[Aurornis]

Depressive disorders are understood to involve alterations in inflammation pathways. SSRIs and SNRIs have been documented to induce alterations in multiple inflammatory pathways, coinciding with improvement of depression symptoms.

That doesn’t imply that depression is a simple result of inflammatory processes, it just shows that depression is a cross-cutting alteration to the body’s function on many levels.

In some cases, depression does result from physical processes in the body going wrong. However, I think too many people try to pin mental health conditions on underlying physical problems that don’t exist. It’s very common for people to want to explain away their depression rather than accept that mental health treatment is the way forward.

[al_borland]

Is it possible that these physical markers are a result of how a person tends to live when depressed?

When I’m in a depressive state I’m generally eating garbage food, drinking a lot, and not sleeping much (staying up late, but still needing to get up for work). All of this is going to lead to a lot of inflammation and other negative physiological outcomes.

I’m dealing with this right now. I have mild chest pain, and have for weeks. This has happened before, cleaning up my diet, even just for a few days, made it go away.

It’s somewhat a chicken and egg problem to fix though. Mentally, things suck, so I want to keep doing what I’m doing, which causes physical discomfort. Overriding the desire to eat and drink the bad stuff, through sheer force of will, will ultimately alleviate the physical issues, and at the same time clear my my head to some degree… at least until something else pushes me over the edge. When I get pushed back into it, it’s normally just looking for a mental escape from discomfort. If I simply went to sleep instead, I’d probably be all good. I say simply, but that’s always been the hard part for me.

[kaba0]

If someone’s coping mechanism is unhealthy lifestyle, then it can surely have an effect, but it is absolutely not surprising that certain mental health issues can in and of itself cause physical symptoms.

Like, you wouldn’t be surprised that a panic attack causes an actual hormonal response, that will actually cause the heart rate to jump, etc. Why are we surprised that depression causes other symptoms?

Also, it is well documented that when the husband/wife in an elderly couple passes, the other often follows them. Also, will of living greatly corresponds to survival in hospitalized elderly.

[imoverclocked]

Too much sleep can also have detrimental effects to your health; I used to think that more sleep was always good. I gained the ability to sleep as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted and it was great … for a while.

[agos]

> too many people try to pin mental health conditions on underlying physical problems that don’t exist

it wouldn't be the first disorder where after years of "it's psychological, there is no underlaying physical issue" it turns out that there is an underlying physical problem, see the history of gastric ulcers