Description

In this episode, I cover six things that I do or have done to help combat depression partially related to Ankylosing Spondylitis. 

First I do a Question of the Week. A question listed online asked if stress could trigger a flair. I came across this article that discusses this very item. I also include some personal insight into this topic.

I also discuss ways that I have tried to cope with depression. It never fails for me, that as the weather transitions from summer to fall here in Michigan, I get depression setting in. I HATE winter and with AS find everything I need to get done takes much longer. I found this article that outlined some things I do to help combat depression. They are: 

1. Exercise - My exercise is limited, but I know that when I do my stretches and pushups I feels better.
2. Sleep Well – I have sleep apnea and have started using my CPAP more to help correct this.
3. Get Educated – I started getting more information on depression, AS, and other topics that I knew would help to combat the “winter blahs”.
4. Get Support – I’ve made a bigger attempt at reaching out to fellow AS Warriors to build up my support network.
5. Manage Stress – You can pick any number of ways to manage stress. I like to use meditation and yoga. I put links below to YouTube videos on both topics.
6. Seek mental health counseling – Please consult a professional if you find that you are not having luck with getting to a better spot mentally.

Thank you very much for reading this and listening to the show.

Yoga for people with arthritis - https://youtu.be/RJ8kQPSug0U

Meditation for Beginners -  https://youtu.be/F0jedwTzIJg

See below for transcript:

Welcome to this episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis podcast. In today's episode I want to talk about or cover dealing with some ways of dealing with depression. It's beginning to be that time of year again, in the Northern Hemisphere where we roll into fall and then winter's coming. For me personally, that generally means the onset of depression, the days get shorter, the weather gets crappier and it's just an overall time that I don't particularly care for. I know I'm going to be cooped up more inside where I live. So for me, it's a time of year when I have to really make sure to consciously fight depression and not succumb to it. 

I'll go over some of the things on fighting depression, but first on this episode I wanted to touch base with and do what I call the Question of the Week. I was going through the different forums on Facebook and I saw this question,does stress cause flares and make your AS worse? Well, I did a little bit of looking around. You know, with stress, we all have stress, you know, if you're working, you've got the stress of work and getting yourself there and just daily life and everything else. But if you have Ankylosing Spondylitis or any other type ofchronic condition on top of daily life, that can just be that extra push to cause many more or increased days of inflammation. One of the things looked at is, you know, AS which affects your spine can affect how you move, walk, feel anything because you use your spine all day long.

There have been some that looked at the links between stress and inflammation, and there was a study in 2017, and I'll have all