Natural Ways To Beat Depression

Depression has been in the news a lot recently with the untimely death of world renown and beloved comedian, Robin Williams.

I, like so many others of my generation grew up watching the whirling dervish of comedy, Mr. Williams, captivate in many of my most favorite childhood films, from “Mrs. Doubtfire” to “Hook” and later as I grew up in tremendously moving performances such as “Good Will Hunting” and “Dead Poet’s Society”. So how does someone who by all accounts has so much to be grateful for – money, celebrity, wife and children- find themselves in such a state of desperation? The not so simple answer is – depression.
All news vehicles cite depression as one of the main causes for Robin Williams’ suicide, and thus it has brought an issue that is often dealt with in private into the public eye and consciousness. Depression is a mind disorder that is defined as:

I loved him so much. Robin Williams

Depression affects everything in your life from how you perform at work to the quality of your relationships.You see, when you are feeling blue, it colors your world and everything in it. Things, people and activities that once brought you great joy and delight can no longer elicit those same feelings. Motivation to participate in them and in life in general can be hard to find, and thus you can withdraw into a pool of sadness.

If I seem to be speaking rather intimately about depression it is because I have throughout the course of my life struggled with bouts of it as I am certain many of you have. Sometimes depression is happening because of a tragic or life-altering event like when my only brother, Nimrod, was killed, and at other times it seems to come completely out of left field because of completely unexpected reasons. Regardless of the reason for your current state of depression, there are some simple changes you can make without drugs that can actually alter the chemistry of your brain to boost your mood and prevent falling into further depths of depression.

1. Get enough sleep: The brain and the overall health of your body are directly linked. When we are physically run down and are not nurturing our bodies in the most basic of ways, our mind follows suit and begins to fray which can bring on depression and low mood. One of the easiest ways to re-set your mind is to ensure your body gets the proper amount of sleep, which is thought to be between 8-10 hours of sleep a night.
2. Avoid Sugar: Researchers from 6 countries found a direct link between sugar consumption and depression. For example have you ever gone on a sugar binge where you consumed several sugary treats and felt a jolt of energy, only to find a couple hours later that you felt exhausted and moody. Well there is a reason for that. What goes up, as they say, must come down. Sugar affects body chemistry so if you are noticing a drop in your mood, it is a good idea to cut back and cut out sugar.
3. Brain Booster Foods: Just as it is good to reduce sugar intake, it is also a good idea to incorporate Brain Boosting foods. Upping your intake of leafy green vegetables and fruits, while also making sure to eat Omega 3 fatty acids (from fish like Wild Salmon) and other healthy proteins (Chia seeds, lean meats etc.) has been scientifically proven to help with depression. Vitamin D3 has also been shown to have a great impact on mood and often people who struggle with low mood are found to be deficient in Vitamin D. Thus you should take a daily supplement of Vitamin D and Omega 3 rich Fish Oil to naturally boost your mood.
4. Move Your Body: You’ve probably heard this before, but it’s absolutely true. Exercise is linked to a better mood. The reason being that moving your body, and getting between 30-60 minutes daily, boosts levels of Seratonin and Dopamine in the Brain and has been proven to have the same benefits (and none of the side effects) as Anti-depressants.
5. Connect With Friends and Family: The natural tendency when you are feeling depressed is to withdraw from the world and the people you love, or conversely depression can come on as the result of being disconnected and isolated from people you love and your community. We live in a feeling universe and by nature we are social beings. While it may seem counter-intuitive to your current low mood, the act of connecting and forcing yourself to go out and be among friends and family that love and support you is a great method for treating depression.
6. Accentuate The Positive: As I’ve already mentioned, for a depressed person it is very challenging to see the good in their life or in the things around them. While at first this activity might seem ineffective, starting small and acknowledging even the small ways in which things are going well for you can trigger a positivity domino effect and thus ward off feelings of depression. Start small, perhaps you are grateful for the beautiful day you can get out and enjoy on your bike, or a compliment you received at work for your performance, look for the good and hold onto it no matter how small.
7. Avoid Drinking and Drugs: Unfortunately drinking and drugs are two of the most common ways people with a mood and brain disorder such as depression use to cope. The problem is both of these methods are not only a slippery slope to addiction but they are also depressants. While you may think you are numbing the pain of continual low mood, you are actually self-medicating yourself into a worse mood and one that you will have much more difficulty repairing.
8. Seek Help: While all of the methods I’ve listed are extremely effective and free, I do want to address the fact that sometimes it is important, as was the case with Robin Williams, to seek outside professional help such as a therapist or support hotline when you cannot shake your depression. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you for needing the support of a therapist, and if necessary antidepressants, they are simply more advanced tools to help you get through a difficult time and back on your feet. The important thing to remember is you are not alone, depression does pass, and it is empowering not weak to take the steps necessary for a full recovery.

