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Tag: New Study

  • Depression Symptoms Alleviated By Social Groups

    Researchers have found in a new study that social identification can reduce symptoms of depression in clinical and community settings.

    Depression, a debilitating mental illness, is characterized by feelings of lethargy, hopelessness, and worthlessness, among other symptoms. It strikes at many different ages and in people of all different sorts of backgrounds and is a leading cause of disability, according to WebMD.

    But in a study called “Feeling connected again: Interventions that increase social identification reduce depression symptoms in community and clinical settings,” researchers found that increasing the social identification of depressed patients through social interaction can lead to a reduction in depression symptoms.

    For the study, researchers created what is called a “longitudinal intervention” method, where patients were exposed to social interaction over a course of time throughout the study.

    In the first study, 52 adults diagnosed with depression joined a community recreation group, where activities included sewing, yoga, sports, and art. In the second study, 92 adults diagnosed with depression joined a clinical psychotherapy group.

    The purpose of the study was to analyze social identification, which researchers admitted was a psychological and difficult to understand topics. They measured it through surveys, by asking participants in the study whether they identified with the group or not.

    In both studies, according to Science Daily, patients who did not identify strongly with the groups had a 50 percent chance of continued depression symptoms. But those who identified strongly with the groups and used first person pronouns such as “we” and “us” rather than third person pronouns such as “them” to describe the other group members, less than a third of those participants met the diagnostic criteria for depression when the studies were finished.

    In both studies, social identification led to a recovery from depression when holding for factors such as attendance, severity of depression, and group type. In Study Two, the benefits of social interaction were larger for depression symptoms rather than anxiety symptoms or quality of life.

    The conclusion of the study is that facilitating social participation would be a cost-effective and generally effective way to treat depression.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Weight Loss And Pregnancy Don’t Mix

    It’s no secret that pregnancy often leads to women gaining weight. In some cases, women can gain dozens of pounds.

    If you are already very overweight prior to pregnancy, there is a possibility that there could be related complications.

    Some mothers believe that the best thing they can do is to lose a bit of weight during their pregnancy in order to make it easier on themselves and the child. However, some medical professionals feel that the opposite may be true.

    “While many people recommend that weight loss in pregnancy,” said Dr. Patrick Catalano, “particularly for very obese women is ok, [it is possible there] may be adverse effects,”. Catalano is the director of the Center for Reproductive Health at MetroHealth in Cleveland.

    According to research conducted by Catalono, mothers who gained little or no weight gave birth to fetuses that tended to be small for their gestational age. They had lower body weight, a smaller head circumference and weighed less than the infants of mothers who had gained weight.

    Mothers should be wary of going to the opposite extreme: Gaining more than the recommended amount of weight can also affect the infant, often making them unusually large for their gestational age.

    Said Catalono, “Everyone agrees having a very big baby is not good. The loss of lean mass may have long-term consequence.”

    Whether women gained too much weight or practically dieted throughout their pregnancy, it put the fetus at risk.

    It is important for expectant mothers to understand that weight loss is something that should happen before pregnancy. Once pregnant, the mother should consult her doctor regarding what weight she should or should not gain and pay close attention to how her weight may be affecting the unborn baby.

    If it is a matter of “vanity pounds”, focus on weight loss after the child has been born. If you truly care for your infant, you’ll prioritize their safety and be sure to keep the health of your child in mind along with your own.

    Image via YouTube

  • Scientists: We’ve Found a Protein that Guards Memory

    A report posted last week via Healthday News on WebMD should sound reassuring to all the baby boomers out there (and everyone else, for that matter): age-related memory loss has been linked to a single protein, and replenishing that protein could reduce moments of forgetfulness.

    A team of researchers from Columbia University found that the protein RbAp48, which is present in the hippocampus, becomes deficient in our brains as we age. The loss of this protein appears to be contributing to memory loss. The study was published in the online journal Science Translational Magazine.

    One of the study’s authors, Dr. Scott Small, said that the findings should relieve people, as they indicate that “senior moments” are bad indicators of one’s tendency for dementia, and that the new study “provides compelling evidence that age-related memory loss is a syndrome in its own right, apart from Alzheimer’s.” Small is also director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia.

    The study involved the analysis of eight deceased brains from people of a variety of ages (33-88), of whom the common denominator was they died absent brain disease. The levels of RbAp48 were found to slowly decrease as all humans aged.

    In order to confirm their findings, the researchers examined the brains of mice, and discovered that mouse brains also see a decrease in RbAp48 levels, and that when younger mice had their levels artificially reduced, they were just as forgetful as old ones. When the RbAp48 levels returned to normal, the young mice’s memory was also restored. The test was also performed on older mice, who performed just as well as the younger mice when their RbAp48 levels were artificially increased.

    Dr. Nupur Ghoshal, who assistant-teaches neurology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said that “This is really the first evidence of a molecule someone can focus in on. Now we have a pathway we can learn a lot more about, and somewhere within that pathway may be a target for intervention.”

    [Image via a Stanford University Youtube about memory formation]

  • Women: More Common Sense On Facebook

    A survey of 2,277 adults by Pew Research reports that users have become more active in managing their relationships and taking advantage of privacy controls when compared with data from a few years ago. The study looks at accounts from Facebook, LinkedIn, and My Space. The fact that more users are taking advantage of privacy controls shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

    The surprise comes when they break the data down by gender. Over 25% of men chose to share their personal profiles with the most public settings, basically leaving access unrestricted. Only 14% of women did the same.

    The number of men who chose to only share with friends was about 48%, which is significantly lower than women, who chose to do this in 67% of the cases. Also interesting is that 67% of women agreed that they had kicked users out of their social circles, while only 58% of men agreed to the same.

    Another finer point of the study was the percentage of men who regretted making certain comments on their social networking pages. 15% of men said they had made comments they regretted. Less than half, 7% of women reported regretting the comments they made.

    So there you have it, woman are acting more responsible in their social circles than men are. I don’t know if any of that is a surprise.