Then and now, LSD is followed by controversy. Considered mind-altering, some proponents believe it lowers brain barriers and opens consciousness.

But, it’s illegal, and not without risk. It can cause hallucinations that can persist and may be linked to schizophrenia, rapid heart rate, increased body temperature, delusions and even psychosis.

That hasn’t stopped researchers from exploring the potential health benefits of the drug. It’s been tested as a treatment for stroke-related brain damage as well as for depression, anxiety and addiction — because it can shift blood flow in the brain, reduce negative emotions and induce blissful states.

Obviously, it would be great if there were a way to get the benefits of LSD without any of the risks. One research team may be onto how — and it’s literally as easy as breathing…

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Breathwork could reduce psychological distress

Use of breathwork as a therapeutic tool for psychological distress is becoming more popular because some versions of it can lead to altered states of consciousness (ASCs) similar to those evoked by psychedelic substances like LSD.

High-ventilation breathwork (HVB), which involves gradually increasing the rate and depth of ventilation, has strong potential as a non-pharmacological alternative for treating psychological distress.

However, the neurobiological mechanisms and subjective experience underlying HVB’s impact on taking the mind to an altered state haven’t been studied extensively.

To fill this information gap, Amy Amla Kartar of Brighton and Sussex Medical School in the United Kingdom and colleagues characterized ASCs induced by HVB in experienced practitioners. They did so by analyzing self-reported data from 15 individuals who participated online, eight who participated in the lab, and 19 who underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

They participated in a 20- to 30-minute session of cyclic breathing without pausing while listening to music. Then they answered a series of questionnaires within 30 minutes of finishing the breathwork session.

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The results were impressive. During all experimental sessions, participants reported reduced fear and negative emotions, with no adverse reactions. Across participants and experimental settings, HVB reliably enhanced ASCs dominated by Oceanic Boundlessness (OBN).

OBN is a term describing a set of feelings that include spiritual experiences, insightfulness, a blissful state, positively experienced depersonalization, and the experience of unity. It’s considered a defining aspect of ASCs evoked by psychedelics like psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms.”

The intensity of ASCs evoked by HVB caused a profound decrease in blood flow to parts of the brain implicated in representing the internal state of the body, including breathing, while increasing blood flow to brain regions involved in the processing of emotional memories. These blood flow changes correlated with psychedelic experiences, meaning they may be the source of the positive effects of the breathwork.

Interestingly, the intensity of HVB-induced ASCs was proportional to cardiovascular sympathetic activation, as indicated by a decrease in heart rate variability. This suggests a potential stress response, indicating that the positive changes induced by ASCs may occur even while the body’s stress response is activated.

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Getting started with breathwork

In short, this type of breathwork, combined with music, appears to induce altered states resembling those of psychedelics, calming negative emotions while reshaping brain activity.

The researchers caution that more research is needed. Still, the research—the first to use neuroimaging to map the neurophysiological changes caused by breathwork—indicates that breathwork may be a powerful tool in addressing psychological conditions.

You can find plenty of information online to practice breathwork. However, it’s not recommended to practice high-ventilation breathwork on your own, at least not until you have become adept at it.

It’s more intense, and without an experienced therapy guide during a session, you could experience dizziness, hyperventilation, fainting, or even become emotionally overwhelmed.

Seek a referral from a functional medicine clinic, specialist, counselor or wellness spa in your area to connect with a knowledgeable therapist  — and get ready to feel the bliss.

Sources:

Scientists reveal how breathwork unlocks psychedelic bliss in the brain — ScienceDaily

Neurobiological substrates of altered states of consciousness induced by high ventilation breathwork accompanied by music — PLOS One

LSD — Drugs.com

What is ‘breathwork’? And do I need to do it? — University of Wollongong Australia

High ventilation breathwork practices: An overview of their effects, mechanisms, and considerations for clinical applications — Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

The post Unlock bliss to relieve anxiety, depression and more appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It’s a devastation I’ve seen first-hand, since my mom was diagnosed with the disease when I was still in elementary school.

However, she had been living with constant challenges for close to a decade before she was ever diagnosed…

For years, she was shuffled from doctor to doctor looking for answers to why she was so exhausted she couldn’t get out of bed, why she cried for no apparent reason or why her eyes bothered her.

It was almost a relief when she was diagnosed because at least there was a name for the issues plaguing her life.

And it meant that she could finally start looking for treatments that might help, rather than just trying to survive each day.

Now, researchers are revealing that not only does MS start sooner than doctors believed, but that there are three types of issues patients commonly experience that could help identify the disease and offer access to early interventions.

As it turns out, my mom suffered from all of them…

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A vague confluence of symptoms

Researchers at the University of British Columbia started with the health and insurance data of more than 12,000 people. One thing stood out: People with MS began using healthcare services at elevated rates 15 years before their first obvious neurological symptoms appeared.

Some of the most common complaints they sought help for in the decade and a half leading up to a diagnosis included fatigue, anxiety and pain.

But because symptoms like these are considered vague, they’re often ignored or mistaken for other conditions.

Fortunately, because this study went further back into patient history, these findings may help doctors recognize early warning signs that could lead to earlier detection and intervention.

Compared to the general population, patients eventually diagnosed with MS had a steady buildup of engagement with healthcare providers that looked like this:

• 15 years before recognized symptom onset: Visits to general practice physicians increase, especially for symptoms like fatigue, pain, anxiety, dizziness and depression.
• 12 years before: Visits to a psychiatrist increase.
• Eight to nine years before: Visits to neurologists and ophthalmologists increase, possibly due to issues like blurry vision or eye pain.
• Three to five years before: Emergency medicine and radiology visits increase.
• One year before: Doctors’ visits reach a peak, with trips to neurology, emergency medicine and radiology.

“These patterns suggest that MS has a long and complex prodromal phase, where something is happening beneath the surface but hasn’t yet declared itself as MS,” said Dr. Marta Ruiz-Algueró, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC and the study’s first author.

“We’re only now starting to understand what these early warning signs are, with mental health-related issues appearing to be among the earliest indicators.”

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Get the support you need

If you recognize this pattern in yourself or a loved one, have a serious discussion with a doctor.

Though there is no single test for diagnosing MS, there are several that, together with patient history, can aid in diagnosis.

It’s unknown exactly what causes MS, but some researchers believe a combination of genetic and environmental factors triggers the disease. 

Some studies have found significant differences between the gut microbes of patients with MS and those without the disease. However, the mechanism through which these microbes may influence the disease is still unclear.

But research over the years has suggested ways to support your body against the ravages of MS:

• Supplements – Vitamin D, Omega 3’s, melatonin and antioxidants (CoQ10, vitamin E, quercetin and lutein-zeaxanthin) have been researched for positive impacts on autoimmune issues and some specifically on MS. Also, an acid found in fruit peel was found to reverse the myelin damage of MS in mice.
• A simple sugar – N-acetylglucosamine, a form of glucosamine that’s shown to be effective for joint discomfort and often used in supplements, was found to reduce multiple inflammation and neurodegeneration markers in MS patients in research done at the University of California, Irvine.
• Diet – Dr. Terry Wahls is a physician and also a patient with progressive MS. To fight back against the disease, she created The Wahls Protocol, in which she credits diet and lifestyle interventions with helping her leave her wheelchair behind.

Sources:

Fatigue, anxiety, pain? They might be MS in disguise — ScienceDaily

Early Detection and Treatment — National Multiple Sclerosis Society

The post 3 common complaints may be the earliest signs of MS appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Funny thing is, if you come to them with physical complaints, especially anything pain-related, they’ll often file that under the label of depression, too, and pull out that prescription form.

But they’ve been missing out on the actual physical toll of depression that research pioneer Dr. Philip Gold recently laid out in a landmark paper published in Brain Medicine’s Seymour Reichlin Centenary Festschrift collection.

Depression doesn’t just sometimes hurt. It contributes to the most common chronic diseases, cutting our lives short…

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Far beyond mood changes: Disease and shorter lifespan

“Depression’s toll reaches beyond mood and thought, extending into physical health risks like coronary artery disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and stroke,” explains Dr. Gold.

In fact, considering that these conditions collectively reduce life expectancy by approximately 7 to 10 years in people suffering from them, depression clearly has an adverse effect on longevity itself.

To determine just how depression leads to these life-threatening diseases, Dr. Gold looked at the brain, discovering that people who are depressed experience striking changes in brain structure.

These changes include a 40% reduction in subgenual prefrontal cortex volume—a region that plays a critical role in regulating the stress response.

If that weren’t enough, these structural changes occur in conjunction with disruptions in multiple hormone systems, particularly involving corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and norepinephrine.

“The combined effects of CRH, norepinephrine, cortisol, and inflammatory pathways help explain why depression often leads to early onset of various illnesses and a shortened lifespan for those affected,” notes Dr. Gold, emphasizing the interconnected nature of these systems.

Clearly, the proof is in the pudding. And no matter what your doctor might say, depression is not only in your head.

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Don’t let depression rain on your good health

This isn’t the first we’ve heard about the impact of mental health on physical health…

In fact, scientists at Ohio State revealed a powerful connection between mental health and heart disease.  

“Heart disease and anxiety/depression interact such that each promotes the other,” said lead study author Philip Binkley, MD. “There appear to be mental processes that link heart disease with anxiety and depression that are currently under investigation. Both heart disease and anxiety/depression are associated with the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. This is part of the so-called involuntary nervous system that increases heart rate, blood pressure and can also contribute to anxiety and depression.”

The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for the “fight or flight” response during any potential danger. On the other hand, the parasympathetic nervous system inhibits the body from overworking and restores the body to a calm and composed state.

So, if you’ve been living with depression, be sure you are heard when talking to a doctor about it. And when you see your primary physician, be sure he’s aware that you are dealing with depression so he can pay closer attention to what’s going on in your body.

In addition, these practices could help you mentally and physically:

• Boost your dopamine levels – This happiness hormone is linked to the nervous system and low levels can result in depression.
• Conscious movement – Yoga is a great way to reduce both depression and anxiety. Here are three of the most effective poses anyone can do.
• Foods – Researchers have found that certain foods can help DASH symptoms of depression. So be sure to put the right diet to work for you. Foods that contain the prebiotic galacto-oligosaccharides (like legumes and nuts) are especially helpful at reducing anxiety levels.
• Supplements – If you’re deficient in certain amino acids or minerals, it can amp up your depression. Two of the most important are arginine and magnesium. Research has shown that people with depression also suffered low arginine levels which can lower the amount of nitric oxide in the body. Low levels of nitric oxide are necessary for healthy blood flow and facilitate heart health.

Sources:

Depression research pioneer Dr. Philip Gold maps disease’s full-body impact — EurekAlert!

The link between depression chronic illness and a shorter life — Easy Health Options

The amino acid deficiency that leads to depression — Easy Health Options

The post The full-body impact of depression: Chronic disease appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But the signs of mental exhaustion can be harder to recognize — even though they impact an awful lot of us.

Because of this, we don’t always know when to stop to try to recover. Instead, we often push past the point of no return, leading to burnout.

So how can you know that your brain is throwing up red flags, begging you to take a step back and get some much-needed time and outside support?

Here are the top 10 mental exhaustion warning signs you should heed…

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#1 – Anger or impatience

When your brain is drained, your mood can suffer. You might wonder why you feel so short-tempered. But mental exhaustion makes it harder to control your emotions.

So, if you snap at others because you’re easily irritated by small things that would usually not bother you, you could be well on the way to mental exhaustion.

#2 – Inability to get your work done

Mental exhaustion can make even small tasks feel insurmountable.

You may be unable to concentrate long enough to complete projects or get distracted. Or you could even lack the motivation to get things off the ground in the first place.

If that sounds familiar, check off this sign that you’re mentally overwhelmed.

#3 – Zoning out

Pushing the limits of mental fatigue can make your mind wander and even lead to drowsiness.

While this can cause problems at work and in your daily life at home, it can become dangerous when you need to pay attention and react quickly, such as when driving, operating machinery or caring for children.

Don’t ignore this mental exhaustion warning sign for your safety and that of others.

#4 – Lack of sleep

While it might seem like you would sleep better when your brain is overworked, it’s not so simple.

Research has shown that the reverse is true, with increased mental exhaustion leading to insomnia. Even worse, this can cause a negative feedback loop, with lack of sleep worsening mental exhaustion.

Don’t let this sign of mental exhaustion take over.

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#5 – Depression

You can feel numb or hopeless when you’ve pushed your brain past its limits. You might even feel like you’re moving in slow motion because you lack the energy to get through your daily tasks.

If any of these problems or low moods last for more than two weeks, it could be a signal that your depression is more serious and that it’s time to talk to your doctor.

#6 – Increased worrying

If you’ve been feeling increased levels of worry, it could be a sign you’re mentally exhausted.

That happens when your sympathetic nervous system, which kicks off your ‘fight or flight’ response, is triggered by mental exhaustion. Fight or flight is meant to be temporary.

But when cortisol, the stress hormone that kickstarts it, stays elevated, it suppresses serotonin (a key feel-good hormone). This imbalance creates a cycle of stress, worry and depression.

#7 – Difficulty exercising

Everything feels harder when your brain is at a breaking point, especially exercise. Many researchers believe this is because mental exhaustion decreases your tolerance for exercise.

This can make it feel like your regular exercise routine is more difficult than usual and requires more effort. That can cause you to give up on something actually good for relieving mental stress.

#8 – Changes in healthy habits

Mental fatigue can leave you grasping at straws to feel better. You could snack more often or choose unhealthy options like sugary, fatty or salty foods to “feel better.”

On the other hand, some people suffering from mental exhaustion may not have an appetite at all. Either of these changes could lead to corresponding changes on your bathroom scale.

Additionally, mental exhaustion can cause some people to turn to unhealthy habits like alcohol and drugs to manage their stress.

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#9 – Making mistakes

Because mental exhaustion can decrease focus and increase distraction, you can make more mistakes than usual. It also makes it much harder for you to catch and fix your mistakes.

#10 – Higher pain levels

Finally, one of the biggest flashing warning signs that you are mentally exhausted is experiencing pain more acutely.

This can include everything from headaches and fibromyalgia symptoms to back pain, sore muscles and even stomach and GI concerns. If your pain levels go up, your brain could be begging for a mental health break.

Turn mental exhaustion around

Taking a temporary break from stressors is a good step toward relief from mental exhaustion. But if you’ve dealt with these signs for a long time, you may have developed adrenal fatigue.

Years of constant excess cortisol production sets off an autoimmune inflammatory response in your entire body, affecting the adrenal-hypothalamus-pituitary feedback loop.

When I experienced mental exhaustion and adrenal fatigue in my early adulthood, I was led by an integrative doctor to adaptogenic herbs. As their name implies, they help our bodies adapt to changes, like those brought about by stress, worry and depression. I’ve found relief using a formulation that includes:

• Ashwagandha
• L-theanine
• Rhodiola
• Holy Basil
• Boswellia

Take mental exhaustion as seriously as you do physical exhaustion. The effects on your health and quality of life can be just as potent.

Sources:

Signs You’re Mentally Exhausted – WebMD

The post 10 warning signs you’re mentally exhausted appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Before that, the only singing I’d done was in the shower or driving with the windows open on a beautiful spring day (exactly when I got the hunch!).

Now, ten years later, it’s the centerpiece of my life.

Singing magnificent music with my “chorus family” has not only eliminated the periodic bouts of depression I was prone to, but also given me a sense of belonging and community.

Moreover, I’ve developed deep friendships with people my age that will carry me well into my 70s and beyond.

So when I read a study from the United Kingdom proving that older adults can relieve depression and anxiety by “doing art” together, I wasn’t just reading a study. I was reading a confirmation of what I’d already experienced first-hand.

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It’s the togetherness that matters

Older adults are at a higher risk for developing depression due to factors like physical health issues, social isolation and loss. For similar reasons, they can also fall victim to anxiety.

Group arts interventions are already part of the UK’s social prescribing initiative, which connects patients to community activities to improve their well-being.

But so far, there has been limited evidence to support the use of group arts interventions for mental health.

Elizabeth Quinn, a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University in London, headed a meta-analysis – that is, an examination of data from studies on the same subject – drawing data from 39 studies in 21 countries.

The studies involved over 3,360 participants with depression and 949 participants with anxiety.

The results are quite remarkable. Not only were group arts interventions found to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, but these reductions were comparable with more traditional treatments, including antidepressant drugs, talk therapies or physical activity.

Older adults who lived in care homes (what we here in the U.S. call nursing homes) saw a significant reduction in depressive symptoms compared with those living in their own homes in the community.

Since adults in nursing homes are typically more vulnerable to depression, this means that the use of group art experiences could have a significant effect on their quality of life.

Most importantly, the benefits were consistent whether the art experience was painting, dancing, or making music, suggesting that the “magic” lies in the shared experience of creating together rather than in one specific art.

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An “artistic” alternative to drugs

Given the fact that antidepressant drugs are known to increase the risk of stroke and heart problems, wouldn’t it be worth giving “the arts” a try?