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Source - mentalizer.com/brain-boosters-natural-ways-beat-depression.html

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Osteoarthritis or Rheumatoid Arthritis: Which Kind Do You Have?

Do you wake up in the mornings with stiffness in your hands or your feet? Are your knee joints warm and swollen? Do they get worse when it rains?

Do you look at your older relatives and see that they have the same problems, or that their pain has gotten worse as they got older?

You probably identified this as arthritis. The question is, do you know whether you have rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis?

It might not seem like an important distinction but it is. Understanding the differences can help you have a better conversation with your health care provider and get the right treatment more quickly.

Since these are two different types of diseases, the diagnosis criteria and treatment options are different. Let’s understand them better.

Osteoarthritis arthritis defined
Osteoarthritis is the most common type of arthritis. This occurs when there is deterioration of the cartilage that lines the tops of your bones in the joint area. It tends to occur in the hands, neck, back, knees and hips.

Typical symptoms may be pain or tenderness in the affected joint. In the morning you might experience stiffness when you first get up for about 20 minutes, then as you move around the pain will subside.

You might lose full range of motion in the joint over time. Extra small bits of bone creating hard lumps in the area of the joint are called bone spurs.

There doesn't seem to be symmetry, or pain in the same joint on both sides of the body, because this type of arthritis is due to wear and tear on the particular joint.

Rheumatoid arthritis defined
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation and pain in the joints. In autoimmune diseases the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue cause damage, pain and swelling.

The damage usually starts in the lining of the smaller joints like the fingers and the toes, and can progress to larger joints like the ankles, knees, elbows, shoulders and hips. Over time if the inflammation is not controlled, it will cause deformity and alteration of function in that joint.

There usually seems to be pain in the same joint on both sides of the body. Since it is an inflammatory disease there can be periods of “flare ups” and remission.

Think about your symptoms to identify which type of arthritis is plaguing you or runs in your family history.

Also be aware that it is possible to have both types of arthritis in the same area. Or you might have different types of arthritis in your body. For example you might have osteoarthritis in your knee because of an old sports injury, and rheumatoid arthritis in your fingers.

The better you can describe your symptoms to your health care provider, the more options you will have for treatment and relief from pain.

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Source - empowher.com

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Study Evaluates Risk Factors for Chronic Temporomandibular Joint and Muscle Disorders

Thousands of Americans this year will be diagnosed with a common disorder of the jaw area called temporomandibular joint and muscle disorders (TMJD, formerly called TMJ).  Because of the inherent biological complexity of TMJD, their healthcare providers will have no way to determine whether their patients will get better in time or battle chronic disease.

But research help is on the way.  Scientists affiliated with a large, seven-year study supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, have published the preliminary results of the most comprehensive and systematic analysis to date of risk factors associated with chronic TMJD.  The findings are found in a special issue of the Journal of Pain, which now is available online to subscribers. 

These initial results from the Orofacial Pain:  Prospective Evaluation and Risk Assessment (OPPERA) study provide a voluminous body of high-quality data that confirms many previous discoveries and adds several new possibilities for risk.  These include:

• In women, the risk for chronic TMJD increases between the ages of 18 and 44, the age range evaluated in the study.  Previous studies have suggested that the risk was greatest during a woman’s early childbearing years and decreased thereafter.  In young men (ages 18-44), age was unrelated to TMJD incidence.
• Chronic TMJD incidence does not correlate with low socio-economic status.  This finding is in stark contrast to trends seen in other chronic pain conditions.  Socio-economic status, for instance, has been shown to have a profound effect on musculoskeletal pain, sciatica, ulcer, and neuropathic pain.
• Chronic TMJD seems to be associated with alterations in some parts of the nervous system that control pain perception.  Researchers found that TMJD patients, when compared to healthy study volunteers, were much more sensitive to a variety of stimuli that evoke mildly painful sensations.  They also show elevated heart rate responses at rest and during mild physical and psychological stress.
• Genetic variability contributes to chronic TMJD.  Researchers found that chronic TMJD patients had alterations in several genes, including some known to influence stress response, psychological well-being, and inflammation.  These findings may help to explain the origins of TMJD and provide new targets for drugs to treat chronic pain.
• Several clinical findings also were reported.   TMJD patients frequently experienced many more chronic pain conditions, such as lower back pain, headaches, and fibromyalgia.  Evidence of abnormal jaw function associated with teeth grinding and clenching was also observed.  Future investigations will attempt to unravel whether grinding and clenching is a cause of consequence of the condition.

