This is one question researchers set out to answer in a recent study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, published. Many studies have focused on different nutrients as playing a role in mental health, but this group wanted to look at diet patterns as a whole to determine what big dietary factors might be affecting your mood.

The research team, from the University College of London and lead by Dr. Tasnime Akbaraly, used data from a large study called the Whitehall II study, which monitored many social, lifestyle, work and health factors in a group of over 10,000 British civil servants. Dr. Akbaraly’s team focused on evaluating whether what people ate affected their odds of becoming depressed, using a subset of approximately 3,500 people, for whom this data was available.

The researchers used a food questionnaire to lump dietary patterns into two major groups: a whole foods group (heavily loaded with fruits, vegetables and fish) and a processed food group (heavily loaded with sweets, fried foods, high-fat dairy, and processed grains and meats). What they found was that those who ate more of the whole foods or less of the process foods were less likely to become depressed.

To test the validity of their findings, they used statistical tools to remove the affects of several ‘confounding’ factors that may also be contributing to depression, including: age, gender, marital status, physical activity, smoking, education level, employment grade, and a host of other medical conditions. After adjusting for all of these, the findings still stood. A diet rich in whole foods seemed to protect against depression and a diet rich in processed foods seemed to increase the odds of depression.

These data are interesting because no other studies had really evaluated a ‘pro-depressive’ effect of processed foods. Many studies have shown benefit of individual nutrients, like omega-3s and B vitamin, but not really evaluated diet patterns as a whole.

For many people it’s kind of a no-brainer that the foods you eat can affect the way you feel. However, more studies like this one are needed to really make the link between different aspects of the diet and the risk of real depressive disorders, not just blue moods. The more we understand all the factors involved in contributing to depression and related disorders, the more we can do to effectively treat it.

Currently, psychiatrists, nurses and social workers all work together to help people deal with mental illnesses from different angles. Data is emerging, like this study, that suggests if we added nutritionists and exercise professionals into the mix, we could do an even better job.

Studies like this are the only way we can really solidify the science behind a broad treatment approach; and without the data insurance won’t cover it, and without insurance coverage the system won’t change. But do we need to wait for the system to change in order to live better today? No. Eat Well. Your brain will thank you.

Reference: Akbaraly et al., Dietary Pattern and Depressive Symptoms in Middle Age. The British Journal of Psychiatry (2009) 195:408-413.

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By Simon J. Evans, PhD

What does the word ‘fitness’ mean to you? Do you think of a body builder or a marathon runner? Do you think an Olympic swimmer? How about an old person reading a map? Huh? Where’d that last one come from?

A new study published in the January 2009 edition of Hippocampus finds that older adults (59 to 81 years) who were more fit had increased spatial memory compared to less fit adults of the same age. They also had a bigger part of the brain, called the hippocampus, which is involved in learning and memory. The hippocampus is also a part of the brain that is particularly targeted in Alzheimer’s disease. Currently science assumes that when it comes to the hippocampus, bigger is better.

Larger hippocampi (plural form) are also associated with better ability to handle stress. In fact, some studies show that war veterans with a larger hippocampus have less intense post-traumatic stress disorder. This may be because their bigger hippocampi protect them from stress better. It may also be that stress itself, shrinks the hippocampus. In fact, the data suggest that both are probably true.

Having a genetically endowed hippocampus probably puts you at somewhat of an advantage when it comes to handling stress. But learning to manage stress can probably also protect your hippocampus and help you age with a little more cognitive grace.

In this new study, researchers recruited 109 older adults and tested their level of physical fitness using a treadmill, measuring aerobic fitness, heart rate and blood pressure. After that, the participants all had their brains scanned in an MRI machine, allowing researchers to measure the size of their hippocampus.

When they compared the two types of measures, low and behold, increased aerobic fitness correlated with increased hippocampal volume, a bigger hippocampus. But the researchers didn’t stop there. They also tested all the participants on spatial memory tasks.

Using a computer, dots were flashed on the screen and the subjects had to remember where those dots came up, monitoring one, two or three dots at the same time. Again, the older adults with better fitness measures performed better on this test.

The researchers believe that the reason they do better on the tests is because they have bigger hippocampi, and the reason they have bigger hippocampi is because they are more fit.

