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Ilona Meagher

NYT | Can Preschoolers Be Depressed? - 0 views

  • Children of depressed parents are two to three times as likely to have major depression. Maternal depression in particular has been shown to have serious effects on development, primarily through an absence of responsiveness — the parent’s conscious and consistent mirroring and reciprocity of an infant’s gaze, babble and actions. “Depressed mothers often respond to their babies from the beginning in ways that dampen their enthusiasm and joy,” says Alicia Lieberman, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. This is problematic, as 10 to 20 percent of mothers go through depression at some point, and 1 in 11 infants experiences his mother’s depression in the first year.
  • Many researchers, particularly those with medical training, are eager to identify some kind of a “biologic marker” to make diagnosis scientifically conclusive. Recent studies have looked at the activity of cortisol, a hormone the body produces in response to stress. In preschoolers who have had a diagnosis of depression, as in depressed adults, cortisol levels escalate under stressful circumstances and then fail to recover with the same buoyancy as in typical children.
  • But in adults, cortisol reactivity can be an indication of anxiety. Other research has found that in young children, anxiety and depression are likewise intertwined. At Duke, Egger found that children who were depressed as preschoolers were more than four times as likely to have an anxiety disorder at school age. “Are these two distinct but strongly related syndromes?” asks Daniel Pine of the N.I.M.H. “Are they just slightly different-appearing clinical manifestations of the same underlying problem? Do the relationships vary at different ages? There are no definitive answers.”
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  • Preliminary brain scans of Luby’s depressed preschoolers show changes in the shape and size of the hippocampus, an important emotion center in the brain, and in the functional connectivity between different brain regions, similar to changes found in the brains of depressed adults. In a longitudinal study of risk factors for depression, Daniel Klein and his team found that children who were categorized as “temperamentally low in exuberance and enthusiasm” at age 3 had trouble at age 7 summoning positive words that described themselves. By 10, they were more likely to exhibit depressive symptoms. And multiple studies have already linked depression in school-age children to adult depression.
Ilona Meagher

Scientific American | Toxic Together: Depression and Heart Disease - 0 views

  • n any given day participants with both depression and heart disease were nearly five times more likely to die than their healthy peers. Depression alone doubled mortality risk, and heart disease increased risk by only two thirds.
  • at least 20 percent of the 17 million Americans with heart disease also suffer from depression
Ilona Meagher

Health | Can psychedelic drugs treat depression? - 0 views

  • Although mind-bending drugs such as psilocybin are still used most often by people looking to get high, researchers around the country have begun to explore whether these and other illegal drugs can help treat intractable depression, anxiety, and other mental-health problems.
  • n the past month alone, studies have been published on the benefits of MDMA (better known as Ecstasy) in people with post-traumatic stress disorder and on the fast-acting antidepressive effects of the club drug ketamine (aka "Special K").
  • But research into the potential benefits of psychedelic drugs ground to a halt in the early 1970s, after the federal government criminalized LSD and psilocybin -- and after the drugs were eagerly adopted by college students and the hippie counterculture. "These studies had to be shut down because of the cultural reaction,"
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  • The new wave of research on psychedelics -- "version 2.0," as Ross calls it -- began in the early 1990s, when the Food and Drug Administration sanctioned a few preliminary studies on psilocybin and MDMA. (The latter had been used in psychotherapy beginning in the 1970s, without the FDA's blessing, and was ultimately outlawed in 1985.) The research has picked up dramatically in the past few years.
  • When everything goes well, the drugs induce a "peaceful and blissful" state of unity with oneself and the cosmos, resulting in a new level of self-awareness and knowledge that can make an individual more responsive to cognitive therapy and other forms of psychotherapy, Vollenweider says. (Ironically, the drugs show promise in the treatment of alcohol addiction, he adds.)
  • In the MDMA study published in July, for instance, 10 of the 12 people who took the drug no longer met the criteria for post-traumatic stress two months later. And all five of the patients that have enrolled in Ross's study so far -- eventually it will include a few dozen -- have shown significant decreases in anxiety and depression.
Ilona Meagher

WebMD | Depression on the Rise in Colleges? - 0 views

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    Some mental health problems, including moderate and severe depression, are more common among college students today than in the past, according to a study that looked back 12 years.
Ilona Meagher

CNN | Gloomy personality may up heart risk - 0 views

  • People with a history of heart disease who are prone to negative thinking, gloom, and inhibition -- a personality profile known as Type D (for "distressed") -- are nearly four times more likely to experience heart attack, heart failure, heart rhythm disorders, death, and other negative outcomes compared to heart patients with a different personality profile, the study found.
  • "There is a clear connection between heart risk and psychological risk factors, and those people who have this personality and lack social support have higher risk of health problems,"
  • Type D personalities are "characterized by negative emotions like anxiety, frustration, and anger, and at the same time score high on social inhibition, meaning that they are less likely to disclose emotions," Denollet says.
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  • Experts don't fully understand why the Type D personality appears to affect heart risk. Genes may be partly responsible, but the chronic stress associated with Type D traits is also a likely culprit.
  • Consistently high levels of one stress hormone, cortisol, are a known risk factor for heart attack.
  • Type D personality and depression are not the same thing, although there is some overlap between them. While depression tends to occur in episodes, the emotional distress associated with Type D personality is chronic and may never reach the level of clinical depression, according to the study.
Ilona Meagher

