Category: Psychology

Parkinson’s disease causes problems with walking, balance and coordination — along with a characteristic tremor.

Anxious or pessimistic people are at a higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, research finds.

Parkinson’s disease affects the brain cells that control movement.

It is linked to problems with walking, balance and coordination — along with a characteristic tremor.

Dr James Bower, who led the study, said:

“This is the first study that took a group of people with documented personality characteristics but no symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and showed that those with high levels of an anxious or pessimistic personality are at higher risk for developing Parkinson’s disease up to several decades later.”

The reason for the link between the personality trait and Parkinson’s, though, is not clear, said Dr Bower:

“What we have shown in this study is that there’s a link between an anxious or pessimistic personality and the future development of Parkinson’s.

What we didn’t find is the explanation for that link.

It remains unclear whether anxiety and pessimism are risk factors for Parkinson’s disease, or linked to Parkinson’s disease via common risk factors or a common genetic predisposition.”

The conclusions come from a group of 7,216 people who were followed over more than 50 years.

Those ranked in the top 25% for anxiety had a moderately increased risk of developing Parkinson’s decades later.

The increase in risk for anxious and pessimistic people was not that great, said Dr Bower:

“We found a significant and definite link between anxious and pessimistic personalities and the future development of Parkinson’s disease.

But, the increased risk was relatively small. Just to give you an idea of numbers, if you take 1,000 40-year-olds, about 17 of them will eventually develop Parkinson’s disease.

If you take 1,000 anxious 40-year-olds, about 27 of them will develop Parkinson’s disease.”

Normal worrying in response to stressful events was not examined by the research, Dr Bower explained:

“I think it’s important to understand that what our study looked at is people with anxious personalities.

These are the chronic worriers — the people who worry about things that most people don’t seem to worry about.

Those are the people we’re saying have an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

We did not look at people who are undergoing some acute, stressful life event or people who have very stressful jobs.”

The study was published in the journal Movement Disorders (Bower et al., 2005).

The best psychological therapy to reduce bodily inflammation.

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is the best psychological therapy to boost the immune system, a review finds.

CBT is superior to other types of therapies at reducing disease-causing inflammation in the body.

While CBT is best known as a treatment for psychological problems like depression and anxiety, it also boosts biological processes.

Dr George Slavich, study co-author, said:

“People automatically go to medication first to reduce chronic inflammation, but medications can be expensive and sometimes have adverse side effects.

In this review, we wanted to know whether psychotherapies can also affect the immune system and, if so, which ones have the most beneficial effects over the long term.”

Researchers reviewed 56 separate randomised controlled trials that tested how various non-drug therapies affect the immune system.

The results showed that CBT was particularly effective at reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines in the body.

If cytokines remain at high levels in the body, they can cause a range of physical problems, such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

Mental health problems like depression, anxiety and schizophrenia are also linked to high levels of inflammation.

Dr Slavich said:

“This seems to be a case of mind over matter.

Psychotherapies like CBT can change how we think about ourselves and the world, and changing these perceptions can in turn affect our biology.

The results of this study take this idea one step further and suggest that psychotherapy may be an effective and relatively affordable strategy for reducing individuals’ risk for chronic diseases that involve inflammation.”

The findings are a boost for those who prefer a non-drug approach, said Dr Slavich:

“There are many people who would prefer to use non-drug interventions for improving their immune system function.

In some cases, they can’t take certain medications because of medical reasons, and in other instances the medications they need are too expensive.

And then there are people who simply prefer a more holistic approach to improving their health.”

Psychotherapy emerged as the best non-drug approach, said Dr Slavich:

“Out of all of the interventions we examined, CBT was the most effective for reducing inflammation, followed by multiple or combined interventions.

Moreover, we found that the benefits of CBT on the immune system last for at least six months following treatment.

Therefore, if you’re looking for a well-tested, non-drug intervention for improving immune-related health, CBT is probably your best choice.”

The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry (Shields et al., 2020).

Researchers predicted who was depressed with 90 percent accuracy from this one sign.

Changes in heart rate can predict depression, new research finds.

