 Welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. This podcast was created to provide you the information and tools Doc Snipes gives our clients so that you too can start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos, and handouts, and even interactive sessions with Doc Snipes to help you apply what you learn. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes, practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. We're going to continue with our segments on the causes of depressive symptoms and ways to address them. In this segment, we're going to talk about the causes, consequences, and possible interventions for agitation and restlessness. Now, a lot of times when you're depressed, you're not thinking about agitation and restlessness, but there are many, many people who have these symptoms when they are depressed. They can't sit still. They're agitated. They feel like they need to stay moving all the time. They're depressed. They're not getting pleasure from most things. They're having difficulty sleeping. They meet other criteria for depression, but they've also got this other symptom going on. So we're going to take a look at that. Agitation and restlessness is often, but not always, accompanied by worry. Sometimes people worry a lot. When you worry and worry and worry, eventually you just start running out of gas and you start feeling hopeless and helpless because you're not able to make that worry go away, which is when the depression starts kicking in. But there's also people who are depressed or even when they're depressed that have agitation and restlessness and it's not even associated with worry really. They just can't sit still and they're trying to find something to do that's going to make them happy and nothing seems to work. Noripinephrine is your get up and go neurotransmitter. Too much of it or too little serotonin can cause feelings of agitation. So whether you don't have enough serotonin or you've got too much noripinephrine, you need to look at what's going on. Either way, you're going to feel agitated. When your body perceives stress for too long, it'll determine it may be unwinnable and may reduce noripinephrine and dopamine, turning down that threat response system that we've talked about, leading to fatigue and apathy. At a certain point, your brain just goes, you know what? There's nothing we can do about this. I surrender. I give up. I'm going to save energy for when it's really important for when I really need to fight or flee. Unfortunately, when your body tries to save energy and it reduces its response, you don't feel pleasure either. You need noripinephrine to feel pleasure in addition to feel stress. It's your get up and go. Whether it's get up and go and woo-hoo or get up and go and fight or flee. So agitation busters is what we're going to call them in this segment. Exercise helps release serotonin. They've done many, many studies. They've found that exercise can help with depressive symptoms. That's great. It doesn't mean you've got to get into the gym and get into target heart rate range and all this kind of other stuff, especially if you haven't been exercising or if you don't even like exercising. Exercise means get your body moving. Get up off the couch and move, ideally walking around the neighborhood, playing with your dog, doing something a little bit active. But anything is better than nothing. You don't necessarily have to get what we typically think of as exercise. Put on your headphones and dance around your house like a maniac, maybe even while cleaning. It'll help release serotonin. It also uses, if you want to use that term, excess nervous energy. I find when I'm really stressed out and I'm agitated, especially if it's maybe I've got a job interview coming up or some sort of other thing coming up that I'm a little nervous about. I'm not persistently worried, but I'm a little stressed. I may have more nervous energy. If I get up and I put that energy to use for something, then I'm not dwelling on whatever it is that I'm worried about, and I'm also getting the benefit of getting something positive done. Cut down, if not out, stimulants. Remember if you've been using caffeine for a long time and you just cut it out cold turkey, you're going to likely get headaches and stuff. Anytime you switch anything in your diet, start an exercise program, talk to your doctor, but be aware that switching to decaf can help or, hey, even water. Water is even better, but I'm being realistic here. Some things to be careful of, and I've noticed even more since I've quit using caffeine after like 10, 30, 11 o'clock in the morning, is the lot of fast food restaurants that you go to don't have an option for anything caffeine-free that is also sugar-free. Because I don't drink sugar either, I usually end up with water. Water is great for you. Don't get me wrong. That's wonderful. But do be aware that it's not just coffee that has caffeine. Caffeine is found in root beer, Sprite, ginger, or I'm sorry. Caffeine is found in Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew, and other drinks like tea. Beer, Sprite, ginger ale, 7up, decaf sodas, and Powerade-type drinks generally don't have caffeine in them. I put the links down here for, actually I didn't, for caffeine. You can Google what has caffeine in it. Just Google things like soft drinks and caffeine