Genetic Roots Of Depression
When people talk about someone being “depressed” most often they are referring to what medical professionals term “unipolar depression”. Other terms used to describe the condition are “clinical depression”, “major depressive illness”, and “major depression with melancholic features”. Regardless of the name, each one of these refer to the same illness located in the same region of the brain, damaging the same cells and causing the same chemical imbalances. Other conditions that also have “depression” in their name for example “bipolar depression” are very different in the cells and chemicals affected.
During the last several decades medical investigation has recognized a certain hereditary link for unipolar depression. When one of your parents as well as other members of your immediate family members are affected with unipolar depression there is a one in five (20%) possibility of battling it yourself. Should both parents possess the depressive gene your chances to be depressive too rise to one in two (50%). But even if no one in the family has unipolar depression, or has the genetic marker, the genes can and do turn up very quickly.
Just how important this genetic component is has been proven by studies that focused on people with identical genes (twins) but, for a variety of reasons, were raised apart by different parents. These studies concluded that, if both twins had the depression gene, both individuals were most likely suffering from unipolar depression regardless of the different life experiences and conditions.
The genes that have been identified as causing unipolar depression act by causing the brain to over react to stress stimulation. It is normal for everyone to secrete a steroid stress hormone into the body and certain chemicals into the brain when faced with a stressful situation. Although this process is completely normal, those who suffer from unipolar depression don’t turn off these hormones and chemicals when the stress is past. And when these substances remain at high levels for too long a time, they cause severe damage to healthy brain cells which is a major contributing cause to the disease.
For example, athletes who perform at high levels often release steroid stress hormones to meet a physical challenge such as catching a pass or hitting a baseball in a pressure situation. This happens for just a brief period of time, once the immediate challenge is past the athlete’s body turns off the stress response and the body reverts to its normal state.
In the individuals who bear the genes liable for unipolar depression these responses to pressure cannot be turned off. The many normal stresses of day-to-day life result in a lot of the steroid stress hormones as well as other chemicals to flood the brain and this overload may cause significant injury to usually healthy brain cells which eventually leads to unipolar depression.
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