LIVING WITH FAITH AND DEPRESSION
It can be terrifying that God knows everything about us, but in the Meaning of Marriage, Tim Keller tells us the flip side.
“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.
To be known and not loved is our greatest fear.
But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.”
A fascinating new study (of mice) in the journal Neuropharmacology shows why the compound Resveratrol might help depression and anxiety.
A lot of it hinges on the stress model of depression.
When your body gets stressed, it releases glucocorticoids. Over time, that stress can damage neurons in the hippocampus. That can lead to depression and anxiety.
So if that’s a big way depression and anxiety happen, a key is this: how do we stop, or reverse, that chain of events?
Scientists found that resveratrol could be helpful by studying rodents, who respond to stress the same way we do by releasing something called corticosterone.
That release produces (bad) cell lesions in the rodent brains and higher levels of an enzyme that’s implicated in the development of depression and anxiety.
The great thing is that giving the little rodents resveratrol reversed the levels of that enzyme, and consequently, reduced depressive and anxious symptoms in the mice.
Hooray!
Medical News Today, though, notes that it’s way too early to get to excited.
Despite Dr. Xu’s excitement, there is little evidence of resveratrol’s ability to fight depression in humans. Although evidence of its effects in animal models is growing, data from clinical trials are lacking.
However, any step toward a new understanding of the chemical ins and outs of depression and anxiety is beneficial.
You can find resveratrol in red wine, red grapes, and berries, but also in supplements.
WebMd has a great list of its potential non-mental health benefits.
Early research suggests taking high doses could help lower your bad cholesterol, might help protect nerve cells from the damage that can lead to the Alzheimers, could help fight diabetes, and possibly limit the spread of cancer cells.
Of course, the research is very early, but it certainly seems worth checking out (after talking to your doctor).
The WSJ has a good look at classic anxiety symptoms in men: Anger/Irritability, trouble sleeping, muscle aches, substance abuse.
Women, on the other hand, are more likely to verbally worry and say, “I’m anxious.”
So we often assume women are the anxious worriers, while men are the solid, strong quiet types. But researchers suggest men could be as prone to anxiety as women.
Yes, statistics suggest about 20% of men will have some kind of anxiety disorder during their life, as opposed to 33% of women.
However, there’s the obvious caveat to that disparity.
Researchers think that societal pressures and internal attitudes make men far less likely to admit and get help for their anxiety than women, which leads to significant underreporting.
One clue is that male suicide mortality rates are higher, and interestingly, research has shown that anxiety is a stronger predictor of suicide than depression. Particularly, anxiety mixed with conduct problems and substance abuse.
So the reasonable (though not empiric) inference is that if there are more fatal suicides among men than women, they might be more anxious than statistics suggest.
Of course, women attempt suicide, at a higher rate, so it’s a tricky thing to untangle.
But the point is that, whether you measure these things as either fatal or attempted suicide, the true rate of anxiety between the two genders are probably pretty comparable.
There’s a pretty sizable stigma for men with depression, but there’s an enormous one for men with anxiety.
Anecdotally, I know so many guys who might acknowledge they have depression, but would never say, “I’m a worrier,” or “I’m anxious.” It just seems too weak.
Personally, as well, it’s been so much harder for me to say, “I worry a lot” than “I’m depressed.”
A lot of cool guys we admire (the artists, writers, singers etc) have battled depression, so it seems manly enough. But we rarely read about men with anxiety.
Things are slowly changing, though.
Here’s a quick list of current male celebrities who’ve spoken about their anxiety.
Stephen Colbert (panic attacks), actor Clark Gregg (panic attacks), Ryan Reynolds (severe anxiety), Carson Daly (Generalized Anxiety Disorder –GAD), Michael Phelps (depression and anxiety), basketball player Royce White (GAD), tennis player Mardy Fish (“severe anxiety disorder”), basketball player Kevin Love (panic attacks, anxiety).
Milan Kundera, in his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
“She realized that she belonged among the weak, in the camp of the weak, in the country of the weak, and that she had to be faithful to them precisely because they were weak and gasped for breath in the middle of sentences.
