Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Is there anything the Med diet can't do?
In addition to the cardiac, weight-loss and glucose-control benefits we already knew about, now comes the news that the Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of depression. According to a Spanish study in the latest issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, "individuals who followed the Mediterranean diet most closely had a greater than 30 percent reduction in the risk of depression than whose who had the lowest Mediterranean diet scores."
So maybe it's not just be the weather that makes southern Europeans so happy. Of course, the researchers might want to be careful in making conclusions about causation, since we have anecdotally observed a certain link between depressive symptoms and the desire to eat ice cream. But this research should fix that. Next time you have a bad day, try comforting yourself with olive oil instead!
Labels: depression, diet
posted by Stacey Butterfield at
1:01 PM
0 Comments
Monday, August 10, 2009
Medical news of the obvious
Depressed people were almost three times as likely to have impaired cognition after gloomy weather in one study. Researchers screened by phone 16,800 Americans enrolled in a stroke study for signs of depression and then administered a cognition test. Data were correlated with NASA's daily records of how bright sunlight was at any given location for the two weeks before the test. We're not rocket scientists, but two weeks of cloudy weather is enough to fog anyone's senses, let alone people who are already depressed.
This next video starts off with what exercisers knew intuitively: Working out makes one hungrier. But does exercise really make it harder to lose weight? Let's sit on the couch for a while and mull that over ...
Labels: depression, exercise, medical news of the obvious, weight loss
posted by the Better Health network at
9:00 AM
0 Comments
Monday, July 20, 2009
Medical news of the obvious
Poor sleep after childbirth increases the risk of postpartum depression, Norwegian scientists reported in Sleep. They suggested having a spouse or other family member let new mothers catch up on their shut-eye. The gravid and their spouses don't need What to Expect When You're Expecting to tell us this.
Once children grow up, they become teens. And where there's teens, there texting. Teen Texting Tendonitis afflicted this girl who'd sent 8,000 messages a month and wound up in her doctor's office for an obvious diagnosis.
Labels: depression, medical news of the obvious, pregnancy, sleep
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
9:00 AM
0 Comments
Monday, March 9, 2009
Depression linked to cardiac death
Healthy women with severe depression have double the risk of sudden cardiac death, as well as higher risk for fatal coronary heart disease.
Depression and heart disease are linked by cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and smoking, which are more common among severely depressed women. Possible explanations could be autonomic dysfunction, higher resting heart rates and reduced heart rate variability.
Researchers prospectively studied 63,469 women from the Nurses Health Study with no evidence of prior heart disease or stroke between 1992 and 2004. They used self-reported symptoms of depression and antidepressant use, and then examined those with the most severe symptoms on a mental health index or those regularly using antidepressants. They reported their results in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Low mental health index scores were associated with an increased risk of heart disease, with a hazard ratio of 1.5 after controlling for other risk factors. Sudden coronary death risk was 3.3 times greater in subjects who took antidepressants, more so than the mental health index scores, causing an editorial writer to raise the specter of needing further research into this drug class while emphasizing that the benefits outweigh the risk. As usual, one study raises more questions to answer. In the meantime, doctors should closely monitor patients with depression for risk factors for coronary heart disease.
Labels: cardiology, depression, heart, heart disease, heart failure
posted by Ryan DuBosar at
5:01 PM
0 Comments
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Post-stroke depression: cultural differences
I went to a session far too early this morning on cross-cultural differences in post-stroke emotional distress. It focused mainly on post-stroke depression in both patients and caregivers, though there was some mention of post-stroke anger as well. The upshot seemed to be that there isn't a great deal of research in this area; most of the info about cultural differences comes from the general depression research, or research on depression related to diseases other than stroke. Some interesting tidbits:
--Research on depression in caregivers of patients with dementia suggests that Asian and Hispanic American caregivers are more prone to depression than whites, while African American caregivers are less prone to it. One study on stroke patient caregivers found African American caregivers had a 3.7 times lower risk for depression than whites.
--There is some evidence that genetic differences in ethnicities may affect both the likelihood of getting depression and response to treatment, but it's complicated. Several genes seem to be involved, such that a mutation in any single gene accounts for only a small portion of the disease risk.
--There is some evidence that while somatic symptoms of depression may be the same between cultures, cognitive symptoms may be different. For example, Westerners are more likely to report psychological symptoms than the Chinese. Treatment response appears to be the same among different cultures, however.
Labels: caregivers, depression, Stroke 2009
posted by Jessica Berthold at
3:07 PM
0 Comments
Friday, December 5, 2008
Internship years often trigger depression
Recent research involving medical students in Brazil suggests that professors should be alert to signs of suicidal thoughts during the internship years, when students appear mostly likely to suffer from depression.
