Brain Waves and Depression

People suffering from depression disorder, especially chronic depression, have certain pattern of their brain waves.

There are only five different brain waves which we have:

- Beta is the one for the wide awake state of mind. Usually people with not enough beta waves suffer from depression. Beta waves control emotional stability, our levels of concentration and awareness of our surroundings.

- Alpha is a state of light relaxation, which your brain switches to automatically when you close your eyes. It's that state in between when you just woke up or are ready to go to sleep.

- Theta is a state coveted by those who meditate, it's either light sleeps with dreaming or deep meditation. In this state hypnotists can plant suggestions; you can also listen to audio language lessons or different personal development programs.

- Delta is a state of deep sleep, where we do not dream but rather our body takes time to recharge and heal itself.

- Gamma waves process the information from different parts of brain. The higher their activity, the more intelligent is the person. Generally, people like this are sharper, have excellent memory and all five senses perfect. On the contrary, people with learning difficulties produce less gamma waves.

Brain waves were first discovered in 1934, but only through the 1990s the researchers started trying to manipulate the brain waves to cure certain mental disorders: SAD (seasonal affective disorder), depression and anxiety, chronic fatigue, pain or hypertension.

What I'm particularly interested in is beta waves.

If you have too many of them, you experience anxiety, tension and worry as you become extremely alert and over-concentrate or over-analyze stuff. Vice versa, you become depressed or feeling blue if there is not enough beta waves activity to interest or motivate you.

So, by altering your brain waves with certain sounds, frequency and tones on audio recordings you can improve and stabilize your emotional state. There are plenty of products out there that you can try.

The latest I heard is that you also can determine how successful some antidepressant medications will be for you by examining your brain waves changes from the onset of your depression treatment instead of waiting for 6-8 weeks to see if the drugs started working.

Just a caution though. Whatever depression help I'm suggesting to you, do not discount conventional help first. Go to your doctor, wait for the diagnosis and discuss all the possible ways of fighting your mental disorder with them first.