This simple breathing trick can help treat and prevent depression

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"Just breathe."

It's a phrase we hear time and time again, and one we often repeat to ourselves in times of stress – but could it also be the key to managing and preventing mild to moderate depression?

Bryce Wylde, associate medical director at P3 Health in Toronto, Ont., thinks so – in fact, the alternative health expert relies on the tactic of breathing as a major component of treating patients with mental illness. He says it helps quell stress by lowering blood pressure and forcing your mind to stop multitasking.

"The effects of breathing techniques, meditation and other mindfulness-based stress reduction methods on your body are measurable," Wylde tells Yahoo Canada Shine.

"When you practice it like you would exercise at the gym every day, you help your heart tell your brain to relax and that everything is OK."

The type of breathing Wylde's referring to here is a very specific method that's been used for thousands of years in traditional eastern medicine and yoga – the deep belly breaths where you breathe in for five seconds, hold for seven seconds and exhale for eight seconds.

He says when performed regularly for at least 15 minutes a day, this simple breathing technique has been shown to be equally effective at relieving anxiety and depression as benzodiazepine, a drug commonly prescribed for these mental illnesses.

"It's like a massage for the internal organs and the mind," he says. "You're quelling [stress hormones] cortisol and adrenaline just by breathing. It's powerful."

His methodology is all part of an alternative, holistic approach to managing mental illness called Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which combines counselling with practices such as yoga, meditation and focused breathing to target the source of depression and anxiety, which in most cases is stress.

"In this day and age, stress is the No. 1 North American silent killer and strongest contributor to mental illness," Wylde says. "We're chronically exposed to stress, and it burns up serotonin and metabolizes feel-good hormones, just like a lack of sun leaves us deficient in vitamin D."

In addition to the immediate anxiety-relieving benefits, MBCT has been shown to provide lasting protection against mental illness relapses that is on par with taking antidepressant medications.

Dr. Tim Cooke, a former Canadian Armed Forces doctor and specialist in stress and post-traumatic stress disorder, says breathing techniques are part of a burgeoning area of health research surrounding the topic of mental fitness – the concept of caring for and maintaining your mental health just as one does their physical well-being.

Cooke, who is also the medical director at P3 Health, is a major proponent of 'flow state,' a mental state in which your brain is so intensely focused on one thing (such as counting breaths) that it causes you to forget about stressors in your life. One way to achieve flow state is by doing the mindful breathing Wydle recommends, though it can also be achieved through yoga and meditation. While it might sound a little like hippy talk, Cooke says there's solid research to back it up.

"MBCT has been shown to induce structural changes in your brain to lower adrenalin, cortisol and even blood pressure," Cooke tells Yahoo Canada Shine. "And just five or 10 minutes of mindful breathing, yoga or meditation has been shown to turn off genes responsible for your stress response."

While Cooke and Wylde urge that medication is necessary in extreme cases of mental illness, they both look to these alternative measures, such as daily mindful breathing, to treat the stress and anxiety that causes depression to set in. They find it more effective than drugs in both the short and long-term since it teaches how to respond to problems, such as stress and negative feelings, in a more positive way.

"If you have depression, your brain is often hard-wired to make you prone to depressive episodes -- it's kind of like an eight-track tape," says Cooke. "What mindfulness does is allows you to break that eight-track tape. You dismantle that network in your brain and build a positive one."