Exercise can work as well as antidepressant medication for depression. Diet, sleep, and exercise should be tried first before medication, especially in primary care. Ultra-processed foods worsen depression symptoms.
Is there some way to quantify like, okay, we can improve your depression by X% if you do these things and then you're left with some percent that you might need medication for?
If we think of diet, sleep, and exercise, there's not better antidepressants out there. I mean, if you put optimizing sleep against an antidepressant, exercise has been shown to be as good as any medication. And certainly We know now, we can say the research confirms ultra-processed foods affect depression. So absolutely, those lifestyle changes would be immense and make— support recovery. But for many people who are struggling with depression, I mean, the thought of exercising, the thought of eating healthy is challenging. But absolutely, those 3 lifestyle factors are huge. You know, in the world as a psychiatrist, usually those would be second to optimize the nutritional deficiencies first and then work on that. But for people in the community, people seeing their PCPs, that often should be the first step to make changes in someone who's struggling with mood changes.
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