Health - Diet, Exercise and Natural Health Blog

Antidepressants for psychosis

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:35:22 +0000

As well as suffering from delusions and hallucinations people with schizophrenia often experience so-called negative symptoms such as flat mood, lack of interest in being sociable and an inability to experience pleasure, as well as many cognitive problems. Psychiatrists often prescribe antidepressants for these symptoms but there are reports of negative effects as well as positive ones. Researchers from the University of Wolverhampton reviewed 23 studies into the use of antidepressants for people with psychosis. They found a moderate positive effect from the antidepressants and significant responses for the drugs fluoxetine, trazodone and ritanserin.

Singh, Surendra P., Singh, Vidhi and Chan, Kelvin – Efficacy of antidepressants in treating the negative symptoms of chronic schizophrenia: meta-analysis British Journal of Psychiatry September 2010, 197(3), 174-179

Drunken mums and screwed-up kids

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:32:28 +0000

Psychologists sometimes use the maximum number of drinks people can remember having in one evening as a ‘proxy’ measure of alcohol problems. Not surprisingly women who can remember downing eighteen rum and cokes in an evening don’t always make perfect mothers and a team of researchers from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities have been looking into the relationship between mothers’ maximum drinks ever consumed in 24 hours and their children’s mental-health problems. They found that having a higher maximum consumption, even just at one point in a mother’s life, was associated with conduct disorder, disruptive disorder and early substance use and misuse in their children.

Malone, Stephen M., McGue, Matt and Iacono, William G. – Mothers’ maximum drinks ever consumed in 24 hours predicts mental health problems in adolescent offspring Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry September 2010, 51(9), 1067-1075

Searching for a psychopath? Mind the gap!

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:30:37 +0000

In Philip Kerr’s novel A Philosophical Investigation the authorities scan people’s brains and those thought to be at risk of behaving violently or antisocially are monitored closely by the authorities. A team of researchers, led by Adrian Raine from the University of Pennsylvania, have brought this scenario a small step closer in a study of 87 people. They looked for the presence, or absence, of a gap between areas of the brain which closes over in most people but can remain open if the brain develops abnormally. The gap is called the cavum septum pellucidum and 19 of the participants had it. Those who had the gap had significantly higher levels of antisocial personality, psychopathy, arrests and convictions, even if they had not been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Those who had been charged or convicted of an offence had a bigger gap than other participants and the results could not be attributed to prior trauma, head injuries, demographic factors or mental illness.

Raine, Adrian … [et al] – Neurodevelopmental marker for limbic maldevelopment in antisocial personality disorder British Journal of Psychiatry September 2010, 197(3), 186-192

Empathy, autism and accidents with hammers

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:33:44 +0000

Children with autism usually have less empathy with, and sympathy for, other people. Autism is usually diagnosed at around three years of old but children’s empathetic responses to other people’s distress usually develops between one and two. So, could this be used to provide an early diagnosis of, and interventions for, autism? A team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles tested this theory in a study of 158 children. One of the researchers pretended to hit their finger with a hammer and the children’s responses were measured at 12, 18, 24 and 36 months, with the children being tested for autism at three. 103 of the children had brothers or sisters with autism and 14 were diagnosed with it at three. The children who went on to be diagnosed with autism paid less attention to, and showed less change in mood after, the researcher’s ‘accident’ leading to hopes that such a test could be used to flag up those at risk of developing the condition.

Hutman, Ted … [et al] – Response to distress in infants at risk for autism: a prospective longitudinal study Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry September 2010, 51(9), 1010-1020

A Muscle Building Diet – The Top 3 Components

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:31:44 +0000

By Stephen “the Body” Jones

There are 3 major things that go into a diet for those
wishing to build muscles: protein, carbohydrates and water.
Here are a few ideas on how to arrange your diet to include
the most necessary building blocks for muscles.

As we all know, water is required for life and some do not
take into consideration the effects on the muscles it has. A
doctor would recommend for a healthy adult to drink at least
64 ounces of water a day. If a person were to exercise more
than a half hour daily, it would be suggested that a minimum
of another 16 ounces be taken in to replace the lost fluids
from exercise.

Carbohydrates are off limits in many diets. But if you are
trying to build up muscles, they are have an essential
function. For someone who has a 2,000 calorie a day diet,
half of this should be from carbohydrates. If your diet is
more than 2,000 calories a day, the carbohydrate intake has
to be elevated as well so the energy required for exercise
is available and the muscles can be built up.

Your carbohydrate intake should be from foods like fruit,
potatoes and vegetables, and avoid sources that include
added sugars like fruit juices and sports drinks. The added
sugars will offer short bursts of energy and also normally
add fat that the body does not need. Your healthy
carbohydrates should come from bread, green vegetables,
colorful fruits and almost any type of noodle or pasta.

Your last half of daily caloric intake should come from
proteins. Some foods that are considered the healthiest
means of getting your intake includes baked chicken or
turkey as well as salmon or tuna in water. Do not take in
any fried foods, since they offer additional fats that you
do not need and this could cause fatigue of the muscles.