In the study of 481 students, depression scores were highest in the "affective" (sadness, dissatisfaction, episodes of crying, irritability and social withdrawal) and "cognitive" (pessimism, sense of failure or guilt, expectation of punishment, dislike of self, suicidal ideation, indecisiveness and change in body image) clusters during the internship years. The latter symptoms, researchers noted, were likely linked to fear about entering the hospital environment. One thing that seemed to alleviate symptoms: having a physician parent who had already been through the internship process.
According to one of the researchers, “Frequently pre-internship students fear they ‘know nothing’, and are insecure about the physical examination of other people.”
Labels: depression, medical education
posted by Janet Colwell at
9:00 AM
0 Comments
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
How depression breaks the heart
It's been known for quite some time that depressed patients have a higher risk of heart problems than those who are mentally healthy. What's been unclear is why-- till now.
A new JAMA study finds that, in depressed patients with coronary heart disease, most of the higher risk of CV events can be chalked up to a lack of exercise.
The study followed more than 1,000 outpatients with CHD for nearly 5 years. Patients reporting symptoms of depression had a 50% greater risk of CV events. Adjusting for comorbid conditions and cardiac disease severity lowered the risk to 31%, but adjusting for lack of exercise pretty much wiped out the association completely (along with a few other "health behaviors," like diet). Put another way, not exercising was associated with a 44% higher rate of CV events-- almost the same as the depression association.
So now the real question is: how do you get those depressed patients to exercise? (Which, by the way, is likely to improve their mood.) That's a whole other study in and of itself. For now, the Mayo Clinic has these tips on motivating depressed patients.
Labels: cardiology, depression, heart, mental health
posted by Jessica Berthold at
4:00 PM
0 Comments
Friday, October 10, 2008
A new, and somewhat puzzling, depression treatment
So the FDA just approved this new gadget that looks like a dentist chair, but in fact is a device to treat depression. The NeuroStar Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation device delivers a magnetic pulse to a specific part of your brain-- sort of like a much milder version of electroconvulsive therapy, and one that doesn't involve seizures.
The device is only indicated in patients who have tried one antidepressant. You may have tried that drug four different times at four different dosages, but you must have tried just that one drug.
The company-sponsored study didn't test the device against switching to another antidepressant, but only to placebo. (And it did twice as well as placebo.) One advantage the TMS offers is that it doesn't have the nasty side effects one can get with pills, like weight gain and loss of libido.
I do wonder, though, how many patients are going to decide, after failing to get any response from one antidepressant, that they want to strap themselves into a scary-looking chair and have their brains zapped, rather than just trying a different drug. Especially since the TMS treatment requires that you be awake when you get it, and the normal therapy course is 40 minutes every day for 4-6 weeks.
What do you say? Would you recommend this kind of treatment to patients?
Labels: depression
posted by Jessica Berthold at
3:41 PM
0 Comments
ACP Internist hosted Grand Rounds on June 16, wrapping up the best of the medical blogosphere. Click here for the complete wrap-up.
Contact ACP Internist
Send comments to ACP Internist staff at acpinternist@acponline.org.
Previous Posts
- QD: News Every Day--Health reform vote by the week...
- Medical News of the Obvious
- QD: News Every Day--Considering health care reform...
- QD: News Every Day--Federal action leads to states...
- QD: News Every Day--The end is in sight (until lat...
- Coffee and the Heart - Researchers are Getting Pai...
- What if Other Parts of Life Were Like Healthcare?
- QD: News Every Day--Reform rhetoric heats up
- Is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Caused By Retroviruses...
- QD: News Every Day--Health care reform's "endgame"...
Archives
Blog log
American Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and community-based practice.
Clinical Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, ACP Member, associate program director at New York University Medical Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news, commentary and more.
db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating medicine and the health care system.
Everything Health
EverythingHealth is designed to address the rapid changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st Century.
Getting Better with Dr. Val
Getting Better is the continuation of Dr. Val Jones' previous blog at Revolution Health. It is devoted to helping people understand health issues from a balanced, scientifically sound perspective.
HealthHombre
A roundup of health policy news drawn from a database of hundreds of Web sites.
Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news of the day.
Kevin, MD
The alter ego of Kevin Pho, ACP Member, is the closest thing to royalty in the medical blog world.
LSUHSC-S Medical Library Evidence Alert
Major guidelines, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and/or major reviews by national and international organizations.
PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a blog.
White Coat Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by a doctor.
