Published: September 4, 2011
© iStockphoto
n a study of people with serious depression that wasn’t responding to an antidepressant, vigorous exercise was as effective as or more effective than adding a second medication for achieving remission.
In the New York Times Grechen Reynolds ponders the effect of exercise as a prescription for depression .
Clinical depression, as anyone who has experienced or watched a loved one struggle with the condition knows, can be stubbornly intractable. Even if patients have been taking an antidepressant for months, recovery rates tend to hover below 50 percent.
In order to increase the odds of improvement, doctors frequently add a second treatment — often another drug, like lithium or an antipsychotic — to the S.S.R.I. regimen at some point, Dr. Trivedi said. Most patients ultimately require at least two concurrent treatments to achieve remission of their depression, he said. Studies have shown that these secondary drug treatments help an additional 20 to 30 percent of depressed patients to improve, but the medications can be expensive and have unpleasant side effects.
Which prompted Dr. Trivedi to look to exercise. His investigation joins a growing movement among some physiologists and doctors to consider and study exercise as a formal medicine, with patients given a prescription and their progress monitored, as it would be if they were prescribed a pill. link to read article
Source: The New York Times
Published: September 1, 2011
Many common signs of aging, such as shaking hands, stooped posture and walking slower, may be due to tiny blocked vessels in the brain that can’t be detected by current technology.
In a study reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers from Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, examined brain autopsies of older people and found:
Microscopic lesions or infarcts — too small to be detected using brain imaging — were in 30 percent of the brains of people who had no diagnosed brain disease or stroke.
Those who had the most trouble walking had multiple brain lesions. Two-thirds of the people had at least one blood vessel abnormality, suggesting a possible link between the blocked vessels and the familiar signs of aging. [continue reading…]
Published: September 1, 2011
Stressed-out parents make lasting impressions on their kids, according to a new study that finds the negative experience causes changes to a child’s genes that are still present in their teenage years.
The finding reveals a mechanism by which childhood experiences impact a person’s biology, the researchers said.
“This is very exciting, because we’ve shown that day-to-day stress in early childhood can predict changes in DNA that can be observed in adolescence,” said study researcher Marilyn Essex, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health. “It’s further proof of the importance of those early years and the lasting effects of children’s family environments during infancy and preschool.” Curious? Continue reading
Source: Live Science
Published: September 1, 2011
istockphoto
oes Dad’s stress affect his unborn children? According to the results of a new study in
Elsevier’s Biological Psychiatry, it seems the answer may be “yes, but it’s complicated”.
The risk of developing depression, which is significantly increased by exposure to chronic stress, is influenced by both environment and genetics. The interplay of these two factors is quite complex, but in fact, there is even a third factor that most of us know nothing about – epigenetics. Epigenetics is the science of changes in genetic expression that are not caused by actual changes in DNA sequencing. It is these mechanisms that have been the recent focus of intergenerational investigations into the transmission of stress vulnerability. [continue reading…]
