Known as “the blues” or “hanging on”, this is a melancholy and downcast mood. When extreme and prolonged, it may lead to more serious disorders. Typical emotional symptoms include fear, anxiety, worry, indecision, pessimism, brooding and unwillingness to co-operate.
Involutional melancholia is a form of mental depression seen in late middle-age, more commonly in women than in men, and appears to have some relationship with the change in the endocrine pattern that follows the middle years. Here is where proper nutrition may help to boost endocrine substances and maintain a healthful glandular balance.
To a certain extent, depression is also a psychosomatic illness. When a depressed person comes to the doctor and says he aches here or there, he is constipated, he can’t taste his food, he may not be imagining it. Many emotionally depressed people do have endocrine and neuromuscular or autonomic system dysfunctions.
During emotional depression there is a major functional disruption of the autonomic nerves, the adrenal, the thyroid, which upsets the homeostasis (body balance) of the organism. Prolonged depression may lead to tissue depletion, forms of arthritis and ulcers. To tell the individual “it’s all in your mind” is to do him a disservice. These days many doctors are seeking nutritional means to help restore body homeostasis and ease depression.