Depression and Your Hypothalamus | Dr. Lauren Deville …

Physiology 101:

Your thalamus is like the manager of your brain. All the signals from your body route through your thalamus to your cerebral cortex, where you actually do your thinking, and all of your thoughts route through your thalamus before affecting other parts of your body.

Your hypothalamus sits right below the thalamus (hypo means below or beneath, just like hypothyroid means your thyroid is underactive). The hypothalamus is responsible for the bodys homeostasis, or balance with the outside world. It regulates a number of functions, including body temperature, thirst (and thus, fluid balance and blood pressure), hunger, sleep, sex drive, bonding, fight or flight responses to threats, and mood.

The hypothalamus is one of several structures included in what is considered the brains limbic system, considered to be the seat of emotions in the brain. Depression, whether organic or caused by an outside event, is associated with an overactive hypothalamus.

Dr Daniel Amen (Change Your Brain, Change Your Life) calls this an overactive deep limbic system, which is shown on SPECT studies to correlate well with clinical depression. You can pretty well guess what will be affected when the hypothalamus is overactive, based on its actions listed above:

If you think of depression as an overactive hypothalamus, then it makes sense that it is most frequently associated with decreased amounts of the neurotransmitters serotonin and epinephrine the more active the structure, the more of the messengers its likely to burn through.

I wrote about lifestyle techniques to help cool an overactive hypothalamus a few weeks ago, and I definitely recommend you try these before taking any meds, or in addition to medication, if you are already taking it.

Very often, people have an overactive hypothalamus due to repetitive negative thoughts. Its important to remember that you are in control of your thoughts. You are capable of taking a step back, listening to what you are thinking, deciding whether or not those thoughts are helpful or harmful to you, and rejecting those thoughts that are harmful. It will definitely be a battle at first, but will get easier over time. I often share a biblical approach to this process with my patients, and Ive shared it with you here.

There are also some natural, over-the-counter approaches to minimize depressive symptoms as well, based on the principle that depression is correlated with low serotonin (due to an overactive hypothalamus). These are the biochemical precursors for serotonin.

Since some depression is associated with low epinephrine as well or instead of low serotonin, some people might do better with those biochemical precursors instead. These patients might have issues with energy and focus in addition to the symptoms of a hyperactive hypothalamus.

For resistant cases, I test for neurotransmitters through a company called NeuroScience. This tells me which neurotransmitters are high, which are low, and which precursors and cofactors an individual needs in order to help restore balance. Unfortunately the test is not covered by insurance, but I have found it to be very helpful for many of my more challenging patients.

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Depression and Your Hypothalamus | Dr. Lauren Deville ...