Mind you, this isn’t about how good a painter or singer you are. It’s about being with others and enjoying an activity where you create something and send it out into the world.

It could be a song or a painting that lives on your kitchen counter. Every time you look at it, you’ll remember the enjoyment and togetherness you felt while you created it.

If you’re wondering where to find a group to create with, Google could be your best friend.

Just a quick search for “group arts for older adults” turned up groups in Washington D.C., Missouri, California, and my home state of Maine. Community Centers and Local Commissions on Aging (usually at the county level) may also point you in the right direction.

Here’s a small painting I did in a group I found in my community. Nothing museum-worthy, but I smile every time I see it.

Sources:

The art of well-being: group activities shown to ease depression and anxiety in older adults — Eureka Alert

Group arts interventions for depression and anxiety among older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis — Nature Mental Health

The post Art by the numbers boosts seniors’ mental health appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

In fact, people living in the black hole of depression often suffer not only from negative psychological feelings but also from physical symptoms.

Even worse, depression has been found to lead to a frighteningly high rate of other chronic illnesses. This makes taking steps to support your mental well-being vital if depression has come knocking at your door.

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Depression drags your health down 30% faster.

Recent research involving 172,556 volunteers in the UK Biobank study delved into the likelihood a person with depression has of ending up with one (or multiple) long-term physical conditions.

The team followed participants for nearly seven years, focusing on 69 physical conditions. Ultimately, the research revealed two disturbing findings…

The first is that even at the start of the study, people with depression were already behind the eight ball. That’s because the research showed that those with depression had an average of three physical conditions compared with an average of two in people without depression.

And if that weren’t worrisome enough, the results revealed that over the study period, adults with a history of depression accrued those healthy problems 30% faster than those without depression.

The most common new conditions people with depression were likely to suffer included:

• Osteoarthritis
• Hypertension
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)

The results highlight that a previous diagnosis of depression is a risk market for accelerated development of long-term physical health conditions — and that depression should be viewed as a “whole body” condition.

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Recognizing depression

It’s crucial that we recognize the signs of depression early on. This research underscores the fact that if we want to safeguard our physical health, we must be proactive in identifying and addressing depression.

Psychological feelings of depression can include things like persistent sadness, anxiousness, hopelessness or pessimism.

You might also feel irritable, worthless, or helpless and lose interest in hobbies or activities you once enjoyed.

However, as we mentioned earlier, physical signs of depression are also a possibility. These can be issues such as:

• Sleep problems – 75% of those with depression experience problems falling or staying asleep.
• Chest pain – Depression can raise your heart rate, respiration and blood pressure.
• Fatigue often includes feeling exhausted even when you’ve had enough rest.
• Pain – People who are depressed are three times more likely to experience regular pain and four times more likely to get intense, disabling neck or back pain.
• Digestive trouble – Living with depression can upset your GI system, leading to nausea, indigestion, diarrhea or constipation.
• Headaches – Both tension-type headaches and migraines are common in people with depression.
• Weight or appetite changes – Depression can cause appetite changes in either direction.
• Agitation or restlessness – Irritability or anger has been reported in up to two-thirds of people with depression.
• Sexual dysfunction – Either depression itself or the prescription drugs given for it can result in loss of sex drive and performance issues.

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Because of all these symptoms, you might be tempted to turn to medication to help your depression.

It’s essential to consult a healthcare professional. They can provide guidance on what to expect from medications and help you make informed decisions.

Over the years, we’ve learned that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, are only approximately 33% effective. Yet, they also carry a 33% higher risk of premature death.

For some people, talk therapy works better. You might consider using these lifestyle tips that research has shown to be key in breaking the catch-22 of depression.

Sources:

Depression linked with higher risk of long-term physical health conditions — EurekAlert!

9 physical signs you could have depression — Easy Health Options

Unraveling: The serotonin connection to depression — Easy Health Options

The post Depression can bring on physical illness 30% faster appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Almost five percent of American adults will be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at some time in their lives — that’s one in every 100 people. You, a friend or a family member may be one of them. Slightly fewer will be diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Mood swings, delusions, agitation, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, insomnia, reckless behavior, and other symptoms tear through patients’ lives like a tornado, destroying relationships, ruining careers and in some cases, taking lives.

Most people with these conditions need antipsychotic medication to keep their lives on track. But the side effects can be unhealthy, and distressing enough that many patients stop taking their medication.

Now, there’s research pointing to a promising way to help them…

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Metabolic psychiatry: eating for brain health

As a medical student, Dr. Shebani Sethi worked in an obesity clinic. There, she saw a patient with treatment-resistant schizophrenia whose auditory hallucinations were reduced while on a ketogenic diet.

So she dug into the existing research. There wasn’t much about the diet’s effect on schizophrenia, except for some decades-old case reports.

But she did find plenty of literature on the success of using the keto diet to treat epileptic seizures — and she made a connection…

“The ketogenic diet has been proven to be effective for treatment-resistant epileptic seizures by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain,” Dr. Sethi said. “We thought it would be worth exploring this treatment in psychiatric conditions.”

Now a board-certified doctor in both obesity and psychiatry, Dr. Sethi has coined the term metabolic psychiatry, a new field that approaches mental health from an energy conversion perspective.

In a four-month trial, her team followed 21 adults who were diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, who were taking antipsychotic meds and who had a metabolic disorder such as obesity or insulin resistance.

The participants were instructed to follow a ketogenic diet. Only about ten percent of their calories came from carbs, with 30% from protein and 60% from fat.

Dr. Sethi shared keto-friendly meal ideas with the participants. They were also given keto cookbooks and access to a health coach.

Keto improved physical AND mental health

The results of this four-month trial speak for themselves, both in terms of physical and mental health:

• Before the trial 29% of participants had three of the five conditions that define metabolic syndrome: abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, low HDL (“good”) cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high fasting glucose levels.
• After four months on the ketogenic diet, none of the participants had metabolic syndrome.
• On average, the participants improved 31% on a psychiatrist rating of mental illness known as the clinical global impressions scale, with three-quarters of the group showing clinically meaningful improvement.
• Overall, the participants also reported better sleep and greater life satisfaction.

“The participants reported improvements in their energy, sleep, mood and quality of life,” Dr. Sethi said. “They feel healthier and more hopeful.”

The researchers hypothesize that just as a ketogenic diet improves the rest of the body’s metabolism, it also improves the brain’s metabolism.

“Anything that improves metabolic health in general is probably going to improve brain health anyway,” Dr. Sethi said. “But the ketogenic diet can provide ketones as an alternative fuel to glucose for a brain with energy dysfunction.”

Ketones are chemicals that the liver produces when it breaks down fat for energy instead of carbs.

These findings confirm past research showing that a ketogenic diet can reduce brain inflammation.

Want to go ketogenic?

The keto diet is very restrictive, so it’s not for everyone. If you’re being treated for a mental illness and want to try it, be sure to talk to your doctor and never go off any medication without consulting them.

If you’re someone purely interested in following the diet to improve your metabolic health, you may want to ease into it. In that case, there’s an alternative diet that offers similar benefits, but with more flexibility.

It’s called the satiating diet and includes foods that are proven to reduce hunger, increase metabolism, balance blood sugar and provide other health benefits.

Sources:

Pilot study shows ketogenic diet improves severe mental illness — Science Daily

Ketogenic Diet Intervention on Metabolic and Psychiatric Health in Bipolar and Schizophrenia: A Pilot Trial — Psychiatry Research

The post Keto: From metabolic disorders to mental health appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But the research is clear: exercise helps relieve depression.

What’s more, at least one study found exercise to be 1.5 times more effective than depression medication!

In many of the studies, the participants performed moderate to intense exercise for at least 30 minutes at a time multiple times a week. Anyone with depression will tell you that committing to that much intense exercise can seem overwhelming.

The good news? It may not take that much effort to gain real benefits…

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Low to moderate activity is enough

Researchers at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in the United Kingdom conducted a review and analysis of seven global studies to examine the effect of physical activity on mental health.

“These conditions can be complex and necessitate a multi-pronged approach to treatment, which may encompass pharmacological interventions, psychotherapy and lifestyle changes,” says lead author Lee Smith, a professor of public health at ARU.

Their findings were promising…

First, they found there was indeed a particularly strong link between low and moderate physical activity and better mental health. Specifically, a 23 percent reduction was seen in depression risk and a 26 percent reduction in anxiety risk.

There was even an impact on more severe mental health conditions, including a reduction in psychosis/schizophrenia by 27 percent.

The researchers defined low and moderate physical activities as gardening, golfing and walking — activities that seem much easier to ease into.

Another perk about activities like these is that they get you out in the sun. In a different meta-analysis, the sunshine vitamin was found to ease depressive symptoms.

Interestingly, high-intensity exercise was not seen as helpful. Prof. Smith noted that high-intensity exercise may worsen stress-related responses in some individuals.

These results were consistent across the world, as well as across gender and age groups.

Smith says the results highlight the need for “precise exercise guidelines,” since “moderate exercise can improve mental health through biochemical reactions.”

“Acknowledging differences in people’s response to exercise is vital for effective mental health strategies, suggesting any activity recommendations should be tailored for the individual.”

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The key? Start small

According to Smith, the fact that even low to moderate levels of physical activity can benefit mental health is particularly important, since these levels of activity may be easier to achieve for people. They can make smaller lifestyle changes without feeling the need to commit to a high-intensity exercise program, he adds.

Dr. Adria Schmedthorst recommends starting with just five minutes a day of any activity you enjoy, from walking or cycling to golf, tennis, swimming or even gardening. The key is to just get your body moving. As you start to feel better, you’ll naturally increase the time you spend doing whatever activities you choose.

Bear in mind that this isn’t a one-time fix — it’s a long-term treatment plan. So don’t give up if after the first five-minute session you don’t feel any different. Keep plugging away and it won’t take long before you’re experiencing exercise’s mood-boosting benefits.

Here are just a few of the ways physical activity can help:

• Interrupts the cycle of worries and negative thoughts that make you anxious and depressed
• Releases feel-good endorphins and other natural brain chemicals, which increase the availability of critical anti-anxiety neurochemicals
• Decreases muscle tension
• Boosts resilience against reoccurring destructive emotions
• Increases self-confidence and improves self-image

Sources:

Low intensity exercise linked to reduced depression — EurekAlert!

Physical activity and prevention of mental health complications: An umbrella review — Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

The post A little exercise goes a long way to ease depression appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

What kind of question is that you might be thinking?

Doesn’t everyone know by now that we need enough physical activity to protect our heart from cardiovascular disease, and that sitting too much makes you a sitting duck for a heart attack?

But how does that work, exactly?

Most of us assume that our heart muscle gets stronger with exercise, just like any other muscle, and our blood pressure, weight and cholesterol get lower.

But there’s another step that happens before that.

It turns out that what happens in your brain kicks off the heart-protective effects of exercise…

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Exercise de-stresses your brain

A team of doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital set out to investigate the mechanisms behind both the psychological and cardiovascular benefits of physical activity.

To start with, Dr. Ahmed Tawakol of the Hospital’s Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center and his colleagues analyzed the medical records of 50,359 participants from the Massachusetts General Brigham Biobank. They’d all completed a survey asking about their levels and frequency of physical activity.

From this large group, 774 participants were selected to undergo brain imaging tests and measurements of stress-related brain activity.

Over a ten-year follow-up period, members of this group who met physical activity recommendations had a 23% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

These same people also tended to have lower stress-related brain activity. In particular, they showed functional gains in the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain known to restrain the brain’s stress centers.

This reduction in stress-related brain signaling partially accounted for physical activity’s cardiovascular benefit.

In other words, exercise dampened the stress centers in the brain, and this in turn removed some strain on the heart, thus offering a protective effect.

Depressed? Exercise is an extra advantage for your heart

Something else remarkable was noted: people with depression benefited even more from this exercise-brain-heart connection than those who were not depressed.

“Physical activity was roughly twice as effective in lowering cardiovascular disease risk among those with depression. Effects on the brain’s stress-related activity may explain this novel observation,” says Dr. Tawakol.

In simple terms, we already know that even a little physical activity can alleviate depression. Now we know why.

When exercise builds up the prefrontal cortex, stress is reduced, and depression alleviated.

This is great news considering the feedback loop with depression and heart disease.

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What this means for you

If we’re wise, we will treat all of this as more than just an interesting piece of scientific news.

We’ll take it as a reminder that exercise in some form is not optional, not if we want to continue functioning independently and enjoying life well into old age.

While this research proves the point, I hope this isn’t new information for you.

The prolonged sitting that many of us do (myself included) skyrockets our risk of dementia, diabetes, and blood clots in the leg that can be potentially life-threatening.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to prevent these effects. Personally, I’ve taken to getting out of my chair every 20 minutes and staying up for at least 20 minutes.

I do household chores, walk up and down the many stairs in my home, or, if it’s a nice day, take a short neighborhood walk. In most cases, I return to my desk with renewed focus.

If you sit a lot at work or consider yourself a “couch potato,” you’d be well advised to come up with a similar plan and stick to it. Being proactive now will give you a happier, healthier life later.

Sources:

Physical activity reduces stress-related brain activity to lower cardiovascular disease risk — Eureka Alert

Physical Activity Reduces Stress-Related Brain Activity to Lower Cardiovascular Disease Risk — Massachusetts General Hospital

The post Heart-healthy benefits of exercise start in the brain appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Having to worry about your blood pressure, taking medicines, going to multiple doctor visits and even spending time in the hospital can skyrocket your anxiety level.

And the physical limitations that come with heart issues can leave you feeling depressed.

Yet, these are symptoms that the medical community tends to ignore – a mistake that could worsen your outcomes and even increase your risk of death.

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Poor mental health, poor heart health

Research from a team of scientists at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center may be the first to reveal the powerful connection between mental health and heart disease.

“Heart disease and anxiety/depression interact such that each promotes the other,” said lead study author Philip Binkley, MD.

“There appear to be mental processes that link heart disease with anxiety and depression that are currently under investigation. Both heart disease and anxiety/depression are associated with the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. This is part of the so-called involuntary nervous system that increases heart rate, blood pressure and can also contribute to anxiety and depression.”

He and his team followed over 1,500 adults with heart disease for three years who had hospital admission for blocked arteries or heart failure and had two or more health insurance claims for an anxiety disorder or depression.

To see how treating their mental health might impact their heart health over that time, some participants received both antidepressant medications and psychotherapy, others were given psychotherapy or medication for depression alone and about a third received no mental health treatment.

The results were impressive…

Up to a 75% reduction in hospitalization and ER visits

The best results were achieved by patients who were given both antidepressant medication and talk therapy.

The study showed that compared to participants who received no mental health treatment, people who benefitted from this dual approach were:

• 68 – 75% less likely to be re-hospitalized for a heart-related issue
• 67 – 74% less likely to have to return to the emergency room for their heart
• 67% less likely to die from any cause

Talk therapy alone reduced the risk of hospital readmission almost by half and reduced emergency room visits by up to 53%.

Medication alone was also successful, reducing hospital readmission by up to 58% and ER visits by up to 49%.

Clearly, caring for your heart means caring for your mental health.

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Simple tips to reduce anxiety and depression

So if you’re living with heart disease, it’s time to start addressing any feelings of anxiety and depression you might have. It’s something you and your doctor can discuss.

But remember that Dr. Binkley explained that heart disease, anxiety and depression are associated with activation of the sympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for the “fight or flight” response during any potential danger. On the other hand, the parasympathetic nervous system inhibits the body from overworking and restores the body to a calm and composed state.

Stimulation of the vagus nerve has been known to help restore that balance.

In addition, these practices could help:

• Boost your dopamine levels – This happiness hormone is linked to the nervous system and low levels can result in depression.
• Conscious movement – Yoga is a great way to reduce both depression and anxiety. Here are three of the most effective poses anyone can do.
• Foods – Researchers have found that certain foods can help DASH symptoms of depression. So be sure to put the right diet to work for you. Foods that contain the prebiotic galacto-oligosaccharides (like legumes and nuts) are especially helpful at reducing anxiety levels.
• Supplements – If you’re deficient in certain amino acids or minerals, it can amp up your depression. Two of the most important are arginine and magnesium.

Be sure to discuss any new supplements with your heart doctor.

Sources:

Treating anxiety, depression significantly impacts heart disease outcomes — EurekAlert!

The post How heart disease, anxiety and depression feed off each other appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

In other words, if you suffer from MCI how likely are you to develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and will you or family members be able to see it coming?

Now, a new study has shed light on exactly what symptoms to be on the lookout for that can predict whether the problems with memory, language and judgment that go along with MCI will turn into an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

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The Neuropsychiatric Symptom Index

The research, performed at the Medical University of South Carolina, set out to quantify the connection between neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) and the journey from MCI to dementia.

For the study, the scientists recruited 300 patients with MCI, aged 65 and older, from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative database.  

Each participant underwent a Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) assessment to document NPS symptoms — such as anxiety, depression, delusions, hallucinations, abnormal movement behavior and sleep disorders — as potential early signs of preclinical AD to establish a prediction model for AD.