Since muscles have to break down and then rebuild, each of
these 3 components are needed in a diet. They can be changed
as needed due to special diet requirements or medical
conditions. However, if you do have a medical condition it
is best to consult your doctor before starting any diet.

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Sleepless teenagers store up mental-health problems

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:32:53 +0000

On average – and what a blissful prospect this sounds – young people between the ages of 17 and 24 sleep between eight and nine hours a night. However, as more youngsters stay awake using the internet, playing computer games and fiddling with gadgets they are getting less sleep – something which could have profound implications for their mental health. Researchers from the George Institute for Global Health in Sydney looked at the sleeping habits of nearly 20,000 people aged between 17 and 24. They found that over half of those who got fewer than six hours sleep had high levels of psychological distress – more than double the rate of people who got eight or nine hours of sleep.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Cannabis and other drugs. Is the gateway closing?

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:33:30 +0000

Opponents of the legalisation of cannabis often suggest that it is a ‘gateway’ drug from which people move on to more damaging substances such as heroin or cocaine. However, new research from the University of New Hampshire has called this idea into question. The researchers used information from surveys of 1,286 youngsters carried out in the Miami area in the 1990s. The study found that teenagers who did not graduate from high school or go to college were more likely to have used cannabis as teenagers and other illegal drugs as young adults. However, once the effect of unemployment was taken into account the ‘gateway effect’ diminished; in other words once people had got a job they were much less likely to move on from cannabis to a more harmful drug. Once the young adults had reached the age of 21 the gateway effect had subsided completely. The strongest predictor of people moving on to other drugs was race with White people being more at risk of doing so than people of Hispanic or African descent.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

What makes a happy teacher?

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:33:03 +0000

Researchers at the University of Kent have been looking into what makes a happy teacher. They surveyed 197 of them twice over a three-month period and found that those with career aspirations and a goal to learn were happier than those facing unrealistic standards. Teachers who set high performance standards for themselves had higher levels of wellbeing and those who had a goal of advancing their professional development had higher levels of mental energy and were more committed to their work than those whose goal was to outperform their colleagues. However, teachers who felt that other people demanded more from them than they were capable of giving had higher levels of stress, stress-related ill health and burnout and lower levels of wellbeing.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Brain training might stave off dementia but it won’t stop it

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 12:31:29 +0000

Playing ‘brain-training’ games, doing crossword puzzles or learning a language might cover up the brain degeneration caused by dementia but can’t stop it when it gets past a certain stage. Researchers from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago studied almost 1,200 older people over a 12-year period. They developed a scale to measure people’s cognitive activity and tracked them to see whether they developed Alzheimer’s. The researchers found that increased cognitive activity was associated with a 52% drop in mental decline over the first six years of the study. However, once people developed dementia their rate of decline accelerated by 42% for each point on the cognitive activity scale. The researchers thought that the cognitive activity allowed people to compensate for their brain’s degeneration early on. However, by the time they developed symptoms their brain was in a much worse state and so they appeared to decline more quickly.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

The China Study on Wheat

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:20:15 +0000

Denise Minger has just put up another great China Study post that’s worth reading if you haven’t already. Denise has been busy applying her statistics skills to the mountain of data the study collected. She noted in a previous post that wheat intake was strongly associated with coronary heart disease (CHD), the quintessential modern cardiovascular disease. I, and several other people, requested that she work her mathmagic to see if the association could be due to some other factor. For example, wheat is eaten mostly in the Northern regions of China, and CHD rates are generally higher at higher latitudes (vitamin D insufficiency?). This is true in Europe as well, and may be partly responsible for the purported benefits of the Mediterranean diet. You can mathematically determine if the association between wheat and CHD is simply due to the fact that wheat eaters live further North.

To make a long story short, nothing could explain the association except wheat itself, even latitude. Furthermore, she found a strong association between wheat intake and body mass index, typically a predictor of fat mass although we can’t say that for sure. That finding echos a previous study in China where wheat eaters were more likely to be overweight than rice eaters (1, 2). Head over to Denise’s post for the full story.

The China Study has major limitations built into its basic design, due to the fact that it was observational and pooled the blood samples of many individuals. Therefore, its findings can never prove anything, they can only suggest or be consistent with hypotheses. However, the study also has some unique advantages, such as a diversity of diets and regions, and the fact that people had presumably been eating a similar diet for a long time. I feel that Denise’s efforts are really teasing out some useful information from the study that have been de-emphasized by other investigators.

There has been so little serious investigation into the health effects of wheat in the general population that I have to rely mostly on indirect evidence, such as the observation that the diseases of civilization tend to closely follow the introduction of white flour around the globe. Researchers studying celiac disease and other forms of gluten allergy, and the efforts of the paleolithic diet community in spreading that information (for example, Loren Cordain and Pedro Bastos), have been major contributors to understanding the health effects of wheat. Denise’s analysis is one of the strongest pieces of evidence I’ve come by so far. One of these days, I’ll post all of my references incriminating wheat. There are quite a few, although none of them is the smoking gun. I think there’s enough indirect evidence that investigators should begin taking the idea seriously that wheat, particularly in the form of industrial flour products, may contribute to chronic disease in more than just a small subset of the population.