…. We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.”
Obviously, not a Christian novel; obviously a brilliant one, and obviously, a sentiment we’ve all felt.
This isn’t specifically about depression or anxiety, but considering we’ve just learned that food allergies raise your risk for mental illness, it has huge implications for depression/anxiety/OCD etc.,
Basically, researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital looked at a boatload of infants with and without food allergies.
After studying fecal samples over a period of 30 months, they were able to figure out that the infants with food allergies were missing a crucial set of gut bacteria that seemed to be protective. Thus, they were developing food allergies.
So how to fix that?
Well, researchers took the study to, of course, mice.
They found that administering these protective gut bacteria to mice who had allergic reactions suppressed the allergic reaction.
In other words, for all intents and purposes, the injection of these bacteria “cured” them of that allergic reaction.
As the study’s lead author, Dr. Lynn Bry, concluded:
“We’ve identified the microbes that are associated with protection and ones that are associated with food allergies in patients…
If we administer defined consortia representing the protective microbes as a therapeutic, not only can we prevent food allergies from happening, but we can reverse existing food allergies in preclinical models.
With these microbes, we are resetting the immune system.”
Crazy!
The really great part is that researchers think this could work on humans and have already begun kicking human trials into gear with the hopes something could be available in the coming five years.
These trials will investigate fecal transplants targeting peanut allergies, as well as specifically generated probiotic mixes for pediatric food allergies.
Currently, our available treatment for food allergies is mostly avoidance, and if this new treatment worked, it would change (and save) so many lives.
Not just from a physical perspective, but a mental perspective, as well. It’s well-established that food allergies can wreak havoc on a person’s mental health.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, with a good word for the depressive recluse and the Church Events 7 Days A Week-Er.
“One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.”
A new study shows that anxious people are much better at perceiving and reacting to a slow-developing threat (not surprising), but no better at reacting to a quickly-developing threat than their happy-go-lucky neighbor.
Specifically, participants with higher trait anxiety escaped much quicker from the menacing threat of a slowly encroaching virtual predator than did those with lower anxiety.
However, when the virtual predator pounced immediately, there was no difference between the more and less anxious participants.
To put it into day-to-day terms:
Let’s say you’re an anxious person, and you see a mole on your arm that’s kind of sketchy. You’ll probably get it checked out before it turns into a melanoma. See, slow-developing threat.
Your optimistic neighbor, Bob, on the other hand, might wait until it’s bleeding, throbbing, and 12 inches in diameter.
He wasn’t good at reacting to the slow-developing threat.
Now let’s say both you and Bob’s hair is on fire. You’ll be equally good at responding to that threat, because it develops quickly.
So why are some people quicker at responding to slow-developing threats than others?
Well, it all has to do with the part of the brain that’s triggered by slow-developing threats vs. immediate threats.
Slow-developing threats trigger heightened activity in our hippocampus, which is the area of the brain responsible for planning and assessing risk.
Meanwhile, immediate threats trigger reactions in the fear circuit, which is in the central part of our brain.
There’s actually a lot of spiritual application here for a different time and day, but at the top of the list is that we should be very careful about judging more anxious people.
The planning-based portion of their brain is activated much more quickly, and that’s not a sinful thing.
In fact, it could be that those with higher trait anxiety will save the lives of their optimistic friends who choose to wait to act until they can actually see the flames on the ship.
Painting: Approaching Thunderstorm, Martin Johnson Heade.
A good reading from Charles Spurgeon’s Chequebook of the Bank of Faith devotional, based on Hosea 2:14:
“I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.”
“The goodness of God sees us allured by sin, and it resolves to try upon us the more powerful allurements of love.
Do we not remember when the Lover of our souls first cast a spell upon us and charmed us away from the fascinations of the world?
He will do this again and again whenever he sees us likely to be ensnared by evil.
He promises to draw us apart, for there he can best deal with us, and this separated place is not to be a Paradise, but a wilderness, since in such a place there will be nothing to take off our attention from our God.
In the deserts of affliction, the presence of the Lord becomes everything to us, and we prize his company beyond any value which we set upon it when we sat under our own vine and fig tree in the society of our fellows.
