As established in the first post on this subject, depression can definitely affect not just your mental well-being. It impacts your body as well.

This has serious implications for those who struggle with depression. Even if it’s been only for a relatively short time.

However, for those who have had to deal with depression for years, the consequences are much worse than simply a chemical imbalance. Indeed, the serotonin imbalance derived from this disorder of the brain creates an affliction of the body and mind.

In this post, we talk about how this creates a big problem for two important areas of health: neuroplasticity and heart disease.

Depression and Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s capacity to create new pathways. An important emphasis is placed on what are called dendritic spines, which stick out from neural cells and are important for establishing links between cells.

These connections are critical for both memory and your capacity to learn new things. Thus, neuroplasticity is very important for your ability to not only function in everyday life but to also grow and improve yourself.

However, when you’re exposed to chronic stress over a long period of time, stress hormones such as cortisol make it harder for your body to produce serotonin. In fact, if your stress comes from trauma that occurred early on in your life, it can affect how your brain responds to stress in later years. Thus, you become more likely to be exposed to more cortisol and other factors that create a serotonin imbalance. This can make it harder for you to function and respond to stress in a healthy way, as well as impact your capacity to think.

What happens when depression sets in?

Research studies have found that depression can actually cause you to lose neuroplasticity. This occurs because your brain produces fewer of the chemicals needed for healthy brain development.

One of these chemicals is called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). It plays an important role in keeping the connections that exist in your hippocampus strong. It also promotes neuron growth that reacts to serotonin. Hence, if you have a serotonin imbalance due to depression, your brain will make less BDNF. In turn, your neural connections become weaker.

It’s no wonder that people who have been struggling with depression for a long time seem to have a diminished ability to process information.

What Can Help to Kick-Start the Brain?

Interestingly, antidepressants help with reversing this decline in BDNF and restoring neuroplasticity. Studies have found that with antidepressant treatment more receptors that take in serotonin are created on the surface of neural cells. Plus, BDNF production increases as well.

Both of these changes occur in the hippocampus region of the brain. If there is a serotonin imbalance in the brain, the hippocampus would definitely be affected. Thus, antidepressants do more than just relieve symptoms related to depression. They can actually restore the functioning of the brain, reversing the chemical imbalance.

Depression and Heart Disease

Switching gears, when you have a serotonin imbalance and depression, it can also cause you to be more susceptible to heart disease and heart attacks. In one study involving smokers, researchers discovered that even when factoring in smoking, nonsmokers were still as likely to develop heart disease.

The bottom line?

Even if you are healthy overall (except for having depression), your chances of developing heart disease increase between 50-100% in comparison to those who do not have depression. That should be a major concern for anyone, let alone those who are already at risk for heart disease based on other risk factors, such as family history.

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As you can see from this two-part series, simply calling it a “serotonin imbalance” does not go far enough in describing the effects of depression. Rather, the chemical imbalance caused by depression afflicts both body and mind—all the way down to the cellular level.

This disorder of the brain doesn’t just make you feel blue. Rather, it causes your brain to become weaker and less capable of higher-level thinking. It also makes you less able to respond to stress. Finally, in perhaps an apt metaphor, your heart can become weaker as well. It can even “break” in the form of a heart attack.

If you have depression and are concerned about these problems, its time to seek out depression treatment. Please, contact me or read more about my treatment approach by clicking on the link.