And while the outcome showed that more than a quarter of the MCI patients went on to develop Alzheimer’s, those who experienced more neuropsychiatric symptoms were far more likely to end up in the Alzheimer’s group when everything was said and done.

The study showed that for each one-point increase in NPI score, there was a three percent increase in the risk of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

In fact, the study showed that paying attention to NPS symptoms was a better predictor of mental decline than other established Alzheimer’s risk factors, which include heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

When asked about the real-world implications of their research, the team had this to say, “If you feel down or anxious and you experience memory issues as you age, it is important to seek help early and get a thorough evaluation for both cognitive and mental health concerns.”

Evaluating the risk to you or your loved one

So if you or your loved one is living with MCI, evaluation of neuropsychiatric symptoms is key.

Your doctor should use the Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire to understand not only which symptoms are present, but also their severity and the distress they cause to the caregiver.

By understanding the risk of progression from MCI to Alzheimer’s, both patients and families can be better prepared for the journey ahead.

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In addition to understanding progression risks, there are also steps you can take to reduce those risks at home. These include:

#1 – Exercising

Research, performed at Yonsei University College of Medicine, Republic of Korea, showed that physical activity can help prevent the slide from MCI to Alzheimer’s. Their study found that people with MCI, who exercised at a moderate or vigorous level for at least 10 minutes, more than once per week, had an 18 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

#2 – Using pink noise

Certain sounds when you sleep, known as ‘pink noise’, have been shown to result in memory improvement in subjects who suffer from mild cognitive impairment.

#3 – Eating mushrooms

Mushroom eating has been found to slash MCI in half! According to researchers, this is likely due to a specific compound in mushrooms known as ergothioneine, which fights free radical damage throughout the body.

#4 – Improving head-to-toe blood flow

A study found that men taking prescriptions for ED medication were 18 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s. That little blue pill works by increasing a molecule known as nitric oxide (NO) in the lining of the blood vessels. This causes the blood vessels to widen, increasing blood flow and boosting oxygen to all the body’s organs and tissues — including the brain.

Sources:

Neuropsychiatric symptoms predict which patients with mild cognitive impairment develop Alzheimer’s disease – EurekAlert!

The post The symptoms that predict whether MCI turns to Alzheimer’s appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

The first thing to understand is that blood pressure is not static. It varies throughout the day — minute by minute. 

What it’s really doing is oscillating, sometimes quite profoundly, around a mean — and what we’re really interested in is what that mean is. So one reading in a doctor’s office does not a hypertension diagnosis make…

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Taking things into your own hands

What we really need are multiple readings that give us more information.  This is why I always ask my patients to get their own blood pressure cuffs and start taking their own readings at home. Home BP monitors are widely available and relatively inexpensive, and can be invaluable tools for facilitating BP evaluation and management.

The second thing to know is that there are multiple factors that can contribute to high blood pressure that are reversible: excess weight, inactivity, smoking, stimulants (like caffeine and alcohol), non-restorative sleep/sleep apnea, and high sodium intake/poor diet. 

These are not necessarily factors that are chip shots to solve or change, but it’s all doable. Most importantly, making inroads here – even if they’re only partial — can help reduce your readings enough that you can avoid medications or, at the very least, lower the drug doses needed to control them.

How anxiety and depression impact blood pressure

Finally, know that there is a significant connection between mental health and hypertension. Not just anxiety. Depression too can be linked. One recent study found a connection between depressive symptoms and high blood pressure years before hypertension was diagnosed.

The relationship between mental health and blood pressure is complex. On one hand, anxiety and depression may cause people to avoid taking medications or even skip medical appointments altogether. On the other hand, some antihypertensive medications, such as beta-blockers, can have depression and fatigue as side effects. 

High blood pressure causes low-grade inflammation. And inflammation can interfere with mood-regulating chemicals. Left untreated, hypertension can also increase stress-related hormones. And stress, of course, is not good for your mental health.

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We tend to think of mental and physical health separately, but they are so intertwined that it can be hard to tell what is the cause and what is the effect. Is stress making your blood pressure rise, or is hypertension causing your stress? While the answer isn’t always clear, the good news is that treating one should improve the other as well.

The best part is, the treatment doesn’t need to be just drugs, drugs, and more drugs! What we eat has a TREMENDOUS impact on both physical and mental health — including mood and blood pressure readings.  Consuming more whole food fiber, antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables, and healthy fats is the key.  Sound familiar?

We’ve had lots of customers tell us their blood pressure has improved as a consequence of eating Step One Foods. But I’ll never forget the day that a customer marched into our offices and demanded to know if we put anti-depressants into the foods — because he had never felt better! Not everyone will have such dramatic improvements, but shouldn’t we all feed our bodies in a way that supports health on every level?

The post The significant link between blood pressure, anxiety and depression appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And for 20 million Americans, this condition known as tinnitus is not just irritating, frustrating and downright annoying, it is debilitatingly life-changing. It can affect everything from their hearing and mood to concentration and sleep, leading to extreme anxiety and depression.

Often people with the condition are told there’s nothing they can do about it.

And that’s why research and development into helping them continues…

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What’s behind that infernal internal noise

Less is known about what causes tinnitus than about the risk factors associated with it.

According to Penn Medicine, tinnitus is sometimes a sign of high blood pressure, an allergy or even anemia. In very rare cases it has been associated with a tumor or aneurysm.

A few other risk factors for tinnitus may include:

• Temporomandibular joint disorders (TMJ)
• Diabetes
• Thyroid problems
• Obesity
• Head injury

Back in 2007, tinnitus was also linked to a nutritional deficiency…

In a pilot clinical trial on the effects of CoQ10 on chronic tinnitus, participants with low blood levels of CoQ10 supplemented 100 mg of CoQ10 three times a day for 16 weeks and saw a significant improvement in their tinnitus symptoms.

CoQ10 deficiencies can occur due to nutrient-poor food consumption, environmental stress, prescription medications (particularly statins)— and aging. CoQ10 levels drop significantly before age 40. Developing tinnitus is most common in people between the ages of 40 and 80.

The brain stops filtering some sounds

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) involves sessions with a psychologist who can help a person manage their problems by changing the way they think and behave.

According to Professor Suzanne Purdy, Professor of Psychology at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, “Cognitive behavioral therapy is known to help people with tinnitus, but it requires a trained psychologist. That’s expensive, and often difficult to access.”

But that may have just changed with the advent of an app specifically designed to use CBT techniques to calm tinnitus symptoms.

The app works based on the reason tinnitus sounds are so irritating. Let’s break that down…

Even before birth, our brains learn to filter out certain sounds, ones that don’t pose a danger to us — like the sound of blood rushing past our ears.

As we get older, our brains have to step it up even further, blocking out things like traffic noises, the sound of the air conditioner humming away or a snoring spouse.

Basically, it goes to work by allowing only some noises through to trigger an alert, like the noise of a smoke detector going off. Obviously, these are noises it deems necessary to set off a fight-or-flight response that could save our lives.

Yet, for tinnitus sufferers, it’s an internal sound that doesn’t represent a risk in the environment. But the brain still responds by sending out an alert.

Once the noise is perceived and can’t be switched off, the brain then focuses in on it, locking into a feedback loop where it continues to pay more and more attention to it.

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Retraining the brain to filter sound

According to the researchers who tested it, the app, known as MindEar, “… uses a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness and relaxation exercises as well as sound therapy to help you train your brain’s reaction so that we can tune out tinnitus. The sound you perceive fades in the background and is much less bothersome.”

And their study proved just how well it can work…

The research put MindEar to the test against tinnitus in 30 sufferers. Two-thirds of participants saw improvement after 16 weeks. And if they combined the use of MindEar with access to an online psychologist, they got results after just eight weeks.

 “One of the most common misconceptions about tinnitus is that there is nothing you can do about it; that you just have to live with it. This is simply not true,” says lead researcher, Dr. Fabrice Bardy.

Sources:

Train your brain to overcome tinnitus — EurekAlert!

A pilot clinical trial of the effects of coenzyme Q10 on chronic tinnitus aurium — Journal of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery

The post Tinnitus: Helping the brain learn to filter sound again appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Usually, a blue mood is temporary, while depression lingers, grows more intense and interferes with your day-to-day activities. With depression, symptoms like fatigue, lack of enthusiasm and feelings of worthlessness keep you from finding enjoyment or purpose in life.

The factors influencing depression are complex and researchers are still working to understand all the nuances. But one international team has made some fascinating discoveries about the role lifestyle plays…

Lifestyle could be key to resolving depression

These researchers examined data from almost 290,000 people in the UK Biobank followed over a nine-year period. The UK Biobank is a biomedical database of genetic, lifestyle and health information about its participants.

Of those 290,000 people, about 13,000 had depression. The team then took a look at a combination of components, including lifestyle, genetics, brain structure and the immune and metabolic systems to identify the roles they may play in depression.

Out of all those, they were able to identify seven healthy lifestyle factors linked with a lower risk of depression. Then, to weigh the impact of each factor, the researchers split the participants into one of three groups based on the number of healthy lifestyle factors they adhered to.

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And they weren’t too surprised to find the folks in the favorable lifestyle group (those who could tick off the most from the list) were 57 percent less likely to develop depression compared to those in the unfavorable lifestyle group. Those in the intermediate lifestyle group were 41 percent less likely.

They also learned that out of the seven lifestyle factors, getting between seven and nine hours a night of sleep made the biggest difference, so we’ll consider it #1. Regularly getting a good night’s sleep reduced the risk of depression, including single depressive episodes and treatment-resistant depression, by 22 percent.

The other six factors impacted depression risk accordingly:

• Frequent social connection reduced the risk of depression by 18 percent and protected the most against recurrent depressive disorder;
• Never smoking reduced depression risk by 20 percent;
• Regular physical activity by 14 percent;
• Low-to-moderate sedentary behavior by 13 percent;
• Moderate alcohol consumption by 11 percent;
• and healthy diet by 6 percent.

Interestingly, genetic risk had a much smaller impact on depression risk than lifestyle — and past research has shown that as well about other genetic conditions.

“Although our DNA — the genetic hand we’ve been dealt — can increase our risk of depression, we’ve shown that a healthy lifestyle is potentially more important,” says Barbara Sahakian, a professor at the University of Cambridge.

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How do lifestyle factors take depression down?

By examining MRI brain scans from just under 33,000 of the participants, the team was able to find several regions of the brain where the presence of more neurons and connections was associated with a healthy lifestyle.

They also studied biomarkers in the blood that indicated problems with the immune system or metabolism. Among those found to be connected to lifestyle was C-reactive protein, a molecule the body produces in response to stress, and triglycerides, one of the primary forms of fat the body uses to store energy for later.

Low vitamin D levels have been linked to C-reactive protein, also considered a chronic disease biomarker.

To put it simply, a poor lifestyle affects our immune system and metabolism, which in turn increases our risk of depression.

How to break the catch-22 of depression

All this is great news for helping to prevent depression. But what if you already have depression? In that case, it may be hard enough to make one lifestyle shift, let alone seven.

Ease into it by choosing one area to focus on, then take one step toward being healthier in that area.

For example, if you’re having trouble with exercise, try picking one type of exercise and doing it once a week to begin with. Yoga is a good choice because it’s been proven to help with depression. But even taking a walk around the neighborhood is a great start, particularly since on a sunny day it can give you a depression-fighting vitamin D boost.

As for diet, did you know some foods can help fight depression? Try adding a few to your daily menu, especially since they’re great for your overall health, too.

Sources:

1. Healthy lifestyle can help prevent depression — and new research may explain why — ScienceDaily

2. The brain structure, immunometabolic and genetic mechanisms underlying the association between lifestyle and depression — Nature Mental Health

The post 7 things happy people do that reduce depression by 57% appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Depression is a persistent feeling of sadness that isn’t so easy to push through. It interferes with your daily life and even takes the joy from places where you once found it.

But the truth is, depression is an illness that not only steals your happiness — it can also make you far more likely to suffer from other serious ailments as well.

In fact, research has already linked depression to everything from cancer to diabetes and hypertension thanks to the chemical pathway that connects inflammation to these disease processes.

Now, researchers at the University of Galway in Ireland have found yet another dire reason for patients and doctors alike to work hard at treating depression: a higher risk for stroke…

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Increased stroke risk, decreased chance of recovery

Their research involved almost 27,000 participants from the INTERSTROKE study that spanned 32 countries. Approximately half of the participants had suffered a stroke, while the other half were stroke-free.

Participants completed questionnaires at the beginning of the study that delved into risk factors, like high blood pressure and diabetes. And the researchers took a deep look at any symptoms of depression each person had experienced within the year before the study.

So how did all that data boil down?

After adjusting for all other factors that can affect stroke risk, the data showed that people with symptoms of depression before stroke had a 46 percent higher chance of stroke than someone who had not suffered from depression.

And the more symptoms a person had, the higher that stroke risk.

Unfortunately, that was only the tip of the iceberg…

The research also showed that suffering from depression can also make it less likely you’ll recover if you do have a stroke. Those with depression were more likely to have worse outcomes one month after the stroke than participants without depression.

“In this study, we gained deeper insights into how depressive symptoms can contribute to stroke,” said study author Robert P. Murphy, MBBS. “Our results show that symptoms of depression can have an impact on mental health, but also increase the risk of stroke. Physicians should be looking for these symptoms of depression and can use this information to help guide health initiatives focused on stroke prevention.”

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A two-pronged approach to reduce risk

This means that if you want to avoid having a stroke, you not only have to focus on the health of your arteries and blood flow, but also your mood.

To keep your blood vessels at their best and your blood flowing smoothly, try passive stretching. This artery “workout” has been found to increase blood flow and dilation of vessels and decrease arterial stiffness in as little as 12 weeks.

To help fight depression, you may need the help of a psychiatrist. But there are two good reasons to consider supplementing a combination of omega-3 fatty acids and phosphatidylserine (PS for short)…

A 2015 study found that taking 100 mg of PS, plus an omega-3 supplement containing 119 mg of DHA and 70 mg of EPA three times a day for 12 weeks improved mood and lowered levels of the “stress hormone” cortisol in participants with late-life depression.

And there’s a bonus to supplementing omega-3s in regard to stroke risk…

Chronic inflammation in the blood vessels is normally controlled by “stop signals” called resolvins. Resolvins are formed from omega-3 fatty acids bind to a receptor called GPR32, activating the receptor’s ability to counteract inflammation in blood vessels, essentially switching off inflammation and stimulating tissue repair and healing. 

This process is known as resolution of inflammation, and researchers believe this is how omega-3s, like those found in fatty fish, fish oil or krill oil, protect the brain from stroke.

Sources:

The Effects of Phosphatidylserine and Omega-3 Fatty Acid-Containing Supplement on Late Life Depression – NIH

People with symptoms of depression may have an increased risk of stroke – EurekAlert!

The post The stroke risk linked to depression appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Those are just a few of the words that describe people living with depression or anxiety…

And, since it’s estimated that at least 350 million suffer from depression worldwide, odds are that you’ve experienced the feelings of apathy, hopelessness, loss of interest and hopelessness that can go along with the disorder.

You may even live with anxiety, a common component of depression… 40 million people in the U.S. alone do.

If you’ve been to your doctor, you’ve likely been prescribed prescription antidepressants.

And, while they may help, unfortunately, those drugs come with a hefty dose of side effects as well, including nausea, weight gain, constipation, fatigue, diminished sex drive and blurred vision.

If your doctor was more proactive, they may have even tested your vitamin D levels and told you to get more sun and take the vitamin to help you beat back the depression that’s been ruling your life.

But even if they were that knowledgeable, more than likely, there’s one thing they missed…

One vital nutrient that most doctors never even think about using to help their patients in the battle against depression and anxiety…

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It’s not just for blood clotting

Most doctors only think about vitamin K when they’re worried about your blood clotting, like when they put you on blood thinners.

But, this little-known vitamin does so much more. Since its discovery, scientists have uncovered five different compounds that make up the vitamin K family. And one of the most compelling is vitamin K2.

In fact, here’s what Dr. John Cannell at the Vitamin D Council has to say about it…

“If you asked practicing physicians, I bet 99% would say vitamin K is only involved in blood clotting. However, there are vitamin K-dependent proteins in multiple human tissues.

Blood clotting is simply the most urgent function of vitamin K, so, if vitamin K intake is restricted (as it is in most people who don’t consume five servings of vegetables every day), vitamin K is first used by the liver to handle blood clotting so you don’t bleed to death.”

And, one of those tissues that utilize vitamin K that Dr. Cannell talks about is your brain, which is why studies have shown that supplementing with vitamin K version, known as K2 can prevent both depression and anxiety by feeding your brain the proteins and lipids it needs to function optimally.

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The natural prescription for depression and anxiety: K2 and D3

In fact, in order to defeat depression, you need both vitamin D and vitamin K2.

According to the Vitamin D council, to get the most benefit from vitamin D, you must have other cofactors in your body, one of the most important being vitamin K.

