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posted by mrpg on Friday March 02 2018, @01:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the get-help-now dept.

Research shows that longstanding depression alters the brain -- treatment may require different approaches depending on not just the severity of the depression but also on its longevity:

Is clinical depression always the same illness, or does it change over time?

New brain imaging research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows that the brain alters after years of persistent depression, suggesting the need to change how we think about depression as it progresses.

The study, led by senior author Dr. Jeff Meyer of CAMH's Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, is published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

The research shows that people with longer periods of untreated depression, lasting more than a decade, had significantly more brain inflammation compared to those who had less than 10 years of untreated depression. In an earlier study, Dr. Meyer's team discovered the first definitive evidence of inflammation in the brain in clinical depression.

This study provides the first biological evidence for large brain changes in long-lasting depression, suggesting that it is a different stage of illness that needs different therapeutics - the same perspective taken for early and later stages of Alzheimer's disease, he says.

"Greater inflammation in the brain is a common response with degenerative brain diseases as they progress, such as with Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson´s disease," says Dr. Meyer, who also holds Canada Research Chair in the Neurochemistry of Major Depression. While depression is not considered a degenerative brain disease, the change in inflammation shows that, for those in whom depression persists, it may be progressive and not a static condition.

Over years, depression changes the brain, new study shows
Depression Can Actually Leave Long-Term Changes in Your Brain, Study Shows

More information: Elaine Setiawan et al, Association of translocator protein total distribution volume with duration of untreated major depressive disorder: a cross-sectional study, The Lancet Psychiatry (2018). DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(18)30048-8


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 02 2018, @05:11AM (10 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 02 2018, @05:11AM (#646216) Journal

    I'm one of those long-term depression cases from earlier in life--think "suicidal 8 year old" here--and it was comorbid with PTSD, anxiety disorders, panic attacks, you name it. I'm also one of those people who can't take SSRIs. Being raised Catholic and discovering you're a lesbian at 14 (and not admitting it till 16 because of course not) didn't help either.

    Mostly the solution was to be my own cognitive behavioral therapist. Knowledge drives out fear. But your body needs to be in a state where it can do that in the first place, and one of the keys to *that* is making sure what goes into it isn't hurting the cause. Cutting out refined flours and sugars, especially HFCS, helps a lot. So does avoiding food dyes, at least for me. And avoiding all sweeteners aside from stevia and mannitol or erythritol made a huge difference; if I have even a swallow of a diet soda I feel like hell.

    Beyond that, stress depletes your magnesium levels and messes with your adrenal glands. In desperation I went to a local Chinese naturopath who diagnosed this as "kidney Yin deficiency," which more or less maps to adrenal fatigue. So I started biohacking my body a little, trying individual supplements to see what had what effect.

    BIG HONKING DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, pharmacist, or biochemist. This is only what worked and has been working for me. Your body may be different, maybe very different.

    Far and away the magnesium was the most important. You want this in citrate form, as oxide is uselessly un-bioavailable and the malates, tartrates, and chelated forms are too expensive for not much better performance. I needed over three times the RDA daily for about a week to replete my cells, and then settled into a maintenance dose of about 200% of the RDA, half every morning and evening.

    Once that's working, add niacin if you can tolerate it--you WILL flush and itch and burn--and a methylfolate supplement, NOT folic acid. If you have an MTHFR gene mutation, as I suspect I do, you *need* the methylated form, as folic acid will just hurt you more. Vitamin D3 is also important; get a "dry" formulation, and take it with magnesium or it'll leach calcium out of your bones and deposit it in a nice thick layer across your vascular system, if I understand it right. Vitamin D is a steroid hormone, and its chemical moniker of "cholecalciferol" (bile + calcium + bearer) attests.

    I'm not sure if extra vitamin C helps, as it's water-soluble and you'll probably just pee out the excess, but I also take one of those that comes mixed with rutin, hesperidin, and a few other phytochemicals of that nature.

    Sometimes I'll take a very low dose iron supplement (you can guess when), but since most people reading this are men, you probably don't want that. I think I read somewhere that men need zinc like women need iron, but that zinc and magnesium interfere with one another, so if you take it, it would need to be early/mid-afternoon and as far away from the magnesium as possible.

    Again, this is only what worked for me. Clear this with a doctor first if you're interested in trying it out. I don't *think* there's anything harmful in here, and have felt much better on this regimen, but as always, caveat lector.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @05:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @05:30AM (#646219)

    > I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...

    Yup, my mother warned me about supplement junkies(grin)...
    But this wasn't a direct warning -- she is one and I'm afraid has gone a bit overboard (but rarely far enough to hurt herself).

    Glad to hear that you have worked out a useful regimen for yourself.

  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday March 02 2018, @08:18AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Friday March 02 2018, @08:18AM (#646272) Homepage Journal

    Dr. K. used to assign me such homework as reading Lonnie Barbach's "For Yourself" which teaches women to experience orgasms.

    Eventually I started finding fear driving-out knowledgable books on my own.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @11:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 02 2018, @11:27AM (#646317)

    I recently heard a presentation by Suzanne Humphries MD.[1]
    She said there's lots of stuff that gets better with more Vitamin C.
    She also said don't get the stuff with calcium. [google.com]
    I wish I'd known that when I was 25 so that I didn't get my first kidney stone at 26, which I suspect was from that source.

    These days, I'm seriously into chilis and have found a grocer where I can get pasillas or jalapeños or serranos on special almost every visit.
    (Better than citrus for Vitamin C.)