Heart rate could provide an early warning sign of depression and indicate when it has resolved.

People who are depressed have a heart rate that is roughly 10 to 15 beats per minute higher than the non-depressed, the study demonstrated.

Depressed people also show less variation in their heart rate and do not experience the normal drop in heart rate during the night.

By wearing a heart rate monitor for 24 hours, researchers were able to predict who was depressed.

Dr Carmen Schiweck, the study’s first author, said:

“Put simply, our pilot study suggests that by just measuring your heart rate for 24 hours, we can tell with 90% accuracy if a person is currently depressed or not”.

The small pilot study included 32 people, half of whom were depressed.

Depressed people were given the rapid anti-depressant ketamine, an anaesthetic recently licensed for use in this way.

Dr Schiweck explained:

“Two innovative elements in this study were the continuous registration of heart rate for several days and nights, and the use of the new antidepressant ketamine, which can lift depression more or less instantly.

This allowed us to see that average resting heart rate may change quite suddenly to reflect the change in mood.”

Ketamine can take effect in just minutes, which helped researchers spot the link between heart rate and depression.

Dr Schiweck said:

“We knew that something was going on to link heart rate to psychiatric disorders, but we didn’t know what it was, and whether it would have any clinical relevance.

In the past researchers had shown that depressed patients had consistently higher heart rates and lower heart rate variability, but because of the time it takes to treat depression it had been difficult to follow up and relate any improvement to heart rate.

But when we realized that ketamine leads to a rapid improvement in mood, we knew that we might be able to use it to understand the link between depression and heart rate”.

The study measured people’s heart rate across 4 days and 3 nights.

Dr Schiweck explained the results:

“We found that those with depression had both a higher baseline heart rate, and a lower heart rate variation, as we expected.

On average we saw that depressed patients had a heart rate which was roughly 10 to 15 beats per minutes higher than in controls.

After treatment, we again measured the heart rates and found that both the rate and the heartrate fluctuation of the previously depressed patients had changed to be closer to those found in the controls.”

Among the depressed, heart rates did not drop during the night as is normal, said Dr Schiweck:

“Normally heart rates are higher during the day and lower during the night.

Interestingly, it seems that the drop in heart rate during the night is impaired in depression.

This seems to be a way of identifying patients who are at risk to develop depression or to relapse.”

The next stage for the researchers is to carry out a larger study, said Dr Schiweck:

“We need to remember that this is a small proof-of-concept study: 6 of our of our 16 initial patients responded to treatment with at least a 30% reduction on the Hamilton Rating scale for depression, so we need to repeat the work with a larger, anti-depressant free sample.

Our next step is to follow up depressed patients and patients who are in remission, to confirm that the changes we see can be used as an early warning system”.

The study was presented at the ECNP virtual congress (Schiweck et al., 2020).

Men and women cheat on their partners for different reasons, research finds.

Time management research reveals if it really helps people achieve life satisfaction and career success.

Time management is the process of planning activities to increase productivity.

Over the past decade or so it has almost become a cult, with websites, books and gurus all claiming to have the answer to your professional advancement and, naturally, lack of time.

Now, new research looks at 158 separate studies including over 50,000 people around the world to find out whether time management works.

Can it really help you achieve life satisfaction and career success?

Before we get to that, though, here are the basic time management strategies skills and tools.

Time management strategies

There are a seemingly endless number of time management strategies, but most involve three basic components:

1. Structuring time

Encourages the use of daily routines so that work fits together in a structured way.

Time management strategies are generally trying to combat the unsystematic way that most people work.

In practice, this involves simply prioritising tasks and using to-do lists.

2. Protecting time

Protecting time is mostly about stopping other people interrupting you from working.

This could involve saying ‘no’ when asked to do something else, delegating tasks to others or keeping other people away during certain periods.

The idea being, we cannot get the work done with continuous interruptions.

3. Adapting time

Involves looking at your overall schedule and seeing what time can be adapted for different purposes.

For example, sometimes you know a period will be waiting time — what could be achieved in that space?

Adapting time is about time reclamation: seeing what currently ‘useless’ time can be swept up and put to good use.