This all make sense, knowing what we know about how exercise boosts brain function. However, we still have to point out that this is a retrospective study. This means you can’t say for sure that increased fitness caused increased hippocampal size and increased performance on memory tests. There may be other factors.

Still, when you look at this new study in the context of all the other studies showing that exercise is good for the brain, it sure seems to be true. This is one more piece in the mind-body connection puzzle. Every day research comes out making it clearer and clearer that the health of your body influences the health of your brain. So if you want to stay sharp in those older years don’t just rely on crossword puzzles in the daily paper to get you there – unless you’re taking a brisk walk down to the corner store to pick it up.

Reference:
Hippocampus. 2009 Jan 2. [Epub ahead of print]

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By Simon J Evans, PhD

I ran across and interesting study recently suggesting that if we think faster we might feel better. There are plenty of anecdotes to back up this theory. People with bipolar (manic depression) disorder feel high levels of elation and positive mood during their rapid thought firing manic phases. Drugs that induce fast thinking states, like caffeine or amphetamines, also typically elevate mood. However, the new study asked whether we could deliberately improve our mood by engaging in fast thinking activities.

Researchers from Princeton and Harvard published their findings supporting this notion in a recent issue of the journal, Emotion. They recruited college students and set them up in various tasks that required either slow and careful thought or rapid fire brainstorming and then tested their mood and feelings of self-esteem right after the experiences.

What they found was that over six different kinds of experiments that manipulated thought speed, subjects in the ‘fast thinking’ group had improved mood every time. The fast thinkers also showed improved creativity, and self esteem and increased energy and sense of power in most of the tests.

These findings are easy to relate with. If you think about times when you really feel great and unstoppable, they were probably times when your mind was working clear and quickly. The cool thing about the research is that it suggests you can manipulate your mood (for the better) by deliberately doing things that require rapid thinking, like fast paced games, intense conversations or even rapid fire brain storming on your own.

Now, it’s likely that the benefit of fast thinking only applies when such thinking is beneficial. We’ve all had the experiences, lying awake at night, trying to shut off our brains and go to sleep. These times are certainly not mood elevating and are usually very frustrating. But during waking functional hours, this little trick may be a good tool to break out of negative mood states.

I think this actually ties nicely into another theory that I wrote about several months ago, put forth by Kelly Lambert from Randolph-Macon College. In her theory Dr. Lambert suggests that the lack of effort required for our survival today is partially responsible for increased rates of depression. After all, we don’t really have to work very hard to find food and shelter anymore. Dr Lambert suggests that this robs us of the rewarding feelings of success from overcoming challenges in our daily lives.

Both of these lines of research relate to quick thinking associated with problem solving. Both also point to the activation of the brain’s ‘reward centers’, controlled mostly by dopamine (which are also stimulated by many drugs of abuse).

When I look at these two lines of research I am reminded of the old adage “Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.” We have spent centuries developing technologies to make our lives easier, but are we really benefiting from that? Some philosophers argue that human struggle is necessary for happiness. I’m sure there are entire volumes written on this topic, so will just leave it at that.

So if we’re not going to drop out of modern society and go live off the land, what can we do? Maybe we shouldn’t always look for the easy road. That message certainly applies to your physical health. No one has found the magic pill for diet and exercise yet. Maybe that message should apply to our emotional health as well.

Reference:
Emotion. 2008, 8(5):597-612

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By Paul R. Burghardt, PhD

Surfing around the free movies section that comes with my cable subscription I found a documentary on HBO titled: “Wide Awake” by Alan Berliner. I wanted to blog on it for a few reasons. First, it was a well produced documentary. Second, it deals with sub-optimal-sleep which we discuss in our book, BrainFit for Life, and is a looming problem in many societies. Finally, it has an underlying theme regarding the need for balancing life and setting priorities.

Berliner, a filmmaker, has suffered from insomnia for several decades. This documentary chronicles his efforts to understand roots of his sub-optimal-sleep, highlighting his angst and frustration regarding its impact on his function during “normal” daytime hours. In addition, he is clearly concerned that his sleep problems will be inherited by his newly born son.