    [1] She's also an anti-vaxxer but she brings the science with her.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Friday March 02 2018, @01:16PM (4 children)

    by acid andy (1683) on Friday March 02 2018, @01:16PM (#646327) Homepage Journal

    Yeah there's very probably something in it. When I first took a flax seed supplement, I felt almost euphoric. I think if you have a dietary deficiency then when you address that it can improve your mood. Of course, deficiencies aren't the only causes of depression -- there are unquestionably external mental factors as you identified. Maybe tackling depression therefore becomes fixing as many of the different factors as possible, until enough of a cascade in thinking and habits happens to overcome it. In my experience though sometimes you overcome it for a few months or even a few years but later find it easy to sink back into the old patterns, so it's a fiendishly complex and difficult thing.

    --
    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 02 2018, @04:27PM (3 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday March 02 2018, @04:27PM (#646456)

      I think there's something to the supplements/diets and finding what works for you is a very good thing. Chronic excessive inflammation is bad juju for life, and if you've got it - getting it reduced is important. The most beneficial thing is getting to a state where you're not actively suffering - once there, you can "have a life" that allows you to get past feelings of being stuck in a bad place and that starts a positive feedback loop that can reduce your sensitivity to negative influences in the first place.

      I've tried a bunch of things over the years, and they either didn't have a noticeable impact after using them for a while, or even more often they didn't have a noticeable impact after discontinuing them for awhile - so I don't bother with those anymore. There's a more insidious variety like dandruff shampoo which actually does reduce dandruff when you start and increase it when you stop short term, but I liken that one to hand sanitizer - broad spectrum antimicrobial that wipes out the good with the bad, and I've decided that those things aren't in the "good for me" category.

      Some things that do appear to make a difference for me: reducing gluten intake to near zero - correlation with reduction in joint inflammation is very clear and noticeable (for 10+ years now) and there are other harder to pin down effects in the gut and brain. Foods high in ginger content seem to reduce inflammation also. Vitamin C and fiber from orange juice, blueberries or other sources clearly hits the positive column. High sensory input activities like bike riding or driving a convertible with the top down (or at least windows open on the highway in a fixed roof car), all seem to be clear mood lifters. I think my negative response to fluorescent lighting is a mental conditioning thing, but those can have real effects too.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 02 2018, @10:13PM (2 children)

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 02 2018, @10:13PM (#646660) Journal

        Ooh, yeah, ginger is good stuff :) I have some powder in hot water every day. It's great for aches and pains, and it thins the blood slightly.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @01:41AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @01:41AM (#646761)

          "thins the blood slightly"

          And how exactly do you know that?

          • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 03 2018, @05:10AM

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday March 03 2018, @05:10AM (#646856) Journal

            ...seriously? 10 seconds and a well-formed query in the search engine of your choice will show both professional and amateur observations that ginger affects the clotting process in this manner. Try searching for something like "ginger drug interactions" and you'll get a long list of warnings about not combining it/using it with extreme caution in conjunction with Warfarin or the -xaban family, the activated clotting factor X inhibitors.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by meustrus on Friday March 02 2018, @05:31PM (1 child)

    by meustrus (4961) on Friday March 02 2018, @05:31PM (#646489)

    Being that it's very unlikely for anybody reading this to have the exact same set of issues, could you provide more information/resources on how you constructed this elaborate regimen for yourself? How does one diagnose "adrenal fatigue" or any of the deficiencies you are treating with supplements? What are all the chemicals you are avoiding, how did you decide to try avoiding them, and what specific harm can they inflict?

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 02 2018, @10:09PM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 02 2018, @10:09PM (#646656) Journal

      To be completely honest, it's been "search my symptoms" and "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks," with a healthy dose of "don't put supplement even the least bit harmful at doses of up to 500% of the RDA in yourself." Well, that combined with long study of how particular systems and cycles in the body work.

      The information I've found on methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase SNPs in particular hit me like a truck, as the symptoms several people were mentioning that were as disparate as brain fog, fatigue, random aches, anxiety disorders, depression, constantly being pissed off, and *pulmonary goddamn embolism* all happened to me. About 10% have some form of MTHFR polymorphism, and while I can't afford the genetic testing to confirm or deny it, on a lark I decided to try substituting standard B complex for individual B vitamins, several in their methyl forms, and felt almost instant relief. So, test or no test, I'm guessing there is a problem with my muthafuckin' MTHFR production.

      Since this enzyme is involved in epigenetic expression and gene regulation via methylation, and is very important for converting homocysteine back to cysteine and methionine, loss-of-function polymorphisms would imply constant inflammatory problems, which would translate into cancer, cardiovascular disease, and likely dementia, if left untreated. My entire body feels, I don't know how to say this, "cooler" and "wetter" since starting this regimen, and I've got a lot more tolerance for peoples' and life's absurdities now.

      The magnesium is actually prior to this, and was something I tried because I'd heard it was good for reducing anxiety and promoting good sleep. It was, it just isn't the entire picture.

      Finally, the turmeric/black pepper thing is a component of much of my cooking to begin with, and reading about how piperine massively increases bioavailability of anti-inflammatory curcumins made a lightbulb go off. Eating home-cooked curry always makes me feel wonderful, beyond just what a satisfying meal would do, and I wondered for a long time exactly why. Supposedly towns and villages in India that cook with a lot of turmeric have near-zero rates of Alzheimer's, which might explain it.

      All of these things work synergistically. Magnesium is involved in literally hundreds of enzymatic reactions in the body, and I would bet good money the soil is depleted in Mg compared to even 50 years ago. The B vitamins all have different effects, and folate and cobalamins (B12) have interactions such that supplementing B12 can actually mask a folate deficiency because they're cofactors in some methylation cascades.

      What this all adds up to, in my lay(wo)man's mind, is 1) inflammation is bad and 2) my body is particularly prone to certain types of it (hyperhomocysteinaemia) due to low MTHFR activity among other reasons.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...