amounts. And there are lots of different websites that have charts that will show you how much caffeine is in various different things. The other stimulant that a lot of people use is nicotine. Again, in an ideal world, we would cut it out. If you're not ready, willing, or able to do that, you may want to consider cutting back on nicotine. There are smokeless tobacco products as well as cigarettes that have much lower levels of nicotine than other brands. So if you're trying to gradually cut back down, you can look at these different websites, and find something that has less nicotine than what you're currently using. Again, also you can talk to your doctor about nicotine replacement therapy and things like that. But there are options, I guess is my point to you. You're not going to stick to something if you feel miserable. So figuring out what's realistic for you is going to be really important in busting that agitation, because if when you get stressed out, you tend to reach for a cigarette or some other sort of nicotine product, if you cut that out, then when you start to get stressed, what do you reach for? So there needs to be something in there to help you bridge that gap until you develop new habits. And you want to make sure that you're not going to get so stressed out about quitting the nicotine that it makes your agitation even worse. Nutrition. Eat foods high in taurine, mackerel, eggs, and brewers yeast. You can do a internet search to find other things, if none of those sound really good to you. But taurine can help your brain produce GABA. GABA is one of your calming neurotransmitters. Drink enough water and don't let your blood sugar get too low. When your body systems get out of whack, think about your car and how you have to check all the fluids all the time and make sure that you've got the right kind of gas. Same thing for your body. And most of us, and I'm not saying everybody, but most of us, when our blood sugar gets too low, we get hangry, which is a cross between hungry and angry. We want food and we want it now. Some people also get shaky, which adds to their agitation and irritability. Get focused. Too many irons in the fire can keep you on edge. If you've got 14 different projects going and you feel like you're being pulled in 14 different directions. Yeah, you're probably going to be agitated and stressed because you're trying to juggle too many balls. So see how many you compare it down to and do it in a succession. So maybe get three goals accomplished and then add three more and then work on it like that instead of trying to do 15 at once. Make sure when you're getting focused and you're prioritizing those goals, you're focusing on those goals that are going to help you move toward those people, things and goals that are most important to you. Because that'll increase your motivation and reduce your agitation because you're going to feel good about what you're doing. Stay busy. If your agitation is just, you know, I'm trying to do something to feel better, they're sitting still. I don't feel good moving. I don't feel good. Sometimes it's helpful just to stay busy, pick up a hobby like crocheting or reading or doing crossword puzzles. You can go down the Pinterest rabbit hole. I know my daughter does that on a regular basis. We'll be sitting there in the evening and all of a sudden I won't hear anything from her for like an hour and she's just down that Pinterest rabbit hole. But it is occupied her for that hour. You can clean. If worse comes to worse, clean. That's when I was in college, that used to be my go-to. People could always tell when I was a little bit stressed or agitated because I would be cleaning the baseboards. That was my thing. I've always been a freak about floors and baseboards. Mindfulness, identify your vulnerabilities. And I have other presentations, other podcasts that I've already done on understanding vulnerabilities, being mindful of what you need in order to be less vulnerable to getting upset. So think about it. If you wake up and you're feeling rested, you're well nourished, you're hydrated, it's a sunny day outside. You know, you've got good friends. You feel loved. You know, you are really buffered against stress as opposed to the days that you wake up and you're not feeling well, you're running late for work, you didn't get enough sleep, yada, yada, yada. And you kind of wake up and you're in a bad state. Those days you probably react more strongly to anything negative that comes your way than the days you get up and, you know, you've got that good buffer going. So identify your vulnerabilities and work with them. You know, ideally you want to prevent as many as possible and try to work on making sure that you're taking care of yourself. But sometimes like last night, we had thunderstorms all night long and y'all know I let my dogs sleep in the bedroom. And one of my dogs is terrified of thunder. So every couple of hours when a thunderstorm would come through, he would get up, jump off the bed and start pacing around like an expectant little father just waiting for the thunderstorm to go away. So I didn't sleep well last night knowing that coming into work today, I knew I was going to be less productive and I just accepted that. I accepted the fact that I'm going to be not on my A game instead of beating myself up and trying to do everything that I