By now you’re probably wondering how much of each you need to help lift your depression, boost your mood and overcome your anxiety.

Here’s the answer…

Since your body makes vitamin D when your skin is exposed to sunlight, it’s best to use brief sunbathing when appropriate and supplement with 5,000 IU/day of D3 with 600 mcg of vitamin K2.

You should also increase your intake of green leafy vegetables to get more vitamin K from your diet.

If you’re taking blood thinners, talk to your doctor before taking vitamin K2 as it does affect clotting.

Good sources of vitamin K2 include:

• Kale
• Spinach
• Collard greens
• Scallion
• Natto (fermented soy)
• Brussel sprouts
• Cabbage
• Broccoli
• Kefir
• Prunes

So, if you’re living with depression and anxiety, don’t suffer in silence or from the unwanted side effects of prescription antidepressants, combine the power of the new vitamin on the block, vitamin K2, with your daily dose of vitamin D and take back your life.

Sources:

Depression and Mental Health by the Numbers: Facts, Statistics, and You — Healthline Media

Facts & Statistics — ADAA

Coping With Side Effects of Depression Treatment — WebMD

Vitamin K2 Improves Anxiety and Depression but not Cognition in Rats with Metabolic Syndrome: a Role of Blood Glucose? — Folia Medica

Vitamin K and brain function — Seminars in Thrombosis and Hemostasis

The post The vitamin duo that beats depression and anxiety: K2 + D3 appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

SSRIs are the most widely used treatment for depression. Even if you’ve never taken them, you probably recognize popular brand names like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and Lexapro from commercials.

Unfortunately, these pervasive pills leave much to be desired…

When SSRIs first came out, doctors thought they were 80 to 90 percent effective at treating depression and certain anxiety disorders, so they began passing them out like candy.

But it turns out that prescription drug companies manipulated those initial statistics. They’d concealed studies with negative results to sell more drugs and make more money.

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Over the years, we’ve learned that SSRIs are only 33 percent effective. That’s about the same as a placebo pill.

Of course, SSRIs have more side effects than a placebo — like insomnia, skin rashes, headaches, joint and muscle pain, stomach upset, nausea, diarrhea, internal bleeding, low sex drive, tics, muscle spasms, repetitive muscle movement and compulsive restlessness.

So SSRIs aren’t effective. And with that long list of side effects, it’s a wonder anyone is still taking them…

The problem is, most people don’t know how else to treat their depression. But a common mineral could save the day for depression sufferers everywhere.

In fact, a recent study suggests this mineral may be effective enough to step in and steal the crown away from SSRIS as the go-to treatment for depression…

Magnesium diminishes depression

In one of the first clinical trials to study the effect of magnesium on depressed people, researchers from the University of Vermont found that magnesium supplements could be an effective treatment for depression.

The study included 126 adults with mild to moderate depression. After six weeks of taking 248 milligrams of elemental magnesium per day, many of them showed a significant improvement in their depression and anxiety symptoms.

Even more exciting, it didn’t take the full six weeks for participants to experience an improvement in their mood. Many experienced a positive difference within two weeks. And barely anyone experienced adverse side effects either. Only one person had nausea and lethargy that was significant enough to stop taking the supplement.

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“The results are very encouraging, given the great need for additional treatment options for depression, and our finding that magnesium supplementation provides a safe, fast and inexpensive approach to controlling depressive symptoms,” said Emily Tarleton, MS, RD, CD, a graduate student in Clinical and Translational Science and the bionutrition research manager in the University of Vermont’s Clinical Research Center.

Now, researchers don’t know precisely why magnesium does the trick for depression, but they have a few theories…

One theory relates to how magnesium affects your brain chemicals — particularly serotonin. Low magnesium levels have been shown to reduce your brain’s production of serotonin. And, as you probably know, low serotonin levels are thought to be one of the primary culprits behind depression.

Inflammation may have something to do with it as well. Studies show that magnesium fights inflammation, and inflammation has been tied to depression in previous studies.

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Should you take more magnesium?

Now, if you’re thinking about changing the way you treat your depression, it’s a good idea to partner with a trusted healthcare professional first. Depression is a serious disease, so you don’t want to take these changes lightly. It helps to have a health expert available to guide you as you get your treatment approach right.

When it comes to using magnesium to treat your depression, it’s generally pretty safe. You can even take it while you’re still taking your SSRI antidepressants. Avoid magnesium salicylate and magnesium sulfate, because they may cause an adverse reaction with certain SSRIs. Your body tends to absorb magnesium citrate best anyway, so look for that. You can take up to 400 mg per day. And, who knows? Maybe magnesium is the missing link in your depression treatment plan.

Sources:

1. “Five Reasons Not to Take SSRIs.” — Psychology Today. Retrieved June 29, 2017.
2. “What are the real risks of antidepressants?” — Harvard Health Publications. Retrieved June 29, 2017.
3. “With health care cuts looming, low-cost magnesium a welcome option for treating depression.” — MedicalXpress. Retrieved June 29, 2017.
4. K. Tarleton, et al. “Role of magnesium supplementation in the treatment of depression: A randomized clinical trial.” — PLoS ONE, 2017.
5. “Magnesium: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals.” — National Institutes of Health. Retrieved June 29, 2017.
6. “Can You Take Magnesium With Lexapro?” — Livestrong.com. Retrieved June 29, 2017.
7. “Magnesium.” — Whole Health Chicago. Retrieved June 29, 2017.

The post The simple mineral that could replace anti-depressants appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

What if you’re traveling after midnight and need to pop into a roadside 24-hour restaurant or convenience store? Who’s there to serve you?

And who’s restocking warehouses all over the country and transporting goods so we have the convenience of getting what we need when we need it?

Night shift workers.

In situations like these, and in factories and plants all over the U.S., over nine million Americans (about 6 percent of all workers) work between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Plentiful research shows that working the night shift messes with people’s circadian rhythm, which comes with its own unique set of health risks.

Compared to early risers, night owls are as much as twice as likely to develop depression.

But when night workers take their meals could make a big difference, according to a new study.

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Nighttime eating and depression

There’s been plenty of research into ways to help night workers minimize both physical and mental health risks, most of it having to do with using light to adjust their circadian clock and avoiding vitamin D deficiency due to less time in the sun.

Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston wanted to find out whether the eating habits of night workers could play a role in their mental health and if confining eating to daytime hours could help prevent depression and other mood disorders.

The researchers already had evidence that nighttime meals can disrupt metabolism, and that this could be why shift workers tend to have a higher body mass index (BMI) and more dangerous visceral fat than daytime workers.

So, over the course of two weeks, 19 study participants followed a schedule and activities that simulated night work. Half the group ate their meals during both day and nighttime hours, while the other half ate only during the day.

In every other way, everything was the same for both groups, including calories, how long they slept, how active they were and their exposure to light.

When “night workers” were fed during the day and at night, the researchers saw a 26 percent increase in depressive moods and a 16 percent increase in anxiety-like moods, as compared to the baseline at the study’s start.

Those who ate only during the day reported no mood changes.

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Other reasons to stop eating at 7 p.m.

As far as health goes, late-night eating is a recipe for disaster.

For starters, about half of us carry a gene that makes late-night eating a recipe for diabetes.

Research has also shown that late-night meals can affect the brain’s hippocampus and lower your ability to learn and concentrate.

And if you’re looking to lose some weight, it’s probably a better idea to do your heavier eating at breakfast rather than later in the day.

The moral of this story is that making the effort to gradually shift your eating habits so that you do your “heavy eating” before 7 p.m. is well worth the effort.

Sources:

The Time of Day You Eat Could Make a Difference to Your Mental Health — Science Alert

Daytime eating prevents mood vulnerability in night work — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

The relationship of body mass index and waist-hip ratio with shift work among military personnel in 2016 — Journal of Occupational Health and Epidemiology

The post How to keep night shift from dragging your health down appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

The cards may not always be dealt that way, but research has uncovered many causes and contributors to disease that help us shuffle the deck.

That’s why we look to diet, exercise, supplemental nutrition and other lifestyle factors within our control to lower our risks for diabetes, heart disease — and the dreaded “c” word.

But there’s one factor that we often leave out — and it’s one that could increase your risk of death from cancer almost 2.5 times…

The wear and tear of stress

It’s not stress in and of itself that can increase your risk of dying from cancer. It’s what it does to your body.

“Good” stress is there to protect us. It sends signals to your body that cause production of two hormones, cortisol and adrenaline.

This leads to a rise in heart rate and blood pressure and, in turn, causes changes to almost every bodily system, including the heart, immune system, digestive system, and brain.

Cortisol “can be beneficial in some circumstances, such as when it motivates you to complete your work on time,” notes Dr. Patricia Celan, a psychiatry resident at Canada’s Dalhousie University.

In examples like that, though, cortisol usually comes back down to normal levels.

“However, if you have chronic, ongoing psychosocial stressors, that never allow you to ‘come down,’ then that can cause wear and tear on your body at a biological level,” According to Dr. Justin Xavier Moore, an epidemiologist at the Medical College of Georgia and Georgia Cancer Center.

There is a name for that “wear and tear” on the body from the cumulative effects of constant stress. It’s called allostatic load — and if yours is high, so is your risk of dying from cancer.

How stress makes cancer more deadly

Moore and other investigators examined 31 years of data collected from more than 41,000 people who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, between 1988 and 2019.

They were able to determine the allostatic load based on baseline biological measures of the participants using body mass, blood pressure readings, cholesterol and A1C levels, as well as measures of inflammation and kidney function.

Even after adjusting for confounding risk factors like age, social demographics like race and sex, poverty to income ratio and educational level, those with a high allostatic load were 2.4 times more likely to die from cancer than those with low allostatic loads.

“But you have to adjust for confounding factors,” Moore explains. “We know there are differences in allostatic loads based on age, race and gender.”

To that point, previous research looking at trends in allostatic load over 30 years among 50,671 individuals, found adults aged 40 and older had greater than a 100% increased risk of high allostatic load when compared to adults under 30. Black and Latino adults had an increased risk of high allostatic load when compared with their white counterparts regardless of the time period.

“That means that if you were to have two people of the same age, if one of those people had high allostatic load, they are 28 percent more likely to die from cancer,” says Dr. Moore.

Even after adjusting for demographic factors, people with lifelong stress still had a 21 percent higher risk of cancer death. And even those who had smoked, had previous cancer or heart failure diagnoses were at 14 percent greater risk of cancer death.

The moral of the story: Make handling stress a priority

This research just gives us one more thing to add to the already lengthy list of ways that stress kills.

Luckily, there’s a lot we can do to keep ourselves from succumbing to chronic stress.

Stress-reducing supplements like ashwagandha can control cortisol levels and soothe the body and mind naturally.

Orange essential oil has been found to regulate the immune system and relieve the effects of chronic stress.

It’s been proven time and again that the Mediterranean diet is the ultimate diet for stress management.

Yoga trains the nervous system to return to a balanced state after being faced with a stressful situation. You don’t need to learn all kinds of complicated poses, either. Find a local yoga teacher or studio, or a self-study video, and learn the basics.

Meditation. Again, nothing complicated. Here, Dr. Isaac Eliaz explains how to start a simple meditation practice that will benefit both your physical and mental health.

Sources:

Wear and tear from lifelong stress can increase cancer mortality — Eureka Alert

Exploring racial disparities on the association between allostatic load and cancer mortality: A retrospective cohort analysis of NHANES, 1988 through 2019 — Science Direct High Cortisol Symptoms: What Do They Mean? — Healthline

The post Your stress score could increase cancer risk almost 2.5 times appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Thankfully, the second screening and ultrasound determined it was a benign cyst. But for a few weeks, I was truly worried I was about to become one of the 264,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer each year.

Even though it’s not the most common cancer among women (that would be skin cancer), breast cancer is certainly the most feared. And it’s no wonder. Even though early detection has reduced the number of deaths from breast cancer, the disease remains the second leading cause of death for women.

There are a number of risk factors for breast cancer that you can change, such as inactivity, obesity and drinking alcohol. Unfortunately, there are a lot of risk factors that can’t be altered, such as age, family history and genetic mutations.

Emphasizing these risk factors isn’t meant to scare you. It’s just important to be aware of them so you can monitor carefully for any sign of breast cancer. This way, if breast cancer does show up, it can be caught early, giving you the best shot at beating it. The five-year survival rate for breast cancer that remains localized in the early stage is 99 percent.

In that interest, there’s another risk factor uncovered by recent research that you need to be informed about…

The risk of antipsychotics

According to studies, elevated breast cancer incidence has been consistently reported in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Further investigation indicates antipsychotic medications may explain at least part of this increased risk.

Antipsychotics are commonly prescribed for patients with a variety of psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and dementia. The possible mechanisms behind the increased cancer risk include:

• Antipsychotic-induced hyperprolactinemia, a higher-than-normal level of the hormone prolactin in the blood.
• Weight gain that occurs as a result of taking the medication and poorer lifestyle among antipsychotic users.

Since there are multiple interacting risk factors and complexities to consider, evidence of the antipsychotic-breast cancer association remains inconclusive. This has prompted researchers at the University of Hong Kong to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the existing evidence to more clearly determine whether there’s a concrete link.

The review included nine observational studies with more than 2 million individuals, and the meta-analysis included seven studies.

According to the review, six out of the nine studies reported a significant link between the use of antipsychotics and an increased risk of breast cancer. The meta-analysis estimated that use of antipsychotic medication raised breast cancer risk by more than 30 percent.

Some of the reviewed evidence further illustrated that the extent of antipsychotic exposure, such as longer duration of use, is associated with higher breast cancer risk. This is particularly true for antipsychotics with prolactin-increasing properties.

Specifically, a large Finnish case-control study compared those who had prolonged periods of prolactin-elevating antipsychotic use to those exposed for less than year. Results showed those exposed for at least five years had a nearly 60 percent increase in their risk of breast cancer.

Managing your risk

The University of Hong Kong study indicates breast cancer could be a potential but rare adverse side effect of antipsychotic medications.

“With the increasingly prevalent use of antipsychotics worldwide, including off-label use, we believe a comprehensive clinical assessment should be made for patients based on the overall safety profile of antipsychotics before prescription,” says Dr. Francisco Lai Tsz-tsun, a professor with HKUMed and the study’s corresponding author.

Clearly, if you’re on antipsychotic medication, stopping it isn’t an option. But based on the findings of this study, your doctor may want to avoid putting you on an antipsychotic with known prolactin-elevating properties, especially if you already have other risk factors for breast cancer.

If you are taking a prolactin-increasing antipsychotic and your doctor feels it’s not a good idea to switch to another medication, they’ll likely want to monitor your prolactin levels so that they can immediately manage any hyperprolactinemia that might occur. They should also keep a close eye on your overall breast health so that changes can be caught quickly.

It’s also a good idea for you to increase the number of self-checks you do on your breasts. The recommended frequency is once a month, so maybe conduct a self-exam twice a month instead.

Finally, you may want to take steps to reduce other risk factors for breast cancer. Here are 10 ways you can reduce your risk of breast cancer safely and naturally.

Sources:

HKUMed research team estimates over 30% elevated risk of breast cancer among antipsychotic users — The University of Hong Kong

Association of antipsychotic use with breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies with over 2 million individuals — Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences

Overcoming the Fear of Breast Cancer — Woman’s Hospital

Survival Rates for Breast Cancer — American Cancer Society

What Are the Risk Factors for Breast Cancer? — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Hyperprolactinemia — Cleveland Clinic

Breast Self-Exam — National Breast Cancer Foundation

The post The medication that could raise your breast cancer risk appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

In fact, the use of antidepressants has been on the rise. And it’s a trend that only accelerated with the social isolation and stress brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But despite the popularity of antidepressants, what if the mechanism by which they were designed to work — correcting a serotonin “imbalance” — turned out to be a wrong turn?

By that I mean, what if the most popularly prescribed medication for the treatment of depression, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), is based on a theory that actually has no solid connection to the illness?

That’s the conclusion of a team of researchers from University College London…

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A myth that took hold

You see, those anti-depressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, were developed based on a hypothesis that depression is caused by an imbalance of the brain neurotransmitter serotonin.

And it’s an idea that’s been on shaky ground since it was first presented in the 1990s.

“The popularity of the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of depression has coincided with a huge increase in the use of antidepressants,” says lead author Joanna Moncrieff, a psychiatrist from University College London.

Yet study after study has failed to prove the theory true and support the use of those drugs.

So the London researchers set out to perform a meta-analysis, going through all of the available research to settle the question for good.

After assessing the quality of each study, just 17 made the cut — and the results were not good (at least for Big Pharma whose goal is to make a profit from the drug)…

According to the researchers, the evidence that serotonin plays a role in depression is weak at best.

Sifting through the evidence

Overall, the team found that there was no difference in serotonin levels in people with and without depression. The same held true for massive studies that compared the genetics of serotonin and its supporting proteins.

