What? I hear you ask. Why does my mental health have anything to do with sea life?
Well, you can blame the Greeks, you see back when they dissected the brain you couldn’t tell what the brain did, many believed it was an air conditioning system to cool the body, believing we thought with our hearts.
So the part of the brain that looked like a seahorse hence received the name hippocampus and we had to wait until the last 50 years of so to understand it’s importance.
The hippocampus is responsible for special awareness and short term memory, for those who have had a relative with Alzheimers will know that early indications of the disease is for people to remember what happened that day and often getting lost. The disease shrinks the hippocampus so new memories do not form so well.
But the hippocampus is also involved with depression; those suffering with depression often have problems with declarative memory, which is the memory for facts such as names or places. It is also why depressed people find it difficult to recall good times past. Often long periods of anxiety shrink the hippocampus and this in turn leads to the depressed behaviour.
The hippocampus is also very active during sleep, sorting through the short-term memory and linking it to similar memory chains. One of the first signs of depression is a change of sleep patterns. Often waking early in the morning and feeling absolutely exhausted as the brain tries to think it’s way out of the situation.
Research has also found the elevated glucocorticoid levels in the brain during depression also induce brain shrinkage. The jury is still out and much research is now happening to see if the volume of people’s hippocampus changes over time and whether these abnormalities are from chronic stress or a vulnerability to depressed moods.
Signs that you might be vulnerable to depression are:
- Poor appetite
- Sleeping problems
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Being restless
- Having very little concentration.
If you suffer with any of these Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help you before it becomes a bigger problem.
Call or text “seahorse” to 07759 820674, or contact me.