Hello,
I am a 61 year old woman who has suffered from depression all my life as best I can figure out. I was diagnosed with depression in 1982 and first started on medication then. After the initial few weeks, I discovered how it felt to have energy, to not feel paranoid, and to believe something not under my control was causing my day to day struggle with life. I also have an underactive thyroid which was diagnosed in 1988. Since then I've been through every type of medication until Prozac became my first "miracle" drug. I now use full spectrum light for an hour first thing in the morning and then ride my exercise bike for 35 minutes. I lead a strength and flexibility exercise class twice a week for people over 40. I'm one of the youngest! I've deliberately lost the extra weight I had been carrying around since I had my son 34 years ago. Right now I've regained 10 pounds starting in November when the light started to decrease and I let my craving for chocolate take over.
When I'm out of depression I thoroughly enjoy my life with the energy and optimism I had never had before. But it's the recurrence of it that drains me. Despite using the light for the first time since Sept. 1 and continuing a healthy life style, I had the worst episode of depression ever right after Christmas. There is an issue my husband and I are working on which would definitely contribute to it but I've know about that since the first part of August. But I felt everything I have felt before and to the nth degree. I was working out suicide scenarios in my mind but have never acted on them in all the years of this struggle. I felt totally bereft of hope which hasn't happened before. Usually I can believe that the time will come when I feel good again. I sobbed immediately at any attempt to talk about any issues. I wanted to go somewhere and rest until it went away. I felt stuck in the bottom of a mud hole spinning my tires with no hope of getting out. My Beck scores were in the high severe range consistently.
Then over a period of two days, miraculously, my mood did a 180 degree shift. I felt the way I love to feel and all my self esteem returned along with hope and physical energy to do things. This has NEVER happened before. Today I'm sinking back into it and am going to use whatever resources I can to stop it.
By joining this support group, I'm hoping to get support and maybe other people's experiences to allow me to accept the cycle of depression and avoid my pitfalls. I believe that bingeing on chocolate is a significant contributor in the fall/winter but not the whole story. Has anyone out there found chocolate and simple carbohydrates a contributor to their episodes of depression?
Thank you to anyone who has persisted through my introduction.
Daisy
. Yes food has a major impact on your mood! Fats and cards - like in chocolates are comforts foods that stimulate insuline production in the body and a whole bunch of brain functions! THat is why we are supposed to do exercise, to stimulate the body and the brain is other "good" ways.