The only positives for the serotonin theory of depression researchers found were:

• Some studies, which delved into the behavior of serotonin’s receptors and its transporter offered some support. However, findings in these were inconsistent.
• Studies showed lower levels of serotonin in people who benefit from anti-depressants. While this sounds good, it could be due to changes in the body’s biochemistry over time which results due to compensating for the drugs.

So what did the researchers conclude?

“It is always difficult to prove a negative,” says Moncrieff. “But I think we can safely say that after a vast amount of research conducted over several decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities, particularly by lower levels or reduced activity of serotonin.”

“Our view is that patients should not be told that depression is caused by low serotonin or by a chemical imbalance, and they should not be led to believe that antidepressants work by targeting these unproven abnormalities.”

You can almost hear those pharmaceutical executives gnashing their teeth, can’t you?

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Natural depression fighters

Over the years, we’ve learned that SSRIs are closer to only 33 percent effective. That’s about the same as a taking a placebo.

Of course, SSRIs have more side effects than a placebo, including insomnia, skin rashes, headaches, joint and muscle pain, stomach upset, nausea, diarrhea, internal bleeding, low sex drive, tics, muscle spasms, repetitive muscle movement and compulsive restlessness.

Worse, it turns out that people who take SSRIs have a 33 percent higher chance of premature death than people who don’t take the drugs. They also have a 14 percent higher risk for cardiovascular problems, like strokes and heart attacks.

But there are experts in the field who still insist that SSRIs can be helpful in the treatment of depression and can be life-saving.

So what should anyone who’s been relying on SSRIs do?

The first step would be to talk to the prescribing doctor. Deciding to come off of medication can be difficult and is best done under the guidance of a physician after a full understanding of what to expect.

Fortunately, there are also drug-free options to deal with depression including:

• Improving magnesium levels: In one of the first clinical trials to study the effect of magnesium on depressed people, researchers from the University of Vermont found that magnesium supplements could be an effective treatment for depression.
• Getting more exercise – Physical activity has been shown to be key in preventing and treating depression.
• Trying yoga – Yoga has been found in numerous studies to offer significant reduction in depression symptoms.
• Asking about magnetic therapy – A form of transcranial magnetic stimulation, called SAINT, was found to provide relief from depression.
• Battling back inflammation – People with severe clinical depression have been found to suffer from 30% more inflammation in the brain. Omega-3s are a great way to beat back the fires of this inflammation.
• Increasing nitric oxide – A link has been found between deficiency in an amino acid called arginine, which your body uses to produce nitric oxide, and depression.
• Improving your diet and lifestyle — Researchers have found that people who were eating lousy diets, not exercising and living erratic, sleep-deprived lifestyles were most likely to end up depressed. Fiber is the dietary fix for a better mood!

Sources:

Huge New Study Suggests Depression Isn’t a Serotonin Imbalance After All – Science Alert

By the numbers: Antidepressant use on the rise – American Psychological Association

The post Unraveling: The serotonin connection to depression appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Traditional antidepressants like SSRIs are not only sometimes ineffective but can actually be dangerous for your health. One study found people who take SSRIs are at a 33 percent higher chance of premature death than people who don’t take the drugs. SSRI users also have a 14 percent elevated risk of cardiovascular problems like heart attacks or strokes.

These downsides have prompted researchers to seek alternatives that are safer and more effective than traditional antidepressants. One of these alternatives is psilocybin, a psychedelic compound derived from so-called “magic mushrooms.”

Several studies have indicated it can significantly reduce depression symptoms and even put some patients into remission. In fact, 60 percent to 70 percent of people with clinical depression and anxiety have experienced long-term remission after just one treatment.

But how does it do its “magic?”

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Psilocybin: a rope in a deep well of depression

To find out, U.S. and U.K. researchers analyzed fMRI brain scans from participants in two psilocybin trials.

In the first, the patients had treatment-resistant depression and were aware they were taking psilocybin. The participants in the second group weren’t as severely depressed and did not know whether they were receiving psilocybin or escitalopram, an SSRI antidepressant. In addition, all participants underwent psychotherapy.

fMRI scans examined by the researchers done before and after treatment showed that psilocybin reduced connections within areas of the brain which were strongly associated with depression and fixed-patterned thinking.

On the brain’s “landscape” those areas are visible as deep wells that make it difficult for depressed people to switch between different thoughts and perspectives. That’s why their thinking gets “stuck” and can become obsessive.

Therapy with psilocybin evens out those deep wells, “flattening” the brain’s landscape and loosening the rigidity of depressed thinking. This allows the depressed to experience new thoughts, insights and perspectives — all of which contribute to healthier flexibility and diversity in their thought patterns. Psilocybin also increased connections to other regions of the brain that weren’t well-integrated before treatment.

In addition, participants who took psilocybin demonstrated better cognitive functioning and were less likely to avoid emotions.

The good news is the brain changes in the psilocybin group lasted until the study ended three weeks after their second dose — but more research is needed…

“We do know that some people relapse, and it may be that after a while their brains revert to the rigid patterns of activity we see in depression,” says Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD, who directs the Neuroscape Psychedelics Division at UCSF and is the senior author of the study.

However, the study does point to a potential mechanism that may explain how psilocybin helps to relieve depression and, potentially, other psychiatric conditions.

“For the first time we find that psilocybin works differently from conventional antidepressants — making the brain more flexible and fluid, and less entrenched in the negative thinking patterns associated with depression,” says Dr. David Nutt, head of the Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London. “This supports our initial predictions and confirms psilocybin could be a real alternative approach to depression treatments.”

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Legal ways to rewire your brain

While these findings are encouraging, the researchers warn that patients with depression should not attempt to self-medicate with psilocybin. The participants in the study received a regulated, laboratory-formulated dose of psilocybin and received extensive psychological support before, during and after dosing. And while recreational psilocybin use has been decriminalized in some U.S. cities and states, it’s still against federal law.

There are ways of “rewiring” your brain to help relieve depression that don’t involve antidepressants or psychedelics. For instance, doing things that improve your brain’s neuroplasticity can help get rid of the negative thought patterns associated with depression. Positive self-talk can help shush the negative thoughts.

Some activities that promote neuroplasticity include playing video games, learning a new language, engaging in creative pursuits like playing a musical instrument or making art, traveling and exercising regularly.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) also has been associated with better brain neuroplasticity. The theory behind CBT is that our thoughts and actions directly influence the way we feel. By using CBT to alter distorted thinking and behaviors that aren’t productive to our needs, we can change our emotions, which leads to a better, healthier life.

Sources:

Psilocybin Rewires the Brain for People with Depression — University of California San Francisco

Increased global integration in the brain after psilocybin therapy for depression — Nature Medicine

Anxiety and Depression: Household Pulse Survey — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Psilocybin Fast Facts — National Drug Intelligence Center

Where Magic Mushrooms Are Decriminalized in the U.S. As Detroit Set to Vote — Newsweek

6 Ways to Rewire Your Brain — Healthline

4 Steps to Change Your Brain, Change Your Mental Disorder — Discovery Mood & Anxiety Program

The post How a strange little mushroom fills the deep well of depression appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

It’s an issue that has been linked to full-body inflammation that can result in micro-clots developing throughout blood vessels, joint and muscle pain, diabetes, depression — and who knows what else, since the aftermath of the pandemic is still unfolding.

It’s also hard to know who will develop long COVID. There seem to be no hard and fast rules, including severity of infection.

“For example, a person may not get very sick from COVID-19, but six months later, long after the cough or fever is gone, they develop diabetes,’ says Candace Rebello, Ph.D., a research scientist studying the problem of Long COVID at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

And sadly, there’s currently no recognized treatment to prevent long COVID from happening.

But researchers have found that the secret to defeating diabetes and depression linked to COVID inflammation could be as simple as exercise…

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Dousing the fires of inflammation

The reason exercise appears to help is its ability to bring the elevated levels of inflammation experienced with COVID back under control — which is exactly what led the Pennington researchers to focus on it in the first place.

You see, inflammation has already been shown to play a role in the development of diabetes. It’s also been linked to depressive symptoms. In fact, previous studies show that clinical depression is associated with a 30 percent increase in inflammation in the brain.

Yet, exercise has been found to render pro-inflammatory molecules powerless to douse the fires that lead to progressively worse symptoms.

And that’s exactly what the researchers found it can do in the case of Long COVID.

“We know that Long COVID causes depression, and we know that it can increase blood glucose levels to the point where people develop diabetic ketoacidosis, a potentially life-threatening condition common among people with type 1 diabetes,” said Dr. Rebello. “Exercise can help. Exercise takes care of the inflammation that leads to elevated blood glucose and the development and progression of diabetes and clinical depression.”

These findings were echoed by said Pennington Biomedical Executive Director John Kirwan, Ph.D. who says, “We know that physical activity is a key component to a healthy life.  This research shows that exercise can be used to break the chain reaction of inflammation that leads to high blood sugar levels, and then to the development or progression of type 2 diabetes.”

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Start slow and work your way up

So if you’re living with the symptoms of Long COVID, including depression and diabetes, or you’ve had COVID and want to avoid problems down the road, staying active could be the answer you’ve been looking for.

And there’s more good news…

“You don’t have to run a mile or even walk a mile at a brisk pace,” Dr. Rebello said.  “Walking slowly is also exercising.  Ideally, you would do a 30-minute session of exercise. But if you can only do 15 minutes at a time, try to do two 15-minute sessions. If you can only walk 15 minutes once a day, do that. The important thing is to try. It doesn’t matter where you begin.  You can gradually build up to the recommended level of exercise.”

However, if you’re a woman dealing with long COVID, you may need extra help regaining your activity levels, according to the Mayo Clinic. If that’s the case reach out to your doctor for a possible referral for physical therapy.

Sources:

Exercise May Treat Long COVID-induced Diabetes, Depression — Pennington Biomedical Research Center

The post Why exercise is vital for Long COVID recovery appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

In its 2021 Stress in America survey, the American Psychological Association (APA) found roughly 1 in 3 American adults are so stressed about the pandemic that they struggle to make even the most basic daily decisions like what to wear and what to eat. More than a third also said it was more stressful to make major life decisions now than it was before the pandemic.

In the survey, about 2 in 3 adults agreed the uncertainty about what the next few months will bring is causing them stress, while about half said the pandemic makes planning for the future seem impossible.

The cruel irony in these results is that these elevated stress levels may actually leave us more vulnerable to the very thing we’re most anxious about…

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The link between stress and COVID-19 susceptibility

A recent study by investigators in the United Kingdom and New Zealand found people who experienced higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression at the start of the pandemic had a greater risk of getting COVID-19. And when they did contract SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, they experienced both a greater number and severity of symptoms.

Previous research has demonstrated higher levels of stress and reduced social support are linked with increased susceptibility to viral respiratory illnesses and more severe symptoms. Both of these factors have been present during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the recent observational study, nearly 1,100 adults completed surveys during April 2020, then reported whether they experienced SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 symptoms through December 2020.

“The significance of the work is in that it turns the debate regarding the mental health aspects of the pandemic on its head,” says study lead Kavita Vedhara, a professor at the University of Nottingham. “Our data show that increased stress, anxiety and depression are not only consequences of living with the pandemic but may also be factors that increase our risk of getting SARS-CoV-2 too.”

The researchers say further work is needed to determine whether and how public health policy should change to accommodate the study findings. But as far as we handle stress ourselves going forward, it looks like it’s time to make relieving it a priority…

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Eat your way to lower stress

So far, we haven’t been great about coping with pandemic-related stress. In the APA survey, about 59 percent of Americans said stress has led them to change some behaviors, including altering their eating habits and physical activity levels. And more than a third admitted they eat to manage their stress.

It’s no wonder many Americans have gained significant weight since the pandemic began. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show obesity rates of 35 percent or higher in 16 states, an increase of four states in the past year.

Luckily, there’s a way you can address pandemic stress and avoid the associated weight gain in one fell swoop — by adopting a Mediterranean diet.

Following this eating plan, which focuses heavily on plant-based foods and healthy fats, has been shown to help reduce the physiological effects of stress. So, not only does it promote healthy aging and weight, it may be the ultimate diet for stress management.

Of course, starting an entirely new way of eating can be overwhelming on its own. If you find the idea is adding to your stress, start small by eliminating one type of unhealthy food at a time. For instance, you can substitute fish or chicken for red meat, or a baked potato for French fries. And when snacking, skip the chips or cheese plate in favor of hummus and vegetables.

Sources:

Stress associated with an increased risk of getting Covid-19, study finds — University of Nottingham

Stress in America 2021: Pandemic impedes basic decision-making ability — American Psychological Association

Obesity Rates Rise During Pandemic, Fueled By Stress, Job Loss, Sedentary Lifestyle — NPR

The post Can stress increase your odds of getting COVID-19? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

There is clear-cut evidence that chronic stress can be fatal.

Even the low-level anxiety or sadness that we may brush off as just situational can have profound negative effects on our health and even lead to premature death.

On the other hand, research also proves that there are at least seven major ways that being a “glass half full” kind of person can save your life.

So how do you become the kind of person who sees the positive in situations, rather than the problems?

It all starts with how you talk to yourself.

The impact of ‘self-talk’

The reality is that we talk to ourselves all the time, and the messages we give ourselves have a profound impact on our health and well-being.

For example, one study showed that participants with negative attitudes towards aging actually had slower walking speed and poorer cognitive abilities — two years after the study — compared to older adults with more positive attitudes towards aging.

The best kind of self-talk is focused on the present moment, rather than the past or future.

According to Malgorzata Sobol-Kwapinska of the Department of Psychology at the University of Wroclaw in Poland, negative self-talk that focuses on the past has a strong link to depression.

She says that “attention on the present, combined with perceiving the current moment as valuable, reduces the frequency of mentally returning to the negative past or thinking ahead into the uncertain future.”

In other words, if you can stay focused on making the here-and-now a better place to be, you’ll be less likely to dwell on the past or worry about the future.

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The benefits of positive thinking

Research has shown that positive self-talk can provide many health benefits, including:

1. Increased life span
2. Lower rates of depression
3. Lower levels of distress
4. Greater resistance to the common cold
5. Better psychological and physical well-being
6. Better cardiovascular health and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease
7. Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

Having a positive outlook helps you cope with stress more effectively, which reduces the harmful effects of stress on the body.

And it’s also likely that “glass half full” people tend to live healthier lifestyles that include getting more physical activity, following a healthier diet and participating less in harmful activities like smoking.

4 kinds of self-talk that are bad for you

Have you ever caught yourself engaging in any of these types of negative self-talk?

• Filtering. You magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter out all of the positive ones. For example, you had a great day at work, completing all your assigned tasks. You received compliments for a job well done, but in the evening, you can only think about the things you didn’t get to.
• Personalizing. When something bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself. For example, when your friend has to cancel plans because of another commitment, you assume that it’s really because they didn’t want to spend time with you.
• Catastrophizing. You automatically anticipate the worst. The drive-through coffee shop gets your order wrong, so that means that the rest of your day will be a disaster.
• Polarizing. You see things only as either good or bad. There is no middle ground. You feel that you have to be perfect or you’re a total failure.

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5 ways to focus on positive thinking

I have one rule, and it works for me 99.9 percent of the time: don’t say anything to yourself that you wouldn’t say to a good friend. This automatically rules out being mean, sarcastic, or impatient with myself.

Getting into the habit of positive self-talk takes time, but you can learn to make the change.

Here are five things that will help:

Identify areas to change. Start small. Which area of your life do you usually have negative thoughts about?  Work? Relationships? Health? Start there.

Be open to humor. There’s nothing like a good laugh to defuse a negative situation. It’s okay to laugh at something difficult. Seeing humor in everyday problems will improve your health.

Follow a healthy lifestyle. Exercise and diet will help lift your mood, which will make managing stress and talking to yourself positively a whole lot easier.

Surround yourself with positive people. Keep people in your life who are supportive and who see the world in a positive light. Negative people may increase your stress level and make you doubt your ability to manage stress in healthy ways.

Oh, and here’s the ultimate diet for stress management, based on a long-term study.

Try these exercises and maybe all, or one in particular, will work best for you. You’re worth and owe it yourself.

Sources:

Positive thinking: Stop negative self-talk to reduce stress — Mayo Clinic

Keep Your Self-Talk Positive by Focusing on the Here and Now — Psychology Today

The post 7 benefits of positive self-talk (and how to shush the negative) appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

This is what’s known as chronic inflammation — and it’s been linked to a host of health problems, including heart disease, autoimmune diseases, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

There’s also evidence that chronic inflammation is linked with obesity and depression. This has prompted researchers to explore potential solutions that directly target inflammation in people with these diseases.

And a Japanese study indicates a long-used ancient anti-inflammatory spice could help with these modern-day problems…

Turmeric helps with mood as well as weight loss

While acute inflammation has been the subject of much research, chronic low-grade inflammation — considered to be related to aging, obesity and an unhealthy lifestyle — hasn’t been as clearly defined until recently.

