen and breathing than is being thought about. Cancer is connected. Cancer is anaerobic. I have the feeling that many women have significant concerns about the risks of birth control substances, but push those concerns into their subconscious. These concerns can cause an underlying anxiety-related breathing-pattern disorder that will never get diagnosed. If the breathing problem is handled, it would reduce some of the negative aspects of birth control.

In the June 2001 Health magazine, Brenda Penninx, a gerontologist at Wake Forest university, reported that she followed 2,900 patients, both with and without heart disease, for four years to trace the effects of depression. Patients with depression were almost four times as likely to die of heart disease as were non-depressed patients.

From Mike:
The heart often goes into spasm due to lack of oxygen.

From a subscriber:
Dear Michael:

I was not surprised to read your article linking depression to breathing. I have been suffering very deep depression over the past 11 months, and recently have discovered myself that throwing my shoulders back and taking few long deep breaths has the amazing effect of overcoming what I would consider to be extremely severe depression. I came about this discovery by chance a few weeks ago, and it has proved so successful that today I performed a search on the Internet to see if there were any medical studies linking depression to breathing.

I naturally tend to hunch my shoulders over, and it was under my chiropractor's advice that I started doing exercises to open my chest cavity and correct my posture.

With these exercises, I naturally tended to take a few deep breaths, and usually I noticed an instantaneous lifting of my mood. It was a short jump in logic that lead me to try the breathing alone when I felt my mood slip.

I am quite amazed by the effects of this simple treatment -- even three or four deep breaths in the morning can mean the difference between a good and a bad day.

I should expect that you have heard many such stories -- but decided to write to you anyway to reinforce your theory with my piece of anecdotal evidence.

-- Alexander

Turn depression into unstoppable spirit. Level 3 or perhaps level 4 if you need vitamin assistance.