October 26, 2025 Update

A recent study by the Annals of Internal Medicine found that some antidepressant medications are associated with weight change. They found that many people had a modest change on average, but the risk differs significantly by drug and by person. The research supports awareness of weight as a potential side-effect; however, it doesn’t specify that everyone will gain significant weight, nor that weight gain is inevitable.

Did You Reach Your 10,000 Steps Today?

Ah, the beauty of exercise! What can one say but only good things about this natural, physical full-body enhancement?

Workouts can stimulate just about every part of your body. But the organs that will love you most are your heart and your belly; however, don’t neglect what they can do for your brain, and this is where we will focus our discussion today.

Helping Your Brain with Exercise

Anxiety reduces the production of cells in the hippocampus (the area where learning, memory, and emotion reside) by inhibiting the neurons from building new cells.

The solution is to increase the production of a chemical called serotonin. This chemical plays a crucial role in supporting your brain in growing new cells. When you have healthy serotonin levels, your hippocampus can create new neurons (a process called neurogenesis).

Exercise does this. It makes it easier for your brain to produce more serotonin. This is one reason why regular exercise can improve mood and reduce anxiety—it’s giving your brain more of the “feel-good” chemical it needs.

The Research Proves It

Studies have shown that exercising, specifically aerobic workouts for a minimum of 20 minutes, can promote healthy information processing and memory functions within the brain; thereby countering the decline in neuron loss that occurs when a person is under stress.

One person told us of her continuous anxiety. She would be stressed all day and had to take pills to sleep, but if there was one daily factor that gave her relief (at least for a while), it was exercise.

Feeling good after exercise is healthy and a valuable factor in stress reduction. In this article, we will not delve into the details of all the benefits of exercise, but our article on cancer and exercise is most informative. In short, it is a great natural way to keep your mind and body in shape. But remember, no pain, no gain. So put your all into it and watch your health steadily improve!

Can Learning Help Reduce Stress?

Let’s go back to the hippocampus. When two dendrites (the receiving ends of neurons) get close together, electrical messages are transmitted from one neuron to the other. This is done through the contact points between the dendrites, called the synapse.  When you learn something new, you are growing topic-specific dendrites to connect neurons to particular synapses or said in another way, you are growing more neurons that communicate with each other so that the new information is intact.

As you continue to learn new things, you are growing new neurons. This can help counter the negative effects in the brain when under anxiety (as mentioned in the exercise section above), but another positive factor is the ‘feel-good feeling you get after knowing you have learned something new, so, from a cognitive standpoint, the more learning you can achieve, the healthier your mind will be.

Get a Massage!

Massages have been known to promote relaxation and help alleviate anxiety. But they are not cheap. If you cannot find one that fits your budget, try getting a partner who can do it for you.  For many people, this can work wonders, even for those who are not in stressful situations. Here is a video on how you can do it right.

Medical Assistance

Now we are getting into the heavy stuff, but also the most successful when it comes to helping people get relief from stress. Seeking the advice of a medical professional is commonplace for people with anxiety and depression, and there is a correlation between the two, but we’ll focus on anxiety for now.

Therapy – A Positive First Step

One of the most common ailments that would cause someone to go to therapy is stress and the related problems that are associated with it. A counselor can help you manage your anxiety better than you are probably doing yourself. Having someone to talk to in privacy may be one of the most rewarding options for you, but for others, more assistance may be required; however, this would be a good start.

Medication

Always seek the advice of a medical professional before taking ANY medications.

Now we come to a path that many, many people pursue, and for good reason!

Prescription drugs can be a significant benefit in managing your anxiety, as well as the subsequent negative effects it has on your body, but caution is highly recommended!!

If you find yourself in constant anxiety, don’t go through it alone!

Popular Medications for Stress

There are so many drugs on the market, and more are being tested. Some medical scientists are even studying the use of psychedelic drugs to help manage depression and stress, but we will focus on the conventional drugs used to help anxiety here..  We will mention three meds here, but always speak to a doctor or certified practitioner, who are the only ones who can prescribe the appropriate medication for you!

