Serotonin is a hormone that's found naturally in the brain and is considered the 'happy' hormone as it greatly influences your overall sense of well-being. It helps to regulate moods, temper, and relieves depression. It's also credited with being a natural sleep aid and even plays an important role in regulating such things as appetite and sexuality.

If you're feeling particularly down in the dumps or just happen to feel more emotional than usual (like bursting into tears during an episode of How I Met Your Mother), it could mean that your serotonin levels are low.

A recent study actually found that if you have a tendency to cry easily your serotonin levels may be low. The research team, led by Frederick van der Veen from the Erasmus Medical Centre, studied the effect of a single dose of paroxetine (paroxetine briefly increases serotonin levels) on crying in response to emotional situations. They gave 25 healthy women either one dose of paroxetine or a placebo. Four hours later they showed them one of two emotional movies, Brian's Song or Once They Were Warriors. On a different occasion the women took the opposite treatment and watched the other movie. After both occasions they noted if and how badly they felt like crying during certain scenes. The movie that they watched did not affect their crying, but taking paroxetine did. They were less likely to cry after they took the drug.

So What Causes Serotonin Levels To Drop?

Long-term stress depletes serotonin, so does lack of sleep and exercise, poor nutrition, and lack of sunlight. If you're feeling low or burnt out, try upping your intake of natural foods that help with serotonin production.

Foods That Boost Serotonin Production

  • Foods high in B-vitamins like brown rice, chicken, eggs, green leafs, legumes, meat, nuts, peas and sunflower seeds.
  • Calcium found in almonds, brewer's yeast, green leafs, fish with bones, sesame seeds and tofu.
  • Foods with magnesium such as green leafs, brown rice, sesame seeds, shrimp, salmon and food with Tryptophan – soy foods, peanuts and almonds.
  • Essential fatty acids, omega 3's (fish oils found in mackerel, salmon, sardine, tuna; walnut oil, flax oil) and 6's (canola oil, chicken, eggs, flax, grape seed oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, wheat germ oil) as well as Gamma-Linolenic Acid (Evening Primrose oil).

    Also avoid stimulants because they deplete serotonin over time. This works the same was stress does. Things like caffeine, refined carbohydrates, sugar as well as the heavier stimulants like cold remedies, alcohol, street drugs, diet pills and tobacco.