SOURCE: HealthDay News
October 16th, 2014 | Randy Dotinga

Physically active people are less likely to show signs of depression, a new study finds.

And exercise can help improve mood in people who already feel depressed, but there's a catch: Depressive symptoms appear to be a barrier to physical activity, the British researchers said.

The findings, based on 11,000 adults ages 23 to 50, correlate with previous research suggesting that exercise can have a powerful effect on depression, although it's far from a cure-all.

"Exercise is good for you," said Dr. Madhukar Trivedi, a leading researcher into the effects of physical activity who wasn't involved in the study. "It improves your mental health and lowers your chances of getting depressed."

It may seem obvious that exercise improves mood, but it's been difficult to prove scientifically. One of the challenges is that depressed people tend to be withdrawn and don't want to engage in any kind of activity. If they do exercise, it might be because their depression is starting to lift for some reason that has nothing to do with their activity level, experts say.

The new research, published online Oct. 15 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, relied on data from a large study of people born during a single week in March 1958 in Great Britain.

The researchers, from University College London and Canada's McGill University, assessed common depressive symptoms -- including sleep disturbance, fatigue, irritability and anxiety at the ages of 23, 33, 42 and 50.

The study design relied on complex statistical formulas and found that people who exercise more have fewer symptoms of depression. Also, in younger people, those who exercised more had fewer depression symptoms over time.

Among those inactive at any age, boosting activity from never to three times a week reduced the odds of depression by 19 percent five years later, the researchers found.

On the other hand, those who were inactive at age 23 and were still inactive five years later showed no change in the number of depressive symptoms, the researchers said.

These trends held up even when the researchers adjusted their statistics for factors such as education levels.

The study can't prove that exercise lifts depression. However, it "adds much more confidence to what we know," said Trivedi, director of the Comprehensive Center for Depression at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

"People who exercise have less depression, and once someone's depressed, exercise leads to improvements in depression," said Trivedi.

It's not clear how exercise may help lift depression, but Trivedi said one possibility is that it boosts the creation of new brain cells and new connections in the brain.

Forty-five minutes of moderate exercise four to five times a week can make a big difference, Trivedi said.

However, he cautioned that it's difficult for depressed people to help themselves by becoming more active.

"If you do get depressed, try to muster as much support from your environment as you can to get into exercise since it'll be harder for you to exercise than your neighbor who isn't depressed," he explained.

But depressed people shouldn't attempt to treat themselves, Trivedi added. "It does not matter which treatment they're using -- medication, psychotherapy, exercise. They should do it under the guidance of a health care provider," he said.

Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, agreed.

"The study does suggest that depression takes away the inclination to be active," he said.

"We should respect that, treat it as a barrier that first needs to be addressed directly," Katz added.

Once symptoms are under control, he said, "then encourage exercise as part of the definitive treatment."

SOURCE: Sequoia Education Systems
Dicken Weatherby, N.D. & Ron Grisanti, D.C. 

Americans are Getting Sicker-What’s the Problem?
Every year, the number of Americans who seek out alternative healthcare
increases. The latest study on consumer health spending found that more
than 37% of Americans use alternative medicine regularly (according to a
2006 survey conducted by Thomson Medstat, a business of The Thomson
Corporation). People are spending billions of dollars on Chiropractic
Physicians, Naturopathic Physicians, acupuncturists, and so on. Yet disease
rates are increasing. Obesity is on the rise. Diabetes, auto-immune
diseases, and cancer rates are soaring. The willingness of people to seek
non-drug solutions is a step in the right direction, but the paradigm needs
to shift before people will see a true improvement in their health.

Doctors must focus their attention on the right places. Here are a few of
the areas that need to be addressed in every patient. 

1. The role of what we call “The Toxic Load” in the development of chronic disease.
2. An understanding of Biochemical individuality.
3. The concept that medicine and health care must be patient focused and not disease focused 

DOWNLOAD & READ the article for the whole story 

SOURCE: Experience L!fe
July/August 2008 | Mark Hyman

Let me tell you about a patient of mine whose story may sound all too familiar to you. James was a 46-year-old Wall Street executive who came to me for a cardiac stress test. He was a hard-driving guy who was convinced he was dying of heart disease. Every afternoon, he would experience the sudden onset of sweating, a racing heart, anxiety and shortness of breath.