Sertaline (Zoloft)

Sertraline is a common antidepressant pill that helps with depression, anxiety, OCD, and other mental health issues. It works by keeping more of the serotonin in your brain.

Note: Never just stop taking it cold turkey! You need to talk to your doctor first. Stopping suddenly can make you feel awful.

Lexapro

Another antidepressant that increases serotonin by preventing your brain from reabsorbing it too quickly, lexapro works differently than sertraline. For one thing, lexapro doesn’t involve dopamine, which helps with motivation and drive.  For some people, that makes all the difference, as Zoloft’s dual action might be hitting the right spot where Lexapro missed.

For both sertraline and Lexapro, you can think of them as plugging a drain so more serotonin stays in your system, but to find the right ingredient for your brain cell support, leave it up to your doctor to decide. Sometimes, testing out one or the other or a combination of antidepressants might be needed.

Trazodone

Not as popular as Sertarline in supporting serotonin, but it is worth mentioning here, even though it is much weaker in the serotonin process. Its main feature is to make you sleepy so that you can get a good night’s sleep. So if you are anxious, this medication can help you sleep well.

Bottom Line

Talk to your doctor if you’re thinking about taking a serotonin-supporting antidepressant or if you have questions about how it’s working for you. You may be surprised how much better you could feel with the proper medication and respective dosage.

We hope this brief outline on some of the antidepressants and how they work. For complete details, consider going to drugs.com or the Mayo Clinic.

A Case Story

A 45-year-old man lost his father to heart failure. For eleven months, the man blamed himself for the notion that he could have done things better while his father was in ailing condition, not realizing that guilt is a common issue for someone to feel when they lose a loved one; however, most of the time, it is completely unwarranted. “Why didn’t I do it this way”? Or “I could have done this differently” are common thoughts a guilty person may encounter. For many people who suffer guilt after a loss, the fact is that nothing would have been any different, and as they say, “It is all in your head”. But in the mind of the person suffering from it, it was a die-hard reality.

The ongoing guilt and grief were causing this man to have episodes of depression, and when not in depression, he would suffer from serious anxiety attacks. The symptoms alternated. The two issues never occurred simultaneously. It wasn’t until he sought medical help that a prescription plan of lexapro and Colazapan was provided to him, and after a few months, his guilt began to dissipate to the point that one morning, when he woke up, he felt entirely free of this negative feeling.

What are the Details?

His brain wasn’t producing enough serotonin, which, if the chemical was increased it would help him to think more clearly. Since he was not taking any medications to help him, he viewed everything in a negative, distorted way. Once he started taking medication that resolved this chemical imbalance, his thinking straightened out. He thought processes balanced out, and he was able to finally see things as they really were—he had actually been a big help to his father, and it became clear how grateful his father was for it. Once he realized this, the guilt he’d been carrying disappeared, and so did his depression.

Referring to a popular expression, we can say that the man went from feeling that the glass was half-empty to the glass being half-full. In reality, this meant that he went from thinking negatively about how he could have done things better when aiding his father to thinking about all the great things he did for his dad.

If you plan to see your family doctor, you can visit them first, who might be able to recommend some limited amounts of prescription drugs that could help you cope with a bad situation, but for the long term, it would be best to seek the help of a therapist and/or a psychiatrist.

Therapists are great ‘listeners’ and can help you cope with your situation. Psychiatrists are medical professionals whose specialty is your mental health as opposed to your physical health. They will be able to diagnose your condition and prescribe the appropriate medications that could help you. Many people choose to see both a therapist and a psychiatrist. Helpguide.org is a great website for obtaining a lot of information on how to get the best therapy for your condition.

To go any deeper would be beyond the scope of this article, but we hope that these suggestions will help improve your state of mind toward the right direction to follow and live a more enjoyable and happier lifestyle.