Depression: Your brain on sugar

Photo Credit:Sott.net


'You've no doubt seen the television ads warning "this is your brain on drugs". These public service announcements are designed to be visually shocking thereby discouraging youth drug abuse by comparing the brain to an egg and a fried egg in a pan to a brain on drugs. 

The same can be said about the effects of sugar on the brain. In the case of sugar, however, the effects are marked by a high risk of long term mental illness like depression rather than a brief yet dangerous, drug induced high. 

Depression is at epidemic proportions in our modern society. Even children are not immune with some estimates putting 1 in every 8 teenagers as clinically depressed.'


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Why Gardening Makes You Happy and Cures Depression

'While mental health experts warn about depression as a global epidemic, other researchers are discovering ways we trigger our natural production of happy chemicals that keep depression at bay, with surprising results. All you need to do is get your fingers dirty and harvest your own food.

In recent years I’ve come across two completely independent bits of research that identified key environmental triggers for two important chemicals that boost our immune system and keep us happy - serotonin and dopamine. What fascinated me as a permaculturist and gardener were that the environmental triggers happen in the garden when you handle the soil and harvest your crops.'

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