Category: Depression

This tip may help people who are feeling depressed.

Clinically depressed people can find it hard to tell the difference between their own negative emotions, like anger, guilt and frustration.

This could be part of the reason that depression is so hard to deal with.

It may be helpful for people experiencing depression to be more specific about which negative emotion they are feeling, the research also suggests.

The study’s first author, Dr Emre Demiralp, explains:

“It is difficult to improve your life without knowing whether you are sad or angry about some aspect of it.

For example, imagine not having a gauge independently indicating the gasoline level of your car.

It would be challenging to know when to stop for gas.

We wanted to investigate whether people with clinical depression had emotional gauges that were informative and whether they experienced emotions with the same level of specificity and differentiation as healthy people.”

Participants in the study — half of whom were experiencing clinical depression — were asked to report their emotions at random intervals over a period of a week.

Each time they reported how they felt across 11 different emotions, 7 negative and 4 positive:

• sad,
• anxious,
• angry,
• frustrated,
• ashamed,
• disgusted,
• guilty,
• happy,
• excited,
• alert,
• and active.

The results, published in the journal Psychological Science, showed that people who were depressed found it difficult to distinguish between negative emotions (Demiralp et al., 2012).

In contrast, non-depressed people were clearer which negative emotions they were experiencing.

For the positive emotions, however, both the depressed and non-depressed participants could distinguish them equally well.

Dr. Demiralp said:

“Our results suggest that being specific about your negative emotions might be good for you.

It might be best to avoid thinking that you are feeling generally bad or unpleasant.

Be specific.

Is it anger, shame, guilt or some other emotion?

This can help you circumvent it and improve your life.

It is one of our overarching goals to investigate approaches for facilitating this kind of emotional intelligence at a large scale in the population.”

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Are you getting enough of this crucial vitamin? Up to 50 percent of people might not be.

Depression can be a sign of vitamin D deficiency, research finds.

The vitamin is also thought to play a role in regulating serotonin, a neurotransmitter important for mood.

One study has linked vitamin D deficiency to a 75 percent higher risk of depression.

Symptoms of depression include moodiness, lack of motivation and tiredness.

Depression is also linked to physical symptoms such as headaches, stomach aches, dizziness and muscle pain.

Foods that are rich in vitamin D include oily fish and eggs, but most people get their vitamin D from the action of sunlight on the skin.

That is why levels are typically lower in the body through the winter months in more Northern climes.

Up to 50 percent of young women may be deficient in this vitamin, other research has shown.

One small case study involved 3 women who were given vitamin D replacement therapy for 12 weeks.

All had previously been diagnosed with depression and were taking antidepressants.

The results showed that all three women felt their depression lift significantly.

Dr Sonal Pathak, the study’s first author, said:

“Vitamin D may have an as-yet-unproven effect on mood, and its deficiency may exacerbate depression.

If this association is confirmed, it may improve how we treat depression.”

Although only a small study, other much larger studies have pointed to a link between vitamin D deficiency and depression.

One study included 12,600 people, who had their vitamin D levels and any symptoms of depression tested.

The results showed that people who were more depressed had lower vitamin D levels.

Dr Pathak said:

“Screening at-risk depressed patients for vitamin D deficiency and treating it appropriately may be an easy and cost-effective adjunct to mainstream therapies for depression.”

The study was The Endocrine Society’s 94th Annual Meeting in Houston (Pathak, 2012).

The type of bacteria that helps the brain manage stress, anxiety, and depression.

The probiotic, Lactobacillus, also known as a ‘good bacteria’ can boost the body’s resilience to environmental stress and reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.

According to a study, the Lactobacillus species exhibits a protective role against stress, warding off anxiety and depression.

Lactobacillus is found in fermented foods such as yogurt, kefir, and cheese, however, probiotic supplements contain much higher concentrations.

Depression and anxiety are two of the most common and troublesome mental illnesses which affects millions of people, yet current treatments are inadequate.

Dr Alban Gaultier, the study’s senior author, said:

“Our discovery illuminates how gut-resident Lactobacillus influences mood disorders, by tuning the immune system.

Our research could pave the way toward discovering much-needed therapeutics for anxiety and depression.”

Human microbiome & mental health

The gut microbiota (gut flora) consists of trillions of microorganisms including viruses, bacteria, and fungi that live in the digestive tract.

The relationship between the gut flora, the immune system, and the brain has encouraged scientists to look for possible therapies to improve mental health and well-being.

Any illness or poor habit such as lack of physical activity, bad diet, drinking, and smoking could harm the microbiome, leading to serious issues such as cancer and mood disorders.

Past studies on probiotics — due to the vast numbers of microorganisms and the microbiome’s complexity — have struggled to determine what specific bacteria independently influence human brain health.

This research focused on several strains of Lactobacillus, such as L. intestinalis and L. murinus, by removing them in mice.

They found that mice lacking the Lactobacillus species behaved in more stressed and anxious ways.

The findings show the importance of probiotic lactobacilli and how their absence could aggravate depression and anxiety.

Dr Andrea Merchak, the study’s first author, said:

“With these results in hand, we have new tools to optimize the development of probiotics, which should speed up discoveries for novel therapies.

Most importantly, we can now explore how maintaining a healthy level of Lactobacillus and/or interferon gamma could be investigated to prevent and treat anxiety and depression.”

Related

• Probiotics help prevent mild declines in memory and thinking skills.
• Probiotics relieve the symptoms of depression and help with digestion.
• Probiotic supplements improve the effect of antidepressants.
• Bifidobacterium lactis and Lactobacillus rhamnosus have an antihypertensive effect.

The study was published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (Merchak et al., 2023).

Even relatively small amounts of exercise can help reduce the risk of developing depression.

Only one hour of exercise per week is enough to help prevent depression, research finds.

In the largest survey of its kind, the anxiety and depression levels of 33,908 Norwegians were monitored for more than 11 years.

The researchers concluded that just one hour of exercise a week reduced the chances of developing depression by a massive 44 percent.

Dr Samuel Harvey, the study’s lead author, said:

“We’ve known for some time that exercise has a role to play in treating symptoms of depression, but this is the first time we have been able to quantify the preventative potential of physical activity in terms of reducing future levels of depression.”

The researchers also estimated that one hour of exercise would have prevented 12 percent of depression cases that occurred in their study.

Dr Harvey said:

“These findings are exciting because they show that even relatively small amounts of exercise — from one hour per week — can deliver significant protection against depression.”

Fascinatingly, that first hour of exercise turned out to be crucial, said Dr Harvey:

“Most of the mental health benefits of exercise are realised within the first hour undertaken each week.

With sedentary lifestyles becoming the norm worldwide, and rates of depression growing, these results are particularly pertinent as they highlight that even small lifestyle changes can reap significant mental health benefits.”

It is not known exactly why exercise has such a positive effect on mood disorders, said Dr Harvey:

“We are still trying to determine exactly why exercise can have this protective effect, but we believe it is from the combined impact of the various physical and social benefits of physical activity.

These results highlight the great potential to integrate exercise into individual mental health plans and broader public health campaigns.

If we can find ways to increase the population’s level of physical activity even by a small amount, then this is likely to bring substantial physical and mental health benefits.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Harvey et al., 2017).