Exercise can be amazingly beneficial.
- It is a natural antidepressant
- And it improves your willpower, giving you more motivation and more “get up and go”.
- It is referred to as a “keystone” habit in The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg, because people that exercise start engaging in other good habits like eating healthier even if that was never their goal. These good habits like eating healthy also help relieve depression.
A recent study showed that exercise reduced depression symptoms by 55%[1] in people with major depression.
However! The exercise didn’t work for everyone, there was a very clear divide. First the researchers tested how the participants responded to rewards. Participants with low levels of reward processing didn’t gain any benefit at all from exercise. Participants with healthy positive reward processing, even if their depression symptoms were worse, benefited a lot from the exercise.
It sounds very hit and miss doesn’t it.
But There Is A Solution
What if I told you there was a cheap natural supplement that can:
- Effect your reward processing, potentially making exercise more effective
- The supplement itself naturally relieves depression even without exercise
- And it increases your motivation making it easier to get yourself the gym
So it is win-win-win. You gain an antidepressant effect from the supplement, and from the exercise, and a potential synergistic boost between the two.
Enter Carvacrol Oil
Oregano Oil, which contains Carvacrol Oil, beat Fluoxetine (Prozac) and Diazepam in an antidepressant test on mice called the sucrose preference test[2].
And this was just normal Oregano oil that contained 6% Carvacrol Oil. It is now available cheaply with 55% Carvacrol Oil. And this was without additional exercise.
Carvacrol works differently from most other antidepressants. A lot of antidepressants work through the serotonin system, making you feel good. Carvacrol oil relieves depression through the dopamine system[3].
Dopamine is often referred to as “the motivation neurotransmitter”. It is heavily involved in motivation and reward processing. Carvacrol Oil increased dopamine levels by upto 60% in parts of the mouse brain.
All that extra dopamine and motivation can help you get to the gym and could make you a high responder to the benefits of exercise. Dopamine is heavily involved in reward processing[4].
This version from Now Foods was the most cost effective we could see on Amazon, two pills per day is the human equivalent to the dose used in study 3. It is the one that I use personally. Don’t buy one that doesn’t tell you how much Carvacrol Oil is in it or that just says “proprietary blend” on the box.
The benefits of the oil build up over a couple of weeks, and the benefits of exercise build up over 8 weeks. If you try it please let me know in the comments how it went.
Personal Experience
Long ago I used Oregano Oil to see if it helped my digestion as it also promotes the growth of healthy gut bacteria. I didn’t know it was an antidepressant or that it boosted dopamine. I started working really hard on my business. Getting into the office early every day and working late. My business started to benefit and I was able to hire my first employee.
I didn’t even know that these effects were from the oregano oil. I stopped taking it to experiment with other supplements. I lost the benefits and eventually had to let go of my first employee and go back to working on my own.
It was only recently when I found these studies that I realised it was the Carvacrol all along. I started taking the high Carvacrol version of the supplement a few weeks ago, and back to the gym now that it is open again after Coronavirus. And now I’ve been putting in 12 hour days in work, it is the most motivated I’ve ever been. And I’m enjoying it.
References
[1] A randomized trial of aerobic exercise for major depression: examining neural indicators of reward and cognitive control as predictors and treatment targets
[2] Effects of oregano essential oil on brain TLR4 and TLR2 gene expression and depressive-like behavior in a rat model
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5842484/
[3] Antidepressant‐like effect of carvacrol (5‐Isopropyl‐2‐methylphenol) in mice: involvement of dopaminergic system
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1472-8206.2010.00850.x
[4] Neurobiological mechanisms of anhedonia