James also happened to be thick around the middle. After listening to his troubles, I said, “You don’t eat breakfast, do you? And, you feel tired after eating, so that’s why you skip food during the workday? And when you do feel sluggish, you go to the vending machine for a quick sugar fix, and in a few minutes you feel better, don’t you?”

Shocked, he asked, “How did you know?” I explained that he was fighting with his genes and was insulin resistant. In other words, his hormones were severely out of balance. He couldn’t control his metabolism of carbohydrates because he had too much insulin. Consequently, his blood sugar was out of whack, which led to all of his symptoms — and was also taking him down the slippery slope toward high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, cancer, brain aging, dementia and more.

BODIES OUT OF BALANCE
In fact, most Americans are living out of harmony with their natural biological rhythms, because the small molecules that help keep your body in balance have gone haywire.

These molecules — the hormone-messenger molecules of the endocrine system and the neurotransmitter-messenger molecules of the brain and nervous system — are involved in almost every function of the body, and they are critical to our well-being.

The hormone and neurotransmitter system is yet another one of the body’s core systems we must address in order to prevent disease and power our vitality (see “The 7 Keys to UltraWellness,” below). Understand how and why these systems get out of balance and you will begin to see why so many Americans walk around tired, depressed and overweight. And why no amount of pharmaceutical intervention is going to solve the problem.

All of our hormones and brain-messenger chemicals must work together in a finely orchestrated symphony to keep everything in balance. For example, the hypothalamus and pituitary glands in your brain are the command-and-control centers for all the endocrine (hormone) glands. They send signals to distant parts of the body to control everything from your stress response through your adrenal glands, your blood-sugar balance through your pancreas, your thyroid hormone via your thyroid gland, and your sexual function through your reproductive organs. They also control growth, sleep, mood and much more.

Neurotransmitters, meanwhile, send messages throughout the body to every cell, organ and tissue and help you do everything from moving your arm to feeling happy or sad. So it’s not hard to see why having an appropriate supply of these chemicals is so essential to our well-being.

Indeed, when our hormones become imbalanced, the health consequences can be severe. There are three big epidemics of hormonal problems in America today: too much insulin (from sugar), too much cortisol and adrenaline (from stress), and not enough thyroid hormone. These all interconnect with and affect the other major category of hormones — our sex hormones.

Imbalances or disturbances in any one of these interconnected systems can influence the way our brains function and lead to everything from depression and dementia to anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They also are linked to two other major epidemics we currently face: obesity and inflammation.

SOURCE: Experience L!fe
June 2008 | Mark Hyman 

When patients ask me if they are doomed by their genetic report card — destined to suffer the same diseases as their forebears — I tell them the story of the Pima Indians.

For centuries, the Arizona band of Pima Indians was thin, fit and healthy. Since the 1950s, however, they have become one of the world’s fattest populations. They have a staggeringly high 80 percent rate of diabetes and a life expectancy of just 46 years. In contrast, the band of Pima Indians who live in Mexico is still thin and fit, with no incidence of diabetes at all. These people are genetically identical to their cousins across the border, but the state of their health couldn’t be more different.

So what gives? As it turns out, the Mexico Pimas have been living much the same healthy lifestyle as their ancestors, while the Arizona Pimas have fallen victim to what we call the “White Menace” — a diet replete with white flour, white sugar and white fat (think shortening or trans fat).

The upshot? Genes may load the metabolic gun, but when it comes to creating real damage, it’s the environment that pulls the trigger.

Although your individual genes may make you more susceptible to some diseases, your DNA is not a fixed blueprint. Emerging research shows that your genes may be influenced by environmental factors such as diet (as in the case of the Pimas); stress; exercise; toxins in food, air and water; electromagnetic radiation; and trauma.

The great news is that by improving these environmental inputs, we can change the way our genes are activated and expressed. In other words, we may not be able to change our genotype (our actual genes), but we can change our phenotype (how our environment interacts with our genes to create who we are at this moment).