Examples of time management strategies

Central to many different time management strategies is setting goals and priorities.

In the ABCD analysis, for example, long used in business management, tasks are prioritised on this basis:

• A – Tasks that are perceived as being urgent and important,
• B – Tasks that are important but not urgent,
• C – Tasks that are unimportant but urgent,
• D – Tasks that are unimportant and not urgent.

Another, the ‘Pareto principle’, states that 80 percent of tasks can be done in 20 percent of the time, so do those ones first.

Does time management work?

Time management does work, but not wholly in the way people imagine, the new study reveals.

It improves performance at work somewhat, but its main benefit is to happiness, through a boost to life satisfaction.

After reviewing 158 separate studies on time management, Mr Brad Aeon, the study’s first author, said:

“We found that it does have a moderate impact on work performance.

But we found that the relationship between time management and job performance actually increased over the years, and significantly so.”

Time management has become more important in recent years as work has become more autonomous.

Mr Aeon said:

“People have more leeway in deciding how to structure their own time, so it is up to them to manage their own time as well.

If they are good at it, presumably they will have a better performance.

And if they are not, they will have an even worse performance than they would have had 30 years ago, when they had more of their time managed for them.”

The researchers found that time management had the most effect on work, less on academic success and little on standard test taking.

Critically, though, time management improves people’s life satisfaction — makes them happier.

Mr Aeon said:

“Time management helps people feel better about their lives because it helps them schedule their day-to-day around their values and beliefs, giving them a feeling of self-accomplishment.”

Personality and time management

The researchers found three main factors that predicted who is better at time management.

First, they found that women are slightly better at time management than men.

Second, personality had some influence, with the trait of conscientiousness tied to better time management.

Conscientious people tend to have a strong sense of responsibility and are competent, dutiful and self-disciplined.

Mr Aeon said:

“The only trait that did correlate strongly with time management was conscientiousness.

That involves people’s attention to details, their desire for organization, to be reliable and systematic.

That is understandable, because there is a lot of overlap there.”

Third, people with an internal locus of control were better at time management.

An internal locus of control is high when people feel they have control and can change their lives.

It makes people more likely to reach their goals, because they feel they are attainable.

Time management envy

People like to show off their time management skills to each other, but it is best not to get involved in this game, said Mr Aeon:

“You see these social media posts saying, ‘Yes, there’s a pandemic, but I learned a new language or I woke up at 5 a.m. and accomplished more in a few hours than you will all day.

It makes the rest of us feel bad and creates unrealistic standards as to what we can and cannot do with our time.”

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Aeon et al., 2021).

People in one study lost weight without exercise or major diet change.

Eating slowly helps people feel more full from consuming the same amount of food, research finds.

In fact, chewing each mouthful for 30 seconds can double weight loss, one study has found.

When people eat slowly, it gives more time for the gut to secrete hormones that tell the brain to stop eating.

In contrast, eating quickly reduces the release of these hormones, causing people to carry on eating past the point where they have had enough.

It takes around 15 minutes for the message that the stomach is full to arrive in the brain.

Dr Alexander Kokkinos, the study’s first author, said:

“Most of us have heard that eating fast can lead to food overconsumption and obesity, and in fact some observational studies have supported this notion.

Our study provides a possible explanation for the relationship between speed eating and overeating by showing that the rate at which someone eats may impact the release of gut hormones that signal the brain to stop eating.”

For the study, 17 people ate 300ml of ice cream at different speeds.

Blood samples were taken to measure glucose, plasma lipids, insulin and gut hormones.

The results revealed that those who took the longest to consume the ice cream felt most full.

They also had higher levels of two critical gut hormones called peptide YY and glucagon-like peptide.

These are released by the gut after eating and signal feelings of fullness to the brain and that eating should stop.

Dr Kokkinos said:

“Our findings give some insight into an aspect of modern-day food overconsumption, namely the fact that many people, pressed by demanding working and living conditions, eat faster and in greater amounts than in the past.

The warning we were given as children that ‘wolfing down your food will make you fat,’ may in fact have a physiological explanation.”

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (Kokkinos et al., 2019).