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What Are the Causes of Serotonin Reuptake?

Serotonin, a hormone that transmits signals from one nerve cell to another, is one of the body's natural "feel-good" chemicals and imbalances can have serious health effects. Low serotonin levels are linked to a wide range of physical and mental disorders, including depression, anxiety and panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, insomnia, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), cardiac conditions and more. Still, the chicken-or-egg question persists: does low serotonin cause these problems or do these problems cause low serotonin? After being released, serotonin is supposed to bind with nearby neurons but when it is reabsorbed back into the cell that manufactured it, the process is called serotonin reuptake. Doctors often prescribe a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to increase serotonin levels and relieve symptoms of deficiency.

  1. Heredity

    • Serotonin deficiency is much more likely to occur in people whose parents have suffered from signs and symptoms of it, as suggested by conditions such as mood disorders, insomnia and clinical mental illness.

    Environmental Stresses

    • A National Institutes of Health study written up in the November 1997 journal of the American Psychological Association found a correlation between low serotonin levels in rhesus monkeys and environmental stresses early in life. Female monkeys with low serotonin levels were aggressive, impulsive, antisocial and made poor mothers. However, in addition to inheriting low serotonin levels, their offspring were subjected to poor rearing, which appeared to aggravate existing tendencies. The researchers concluded that environment as well as heredity played a role in many disorders associated with low serotonin, a pattern that they believe may exist in humans too.

    Hormonal Disorders

    • The endocrine system consists of all the body's hormone-secreting organs, including the pituitary, thyroid, adrenal, pancreas, pineal and reproductive glands. It works in conjunction with the nervous system to regulate a wide range of internal processes and functions ranging from metabolism to growth and any disruptions in one system inevitably have an impact on the other. For example, medical conditions or phases of life that affect estrogen production in women, such as puberty, childbirth and menopause, also affect serotonin levels and can cause changes in behavior. Likewise, fluctuations in androgen (testosterone) production in men also cause serotonin imbalances affecting mood and behavior.

    Alcohol and Drug Abuse

    • Some adverse prescription drug interactions, as well as substance abuse, can cause dangerous imbalances in serotonin levels. Typically, serotonin deficiency is present in the brains of both clinically depressed women and alcoholic men, yet alcoholism is twice as common among men as women. One theory to explain this disparity is that depressed men are twice as likely to abuse alcohol than depressed women, who deal with the problem in different ways.

    Gender

    • Another unsolved mystery is why women are twice as vulnerable to depression as men, a figure consistent across all cultures, meaning that being born female is a major risk factor for serotonin deficiency. A combination of causes--biological, environmental and psychological--may come into play to account for this phenomenon but uncertainties remain.

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