MedicineNet | Out of Work May Mean Out of Sorts - 0 views

  • Surveys by Mental Health America and other researchers have found that people affected by the lousy economy have a higher risk for mental illness, especially such conditions as depression and anxiety.
  • The Mental Health America survey found that unemployed people were four times as likely as people with jobs to report symptoms consistent with severe mental illness.But the harmful mental effects of the economy aren't limited to the unemployed. People whose jobs were changed by the economic downturn -- those who went through involuntary job changes or had their hours or pay cut at work -- were twice as likely to have symptoms consistent with severe mental illness, the survey found.It also found that unemployed people were four times more likely to think of harming themselves and twice as likely to report substance or alcohol abuse or worries about their mental health.
  • At a time when they need professional help more than ever, many people have less access to it, the survey also revealed. About half of the survey participants who were unemployed said they had difficulty obtaining health care. Of those who hadn't spoken to a doctor about their mental health concerns, 42% said it was because the care was too expensive or they didn't have insurance to cover it.
Ilona Meagher

Reuters | Fish oil may curb depression among teen boys - 0 views

  • Eating more oily fish like sardines, salmon and yellowtail could help teenage boys feel less blue, suggests a new Japanese study. The same does not appear to hold for teen girls, however.
Ilona Meagher

Reuters | More mental disorders treated with drugs only - 0 views

  • More Americans with psychiatric conditions are being treated with drugs alone compared with a decade ago, while "talk therapy" -- either by itself or in combination with medication -- is on the decline, a new study finds.
  • The results, reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry, are based on data from two government health surveys conducted in 1998 and 2007.Over that period, the percentage of Americans who said they'd had at least one psychotherapy session in the past year remained steady -- at just over 3 percent in both 1998 and 2007.However, among Americans receiving any outpatient mental health care, the proportion being treated with drugs alone rose from 44 percent in 1998 to 57 percent in 2007.Meanwhile, combined treatment with drugs and psychotherapy declined from 40 percent to 32 percent, and the use of psychotherapy alone slipped from 16 percent in 1998 to about 10 percent in 2007.National spending on psychotherapy also declined -- from an estimated total of $11 billion in 1998 to $7 billion in 2007. Overall spending on mental health care remained fairly steady, however -- at $15.4 billion in 1998 and $16 billion in 2007- suggesting an increase in the proportion of mental health spending devoted to drug therapies.
  • "Mental health care," he said, "is evolving in a way that means more people are receiving treatment, but are not necessarily getting the most effective therapy."
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  • The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that one in 10 American adults experiences depression in any given year, and that 18 percent of adults suffer from some form of anxiety disorder.
Ilona Meagher

WGN Radio | Strength training benefits more than muscles - 0 views

  • Studies are finding that more lean muscle mass may allow kidney dialysis patients to live longer, give older people better cognitive function, reduce depression, boost good cholesterol, lessen the swelling and discomfort of lymphedema after breast cancer and help lower the risk of diabetes.
  • During a strength workout, the heart's muscle tissue contracts forcefully to push the blood out. Like all muscles, stress causes small tears in the muscle fibers. When the body repairs those tears, muscles grow. The result is a stronger heart, not just one that's more efficient at pumping. Another big advantage of working out with weights is improving glucose metabolism, which can reduce the risk of diabetes. Strength training boosts the number of proteins that take glucose out of the blood and transport it into the skeletal muscle, giving the muscles more energy and lowering overall blood-glucose levels.
  • A 2010 study in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology suggested that people on dialysis can benefit from building muscle. Researchers found that kidney dialysis patients who had the most lean muscle mass — a measurement derived from the circumference of the mid-arm muscle — were 37% less likely to die than the patients who had the least.
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  • The brain may get a boost from the body's extra muscle as well. A 2010 study in Archives of Internal Medicine found that women ages 65 to 75 who did resistance training sessions once or twice a week over the course of a year improved their cognitive performance, while those who focused on balance and tone training declined slightly. One reason for the improvement, researchers believe, may be that strength training triggers the production of a protein beneficial for brain growth.
Ilona Meagher

