How to Naturally Increase Your Serotonin for Better Mental Health

Simple, science-backed strategies to elevate your mood and find more joy every day.

As I was tapering off my antidepressant, my therapist wanted to ensure we had a plan for keeping the serotonin levels high in my body.

As you may know, serotonin is a neurotransmitter and hormone often called the “feel-good molecule” for its importance in mood regulation and mental health.

Antidepressants, specifically SSRIs, work by keeping more serotonin in your synaptic cleft allowing it to send more messages over time, improving mood and reducing anxiety.

When you taper off an SSRI like I just completed, your serotonin levels will begin to decrease. This is why tapering slowly off an antidepressant is essential as your body will need to begin to create more serotonin in response.

This was why my therapist wanted to ensure we had a plan for replacing that serotonin naturally.

This experience highlighted for me just how crucial natural serotonin production is. And whether you're navigating changes with medication, or simply looking for ways to enhance your well-being, understanding how to support your body's serotonin can make a significant difference in how you feel.

And the good news? There are many accessible, natural strategies to help your body do just that.

Natural Ways to Support Serotonin Production

Supporting your body's natural serotonin production doesn't have to be complicated. Here are several lifestyle areas you can focus on:

Food

The concept of “food as medicine” has been gaining traction and for good reason. This is essentially a school of thought that you can heal a lot of health issues by harnessing the power of whole foods.

Is it possible to eat your way to higher serotonin levels? Yes, that’s the prevailing wisdom!

While foods do not directly contain serotonin, many are rich in tryptophan, which is an amino acid that your body uses to produce serotonin.

Eating foods high in tryptophan helps support your body’s natural serotonin production.

But what foods are high in tryptophan?

• Poultry

• Other meats like lamb, pork, and beef

• Eggs

• Cheese

• Fish

• Nuts and seeds

• Soy products

• Oats

• Milk and yogurt

• Legumes

• Fruits

• Chocolate

• Dried dates

• Buckwheat and spirulina

For your body to convert tryptophan into serotonin, it needs carbohydrates. Carbs trigger the release of insulin, which helps to clear other amino acids from the bloodstream, allowing tryptophan a better opportunity to cross the blood-brain barrier.

So, it’s important to eat complex carbs along with foods high in tryptophan to provide the best opportunity for your body to convert the tryptophan into serotonin.

The good news for me is I already eat a lot of these foods listed, so I didn’t have to make any major modifications to my diet.

Gut Health

Here is a good trivia question for you. Where is the majority of your body’s serotonin produced?

Answer: In the gut!

95% of your body’s serotonin is produced in the intestine¹, which makes maintaining a healthy gut biome important.

You can support your gut health by:

• Eating foods rich in fiber: Prebiotic fiber feeds your beneficial gut bacteria.

• Consuming fermented foods: Fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, and kombucha include live bacteria that are beneficial for the gut biome.

Sunlight

Regular exposure to sunlight is believed to trigger your skin’s production of Vitamin D, which in turn can play a role in producing serotonin.

Regular but sensible sun exposure, especially in the morning, can help regulate your body’s natural rhythms and play a role in boosting your serotonin production.

Some people like to go for morning walks or runs. In the warmer months, I like to sit outside and do part of my morning routine, like read, journal, and meditate.

Exercise

Engaging in regular exercise has been linked to higher levels of serotonin and is also a well-established way to regulate your mood.²

Aerobic exercises like running, cycling, or swimming, and activities like yoga and weightlifting can all be effective ways to increase your serotonin levels and improve your mood.

Stress Management

Chronic stress has been shown to deplete serotonin³, so limiting your stress can ensure your serotonin levels remain unaffected.

These practices can all help to manage your stress levels:

• Mindfulness and meditation

• Yoga (see a trend here?)

• Spending time in nature

• Deep breathing exercises

Social Connection

Intuitively, we’ve known for a long time that social connection is important for our physiological well-being.

Studies are now showing proof that social connections can positively impact our neurotransmitters like oxytocin (the love drug) and serotonin, leading to all kinds of health benefits:

…there is significant evidence that social support and feeling connected can help people maintain a healthy body mass index, control blood sugars, improve cancer survival, decrease cardiovascular mortality, decrease depressive symptoms, mitigate posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and improve overall mental health.⁴

Sleep

The importance of quality sleep for overall health is widely recognized, and its connection to neurotransmitter regulation is key.

Sleep plays an important role in regulating neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Interestingly enough, the influence on serotonin is bidirectional: Serotonin influences sleep and sleep quality influences serotonin.

Ensuring you’re getting enough sleep, and quality sleep at that, is crucial for maintaining your serotonin levels.

So, prioritizing a consistent sleep schedule and a restful bedtime routine can make a big difference.

Conclusion

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not perfect in these categories.

My diet has always been a challenge for me as I have a sweet tooth the size of Idaho and a true disgust for many types of vegetables.

This has been me basically since I was born. Still now, I could eat that entire cake in one sitting.

However, becoming more intentional about these areas has made a noticeable difference, and it’s about progress, not perfection.

Hopefully you’ve found a couple areas you can focus on and build into your daily or weekly routine.

Did anything in this post resonate? What are your favorite ways to work on your mental health?

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5526216/

2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2077351/

3. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2634823/#:~:text=M%20Danet%20S%20Lapiz%2DBluhm

4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6125010/