The Japanese study involved 90 healthy but overweight subjects between 50 and 69 years old. Each was randomly assigned to take either two capsules containing a total of 970 milligrams of turmeric extract or a placebo daily for 12 weeks.

The researchers measured their weight and blood inflammatory markers every four weeks, and participants took two mental health-related questionnaires at four-week intervals during the study.

What did they find?

In addition to significantly lower body weight and body mass index (BMI), the group taking the turmeric extract had significantly lower blood levels of two inflammatory markers, including C-reactive protein, than the placebo group.

And another big plus… upon being surveyed, the participants taking turmeric also showed marked improvement in overall mental health and anger-hostility scores.

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Researchers conclude that not only do turmeric extracts appear to help ease chronic low-grade inflammation, they also seem to improve mental health and mood disturbance.

“Mental health problems and mood disturbances are known to be associated with not only systemic inflammation but also neuroinflammation,” the researchers note, adding that brain macrophages, or microglial cells, play a central role in neuroinflammation by releasing inflammatory cytokines that lead to the production of IDO. This enzyme causes the degradation of the amino acid tryptophan used in the production of melatonin and serotonin.

“In the present study, dietary supplementation with Curcuma longa extract (CLE) improved mental health and negative mood state, suggesting that these improvements could be related in part to inhibition of microglial activation in the central nervous system,” the researchers say. “Future studies need to investigate the effect of CLE on human microglial activation.”

Turmeric’s many health benefits

Turmeric has long been used in traditional Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine to treat skin problems, digestive disorders, upper respiratory tract issues and joint disorders.

In recent years, scientists have been exploring the health benefits of turmeric’s active ingredient, curcumin. And many of their studies have clearly shown turmeric’s anti-inflammatory capabilities in areas like brain health, enlarged prostate, liver health and muscle soreness related to exercise.

Clearly, turmeric is something you should be consuming if you want to tame chronic inflammation. But be careful to do it properly — as a fat-soluble compound, curcumin is difficult for the body to absorb and use.

If you take a curcumin supplement, make sure it also contains piperine, a compound present in black pepper, to increase its bioavailability. And try taking the supplement with a healthy fat like avocado or olive or coconut oil, which further helps your body absorb the curcumin.

Sources:

1. Curcuma longa extract improves serum inflammatory markers and mental health in healthy participants who are overweight: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial — Nutrition Journal

2. IDO: more than an enzyme — Nature Immunology

The post The ancient spice that tackles a modern-day plague: Chronic inflammation appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Normally, I’d wonder what was wrong with me. Why am I so out of focus? How hard could this topic be?

Today, though, I went upstairs and took an hour-long nap.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I’ve decided to show myself a little compassion. I’ve learned from current research that by doing so, I’ve not only made it possible to complete my work with a clear mind, but I’ve engaged in a self-care habit that science says could make my heart healthier…

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How much can self-care practices really do?

If you’ve cracked open a magazine or gotten online, you’ve surely seen lots of terms you might chalk up to New Age fads or practices, like “self-care” and “mindfulness.”

You may have even wondered what kind of benefits they might offer you and if it’s worth looking into.

Mindfulness practice is a tool that counselors and clinical psychologists often suggest to clients who are dealing with chronic stress. These techniques are effective for managing anxiety, irritability, and even mild depression — things most of us experience from time to time.

But beyond learning to manage stressors or dealing with difficult situations — one component of mindfulness known as self-compassion has been shown to have the potential to lower the risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

Women who practice self-compassion lower their risk for heart disease

Dr. Rebecca Thurston is a professor of psychiatry, clinical and translational science, epidemiology, and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Various studies show that stressors, especially for women, have been amplified by the ongoing pandemic. They are often the ones to care for children and older relatives, and women compose much of the nursing workforce in the United States.

“A lot of research has been focused on studying how stress and other negative factors may impact cardiovascular health, but the impact of positive psychological factors, such as self-compassion, is far less known,” said Rebecca Thurston, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, clinical and translational science, epidemiology, and psychology at Pitt.

To get some answers, Dr. Thurston and her colleagues enrolled almost 200 women between the ages of 45 and 67 in their study.

The women completed a short questionnaire asking them to rate how often they experience feelings of inadequacy, whether they often feel disappointed by their self-perceived flaws or if they grant themselves caring and tenderness during difficult life moments.

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They also underwent a diagnostic ultrasound of their carotid arteries (the carotid artery is the major blood vessel in the neck that carries blood from the heart to the brain).

Even after controlling for factors like physical activity and smoking, the researchers found that self-compassion was associated with lower risk of heart disease — irrespective of other traditional risk factors such as high blood pressure, insulin resistance and cholesterol levels.

Women who scored higher on the self-compassion scale had thinner carotid artery walls and less plaque buildup, two indicators that are linked to lower risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack and stroke, even years later.

How do I practice self-compassion?

According to Dr. Kristin Neff, who defined and began studying self-compassion two decades ago, it is composed of three core elements:

• Self-kindness – involves being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, much like we would for a good friend
• Common humanity – recognizing that suffering or feeling inadequate are things everyone goes through
• Mindfulness – the ability and willingness to observe our negative thoughts and emotions openly and without judgment

So, what does practicing self-compassion look like, in real life?

• Giving yourself what you need in any given moment to alleviate stress in a healthy way
• Finding healthy ways to cope with physical or emotional pain
• Reaching out to others for help

That sounds great, you may be thinking, but how do I DO all that?

Here are a few things you’ll want to consider trying. Remember, you’re not only improving your state of mind, but improving your heart health, too.

Relieve stress and even depression with yoga

Start a meditation practice

Enjoy a soak in the tub regularly

Experience the benefits of leisure time

Enjoy the natural stress relief of nature

Sources:

Women who practice self-compassion are at lower risk of cardiovascular disease — Science Daily

Self-compassion and subclinical cardiovascular disease among midlife women. — Health Psychology

Definition of self-compassion  — self-compassion.org

The Transformative Effects of Mindful Self-Compassion — mindful.org

The post When women practice self-compassion, their hearts benefit appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

That’s because, typically, the older you get, the smaller your brain volume gets. And if this shrinkage gets too out of hand, you end up with a serious cognitive impairment like dementia.

So your challenge (if you choose to accept it) is to keep your brain big. And if you succeed, you’ll be rewarded with the ability to stay independent, active and dementia-free as you age. But keeping your brain big sounds like an overwhelming task. So where do you start?

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Exercise has big brain benefits, literally

Well, the first step to a bigger brain is exercise. It’s probably the most scientifically-backed way to maintain brain volume and boost cognitive health.

In the past, researchers said any type of exercise will do the trick. And it’s true that any exercise you do helps. But it turns out, there is one type that’s more beneficial for your brain than others—aerobic exercise.

In fact, researchers from the Wake Forest School of Medicine found that aerobic exercise does more than just prevent brain shrinkage and cognitive decline — it actually reverses it…

People with mild cognitive impairment (the precursor to full-blown dementia) were able to increase their brain volume and improve their cognitive function in just six months by doing aerobic exercise a few times a week.

“Even over a short period of time, we saw aerobic exercise lead to a remarkable change in the brain,” said the study’s lead investigator, Laura D. Baker, Ph.D.

The study included 35 participants with an average age of 67. Half of the participants did aerobic exercise four times per week for six months, while the other half did stretching exercises. Both groups had better brain volume at the end of the study, but people doing aerobic exercise ultimately came out on top…

“Compared to the stretching group, the aerobic activity group had greater preservation of total brain volume, increased local gray matter volume and increased directional stretch of brain tissue,” said Jeongchul Kim, Ph.D., co-investigator on the study.

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Get started

Before you break out your old aerobics gear, study participants didn’t attend special aerobics classes or hire a personal trainer. They did simple exercises that anyone can start doing right now.

They exercised on a treadmill, a stationary bike or an elliptical machine. And if you don’t have access to any fancy equipment, running, biking or hiking would work just as well. You could also try more creative aerobic activities like:

• Dancing
• Rowing
• Swimming
• Rock climbing
• Skiing
• Karate
• Racquetball
• Power yoga
• Tennis
• Basketball
• Snowshoeing
• Ice skating

Really, the options for good aerobic exercise are endless. Even an hour of vigorous cleaning could do the trick. And, as an added bonus, a recent study published in the British Journal of Medicine found that aerobic activities such as swimming, racquet sports and aerobics/dance/gymnastics classes reduce your risk of dying from any cause (including heart disease and stroke) by up to 47 percent.

What if you are unable to exercise? Omega-3s have been shown to guard against the loss of brain volume. You can eat two servings of fatty fish per week or supplement with fish or krill oil. But dosage matters. Be sure to get enough to do your brain good.

Sources:

1. “The Changing Brain in Healthy Aging.” National Institute on Aging. https://www.nia.nih.gov. Retrieved November 30, 2016.

2. “Aerobic exercise preserves brain volume and improves cognitive function.” Radiological Society of North America. ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com. Retrieved November 30, 2016.

3. Pekka Oja, et al. “Associations of specific types of sports and exercise with all-cause and cardiovascular-disease mortality: a cohort study of 80 306 British adults, British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2016.

The post Reversing age-related brain shrinkage is easier than you think appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Research confirms that people who suffer from MDD have higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, along with higher rates of death from these conditions and shorter lifespan — but the medical community hasn’t been able to identify why, until now.

Recent research is showing that depression affects our physiology in ways never before imagined…

Depression changes our DNA

“This is shifting the way we understand depression, from a purely mental or psychiatric disease, limited to processes in the brain, to a whole-body disease,” said Katerina Protsenko, a medical student at UC San Francisco.

Protsenko is the lead author of a study that looked at changes in the DNA of people with MDD.

Cells from people with MDD were found to have higher than expected rates of methylation at specific sites on their DNA, compared to cells of healthy people without MDD.

Methylation is a process by which DNA is chemically modified at certain sites. This results in changes in how certain genes affecting the aging process are expressed.

Depression ages you more quickly

To measure the effects of MDD on a person’s lifespan, Protsenko and her team analyzed blood samples from individuals with MDD using the ‘GrimAge’ clock — a mathematical algorithm designed to predict an individual’s remaining lifespan based on cellular methylation patterns.

Individuals with MDD showed a significantly higher GrimAge score, suggesting increased mortality risk, compared to healthy individuals of the same chronological age — an average of approximately two years on the GrimAge clock.

In other words, it appears that depression can slice as much as two years off your life.

“One of the things that’s remarkable about depression is that sufferers have unexpectedly higher rates of age-related physical illnesses and early mortality, even after accounting for things like suicide and lifestyle habits,” said Owen Wolkowitz, MD, a senior author of the study, professor of psychiatry and a member of UCSF’s Weill Institute for Neurosciences.

“That’s always been a mystery,” he says. It was this mystery that prompted the team to look more deeply for signs of aging, right down to the cellular level.

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What to do NOW if you’re feeling depressed

The researchers are hoping to determine if pharmacological treatments or therapy could help normalize the cellular aging process before it advances.

“As we continue our studies, we hope to find out whether addressing the MDD with anti-depressants or other treatments alters the methylation patterns, which would give us some indication that these patterns are dynamic and can be changed,” said Synthia Mellon, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Ob/Gyn & Reproductive Sciences at UCSF and co-senior author of the study.

If you have been diagnosed with MDD, it’s especially important to see your physician regularly to treat the condition and to also stay on top of your physical health.

If you haven’t been diagnosed but have experienced five or more of the following symptoms in the past two weeks, see a doctor. They can help you determine if you’re experiencing clinical depression and can offer ways to help.

• You feel sad or irritable most of the day, nearly every day.
• You’re less interested in most activities you once enjoyed.
• You suddenly lose or gain weight or have a change in appetite.
• You have trouble falling asleep or want to sleep more than usual.
• You experience feelings of restlessness.
• You feel unusually tired and have a lack of energy.
• You feel worthless or guilty, often about things that wouldn’t normally make you feel that way.
• You have difficulty concentrating, thinking, or making decisions.
• You think about harming yourself or suicide.

Sources:

Accelerated Cellular Aging Associated With Mortality Seen in Depressed Individuals —Neuroscience News

Depression Is an Equal Opportunity Killer — Healthline

Depression and mortality in a longitudinal study: 1952–2011  — Canadian Medical Association Journal

The post Depression’s DNA links to accelerated aging appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And while there are new therapies available that doctors can prescribe that could help if you suffer from migraines, if you can stand the side effects of these drugs, your wallet might not.

So are you simply stuck, hiding under the covers waiting out the hours every time you have a migraine attack?

A new study says you don’t have to be…

In fact, the research performed at a headache clinic at the University of Washington has found that all it takes to overcome frequent migraines could be exercise.

Exercise defeats three migraine triggers

Okay, I get it (I live with migraines myself).

When you have a migraine you don’t even want to move, much less exercise. But stick with me…

What the study found was that if you get enough regular exercise, you can calm the triggers that set off your migraines in the first place.

You see, as anyone who suffers from these debilitating headaches knows, certain factors can make it more likely you’re going to get hit with a migraine. Common triggers include:

• Stress or anxiety
• Depression
• Sleep problems
• Hormones
• Weather changes
• Dietary factors (like caffeine and alcohol)

And that new study we were talking about, found that exercise could be the key to blocking those top three — as long as you get enough!

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The magic number for relief

The study delved into the data for 4,647 people. The researchers looked at their migraine characteristics, sleep, depression, stress, and anxiety levels, as well as just how much moderate to vigorous exercise they participated in each week.

This exercise could include anything from heading out for a jog and playing sports to cleaning the house. (Doesn’t sound quite so bad, right? After all, even vacuuming can be called exercise. And you have to do that anyway!)

And here’s what they found…

Related: How I’m beating the migraine trigger I didn’t know I had

The magic number to use exercise to combat migraine triggers and the headaches themselves is 150 minutes (or 2.5 hours) per week.

Overall, the researchers found that people who got less than that amount of exercise had higher levels of depression, anxiety, and sleep problems.

In fact, a whopping 40 percent of people who skipped exercise reported experiencing anxiety compared to just 28 percent in the exercise group (a 12 percent increase).

For sleep problems, the rate was 77 percent in the sedentary group versus 61 percent for those who hit the 2.5 hours a week exercise level.

And when it comes to depression, hold on to your hat…

Compared to the 47 percent of non-exercisers who lived with the blues, only 25 percent of the high exercise group experienced depression. That’s a 22 percent reduced risk of the condition due to exercise alone!

So how did reducing these triggers stack up in the headache world?

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More exercise, less migraine

The researchers discovered that those migraine sufferers in the group that didn’t exercise saw no change.  Skipping out on exercise proved to be a recipe for living with more headaches.

They found that:

• Among the people who didn’t exercise, just five percent had low headache frequency (zero to four headache days per month), compared to 10 percent in the high exercise group.
•  Nearly half (48 percent) of the non-exercisers had high headache frequency (greater than 25 headache days per month), versus just 28 percent in those committed to exercising.

Put simply, getting 150 minutes of exercise a week can mean less depression, anxiety and sleep problems to trigger your migraines and fewer days lost to headaches on a monthly basis. So get out and get moving. It could be the key to combatting your migraines, no copay required.

Sources:

Migraine triggers can be calmed by just 2.5 hours of exercise a week — StudyFinds

Top 10 Migraine Triggers and How to Deal with Them — American Migraine Foundation

Is EXERCISE the key to preventing migraines? Working out for just 2.5 hours a WEEK can slash your risk of painful headaches, study reveals — DailyMail.com

The post The daily habit that eases migraine, depression, anxiety and sleep loss appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Choral singing requires breathing in and expelling air forcefully, over and over again, in close quarters. It’s no wonder that group singing has been identified as one of the more dangerous behaviors one can engage in during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ironically, the one thing that could bring us hope and comfort during this time could also kill us.

But we’re also missing out on some very real, research-based health benefits that will be ours once again, once the pandemic is behind us and we can resume our regular meetings.

And while the age of our chorus members ranges from their 20s to their 80s, research is telling us that these benefits are especially available to our older members.

Group singing is good for emotional health

Choir singing has been associated with better mood and quality of life in healthy older adults.

In Great Britain, joining a choir could soon be part of a “prescription” given to people with mental health disorders, as more and more doctors become trained in “social prescribing.”

“We’ve been fostering a culture that’s popping pills and Prozac, when what we should be doing is more prevention and perspiration,” British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said recently. “Social prescribing can help us combat over-medicalizing people.”

Studies show that, when people sing in a group, their heart rates tend to beat in sync, producing a calming effect.

Group singing alleviates Parkinson’s symptoms

At the Society for Neuroscience’s 2018 conference, Elizabeth Stegemoller, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University, presented findings about group singing and Parkinson’s disease.

Her study revealed that, following a one-hour weekly group singing session, participants’ blood pressure, cortisol levels and heart rate were reduced, and they showed improvements in motor abilities, such as gait, that don’t readily respond to medications.

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Cognitive skills are strengthened when we sing together

Most recently, Finnish researchers have found evidence of the cognitive benefits that choral singing offers to older adults. 

