Now i feel I can actually exercise again and attack depression head-on without first having to slay its friends Addiction and Anxiety.Just wanted to share and hope that you find a solution that works for you. But I'm not risking it for the time being. I cut out weed and coffee (and also the occasional beer) over a year ago during heavy depression. Not to mention the mental fogginess it caused me. It's unbelievable and yet "no duh!" 1-2 days after i stop taking caffeine i already feel better and more motivated. google "coffee salicylates", they are compounds in plant foods. Coffee also contains chlorogenic acid, ferulic acid, and caffeic acid. I suspect from the evidence that it may impair antidepresant treatments (which is different than causing depression), and hope that scientists will study this in the future. If the neurogenesis theory of depression is correct, at least for some people, then they are basically cancelling out the effect of the drug.
And this the most mild form of this cycle that I've forced myself to adapt to. For me as a type 2 diabetic, the sugary drinks were the problem.
If they had not given me a limited amount I think I'd have never stopped taking them. I do not believe it does. Everything I said is solid science unlike the poster whom I replied to.I cannot tolerate any amount of caffeine. When I went off anti-depressants, I eventually found that drinking coffee or any caffeinated beverage would distort my perception of the world, make me feel strange as though everything were terribly sad and unfamiliar, like slipping through to another dimension where everything looks the same and yet totally isn't.I remember walking up to a bakery with my closest friend and flatmate not long after discontinuing my medication.
Such as someone passing away, or a horrible break up. Often it takes months for people to feel better after quitting.
Hopefully in the coming decade we can learn more about the mechanisms that cause and treat depression. What do you guys think?PS. All withdrawal symptoms have dissipated and I actually feel normal again for the first time in years.
The sympathetic nervous system is activated which may lead to exhaustion in the medium run. Hoping the trajectory continues and I'm cautiously optimistic again for the first time in ages.I'm still in that rut; weed to get me to sleep, caffeine to get me up and going. Neurogenesis and depression is simply the current best theory, it may be found to be wrong or incomplete like the serotonin hypothesis.There is no good evidence to suggest caffeine consumption causes depression in humans. I lost days in the first week from sitting and doing nothing and feeling like absolute trash in the gutter. I feel great for a couple hours after taking it, but after that I experience especially intense feelings of depression, worthlessness, & hopelessness. A modern theory of depression is that for many people, antidepressants are effective because they cause neurogenesis in the hippocampus, a major mood center of the brain.I was quite surprised to read that caffeine is very powerful at preventing neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Anyway. Apparently caffeine is very good for the brain in 1000 ways, but it does have that disadvantage.Isn't it kind of crazy that doctors don't tell their patients to stop using caffeine when they start taking SSRIs? Eventually it became my only solution to anxiety which caused me to unlearn all the ways I'd learned to cope with anxiety in the past. It definitely should be helpful for being able to get away from depression, regardless if whether it's the cause or just the means of feeling better.Definitely go off caffeine. Sometimes, when I need to be creative, I drink a cup of coffee to upset myself.
I'm trying to ween myself off, currently.Can I get a link to a paper that supports "caffeine prevents neurogenesis"? Kinda feeling at the same time.I feel optimistic again and just plain stable. I am Type 2 bipolar, or hypomanic. Regular consumers of caffeine, on the other hand, showed only positive effects when it came to memory tasksAnother study used a much larger subject pool and found that age-related differences were quite minimal for attentional memory, but that over the long term, regular caffeine consumption was fairly beneficial to younger subjectsTitle: Caffeine alters proliferation of neuronal precursors in the adult hippocampus.Relevant quote from the abstract: These results demonstrate that physiologically relevant doses of caffeine can significantly depress adult hippocampal neurogenesis.Could it be because caffeine increases cortisol levels?
Neurogenesis, simply put, is the growth of new brain cells. And suddenly the poster is up to 2 points from -1 last I checked?I'm guessing the poster decided to register multiple fake accounts to upvote himself and downvote me?If not, I'll bore everyone with the details as to why neurogenesis isn't some sort of abstract hypothesis. I miiiiight have a depressive or anxiety disorder that may exacerbate this..... Not a Dr.Im not so sure about the relationship between neurogenesis and depression, but it seems caffeine may be a negeative for hippocampal dependent learning and memory.