had anticipated getting done. So identify your vulnerabilities, prevent as many as possible. But when there are some, you know, you wake up and you're sick or something. Give yourself some compassion and go, you know what, I just got to kind of roll with the hand that I got dealt this morning. Identify your strengths, figure out what you're good at. That'll help, you know, delay some agitation because you've got good qualities. You've got something to bring to every situation and identify thoughts you're having, which are triggering your agitation. If you're having some distress, intolerant thoughts like I can't stand this or I have to get this, why do you have to get it? Is the world going to end? You want to look for cognitive distortions and unhelpful thoughts that are triggering anxiety and triggering your inability to feel grounded and content. Meditation or yoga can help you focus on your breath. And if you're focusing on your breath, you're not focusing on everything out here. You're really focusing on paying attention to inhale and exhale. Maybe listening to your heartbeat, whatever it is that you do in your practice. Get a physical. If your hormones, your thyroid hormones, your sex hormones are out of whack. You may feel more agitated or on the other side, you may feel lack of motivation and apathetic. So it's important to rule out, rule out any of the easy things. As we age, all of that stuff gets a little bit wonky. So it's important to work with your doctor and it may not be taking pharmaceuticals. It may be a matter of getting more exercise or taking additional vitamin supplements to help you maintain the energy levels and stuff that you had when you were 20. Oxytocin is a great agitation buster. That is our bonding chemical. We find that a hug that lasts about 20 seconds or more can help release oxytocin and help people feel calmer and less agitated. Now, we can't necessarily, when we're at work, walk up to somebody and go, I need a hug. And you may not have an animal at your office place either. If you can't get a hug, petting an animal has also been shown to do similar things. So if you can get an animal that is conducive to that. My cat Mojo, love the little guy, but he is the greatest therapy cat. And I know you think cats aren't therapy animals, but he is. He can tell when I'm stressed and he whenever I am, he gets on my stomach and will pad on my chest for a little while and then he'll just lay down and get all comfy. And he knows that I'm not going to move as long as he's comfortable. So we both end up kind of calming down or he calms me down, whatever you want to say. But when I'm not stressed, he would rather not be in my lap. So it's definitely a direct correlation between my agitation levels and, you know, he helps me feel calmer and more grounded. So animals are great. Examine your environment. If you are an extrovert and you're not getting enough stimulation, you could be getting restless, which could cause agitation. You're pacing around kind of like a caged animal going, I got to talk to somebody. I got to be around somebody because I feel like I'm just rattling around in between these walls. Knowing that you can take steps, find meetups online, sometimes online chat rooms are helpful. But for a lot of extroverts, you really actually need the human face-to-face interaction. Perceivers, on the other hand, with too much structure may feel like a caged animal. So perceivers are the ones that tend to like spontaneity. They don't like too much structure. And if you're doing the same thing day after day after day, you wake up, you eat breakfast, you go to work, you come home, you eat dinner, you go to sleep, get up, go to bed, get up and repeat. Perceivers are going to get very agitated and very restless with that kind of structure. So it's important that they figure out ways to integrate spontaneity and some fun into their lives so they don't get resentful and agitated. Agitation and restlessness are caused by neurotransmitter and or hormone imbalances, which can be caused by worrying about things. You know, that's kind of the obvious one. Physical causes and it can be just aging. It doesn't have to be anything life-threatening or overwhelming. It can be just you're getting older or environmental causes. So paying attention to what lifestyle factors may be contributing to your agitation and just inability to sit still. If agitation is due to anxiety, then it's important to address whatever threats are causing you to feel like you need to fight or flee. So, you know, you can work on that with a therapist. You can make a list of the things that you're thinking about and identify which of them are worth your time to address and which of them you just kind of need to let go and then figure out how to do that. If agitation is due to something else than minimizing vulnerabilities, getting enough sleep, eating well, having good social support and aiding your body and rebalancing will be imperative. So sometimes agitation is caused by, like I said, aging. So you want to do your best to give your body as much energy as it needs to rebalance so you can feel really good. And that will help you feel better and probably reduce some of your agitation. If you like this podcast, you can subscribe on your favorite podcast. Join our Facebook group at docsnipes.com or join our community at docsnipes.com.