On Serotonin

Quick Facts

-While serotonin makes us feel good, it also helps reduce depression and anxiety, it helps us sleep, it helps us form blood clots, it reduces your libido (in a good way), and more!

-We can produce more of it with exercise, manual labor, and meditation!

Intro

Serotonin is almost a household name at this point! We're told it's good for us and that we produce it through exercise and meditation. We usually associate the feeling of a good level of serotonin with confidence. And, it's more important than most of us realize!

Why Is Serotonin So Important?

The main reason we find it so interesting is that it's thought to regulate our mood. It's also thought to regulate anxiety and decrease depression.

I say thought because, according to the source I'm deriving my information from, we don't know if serotonin does this for sure. However, we do know that SSRIs usually help cure depression, and the way they do that is by keeping some of your serotonin from going from your brain to your bloodstream, which means they just regulate the serotonin you already produce. So, by using a bit of logic, we can say that serotonin 100% helps with depression and anxiety.

It's also helpful because it helps you regulate your bowel movements, it helps you up-chuck when you're sick, it helps you sleep, it helps you form blood clots, it reduces your libido, it helps you be more emotionally stable, calmer, more focused, and generally happier.

It really is a miracle molecule in a lot of ways! I remember working in Texas and sorting out my mind; I was very, very depressed at the time and I did a lot of mental rearranging and healing so that I could be mentally healthy. But I wasn't very physically active with my job, so I didn't have a lot of serotonin flowing through my system! If I had known that upping the flow of serotonin through a healthy diet and exercise was so important I would have exercised a lot more than I did - it would have been very, very nice.

How Can We Produce More Of It?

If you're feeling depressed, chances are you'll benefit from producing more serotonin in your body. I don't think many of us need SSRIs since there are some things we can do to naturally produce more serotonin in our bodies. We can:

-Expose ourselves to sunshine and sun lights.

-Exercise regularly.

-Consistently partake in a healthy diet.

-Meditate. I will personally vouch for this because I can meditate while repeating "I choose to produce more serotonin" and I will instantly feel better! I also say "I choose to produce more DMT" and that definitely works as well :)

Final Thoughts

I'm hesitant to encourage you to take SSRIs for two reasons in particular: they lose their effectiveness over time and they may be a cause for stomach issues. The reason I think this is because SSRIs prevent some of the serotonin your brain produces from going into your bloodstream. That's all well and good, except your intestines use serotonin to regulate your bowel movements; if less serotonin is reaching your lower body via your bloodstream this could be causing some problems. Seeing Jordan Peterson have so many stomach problems while taking SSRIs makes this a solid hypothesis, in my opinion.

Also, if you naturally produce less serotonin than you feel you need, it seems like it's a constant effort to manually encourage the correct amount of production. That means consistently exercising and meditating for the rest of your life. But hey, life's pretty good when you feel good! :)

Conclusion

Thank you for reading my article! I encourage you to produce as much serotonin as you feel is right, and I'll see you in the next post!

Sources

This post was written with some help from:

Healthline, twice!