Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Effective ways to prevent and treat depression: Wisdom Wednesdays

Transcript

Effective ways to prevent and treat depression: Wisdom Wednesdays · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Everyone, Welcome to another edition of Wisdom and Wednesdays. So
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: today I want to talk about something that affects about
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: twenty two percent of Australians and roughly the same amount
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: in most developed nations, and actually in Australia it effects
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: are whopping forty percent of teenage girls. And that is depression.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And I want to talk about ways that we can
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: both prevent it and treat it naturally without medications. And
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not even talking psychotherapy here. But the first paper
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about is a meta analysis
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: that was published in the Journal of the American Medical
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Association in twenty and twenty four and the name of
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the paper is Daily Step kind and Depression in Adults.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: A Systematic Review and meta Analysis. So what they did
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: in this study was they pulled to gather twenty three
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: different studies involving a total of just over ninety six
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: thousand adults is eighteen or over, and they looked at
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: their daily step counts and they looked at the incidence
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: of depression. And what they find pretty consistently is that
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: there was an inverse correlation in that the more people
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: walked per day, the more steps they took. It per
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: day the less depression that they actually had, and they
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: compared it with the baseline of five thousand steps a day,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: and what they actually found was that people who took
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: seven thousand steps a day had a thirty one percent
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: reduced risk of depression versus those who had about five
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: thousand steps a day or lower. And that is really
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: really big, like that is a significant effect, a thirty
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: one percent decrease, And they find that every thousand or
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: an increase of one thousand steps a day over and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: above the five thousand was associated with a nine percent
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: reduced risk. And so this makes it really really easy
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: for us to try and prevent depression in the first place,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: because once you've got it, it's pretty hard to shake
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: if you know anybody with it. And so this is
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: showing that just walking and moving a reasonable amount, not
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: even a huge amount, can significantly reduce your risk of depression.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: The counter way of looking at this is that it
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: being sentary increases your risk of depression, right, So this
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: was looking at prevention of depression. Then I want to
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: talk about a British medical journal Systematic Review and Meta
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Analysis another one, and this was for interventions of depression.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: So they had two hundred and eighteen studies and a
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: total of fourteen thousand participants, and they looked at the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: effectiveness of different interventions. And the thing I love about
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: this research paper was that their criteria wasn't a statistically
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: significant reduction, which means a lot to geeky researchers like me,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: but not a lot to the individual. They looked at
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: a clinically important benefit, which means that the individual in
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the intervention actually felt better, significantly better. That's that clinical
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: important benefit. And what they found they looked at a
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: number of different interventions walking or jogging, cognitive behavior therapy,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: yoga exercise plus antidepressants, aerobic exercise plus psychotherapy, and strength
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: training mixed aerobic exercises, tai chi or chigung aerobic exercise
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: plus strength training. And the last one was looking at
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: antidepressants SSRI selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And what they find
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: the researchers concluded that ssriyes, so medication may or may
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: not have a clinically important benefit. And why they concluded
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: that was when they pulled all of the data, the
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: average was very very close. It was just on the
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: positive side of a clinically important benefit, but a lot
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of studies were negative and a lot were positive. So
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: they really concluded here that across the population or for individuals,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: SSRIs may or may not have a clinically important benefit.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: But they found every other one of the interventions had
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: a clinically important benefit, and actually the most significant was
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: walking or jogging, and now all of the others were
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: reasonably similar to that. So when you take SSRIs and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: you add exercise in, that massively increases the effectiveness of
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the medication. But they found that all of those different
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: into mentions that I mentioned and were actually important, they
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: had a clinically important benefit. And look, the reason for
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: this is that every time you're exercising, I think everybody
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: knows about endorphins, those field good chemicals, but what is
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: also being released in your brain or monomines, dopamine, serotonin,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: no adrenaline if you're in America you call it no epinephrine,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And they're also important neurotransmitters for your mood as well
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and your motivation. But exercise as well as those three
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and endorphins releases endocannabinoids and incafalons, which are other mood
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: enhancing chemicals. So, as I said, to people, every time
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: you're exercising, there's a bloody neurosymphony going on in your
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: brain and there's this orchestra of neurotransmitters that are acting together.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: And then just to kind of close this out, I
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: want to talk about some other things that we can
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: do that are complementary in terms of our lifestyle. We
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: know that vitamin D is an effective antidepressant in and
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of itself as an intervention, and we see in observational
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: studies that a lot of depressed people have got low
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: vinomin D and then you put them on vinamin D
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: supplements and a lot of them it is very helpful
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: for their depression. Another thing that's very very simple is creating,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: which is often thought of as something that athletes take.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: But if you've been listening to this podcast, you know
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of creating for the brain benefits.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: And creating in and of itself is quite an effective antidepressant.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And there was a really interesting research paper that showed
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: that it took a bunch of people who had depression.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Half of them they just did psychotherapy. The other half
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: they had psychotherapy because creating. And the people who took
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the creating in addition to the psychotherapy. It doubled the
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: effectiveness of the psychotherapy. And why this works is that
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: that creating is a direct energy source for our neurons.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: And it's also show in observation studies that people with
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: depression tend to have low creating. And let me circle
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: back to the vitamin D. Why does that work well?
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Vitamin D regulates about ten percent of the genome. It
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: regulates about two thousand genes. It shouldn't be called the vitamin,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: it should actually be called a steroid hormone and other
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: things that are really useful for depression. Again, Amiga three
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: fatty acids low in people with depression quite often, and
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: in and of itself is an effective antidepression. So here
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: we have it. If you pull of these stuff together
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: and we take for me, the perfect prescription to counter
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: depression are to prevent you getting it in the first place,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: would be making sure that you're walking lots, getting outside.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Adding in a bit more vigorous exercise I think would
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: be optimal, and then making sure that your vitamin D
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: levels are good. Supplementing if you have to, but trying
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to get out and get twenty minutes of unbroken sun
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: exposure per day and take some creating. I think if
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: you really want the brain and the cognitive benefits, we're
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: really talking about ten to twenty grams a day, you
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: probably will have to break that into smaller doses, take
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: some in the morning and some in the evening. So again,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: if you're kind of lower weight or smaller, ten grams
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: will probably do, and if you're really quite large, you
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: might need up to twenty grams per day. But then
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: they make you three fairy acids, making sure that you're
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: having plenty of a me throughout three fatty acids. And
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: then the other thing that I have talked about before
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: this is more of the don't and that is really
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: minimizing your intake of ultra process foods. Because it's an
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: umbrella review. Would looked at a whole heap of different studies,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and they find that increasing ult process foods in your
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: dad increases your risk of anxiety by forty eight percent
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: and common mental health disorders by fifty three percent. And look,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I'll probably do a follow up one on this about
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: high ultra processed foods cause both anxiety and depression, because
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: it is really quite fascinating. So there you have it.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: It's basically live the way that humans are supposed to live.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Eat real food, get yourself outside and do plenty of exercise.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Don't eat shit food, and maybe take targeted supplements around
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: vitamin D creating and amgia three if your levels aren't great.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: So that's it for this week, folks, catch you next time.