LA Times | Strength training benefits more than muscles - 0 views

  • A growing body of research shows that working out with weights has health benefits beyond simply bulking up one's muscles and strengthening bones. Studies are finding that more lean muscle mass may allow kidney dialysis patients to live longer, give older people better cognitive function, reduce depression, boost good cholesterol, lessen the swelling and discomfort of lymphedema after breast cancer and help lower the risk of diabetes. "Muscle is our largest metabolically active organ, and that's the backdrop that people usually forget," said Kent Adams, director of the exercise physiology lab at Cal State Monterey Bay. Strengthening the muscles "has a ripple effect throughout the body on things like metabolic syndrome and obesity."
  • Strength training often takes a back seat to cardiovascular training, but it can benefit the heart in ways that its more popular cousin can't. During cardio exercise, the heart loads up with blood and pumps it out to the rest of the body: As a result, Potteiger said, "the heart gets better and more efficient at pumping." But during resistance training, muscles generate more force than they do during endurance exercises, and the heart is no exception, Potteiger said. During a strength workout, the heart's muscle tissue contracts forcefully to push the blood out. Like all muscles, stress causes small tears in the muscle fibers. When the body repairs those tears, muscles grow. The result is a stronger heart, not just one that's more efficient at pumping. Another big advantage of working out with weights is improving glucose metabolism, which can reduce the risk of diabetes. Strength training boosts the number of proteins that take glucose out of the blood and transport it into the skeletal muscle, giving the muscles more energy and lowering overall blood-glucose levels. "If you have uncontrolled glucose levels," Potteiger said, "that can lead to kidney damage, damage to the circulatory system and loss of eyesight."
  • The brain may get a boost from the body's extra muscle as well. A 2010 study in Archives of Internal Medicine found that women ages 65 to 75 who did resistance training sessions once or twice a week over the course of a year improved their cognitive performance, while those who focused on balance and tone training declined slightly. One reason for the improvement, researchers believe, may be that strength training triggers the production of a protein beneficial for brain growth.
Ilona Meagher

Fitness Magazine | Stop Stress for Good: Exercise to Fight Stress - 0 views

  • According to the American Psychological Association, a whopping 75 percent of people in the United States feel stressed out. Almost half of us eat unhealthy because of it; 47 percent of us can't sleep because of it; it makes one in three of us depressed; and for 42 percent of us, it has gotten worse in the last year. There is so much making us anxious these days -- from big-picture problems like uncontrollable oil spills and a still-soft economy to garden-variety job, relationship, money, you-name-it woes -- that it's easy to think of chronic stress as the new normal.
  • the latest research reveals that revving up your body with exercise may be the most effective antidote. In lab studies, when scientists at Princeton put animals on a six-week aerobic conditioning program, then compared their brain cells with those of a group that remained sedentary, they found that the "brains on exercise" morphed over time into a biochemically calm state that remained steady even when the subjects were under stress. The nonexercising group's brain cells continued to react strongly to anxiety-inducing situations. This breakthrough discovery has scientists now saying that cardio workouts may actually remodel the brain to make it more resistant to stress hormones.
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    The positive effects of exercise don't have to end with your workout. Here's how sweating it out can rewire your brain for happiness.
Ilona Meagher

Los Angeles Times | Use exercise to squash killer stress - 0 views

  • Casually flipping through a 2006 copy of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, I learned that exercise is the key to combating the stress of modern life.The authors, from the University of Ioannina in Greece, first explain (in regards to the fight-or-flight response) that "stress responses can be elicited by emotional stimuli or professional and social stress."
  • It takes just one negatively worded memo handed down from on high to get the glucocorticoids and catecholamines flowing, but these adrenal hormones go unused and are stored in visceral fat deposits, and this does bad things to you.
  • these stored adrenal hormones disturb gonadal function (no wonder Viagra is such a big seller), as well as growth hormone and thyroid function. They explain how these "metabolic disturbances" lead to "comorbidities including central obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and endothelial dysfunction." In other words, unrelieved stress turns you into an artery-clogged hippopotamus with Limbaugh-like blood pressure and a lousy immune system. Oh, and it's also hard on your brain.
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  • the authors inform us that "accumulating evidence documents the beneficial effects of regular exercise in preventing or ameliorating the .. comorbidities induced by chronic stress."
  • Researchers at University College of London agree that exercise significantly reduces stress-induced blood pressure. The more exercise the better, according to their review published in a 2006 issue of Biological Psychology, but even just 30 minutes at only 50% of maximum effort will help.
    • Ilona Meagher
       
      The American Psychological Assn. has also weighed in on the subject of exercise and stress, noting online that "physically active people have lower rates of anxiety and depression than sedentary people." This mood boost probably has nothing to do with that old myth about exercise unleashing a surge of happy-making endorphins, the statement adds, since there's really not much evidence for this popular belief. Rather, chemicals such as norepinephrine may be behind it. Still, the effect may be more than just chemical. "Exercise seems to give the body a chance to practice dealing with stress," according to the APA. "It forces the body's physiological systems - all of which are involved in the stress response - to communicate much more closely than usual."
Ilona Meagher

ScienceDaily: Stop And Smell The Flowers -- The Scent Really Can Soothe Stress - 0 views

  • Feeling stressed? Then try savoring the scent of lemon, mango, lavender, or other fragrant plants. Scientists in Japan are reporting the first scientific evidence that inhaling certain fragrances alter gene activity and blood chemistry in ways that can reduce stress levels. 
  • people have inhaled the scent of certain plants since ancient times to help reduce stress, fight inflammation and depression, and induce sleep. Aromatherapy, the use of fragrant plant oils to improve mood and health, has become a popular form of alternative medicine today. And linalool is one of the most widely used substances to soothe away emotional stress.
  • Linalool returned stress-elevated levels of neutrophils and lymphocytes — key parts of the immune system — to near-normal levels. Inhaling linalool also reduced the activity of more than 100 genes that go into overdrive in stressful situations.
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