Solitude and affliction bring more to themselves and to their heavenly Father than any other means.
When thus allured and secluded the Lord has choice things to say to us for our comfort.
He ‘speaks to our heart,’ as the original has it. Oh that at this time we may have this promise explained in our experience!
Allured by love, separated by rial, and comforted by the Spirit of truth, may we know the Lord and sing for joy!
I recently turned 40 years old, and read a passage a few months ago that particularly struck me.
During Stephen’s famous sermon in Acts, he quotes Amos 5:25-26, where God says to his people, “Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices and offerings during the 40 years in the wilderness, Israel? No, you served your pagan gods.”
Where have I been the past 40 years? Much of it in the wilderness, and much of that time serving my pagan gods, whatever they may be.
We often talk about how we complain in our wanderings in the desert, like the children of Israel in theirs, but we rarely ask where we took our sacrifices. Maybe we haven’t complained, but who have we served?
I don’t want to serve my pagan gods, and may my next 40 years — may yours — find us bringing God sacrifices. Not just because he deserves them, but because that’s the only way life can feel like life.
After all, as God also says in Hosea: “Oh Israel, stay away from idols!”
But why? Because God is simply jealous? No.
“I am the one who answers your prayers and cares for you. I am like a tree that is always green; all your fruit comes from me.”
(Photo: Sinai Desert, wikipedia).
For the first time, researchers have discovered eight genes directly related to anorexia nervosa.
It’s a groundbreaking study because, up until now, scientists couldn’t identify any.
Now for the particularly surprising part.
It’s often assumed that anorexia originates from behavioral and psychological factors, but the scientists found that some of those genes were directly related to an entirely different factor.
Professor Nicholas Martin tells The Age, “The other part we hadn’t expected to see is strong links to metabolism, both in terms of body build, body weight and genes involved in diabetes.”
Importantly, the genes linking anorexia with metabolism were not the common variants associated with body-mass index, meaning something more complex was going on at a genetic level.
Co-study leader Gerome Breen tells Newser: “Anorexia has the expected correlations with anxiety, depression and OCD, but it also has this set of apparently healthy metabolic correlations that we don’t see in any other psychiatric disorder.”
In other words, researchers says we should now identify it as a metabo-psychiatric disorder.
This is probably the tip of the iceberg.
For example, Professor Martin notes that we’ve found almost 200 genes directly related to schizophrenia, about 30 to bipolar, and around 100 to depression.
Over time, we’ll probably find more and more related to anorexia nervosa, which is, by far, the deadliest psychiatric disorder (for example, the mortality rate is 4x higher than major depression and 2x higher than schizophrenia).
This is hugely important for treatment.
Breen tells The Guardian: “What our study means is we can no longer treat anorexia, and perhaps other eating disorders, as purely psychiatric or psychological.”
Breen said there was now a need for scientists to study the metabolism of people with anorexia and other eating disorders to see whether it was possible to develop metabolism-based therapies, or spot those at risk of relapse, a common problem in anorexia.
It’s also profoundly important for helping those who suffer with anorexia to better understand why they’re saddled with this disease.
It will also, hopefully, prompt loved ones to treat those suffering with more compassion and understanding.
Painting: L’attesa, Felice Casorati. (h/t: Casey Winter).
a. Study: Are the viral agents of MS, ALS, and schizophrenia buried in our genes?
b. Diabetics who use antidepressants have lowered mortality risk.
c. People with comorbid OCD and bipolar have a higher suicide risk.
d. Study: Why Matcha tea helps with anxiety.
e. 10 Health Anxiety Myths Debunked.
f. Artificial Intelligence can detect depression in your voice.
g. Ed Sheeran on his battle with anxiety: “I closed off from reality.”
h. Olivia Culpo talks about her depression: I pretended everything was great.
i. Cheryl Cole on her depression: I’d smile, “but inside I was dying.”
j. You can now get medical marijuana for anxiety in Pennsylvania.
“It gives your Father great happiness to give you the Kingdom.” Luke 12:32