Research shows a link between serotonin and depression. For example, Seasonal Affective Disorder stems from the effect that weakened winter sunlight has on your body’s circadian rhythm (daily internal clock), affecting both sleep quality and mood. Your body needs Vitamin D-rich natural light to produce serotonin, which your body later uses to create the “sleep hormone” melatonin by breaking down serotonin and tryptophan.
A serotonin deficiency from a lack of light can wreak havoc on the quality of your rest and your overall mood, and the use of serotonin for insomnia also has positive effects on depressive symptoms. However, the risks of medications like MAOI and SSRI antidepressants leads us to seek a natural serotonin booster as an alternative to pharmaceuticals. We discuss a few in this blog post.
Light
Exposure to light dictates your body’s circadian rhythm. When your optic nerve registers light, it tells your body to suppress melatonin production. This means that you need to expose yourself to plenty of natural sunlight to increase your levels of serotonin for insomnia relief. However, this also means that you need to limit your exposure to artificial light, to avoid throwing off your melatonin production.
Your body’s melatonin levels are meant to be highest at night. When your optic nerve is deprived of light, melatonin production kicks in. Your body makes melatonin by breaking down the serotonin your body has collected throughout the day. The sleep problem of modern life is twofold: less sunlight from being indoors more often means less serotonin, and exposure to artificial light means less melatonin since the melanopsin in artificial light breaks melatonin down and inhibits its production. This causes your sleep cycle and mood to deteriorate, indicating the importance of serotonin for insomnia as well as overall health.
As such, controlling your exposure to light is a critical, natural serotonin booster. Make sure to get plenty of sunlight, and when the light is weak in the winter, consider using a lamp that emits light which mimics the sun’s Vitamin-D rich light. These lamps can offset the increased seasonal risks of serotonin deficiency. Consider also using a sleep mask to block out artificial light at night and keep your melatonin production healthy. It’s a recipe for success!
Staying Positive
Health is not just the absence of illness. It’s a holistic state of well-being, and there’s not a strict split between physical and psychological health. Research corroborates the idea that your outlook and mood affect your physical health. For example, a survey of 45 studies regarding the negative mood hostility are more at risk of heart disease and death, likely because of the cortisol involved in stressful situations.
Staying positive can be a natural serotonin booster. A 2007 study was the first to show how changing your mood can influence your serotonin level. This makes it clear that mood and hormones are a two-way street: your hormones influence your mood, and your mood, in turn, influences your hormones.
Everyone’s different, so when it comes to staying positive to increase serotonin for insomnia as well as for your overall mood, you know what makes you happy. Some techniques will probably work for most people who are willing to give it a try. For example, meditation has been shown to cause dopamine increase. This is important not only because meditation has been shown to help people lower their stress. There’s also a neurochemical basis for the use of meditation.
Late in the sleep cycle, around the time your body gears up to awaken, dopamine receptors bind with and inhibit norepinephrine receptors to suppress melatonin production. When your body’s melatonin production is thrown off-balance, perhaps by weak winter light or exposure to artificial light at night, your dopamine production follows suit, causing you to wake up feeling groggy, negative, and at a sub-optimal cognitive performance level.
Massage
Already known to lower heart rate and blood pressure, physical contact increases both immune function and happiness. Studies have shown that when pregnant women who were suffering from depression receive a massage twice a week, their natural serotonin levels increased.
If you aren’t able to head to the massage parlor, consider buying an all-natural exfoliant and using it to massage your face and extremities while enjoying a nice, warm shower. The combination of the physical contact and the relaxing shower will help your body naturally boost its serotonin levels.
Your Toolbox
In this blog post, we discussed some things that could go into your natural serotonin booster “toolbox.” We discussed the importance of your body’s levels of serotonin for insomnia relief and considered three alternatives to over-the-counter medication for circadian balance: sleep masks, light therapy, and meditation. We showed that controlling your exposure to light and staying positive are critical techniques for keeping your body’s hormonal production in balance. Consider the power of the nodpod to improve the quality of your sleep and overall health.
