How To Increase Serotonin Levels For Better Stress Management
As shown in our previous articles, effective stress management often comes down to implementing more helpful behavioural or cognitive techniques to deal with stressful situations or anxiety or worry provoking thoughts.
But stress isn’t simply a behavioural or cognitive phenomenon, caused by behaviours or thoughts alone. It is also strongly related to, if not caused by, our physiology and what’s going on in our bodies.
Anyone who’s spent some time browsing through literature on stress, must have come across a few chemicals or neurotransmitters that have been associated with the experience of stress: serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, cortisol, to name a few.
A large body of literature suggests that imbalances in the levels of these chemicals can exacerbate the experience of stress; and so, in the next few articles we will discuss in depth the relationship between our physiology and stress, and what you can do to make it work in your favour.
We start with serotonin, a chemical that — when significantly reduced — increases our responsiveness to stress [1, 2].
The Happy Chemical.
Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamin) is a chemical nerve cells produce, sending signals between your nerve cells (hence it’s often called a neurotransmitter).
Serotonin is found mostly in the digestive system, although it’s also in blood platelets and throughout the central nervous system.
Known to contribute to feelings of happiness and wellbeing, it’s often called ‘the happy chemical’; but its functions in the human body are far more diverse — as a precursor for melatonin, for instance, it helps regulate the body’s sleep-wake cycles and the internal clock.
It also plays a role in appetite, the emotions, and motor, cognitive, and autonomic functions, but it’s not known exactly if serotonin affects these directly, or if it has an overall role in co-ordinating the nervous system.
Needless to say, low levels of serotonin are associated with feelings of anxiety and depression; irritability, aggression and impulsivity; sleep issues and chronic fatigue, increased nausea and digestive issues; and stronger craving for sweets and carbohydrate-rich foods.
In short, beyond its contribution to stress, low serotonin can negatively impact your overall physical and mental state, and so there’s a good case for all of us to try to increase its levels in our bodies.
Eat Yourself Happy.
According to an integrative psychiatrist Dr James Lake, our diet plays a big role in either replenishing or depleting serotonin in the brain.
Now, while it’s impossible to get serotonin directly from food, you can get tryptophan, an amino acid that’s converted to serotonin in your brain. Tryptophan is found primarily in high-protein foods, including turkey and salmon.
However, tryptophan-rich foods are usually even higher in other amino acids, and these amino acids are more likely than tryptophan to cross the blood-brain barrier (a protective sheath around your brain that controls what goes in and out of your brain).
But there is a way to hack the system. Research suggests that eating a small dose of carbs (25–30 grams) along with foods high in tryptophan may help more tryptophan make it into your brain.
That is perhaps why many medical doctors recommend the Mediterranean diet as especially beneficial for increasing serotonin levels, as it is based on tryptophan-rich products, such as fish, poultry, eggs, dairy, dark green leafy vegetables (e.g. spinach), nuts, and legumes.
Mediterranean diet is also rich in omega-3 fats, vitamin B12, zinc, magnesium, and iron, all of which have been shown to boost brain health while lowering inflammation.
Importantly, a staple food in the Mediterranean are also whole grains which, as mentioned above, aid the absorption of tryptophan.
While low-carb diets might be helpful for other purposes (such as ketosis), it seems that entirely ridding your diet off carbs might not be the best recipe for increasing the production of serotonin.
Shake It Up.
At this stage we probably start sounding like a broken record, but exercise really is a panacea, or a remedy to many (if not all) ills and diseases.
Exercising does not only keep you fit; it also triggers the release of tryptophan into your blood and decreases the amount of other amino acids, thus creating an ideal environment for more tryptophan to reach your brain.
Research suggests that aerobic exercise performed at the level you’re familiar with, has the most consistent effect on serotonin release and, by extension, mood improvements.
Now, you don’t have to “kill yourself” at the gym to reap the benefits of aerobic exercise; in fact, any kind of sustained movement (as opposed to short bursts of activity) that depends primarily on the aerobic energy-generating process will do the trick — even low-intensity.
If you’re not a devoted jogger, you might want to try swimming, dancing, or simply going for a brisk walk to experience a surge of serotonin in your body.
The added benefit of aerobic exercise is that it stimulates and strengthens the heart and lungs, thereby improving the body’s utilization of oxygen, preventing heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes.
Get Some Sunshine.
Humans, like plants, need sun for optimal functioning.
An important benefit of sun exposure is that it boosts the production of vitamin D, which is responsible not only for calcium absorption and bone growth, but also for serotonin production. As research moreover shows, human skin has an inherent serotonergic system that appears capable of generating serotonin when exposed to sunshine.
In short, a lack of sunlight can lead to vitamin D deficiency, which in turn leads to lower levels of serotonin. No wonder that many people experience lowered mood, and in extreme cases Seasonal Affective Disorder, in the winter months!
To better manage stress, and increase your mood in general, try taking some time each day (even 10–15 minutes) to go for a walk in the sunlight, and try taking your physical activity to increase the serotonin boost brought by exercise.
If you live in a rainy climate, have a hard time getting outside, or have a high risk for skin cancer, you can still increase serotonin with bright light exposure from a light therapy box or take vitamin D supplements. Importantly, though, make sure to consult your doctor before reaching for these ‘artificial methods’ — too much of vitamin D can lead to hypercalcemia (buildup of calcium in your blood) whilst using a light box incorrectly can lead to mania in bipolar disorder patients.
Too Much Of The Good Stuff?
Like all good things, it is possible to get too much serotonin, but this generally only happens as a rare side effect of certain SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a type of medication commonly used to manage depression and anxiety), or combining SSRIs.
According to the Mayo Clinic, artificially heightened levels of serotonin cause symptoms like increased nervousness, insomnia, nausea, diarrhea, tremors, and dilated pupils — and should be addressed immediately with medical attention.
Call To Action.
It goes without saying that regulating mood and managing stress is a complex process and certainly requires more than simply increasing serotonin levels in our body.
However, research suggests that increasing serotonin through diet, exercise, and sun exposure can certainly help you feel better and therefore more able to implement more intricate cognitive and behavioural stress-management techniques.
Don’t take our word for it and try the steps described above!
How to deal with stress is a publication packed with tips and techniques for dealing with stress and anxiety in everyday settings — brought to you by Agnieszka (Aggie) Zbieranska & Leon Taylor.
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[1] Temel Y, Helmy A, Pinnock S, Herbert J. Effect of serotonin depletion on the neuronal, endocrine and behavioural responses to corticotropin-releasing factor in the rat. Neurosci Lett. 2003;338:139–42. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
[2] Texel SJ, Camandola S, Ladenheim B, Rothman SM, Mughal MR, Unger EL, et al. Ceruloplasmin deficiency results in an anxiety phenotype involving deficits in hippocampal iron, serotonin, and BDNF. J Neurochem. 2012;120:125–34. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
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