Depression, Anxiety, and Addiction Might All Be the Same Thing | Michael Pollan

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0:37So you mentioned before, you know, two great ways to minimize or decrease depression for a human being is healthy nutrition and exercise. Those two things. Getting some sunlight is really good, too. sunlight, probably quality sleep as well. Oh, yeah. I mean, people are depressed often have trouble sleeping, but one of the ways to fix your circadian rhythms is make sure every morning you look at the sun, you go outside, even if it's cloudy, just look at where it should be. And that information comes through your eyes to your brain and kind of sets your clock and it will improve your sleep. Yeah.

1:16Dr. Andrew Huberman has done a lot of research on that and preaches it almost every day about the research and breathing yeah he says that's the number his number one health tip is get outside and look at the sun first thing in the morning yeah right yeah not when it's already up and no i mean and it's okay if you didn't get up at dawn but you know before midday yeah get up for 10 15 minutes and look towards the sun right just allow your eyes to gaze towards it and you'll be getting outside and you'll be getting some vitamin d because nature We spend way too much time inside. Yeah. Being outside is, you know, I mean, exercising outside, I think, is better for us than inside.

1:54What do you think is the root cause of depression? Why someone could get depressed or chronic depression? Because we all go through sadness and grief and loss and heartache and, you know, relationships and deaths and, you know, career ending, things like that, where there might be a season of sadness. But the chronic depression, what is the root cause of that? I don't think we know. You know, there are people looking for genes implicated in depression. They have not had success finding them. There is depression caused by events. People with a cancer diagnosis get depressed. We understand exactly why.

2:26And if they're healed or cured, their depression might lift. But then you have other people, and I've interviewed them in my research on psychedelics, who've been depressed for 30 years without a break. And I don't think we really understand that. It's exhausting on the nervous system. Yeah, it takes a toll. on the heart, on your... Every system, every system. But I don't think we have a real understanding of what's going on. I mean, one of the things I've learned about mental health is that there's a lot we don't understand. We don't even know if depression, anxiety, addiction, and say OCD are separate diseases or are they four different symptoms of the same underlying disease, which is to say a mind that is too rigidly bound up and stuck in patterns of rumination.

3:16They're all characterized by rigidity and strong habits. Like controlling nature almost, right? It doesn't have the flexibility. Yeah, an attempt to control nature. And they're also characterized by these destructive narratives that people tell about themselves. So, you know, they're in the DSM, you know, the Bible of diagnoses. They're listed as separate things. but I've talked to psychiatrists who say no, they may all be the same thing. Susan David talks about emotional agility, having the ability to be flexible with our emotions and not be so rigid. Habits get us into trouble with food, certainly, and with our mental health.

4:00And habits are really valuable. I mean, they can organize your life. They can save you from having to run, you know, run the algorithm every time a new situation comes up. It's like, okay, this is a conversation with my boss. This is the kind of thing that works. You know, you have a habit, but they also are straitjackets. And the older we get, the harder it is to break habits. And that's one of the really interesting things about psychedelic medicine. I'm not talking about psychedelics used recreationally, but when they're used in a therapeutic context, people seem to be able to break habits and behavior.

4:38And that's really powerful. And that allows you to start taking different consistent actions which get you different emotional results. Exactly. And you can basically lay down the pathways of new habits, which becomes more and more important as we age.

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