Well being and happiness

Kassidi Welch, Staff Writer

Have you ever wondered about what chemical in your body controls your moods, happiness and well-being? Well there are actually twenty plus chemicals in your body that have an effect on your happiness, but Serotonin is one of the more common chemicals that is known to have an effect on your mood and happiness. Serotonin is a chemical in your body that carries signals along and between nerves. It is also active in constructing smooth muscles, transmitting impulses between nerve cells, regulating body processes and contributing to well-being and happiness. Serotonin also reduces blood flow and aids in the formation of blood clots. The only way for you to see what your serotonin levels are is by the doctor taking a sample of your bowels, blood, or looking at your brain. For those of us who struggle with being happy and having a positive state of mind, serotonin levels could be low and you just need medication to regulate Serotonin levels. There isn’t really anything someone can do to cause the chemical levels in the body to be messed up; it just kind of happens. Doctors have found that serotonin runs with depression. Depression is a hard thing to control and there are so many different medicines that one can get for depression, but they don’t always work. What doctors have been doing instead of prescribing someone a “depression medicine” is checking out the chemical balance in the body instead to see if depression may result. Doctors have found that people with depression usually have very low or irregular serotonin levels. I used to have really bad depression and had the doctor check my levels. They found that my serotonin levels were way out of whack, so my doctor prescribed me a medication that balanced out my levels.