Category: Depression

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).

Why these thoughts make some people depressed, while others quickly dismiss them.

“Sticky thoughts” are the hallmark of depression, research finds.

Bad things happen to most of us at some point, but some people take it worse than others.

This is partly down to the inability to mentally turn away from them.

Thoughts about negative experiences can get ‘stuck’ in the brain.

Professor Jutta Joormann, the study’s first author, explained what happens in the minds of depressed people:

“They basically get stuck in a mindset where they relive what happened to them over and over again.

Even though they think, oh, it’s not helpful, I should stop thinking about this, I should get on with my life — they can’t stop doing it.”

The researchers compared the working memory of 26 people diagnosed with depression to 27 people who were depression-free.

Working memory refers to the thoughts that are active in your mind at this very moment.

Our present-moment experience, therefore, is highly dependent on how our working memory operates.

All the people in the study did a test that required them to think flexibly.

In other words, it required them to turn their attention from one subject to another.

The results showed that depressed people had particular problems turning their minds away from negative thoughts.

For example, if they were reminded of ‘death’ or ‘sadness’, their minds got stuck on these ideas and couldn’t change to focus on something else.

Professor Joormann said:

“The order of the words sort of gets stuck in their working memory, especially when the words are negative.”

People who were susceptible to getting these ‘stuck thoughts’ were also likely to ruminate more on their problems.

One way out of this trap is to first, learn to notice when this is happening.

Secondly, it is vital to refocus the attention elsewhere.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Joormann et al., 2011).

If it works so well, why do so few people do it?

Over 80 percent of people experiencing depression say exercise improves their mood and anxiety most of the time.

Yet only around one-third actually reach the recommended exercise levels of at least 150 minutes per week.

Unfortunately, around half of people find that low mood makes it difficult to get motivated to exercise.

Dr Carol Janney, who led the study, said:

“Physical activity has been shown to be effective in alleviating mild to moderate depression and anxiety.

Current physical activity guidelines advise at least 30 minutes, five days a week to promote mental and physical health, yet many of those surveyed weren’t meeting these recommendations.”

Exercise not emphasised

The survey of 295 people receiving treatment at a mental health clinic found that over half were open to paying more for a personal trainer.

Many said exercise was not emphasised by their physician as a treatment for depression.

Professor Marcia Valenstein, study co-author, said:

“This is a missed opportunity.

If we can make it easier for both therapists and their patients to have easier access to physical activity services, then we are likely to help more patients reduce their depression and anxiety.”

Few people with depression are given a comprehensive exercise plan by their health provider.

Dr Janney said:

“Offering physical activity programs inside the mental health clinics may be one of many patient-centered approaches that can improve the mental and physical health of patients.

Mental health treatment programs need to partner with fitness programs to support their patients’ willingness to exercise more.

This support might come from integrating personal trainers into mental health clinics or having strong partnerships with the YMCA or other community recreational facilities.”

Dr Janney continued:

“Mental health providers such as psychiatrists and therapists may not have the necessary training to prescribe physical activity as part of their mental health practice.

But by teaming up with certified personal trainers or other exercise programs, it may help them prescribe or offer more recommendations for physical activity in the clinic setting.”

The study was published in the journal General Hospital Psychiatry (Janney et al., 2017).

Posting this type of image online is linked to depression.

People who are depressed can be identified from their social media photos 70 percent of the time, research finds.

Depressed people have a tendency to post (literally) darker pictures.

They are also more likely to use a filter to convert their images to black-and-white.

Dr Christopher Danforth, who co-authored the study, explained the signs to look for:

“Our analysis of user accounts from a popular social media app revealed that photos posted by people diagnosed with depression tended to be darker in color, received more comments from the community, were more likely to contain faces and less likely to have a filter applied.

When they did select a filter they were more likely to use the filter that converted color images to black and white.

People diagnosed with depression also posted at a higher frequency compared to non-depressed individuals.”

The relatively high rate of accuracy is impressive.

Especially given that it is a considerably higher rate than general practitioners, who only manage the correct diagnosis 42 percent of the time.

Dr Danforth imagines an app that will suggest a check-up when it detects you might be depressed:

“With an increasing share of our social interactions happening online, the potential for algorithmic identification of early-warning signs for a host of mental and physical illnesses is enormous.

Imagine an app you can install on your phone that pings your doctor for a check-up when your behavior changes for the worse, potentially before you even realize there is a problem.”

The study included 43,950 photos from 166 users of the social media app Instagram.

Around half of them had a clinical diagnosis of depression.

The photos were then analysed by a computer program to see if it could work out who was depressed.

Dr Andrew Reece, who co-authored the study, said:

“Although we had a relatively small sample size, we were able to reliably observe differences in features of social media posts between depressed and non-depressed individuals.

Importantly, we also demonstrate that the markers of depression can be observed in posts made prior to the person receiving a clinical diagnosis of depression.”

The study was published in the journal EPJ Data Science (Reece & Danforth, 2017).