December 2025

Depression

• Beyond a mood disorder
• It’s not just in your brain
• The Gut Brain Axis
• Herbal Support For Depression

Depression: It’s NOT just in your brain.

A growing body of evidence suggests that a chronic increase in stress hormones stimulates the secretion of proinflammatory immune messengers that contribute to the complex picture of depression symptoms.

Factors that are common contributors to sustained chronic inflammation, such as psychological stress, disrupted sleep, poor diet, sedentary behavior, and obesity, can in some people promote not just inflammation but depression too.

The relationship between depression and inflammation is bidirectional. Low grade sustained inflammation may make you susceptible to depression because it drains you of your vital forces; However, isolation, fatigue, and loss of motivation and interest can activate the HPA stress response and lead to inflammation.

Modern lifestyle – the perfect trigger

Almost every facet of modern life promotes sustained low-grade inflammation. The most common health condition in the modern world is low-grade sustained inflammation.

Metabolic conditions

It is not a secret that the Standard American Diet is SAD, pun intended. SAD diet is high in empty calories and low in nutrients. High calories promote high glucose, insulin resistance, and diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity, all of which are inflammatory conditions.

Empty calories mean that your cells don’t get the vitamins and minerals they need to produce energy, and that your body doesn’t have the substrate it needs to repair tissue wear and tear, produce hormones, enzymes, and neurotransmitters.

Sleep

The immune system is like a tight walker. It constantly balances between overactivation, sustained inflammation and autoimmune disease, and underfunctioning, which leaves you vulnerable to recurring colds and flu.

Deep restorative sleep is essential for balancing the immune system. Sleep debt or sleep disorder will promote proinflammatory immune messenger.

We are a culture high on productivity. We don’t make rest and sleep a priority. At the same time, being overweight increases the risk of sleep apnea, a sleep disorder that elevates your nighttime cortisol level and promotes high blood glucose and chronic stress.

I worked with a client who was a doula. She worked night shifts and had all the symptoms associated with circadian rhythm disruption. Her circadian cycle was out of whack. She was able to get about six hours of sleep during the day, but her sleep wasn’t restorative; She was obese, with high blood pressure and chronic high stress. Her depression was just the cherry on top of all the other symptoms.

Stress

When you think of stress, you mostly think of psychological stress, and with what’s happening out there in the world, I can’t blame you. However, stress is far more than psychological stress and trauma. For example, a nutrient-replete diet is experienced in your body as famine. Exercising too much or too little increases your stress hormone, cortisol.

An important factor to know about stress hormones, glucocorticoids, is that they suppress the immune system. However, chronically elevated cortisol leads to cortisol resistance in immune cells, which means the usual anti-inflammatory signals no longer register effectively.

People who run the modern lifestyle hamster wheel may be prone to a cycle of immune dysregulation and low-grade inflammation that predisposes them to emotional burnout and depressed mood. 

The inflammatory triad

While each one of these factors, metabolic conditions, poor sleep, and chronic stress, drains the body of resources, when all three factors come together to feed the fire of sustained inflammation, they may lead to depression.

When the immune system is constantly activated, it tries to adapt by conserving resources or vitality. It will promote brain networks that function as functional units, lowering activity, detaching from social engagement, reducing appetite, and decreasing libido as ways to heal.

Depression is not a condition by itself but a symptom of an immune crisis. Therefore, treatment for depression should not be limited to prescribing medicines for neurotransmitter imbalance. Instead, it needs to consider the complexity of the condition and support a nutrient-dense diet, restorative sleep, stress management, and movement.

When going to the beach, was a doctor’s order.

In Victorian times, doctors had the right ideas about treating people with melancholy. The convalescent houses were places where mostly rich people retreated when their nerves became frayed.

Today, we might call these places retreat centers, which were located by water, either by the sea or near mineral baths. When you consider that water is the element of life, and its role in healing and vitality, it makes total sense. A retreat on the beach, soaking up the sun and relaxing in the water, all while being fed a healing diet and getting a restorative sleep, might be the key component to any care plan for the person with depression.

The common treatment for depression is symptomatic, primarily using medicines or herbs to reduce the symptoms. While these interventions are important as a starting point, they should not be both the beginning and the end of the care plan.

Remedies, SSRIs, or herbal remedies can be the first line of intervention. They can help the person with depression develop the capacity to start the slow, consistent work of modifying their lifestyle to reduce inflammation. However, SSRIs and herbal antidepressants should not be used without this second phase of intervention.