Singing in a chorus strengthens cognitive flexibility and improves executive functioning (the many tasks our brains perform that are necessary to think, act, and solve problems) as much as playing an instrument does.

According to doctoral student Emmi Pentikäinen, “choir singing provides a good opportunity to support the wellbeing of the elderly, as it requires flexible executive function and the regulation of attention.”

To sing requires one to process sensory stimuli (the voices of other singers). It involves motor function (voice production and control). It involves learning and memorizing melodies and lyrics.

In other words, singing presents multiple cognitive challenges that can strengthen an older person’s cognitive abilities.

Join a chorus!

I joined my community chorus at age 59. Until then, I’d never sung in front of anyone before. When I auditioned for my voice part, I couldn’t even look at the director.

Today, I’m part of a group of largely over-60’s who can’t wait until we can get back to blending our voices together. We miss the camaraderie. And I’m willing to bet that I’m cognitively sharper than I would have been without it.

My advice: if you’ve ever had the urge to sing in a group, find a local chorus and join. There are hundreds of community choruses in towns and cities throughout the United States, and around the world.

Just do it!

Sources:

Choir singing can improve cognitive functioning among the elderly Science Daily

Beneficial effects of choir singing on cognition and well-being of older adults: Evidence from a cross-sectional study PLoS One

British Doctors May Soon Prescribe Art, Music, Dance, Singing Lessons Smithsonian Magazine

The post 3 ways group singing boosts our health appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

2020 has been a very unpredictable year, and the levels of anxiety and depression have skyrocketed.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by it all. Even the thought of how to shake it seems like an insurmountable task.

But what if all it took was just one thing… one step… one new habit to boost dreariness and feel like your old self again?

Low fitness levels linked to higher depression and anxiety

When you’re suffering from depression or anxiety, exercise may seem like the last thing you want to do. But several studies on anxiety and depression conclude a close connection with lack of physical activity.

In fact, a recent and very large study published in BMC Medicine found that people with low aerobic and muscular fitness are twice as likely to experience depression. And not only that — but low fitness levels also predicted a 60 percent greater chance of anxiety, over a seven-year follow-up period.

The findings suggest engaging in moving your body may be the single best nonmedical solution for preventing and treating depression and anxiety. The combination of cardio exercise and strength training is more beneficial and has extensive public health benefits. 

And guess what? You may not have to wait very long to experience the positive mood-boosting benefits…

According to lead author, Ph.D. student Aaron Kandola (University College London Psychiatry), “Other studies have found that just a few weeks of regular intensive exercise can make substantial improvements to aerobic and muscular fitness, so we are hopeful that it may not take much time to make a big difference to your risk of mental illness.”

So, what are you waiting for?

Fitness in the time of COVID

The global shutdown has closed gyms; however, you still have lots of choices…

Getting out into the fresh air is still an option. Researchers have stated people who exercise outdoors, including those who engage in team sports or individual activities, get more benefits than people who exercise indoors.  Teams sports may be off the table right now, but going for a walk or run every day is a great option

Turn your den into a temporary workout space. The internet is a great source of aerobic fitness videos that can make working out fun if jogging in place bores you to tears.

No weights? You can improvise the use of dumbbells by lifting everyday objects found in your home, such as a jug of milk, a bottle of laundry detergent or those large cans of beans.

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Benefits of Exercise 

• Engaging in exercises takes your mind off worries so you can get away from the cycle of negative thoughts and the very thing you are anxious about
• Releases feel-good endorphins and other natural brain chemicals, which increase the availability of critical anti-anxiety neurochemicals.
• Moving your body decreases muscle tension.
• Regular exercise boosts resilience against reoccurring destructive emotions.
• Engaging in regular exercise boosts your self-confidence and help you feel better about your appearance.
• Participating in an activity to help manage your depression or anxiety is a healthy coping strategy.
• To maximize the benefits, choose an enjoyable activity, so you will want to do it repeatedly.
• Work out with a positive and supportive friend or a local group to repeat the added benefits of social support. Just remember to keep your distance.
• Whenever possible, exercise in nature or green spaces, such as a park, to further lower stress and anxiety levels.
• Give yourself credit for taking a step in the right direction no matter how small and prepare for setbacks. If you skip exercise one day, it doesn’t mean you are a failure, try the next day again and stick with it. 

Before you start a new exercise program, it’s essential to talk to your doctor to discuss the activities, how much, and what intensity is appropriate for you. Your doctor will review your health conditions and may have some helpful advice about getting started and staying motivated. 

Sources:

Effects of exercise on anxiety, depression, and mood — Europe PMC

 Low fitness linked to higher depression and anxiety risk — Eurekalert!

Anxiety, depression can be eased with 150 minutes of exercise a week — Healthline   

4 Psychological Benefits of walking through forest areas   — National Library of Medicine

The post Reduce depression and anxiety with exercise appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

And the rate was even higher in younger adults, with 40 percent under the age of 65 reporting anxiety or depression in the August survey.

There are effective drugs available to treat depression, but these drugs often have side effects, and many patients don’t stick with the treatment. An estimated 30 percent to 50 percent of patients with depression do not respond fully to existing medications. And as many as 10 percent to 30 percent of patients are considered treatment-resistant, meaning their response to the drugs is only slightly better than it would be to a placebo.

All this points to the need for newer, more effective depression therapies. And researchers are testing a possible solution derived from a humble mushroom with a colorful reputation…

The magic of psilocybin

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have found a connection between psilocybin, a psychedelic compound found in so-called “magic mushrooms,” and reduced symptoms of depression. In a small study, adults with major depression who received two doses of psilocybin along with supportive psychotherapy experienced rapid and large reductions in depressive symptoms.

The published findings cover a four-week follow-up in 24 participants, all of whom were given two five-hour psilocybin sessions under the direction of the researchers. Most participants showed improvement, and half of the study participants achieved remission through the four-week follow-up.

Most of the participants had experienced depressive symptoms for two years before entering the study, and all had to taper off any antidepressants before the study began with the help of their personal physician so that they could be safely exposed to the psilocybin treatment.

Over a few hours after ingestion, psilocybin produces visual and auditory hallucinations and significant changes in consciousness. Researchers at Johns Hopkins have been studying the psychedelic since 2016, when a study first found that treatment with psilocybin under psychologically supported conditions significantly lowered existential anxiety and depression in people who had received a life-threatening cancer diagnosis.

The results of the most recent trial suggest psilocybin may be effective in a much wider patient population than previously thought.

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In the most recent trial, 67 percent of participants showed a more than 50 percent reduction in depression symptoms at the one-week follow-up and 71 percent at the four-week follow-up. Overall, four weeks post-treatment, 54 percent of participants were considered in remission, meaning they no longer qualified as depressed.

Dr. Alan Davis, a study co-lead and adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says the magnitude of effect was roughly four times larger than what has been demonstrated by traditional antidepressants currently on the market.

“Because most other depression treatments take weeks or months to work and may have undesirable effects, this could be a game-changer if these findings hold up in future ‘gold-standard’ placebo-controlled clinical trials,” Dr. Davis says.

Study co-author Dr. Roland Griffiths, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, was surprised by the effectiveness of psilocybin, given the multiple types of major depressive disorders and variation in how people respond to treatment. He notes that the major depression treated in the new study may have been different from the more reactive form of depression in the 2016 trial patients.

Dr. Griffiths says public health officials encouraged his team to explore psilocybin’s effects in the wider population of those with major depressive disorder because of the much larger potential public health impact.

The researchers plan to follow the participants for a year after the study to see how long the antidepressant effects of the psilocybin treatment last. They will report their findings in a later publication.

It’s not a good idea to go out and start tripping on magic mushrooms to treat your own depression or anxiety. But there are some other steps you can take to alleviate the burden the pandemic is placing on your mental health…

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Natural modes of depression relief

We’ve reported in previous issues about how effective yoga is for relieving depression and anxiety. Even a few minutes a day of yoga has shown the ability to calm the body and quiet the mind.

Going to a yoga studio may not be an option right now, but you can get started right at home. There are tons of yoga videos for all levels available on YouTube, or you can download a yoga app on your smartphone. Personally, I use Daily Yoga, which has a great variety of skill levels and practice lengths. Down Dog is another often-recommended app.

Meditation is another good way to elevate your consciousness in a drug-free way. But be careful — some studies have shown that not everyone with depression responds positively to meditation. Make sure to discuss it with your doctor first and report any negative reactions you might have to your doctor as well.

If you do decide to try meditation and feel like you need some guidance, you can find it on YouTube or through a smartphone app like Headspace or Calm. Be gentle with yourself — meditation can feel difficult at first, but it gets easier with time and practice.

Nutritional supplements have also been shown to improve depression symptoms naturally. In a 2015 research study printed in Mental Illness Journal, a combination of omega-3 fatty acids and phosphatidylserine (PS), a nutrient known for its positive effects on cognition, improved mood and lowered cortisol levels (stress hormone) in a group of participates aged 65 and up.

Sources:

Psychedelic Treatment with Psilocybin Relieves Major Depression, Study Shows — Johns Hopkins Medicine

Effects of Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy on Major Depressive Disorder — JAMA Psychiatry

One in Four Older Adults Report Anxiety or Depression Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic — Kaiser Family Foundation

Mindfulness and meditation can worsen depression and anxiety — New Scientist

The post A mushroom-derived compound that may treat depression like magic appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Individuals diagnosed with OCD are characterized by having recurring, uncontrollable thoughts and ideas which make them feel driven to engage in repetitive behaviors.

Keep in mind that many people have focused thoughts or repetitive behaviors. But a desire for structure or routine shouldn’t be misconstrued as OCD.

For example, it’s not concerning to have a specific morning ritual to make your bed or clean your desk before you start your day. But the symptoms associated with OCD can be severe, persistent and interfere with a person’s daily life activities

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Symptoms of OCD

OCD is a common disorder affecting 1 in 40 adults in the United States and often begins in childhood, adolescence or early adulthood; average symptoms appear at age 19.

People with OCD have different levels of severity and may have obsessions, compulsions or both. They most often present as time-consuming rituals or persistent thoughts that are distressing and cannot be ignored or suppressed by logic.

In general people with OCD:

• have difficulty controlling obsessive thoughts and/or behaviors.
• feel anxiety when something isn’t done a certain way.
• spend more than one hour a day on obsessive thoughts and/or behaviors.
• experience problems with daily life activities due to obsessive thoughts and/or behaviors.
• don’t receive pleasure when performing the behaviors or rituals, however, may experience brief relief from the anxiety surrounding the ritual.

How is OCD treated?

OCD is most often treated with a combination of psychotherapy and medication.

The two main types of psychological therapy are cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. More than two-thirds of people with OCD who complete these therapies see a significant decrease in the severity and frequency of their symptoms. But the downside is that it is expensive and requires commitment.

Most people with OCD also try medication. The most commonly used drugs to treat the condition belong to a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). But these are not without their dangers.

For example, a study from researchers at the University of North Texas shows that people who take SSRIs are 40 percent more likely to experience brain or gastrointestinal bleeding than people who don’t. And because of this risk, they should be cautious when combining their SSRIs with over-the-counter painkillers, which raise the risk of bleeding even more.

Additionally, researchers from McMaster University, Toronto University, and several other institutions reviewed available studies on SSRIs and found that people who take SSRIs have a 33 percent higher chance of premature death and a 14 percent higher chance of cardiovascular problems, like strokes and heart attacks.

When SSRIs block your brain from reabsorbing serotonin, they are also inadvertently blocking the rest of your body from absorbing serotonin too.

In fact, your heart, kidneys, lungs and liver need serotonin. They typically absorb it from your bloodstream. But SSRIs block these organs from absorbing serotonin, and that may affect the way the organs normally function.

However, for many people, SSRIs work, and it’s never a good idea to stop taking your medication unless discussed with your doctor.

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Cannabis holds hope for OCD

Cannabis may hold potential for providing a break from the chronic cycle of obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors those struggling with disorder deal with daily.

In 2019, a promising clinical review in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research shows that cannabinoids influence OCD by reducing symptoms such as anxiety, fear and certain repetitive behaviors.

And in a recent study conducted at Washington State University using an app, people with OCD reported that the severity of their symptoms was reduced by half within four hours of smoking cannabis. The participants also reported that unwanted thoughts or compulsions were reduced by 60 percent and anxiety by 52 percent.

When participants used higher doses and cannabis with higher concentrations of CBD, or cannabidiol, it resulted in larger reductions in compulsions. Overall, the results indicate that cannabis may have some short-term benefits, but researchers call for more research to determine whether these positive effects can remain in place for longer periods. The researchers also note there were some limitations with the study, including the lack of placebo control.

Editor’s note: If cannabis isn’t an option for you, don’t forget about CBD oil. It may even work better for you because of something known as the entourage effect… dozens of studies show it is now the most effective way to get the most out of a CBD supplement. If full-spectrum, doctor-approved, highly bioavailable CBD oil is for you, click here!

Sources:

Understand the facts Obsessive – Compulsive Disorder — ADAA

OCD statistics 2020 — Singlecare.com

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder — NIMH

Treatments for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder — verywellmind.com

Cannabis reduces OCD symptoms by half in the short-term — Science Daily

The Endocannabinoid System:  A New Treatment Target for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? — Cannabis Cannabinoid Research

The post Is cannabis a safer, effective answer to OCD? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a structured talk therapy that helps patients identify negative thinking so they can respond better to challenges, is the primary recommended treatment for anxiety disorder. Medications such as antidepressants and benzodiazepines are sometimes used to treat it as well.

But there are side effects, including dependency, associated with most anxiety drugs. And while CBT is very effective, it can be tough to access for many because of long wait lists and a lack of trained therapists.

Because of these challenges, researchers are looking into other ways of treating anxiety. They have found promise in one time-honored practice…

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The soothing effects of yoga

A new study led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine demonstrated yoga was much more effective for treating the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder than standard education on stress management, although neither was as effective as CBT.

The study divided 226 men and women with generalized anxiety disorder into three groups: CBT; Kundalini yoga; and stress management education, which was the control group. After three months, 54 percent of those who practiced yoga met response criteria for meaningful symptom improvement, compared with 33 percent in the stress education group. And 71 percent of those treated with CBT met the symptom improvement criteria.

The effectiveness of yoga on anxiety did decline after six months of follow-up, with the yoga response no longer significantly better than stress education. The CBT response remained much better, suggesting it produces more sustained anxiety-reducing effects.

Each of the treatments was given to groups of three to six participants in weekly two-hour sessions over 12 weeks. Participants were assigned 20 minutes of daily homework. Kundalini yoga, the type of practice used in the study, included physical postures, breathing techniques, relaxation exercises, yoga theory and meditation and mindfulness practice.

“This study suggests that at least short-term there is significant value for people with generalized anxiety disorder to give yoga a try to see if it works for them,” says lead study author Dr. Naomi Simon, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health. “Yoga is well-tolerated, easily accessible and has a number of health benefits.”

Grabbing your mat and heading to your nearest yoga class may not be an option in these socially distanced times. But that doesn’t mean you can’t conduct your own antianxiety yoga practice. Try these simple asanas (poses) at home to relieve your anxiety symptoms…

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Simple yoga poses to relieve anxiety

Child’s pose

Most people use child’s pose to relax and regroup between more challenging asanas. Child’s pose helps to release tension in the back, neck and shoulders, areas that can hold a lot of stress. It also gives a sense of calm and stability and promotes relaxation by encouraging steady, conscious breathing. This breathing pattern is especially helpful for anxiety sufferers because it calms the sympathetic nervous system, which initiates the fight-or-flight response, and stimulated the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls the rest-and-relax response.

To do child’s pose, start on your hands and knees. Kneel with your big toes touching and rest your hips on your heels, then bend forward, stretching your arms out and resting your head on the mat in front of you. Be careful with this pose if you have any hip or knee injuries, and only bend as far forward as feels comfortable. Remain in this pose for as long as you need to.

Tree pose

Tree pose can be a great way to distract from anxiety triggers because it demands concentration, focus and awareness on your physical self. It also helps promote balance — literally and figuratively. The pose helps you feel strong, steady and more in control of your emotions.

To do tree pose, stand tall with your feet as wide apart as your hips and shift your weight to your right leg. Bend your left knee and place the sole of your left foot either on your right inner thigh or inner calf just below the knee, whichever feels most comfortable. Point the toes of your left foot toward the floor and make sure your pelvis is centered over your right foot. Press the sole of your left foot into your right thigh or calf while resisting with your right thigh or calf. Press the palms of your hands together with your thumbs at your heart center, then gaze either forward or at the ceiling. Hold for 2 to 3 breaths, then repeat on the other side.

Legs up the wall pose

A common pose in restorative yoga classes, legs up the wall helps you regain a sense of calm after a stressful, anxious day. It is great for relieving lower back pain as well. Twenty minutes in this pose can have the same beneficial effect on the nervous system as taking a nap.