“These initial results from the OPPERA Study mark an important preliminary first step in providing a clearer, more definitive accounting of the risk factors associated with TMJD and related conditions,” said Martha Somerman, D.D.S, Ph.D., director of NIDCR.   “The OPPERA Study has a lot more data in the pipeline.  The next few years will be extremely interesting and should greatly improve the diagnosis of TMJD.”

TMJD is an umbrella term for a group of conditions that affect the area in and around the temporomandibular joint, or TMJ.  These two large, ball-and-socket joints connect the jaw to the skull on both sides of the head.  Common TMJD symptoms include:  persistent pain in the jaw muscles, restricted jaw movement, jaw locking, and abnormal popping and clicking of the joint.

It is not known how many people have TMJD.  But the main symptoms – pain and restricted jaw movement – occur in 5-15 percent of Americans and more frequently affect women.   Although some cases can be to linked physical trauma, in most cases the cause is unknown.

One reason that treatment can be so difficult is the chronic pain associated with TMJD results from a highly complex biological interplay.  The interplay involves myriad factors, ranging from the intricacies of pain transmission and its possible rewiring and overamplification en route to the brain to the complicating and frequent presence of other painful conditions, such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, which mask or modify the symptoms of the TMJD.

With so many variables, some researchers have suggested that the best scientific entry point to examine TMJD is during its earliest stages, before the full-blown complexity of advanced disease clouds the investigative picture.  This thinking and progress in studying the basic biology of pain led to the launch of OPPERA in September 2005.  It marks the first-ever, large prospective (meaning, looking forward in time) clinical study of TMJD and, more broadly, a chronic pain condition.

The OPPERA Study involves four investigative units:  University of Florida in Gainesville, directed by Dr. Roger Fillingim; University of Buffalo-SUNY, directed by Dr. Richard Ohrbach; University of Maryland at Baltimore, overseen by Drs. Joel Greenspan and Ronald Dubner; and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, directed by Drs. Gary Slade, Eric Blair, Shad Smith, Luda Diatchenko, and William Maixner, who is also OPPERA’s program director.   Mr. Charles Knott, with the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, served as the director of the Data Coordination Center.

Investigators at the four study sites now have completed tracking 3,200 healthy male and female volunteers, ages 18-44, from three to five years.  As expected, a subset of approximately 200 volunteers developed their first bout(s) of TMJD, and researchers are currently analyzing the study data to determine the factors associated with the disease’s onset.

The publications in the Journal of Pain, however, stem from an associated but distinct baseline study at OPPERA’s launch.  In this investigation, researchers enrolled 192 individuals with chronic TMJD and 3,200 volunteers enrolled in the prospective study.  Both groups underwent state-of-the-art tests that evaluated comprehensively a range of biological, psychological, and genetic factors, another first for a large clinical pain study.

The results provided in-depth baseline profiles at opposite ends of the disease spectrum.  These profiles provide invaluable reference points from which to better evaluate the data from the longitudinal study.  But the chronic TMJD profile in particular charts fresh scientific ground.

“The profile offers the most quantitative and thus complete picture to date of who has chronic TMJD and who is at risk,” said Dr. William Maixner, the principal investigator of OPPERA and a scientist at the University of North Carolina.   “While the current results are preliminary, they should be of immediate value to practitioners who treat patients with TMJD.”

In addition to the new discoveries highlighted above, Maixner said he and his colleagues confirmed many previous findings in TMJD research and have placed them into a clearer conceptual context for further study.  Maixner noted that these findings have gone far to validate the broad conceptual model of TMJD causation that underlies OPPERA’s longitudinal study.  The model, like a compass to a traveler, predicts the route ahead in the development of a specific disorder.  In this case, Maixner and colleagues predicted that psychological distress and pain amplification are the two broad factors that contribute to the onset and persistence of TMJD.

“Within the broad headings of demographics, pain amplification, psychological distress, genetics, and life history of physical and psychological trauma lies a complex web of causation,” said Maixner.  “Our hope with the larger longitudinal study is to pull out specific factors within this web and also determine if there is interplay between them.  Whatever we learn likely will have an impact on the diagnosis and, hopefully, treatment of TMJD.”

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Source - nidcr.nih.gov/research/ResearchResults/NewsReleases/PressStatements/ChronicTMJD.htm

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