Legs up the wall can be performed against any wall, provided there’s enough room to move around. Sit with your right or left side resting as close to the wall as possible. In one steady movement, swing your legs up onto the wall and lay your shoulders and head on your mat. Shift forward slowly until your buttocks and hamstrings touch the wall. You can place a pillow or blanket under your lumbar spine to ease the pressure on your lower back.

Close your eyes and relax in this pose for 10 minutes or longer if needed. When you’re ready to come out of the pose, swing your legs to the left or right side, rolling on your side with them.

Sources:

Yoga Shown to Improve Anxiety, Study Finds — NYU Langone Health

5 Yoga Poses To Help Alleviate Anxiety — mindbodygreen

17 Best Yoga Poses for Anxiety (Depression and Stress) — The Good Body

The post Calming the anxious mind through conscious movement appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But it turns out the immune system does a lot more than protect against microbes and infection. In fact, recent research has connected certain cells in the immune system with protecting our mental health…

Certain immune cells could prevent depression

A study comparing immune system cells in the spinal fluid of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and healthy people has indicated that a type of immune cell called gamma interferon could play a role in preventing depression in healthy people.

Using new technology that allows a detailed examination of individual cells, researchers discovered an autoimmune response like one linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as MS in the spinal fluid of healthy subjects. They found that while the characteristics of T cells in the spinal fluid of healthy people share similarities with those of MS patients, they aren’t able to reproduce and cause the damaging inflammatory response seen in autoimmune diseases such as MS.

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Previous research in mice has shown that blocking gamma interferons and the T cells they help produce, can cause symptoms like those of depression. Yale professor and senior study author Dr. David Hafler says depression is also a common side effect in MS patients treated with a different type of interferon.

“These T cells serve another purpose, and we speculate that they may help preserve our mental health,” he said.

Past studies have linked depression with an increase of proinflammatory cytokines in the body.

Dr. Hafler and his Yale colleagues plan to further explore how immune system responses in the central nervous system could affect psychiatric disorders such as depression.

Keeping your immune system strong can go a long way toward supporting your mental health as well as your physical health. There are a number of natural ways to do this…

A healthy gut equals a healthy immune system

One of the best ways to keep your immune system humming is to protect your gut health. Science continues to uncover the multiple ways in which the gut influences the health of the entire body, and especially the brain via something called the gut/brain axis. So, it’s become clear that the gut is central to your immune system function — not to mention your brain and your mood.

Two things that are absolutely essential to good gut health are probiotics and prebiotics. Probiotics help enrich and balance the good bacteria in the gut, while prebiotics provide fuel for the probiotics. Probiotics are plentiful in cultured foods like yogurt and kefir, and prebiotic fiber can be found in foods like whole grains, chicory, bananas, onions, leeks, asparagus and garlic.

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Try these other immune boosters

Drink green tea. Green tea is a delicious beverage with antioxidant and immune-boosting properties. The EGCG in green tea helps protect cells against damage. And green tea also contains L-Theanine, which helps the immune system fight foreign invaders and promotes a sense of inner calm along with mental alertness.

Eat (certain) mushrooms. Several mushroom types help strengthen the immune system. For instance, shiitake and maitake mushrooms contain beta-glucans, vitamin D and other important compounds that support immune cell function. These mushrooms also function as adaptogens, which help support the body against stress.

Pop some pumpkin seeds. Pumpkin seeds are a good source of zinc, an important mineral for both immune and neurological health. They also contain plenty of magnesium, which promotes relaxation and helps the brain increase GABA activity. GABA is a neurotransmitter involved in relaxation and stress relief.

Discover black seed oil. The oil of the seeds from the Nigella sativa, a plant native to India and West Asia, is known to possess immune system modulating properties. In other words, it supports a healthy and balanced immune response.

Add some burdock root to your soup or salad. A plant native to Europe and northern Asia, burdock root contains inulin, a prebiotic compound that supports healthy bacterial populations in the gut, promotes immunity and stabilizes blood sugar. These benefits are also important for a balanced nervous system.

Burdock root also contains several potent antioxidants like quercetin, luteolin and phenolic acids. Antioxidants help protect against inflammation and cellular damage.

Get some of that “sun” vitamin. Vitamin D not only helps support the immune system, but it also helps protect against depressive symptoms. Numerous studies have connected low levels of vitamin D with depression, so getting enough vitamin D is important for maintaining your mental health.

The easiest way to get vitamin D is through sunlight. But if you aren’t getting enough sun exposure, try obtaining vitamin D through foods like dairy, salmon, tuna or eggs or by taking vitamin D supplements.

Sources:

Immune system may have another job — combatting depression — Yale News

The concept of depression as a dysfunction of the immune system — Current Immunology Reviews

Immune-boosting superfoods may also boost your personality — Easy Health Options

What is burdock root? — Healthline

Magnesium-rich food — Cleveland Clinic

7 must-have nutrients during the pandemic and how to get them without risking exposure — Easy Health Options

Vitamin D Helps the Immune System During Cold and Flu Season — Pharmacy Times

The Effects of Nigella Sativa on the Immune Disorders — Research Gate

The post Is your immune system causing your depression? appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

That’s because, for me and lots of other people, it means seasonal affective disorder (SAD) can soon hit hard. The fatigue, sadness, hopelessness and social withdrawal can make a long winter feel even longer.

Now, the way I choose to manage my mood in the winter is based on my personal experience. It’s anecdotal rather than scientific.

But if you’re looking for a safe, scientifically-backed way to fend off depression in the winter (and the rest of the year too), I have one word for you — saffron.

That’s right. This fragrant herb is nicknamed the “sunshine spice” for its ability to fight depression. And it’s safe to take with or without prescription antidepressants.

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Saffron slashes depression symptoms by 41 percent

Research from Murdoch University has shown that saffron may be an effective way to fight depression.

In an eight-week study including adults with persistent depression, researchers gave study participants either a placebo or saffron extract to take along with their current antidepressant. And guess what happened?

People who took the saffron extract saw their depression symptoms go down by 41 percent, while people taking the placebo only had a 21 percent drop in depression symptoms.

In other words? People who take saffron with their antidepressants end up less depressed than people who take antidepressants alone. That means saffron is a supplement medical professionals should consider for patients starting depression treatment or those who are already on medication that doesn’t seem to be working.

“At the moment, if pharmaceutical antidepressants aren’t working the options are to increase the dose or to try a new antidepressant. This increases the likelihood of side effects. Now a new option is to take antidepressants and saffron together,” said study researcher Dr. Adrian Lopresti.

Now, if you deal with depression and prescription meds aren’t part of your preferred treatment plan, don’t worry. Saffron could still help you.

A 2013 study found that saffron supplements can improve symptoms in people with major depressive disorder. In fact, it improved symptoms just as much as prescription antidepressants. It also worked as well as prescription meds for women with post-partum depression. And a research review conducted in 2018 shows it may be able to help people with anxiety (which often occurs alongside depression) too.

Using saffron safely

The sunshine spice sounds promising. I may start taking some this winter to see if it helps me. But before you do the same, there’s something important to remember…

Putting a dash of saffron in a few dishes every week probably won’t recreate the antidepressant effect you saw in these studies. If you’re serious about improving your depression with saffron, you may need to invest in a high-quality saffron supplement.

In one of the studies I mentioned earlier, participants successfully improved their depression symptoms by taking 30 mg of saffron per day. It’s safe to take up to 1.5 grams per day, so 30 mg per day sounds like a reasonable starting point. Of course, you can always run it by your doctor to be extra cautious. And be warned…

Like a lot of supplements, saffron becomes dangerous if you take too much. Taking 5 grams or more per day, for example, can cause a toxic reaction. And taking high doses when you’re pregnant can cause miscarriages. So, proceed with caution.

Sources:

Saffron effectively complements antidepressant medications — MedicalXpress.

Efficacy of a standardised saffron extract (affron®) as an add-on to antidepressant medication for the treatment of persistent depressive symptoms in adults: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study — Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) — Mayo Clinic.

11 Impressive Health Benefits of Saffron — Healthline.

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) and major depressive disorder: a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials — Journal of Integrative Medicine.

Hydro-alcoholic extract of Crocus sativus L. versus fluoxetine in the treatment of mild to moderate depression: a double-blind, randomized pilot trial — Journal of Ethnopharmacology.

Comparison of Saffron versus Fluoxetine in Treatment of Mild to Moderate Postpartum Depression: A Double-Blind, Randomized Clinical Trial — Pharmacopsychiatry.

Saffron in the treatment of depression, anxiety and other mental disorders: Current evidence and potential mechanisms of action — Journal of Affective Disorders.

The post This ‘sunshine spice’ could help you feel less depressed this winter appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

All of a sudden, those quirks and bad habits you normally find (somewhat) tolerable become incredibly annoying. Whether it’s your kids not loading their dirty dishes into the dishwasher, your spouse living off pizza and beer or your parents not embracing social distancing and masks as much as you’d like, the tension can build and make an already stressful time even more stressful.

So how do you let all this stress go so you can make it through this pandemic with your family relationships intact?

Well, there’s no instant solution to strained family dynamics. Your relationship with your family comes with years of habits and history that’s hard to erase overnight. But there is something simple you can do to help your family get along a little better during the pandemic…

Go for a family walk.

That’s right. Research suggests a short walk may be just what the doctor ordered to help your family bond better during the pandemic… and beyond. But there’s one rule: no indoor walks allowed.

Families who walk together, have fun together

A 2017 study from the University of Illinois shows that walking in nature can help family members get along better.

The study included moms and daughters who were asked to walk together outside at an arboretum and inside at a mall. After their walks, these moms and daughters had more positive interactions and got along better than they did before the walks. They were also more attentive. But there was a difference between the outdoor walks and the mall walks…

Moms were more attentive and felt more restored only on nature walks, while daughters (who were between 10 and 12 years old) were more attentive after both walks. That said, both moms and daughters thought the nature walks were more fun, relaxing and interesting than the mall walks.

Related: The strange way COVID attacked my brain and how I’m beating it

Why does this matter? And more importantly, how can it keep your family from driving you crazy during the pandemic?

Well, researchers believe there’s a pattern that plays out in most families. Everyone in your family — no matter what their age — deals with mental fatigue from the demands of their day. School, work, household obligations and (of course) the stress of the pandemic leave everyone feeling drained and irritable. And when you put a few mentally fatigued family members together, you’re bound to have conflict.

But according to researchers, a walk reduces mental fatigue and restores attentional functioning, which is why mom and daughter duos who took a walk together got along better afterward. They were feeling refreshed and attentive, which always makes for a better family dynamic.

Family walks: A new part of your daily pandemic routine?

Ready to make family walks a regular habit in your household? Great! It’s bound to help you get along better… and keep you active and healthy during the pandemic.

The good news is researchers say you only have to walk for about 20 minutes to make it worth your while from a family bonding perspective.

Of course, depending on where you live, the weather can get extreme at times. So, make sure everyone’s prepared for an outdoor walk… whether that means bringing water bottles in the summer or wearing long underwear in the winter. That way, there’s more of a chance everyone will enjoy the experience, and family bonding can commence.

It may take a little persuading to get everyone out and walking. But once you do, I bet you’ll see more laughter, smiles and good old fashioned family bonding during a time when families need to love and appreciate each other more than ever.

Sources:

1. A walk at the mall or the park? New study shows, for moms and daughters, a walk in the park is best — MedicalXpress.
2. The Effects of the Natural Environment on Attention and Family Cohesion: An Experimental Study — Children, Youth and Environments.

The post How to improve family bonds and keep peace while safe at home appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

If you have arthritis, nerve damage, migraines, back problems or other health issues, pain can crash the party far too often. Painkillers are one way to kick that party crasher out. But we all know, they end up causing more problems in the end…

Addiction, dizziness, depression, constipation — for most people, these side effects ruin the quality of life more than the pain does. So, how do you tackle pain more holistically?

Well, if you’re addressing pain from a natural perspective, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. And there’s no silver bullet. It usually takes trial and error to find natural pain solutions that work for you. And you’ll probably have to use more than one.

Acupuncture, medical marijuana, cognitive behavioral therapy, curcumin and anti-inflammatory diets are all popular, effective options. But there’s one more natural pain solution I’m willing to bet you’ve never heard about…

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Altruism puts pain in its place

Have you ever noticed that doing nice things for others makes you feel good? Well, a new study shows it might do more than make you feel good… it might make you feel less pain.

The study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that people felt less pain while they were doing something altruistic.

For example, researchers found that people volunteering after an earthquake felt less pain from the needle jab when they gave blood than people who were getting blood drawn for non-altruistic reasons. Similarly, volunteers revising a handbook for migrant children were more resilient to extreme cold than people who weren’t volunteering.

I know what you’re thinking… how am I supposed to do something altruistic when I’m in pain? Well, just listen to this…

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Researchers also found that people with cancer who cooked and cleaned for others felt less pain than those who only cooked and cleaned for themselves. If they can do it, so can you!

Now here’s the big question… why does doing something nice for others make you feel less pain?

Researchers don’t know for sure. But it may be related to dopamine levels. Kind acts cause the brain to release dopamine. And research shows there’s a connection between dopamine and pain.

Make the world less painful — for yourself and others!

I know doing stuff for others when you’re in pain sounds like a stretch. But you don’t have to go build houses in Honduras or help clean up after a hurricane. There are small, everyday actions you can take, like:

• Cooking dinner for someone you love
• Driving a friend to the doctor
• Baking cookies for a neighbor
• Sending someone you know a nice card or note

And if your pain is really so bad that you can’t do much, consider donating a few dollars to a cause you care about. Researchers found that people who donated money to help orphans responded less painfully to electrical shocks. So, even financial altruism counts!

I don’t know about you, but this is a pain relief strategy I’m definitely on board with. Just think about it…

If everyone did something kind in the name of pain relief, the world would be a far less painful place in more ways than one.

Sources:

1. Experiments show altruistic behaviors reduce pain — MedicalXpress.
2. Altruistic behaviors relieve physical pain — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The post How acts of kindness could relieve your pain appeared first on Easy Health Options®.

But just how powerfully can thoughts — at least negative ones — affect your brain?

This latest research shows they’re capable of leaving physical marks on the brain directly linked to Alzheimer’s…

Persistent negative thinking patterns and cognitive decline

The study, conducted by the Alzheimer’s Society and led by researchers from University College London, looked at cognitive decline and dementia risk in people over the age of 55.

The researchers followed 360 people for a period of two years. The team assessed repeated negative thinking patterns — like worrying about the past and future — depression and anxiety symptoms and assessed cognitive function (including memory and attention).

Participants even underwent brain scans to measure the proteins tau and amyloid (which cause the most common types of both dementia and Alzheimer’s).

And here’s what the researchers found…

While the research bore out the fact that depression and anxiety alone were both associated with cognitive decline — people who exhibited higher patterns of persistent negative thinking experienced higher levels of cognitive decline and declines in memory (one of the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s).

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And the striking reason why? They were also more likely to have amyloid and tau deposits in their brain.

In other words, simply getting stuck in a negative thought pattern could cause you to develop those marks on your brain that are the telltale precursor to developing Alzheimer’s.

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The possible link

But why? How in the world does living with negative thought patterns lead to dementia?

Well, the researchers say that those negative thoughts could contribute to Alzheimer’s risk via their impact on indicators of stress like high blood pressure since past studies have found that physiological stress can contribute to amyloid and tau deposition.

As co-author of the study, Dr. Gael Chételat, puts it, “Our thoughts can have a biological impact on our physical health, which might be positive or negative.”

In other words, thinking stressful thoughts can lead to stress-related changes in your body and disease.

Promoting the positive

This should be especially concerning right now when so many of us are feeling scared, confused and lonely during these unstable times.

Luckily, the researchers also had a few words of wisdom that could help you feel better and beat the link between negativity and Alzheimer’s.

First, they say that it’s unlikely that short-term issues with negative thought patterns are linked to dementia. So, getting “unstuck” and creating a new, positive pattern could help ward off that dementia risk.

Related: Top 7 scientifically-proven benefits of gratitude

And second, it’s possible that mental training practices like meditation could help down regulate the negative and promote the positive.

However, if you’re not a fan of meditation, there are other tricks you can use to break those negative thought loops like:

• Limit your negative time — Give yourself 10 minutes each day to think all of the negative thoughts that are running through your head and write them down. You’re only allowed to review those thoughts during your next day’s negative time. This allows you to control how often you stay in that “negative mode.”
• Limit negative input — Especially right now with all of the negativity in the news, it can really help to limit the time you spend absorbing that news, either online or on television.
• Replace with a project — Pick out a project you’ve been wanting to complete and are excited about. Every time you think a negative thought, spend just five minutes on your project to replace negative thoughts with goal-oriented action.
• Focus on gratitude — Keep a list of all your thankful for and take time to read it each day — and of course, add to it as you go.

Persistent negative thought loops could not only leave you depressed but at greater risk of cognitive decline, memory loss and Alzheimer’s. Take steps now to break those thought patterns and replace them with positive thoughts and experiences to lower your risk and live brain healthy.

Sources:

1. 13 Ways to Overcome Negative Thought Patterns — Forbes

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