He uses montage’s of old footage coupled with current footage of himself and his family that gave me a feel for how his thoughts and feelings (as I imagine) interact with his struggle to optimize his sleep and find better balance in his life.

One of the more entertaining sections of the film is where Berliner, who allegedly never uses caffeine, drinks a cup of coffee as an experiment. What ensues is a pretty entertaining segment where you see his alertness continue to increase while he fervently drains his cup of coffee. The final shot has him essentially shaking the last drops out of the cup into his mouth, after which he takes the camera man on a caffeine-fueled tour of his editing studio.

From a cinematic standpoint (in my humble opinion as a sub-amateur film critic), this film was put together very nicely. Stepping back to survey the whole story, however begs the question of whether his insomnia really is a problem?

You could probably take a yes or no vantage point depending on what you would define as a “problem.”

Ok, let’s say it is a problem, but why? Well, Berliner believes that his sleep pattern is disrupting his ability to function. That’s a pretty good definition, by all rights, but is it fair? He is an award-winning director, which would suggest that he actually performs above normal in that aspect of his life. It happens that the time he is most creative and productive is during the night. So it may be that he is more of an “owl” than a “lark” and he should adjust his life accordingly.

That might lead us to say that it’s not a problem. However, what is best for his creativity, and therefore his job, might not be the best for the other aspects of his life. This theme appears to pop-up when viewing his interactions with his family and his desire to keep his son from experiencing the same types of sleep problems.

Even if you don’t struggle with sub-optimal-sleep this movie is probably worth watching from a cinematic standpoint and as a subtle example highlighting the need for balance in one’s life. Check it out below.

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By Simon J. Evans, PhD

Stress exposure can be a major problem for people. Exposure to violence through war, terrorism, rape or domestic violence can leave your psyche damaged and haunt you for years to come. The prevalence of global conflict and our awareness of it due to instant media access are causing psychologists to seek effective treatments for stress exposure to minimize the harm.

A recent study looked at the possibility of reducing post-traumatic stress disorder using the computer game, Tetris. While this might seem fantastic at first glance, let’s take a closer look at their reasoning and their findings.

Traumatic experiences are typically remembered in some visual and spatial way. The images of the event are reconstructed later by your brain as ‘flashbacks’ that can be triggered by some similar environment, a noise, a smell, or sometimes nothing at all. However, these images aren’t acquired by your brain immediately. There seems to be about a 6 hour time window following the event when the memories are consolidated and stored.

This is the first fact that researchers and clinicians can possibly take advantage of. If you can somehow disrupt those memories from forming in the 6 hour window, you might be able to dampen any long-term harm, or even prevent it. In fact, strategies have been used to do this, often using drugs that temporarily interfere with the brain’s chemistry and prevent memory formation.

The problem with this approach is that it can make all memories of the event unreliable. Sometimes having such memory can be beneficial. First, it can help prevent exposure to such events in the future. Second, you may need those memories to aid the prosecution in a criminal case. So what other approaches could researchers try?

Enter Tetris. Tetris is a visual-spatial game so uses the some of the same brain resources used to encode memories of a traumatic event. This was the reasoning behind trying to use it as way to interfere with traumatic memory consolidation. So did it work?

Researchers took 2 groups of healthy adults and showed them real videos of violence and death, which is a standard psychological tool to mimic exposure to trauma. After the videos, half the participants did nothing, while the other half played Tetris for ten minutes. Then throughout the next week participants were asked to keep track of any flashbacks they had relating to the violent and disturbing video exposure.

The Tetris player group had less than half the flashbacks of the non-player group, suggesting that playing Tetris interfered with their ability to consolidate the traumatic memories. But here’s the cool part. There was no difference between the groups in their ability to remember things about the videos. This means that the emotional impact of the experience was dampened, but the ability to recall facts about the experience was not.

Now, this study is not claiming that they can cure post-traumatic stress disorder by having soldiers or victims of violence play a little Tetris after a traumatic experience, although it may help a little. However, the study opens up the potential to develop new methods for helping victims of violence better cope in their future.

Current methods, including debriefing, can sometimes amplify the experience and actually make it worse, so psychologists are looking for new tools and this study may help lead to them.

In the short-term, maybe you should encourage your kids to wind down with a little Tetris after a hard battle playing Call of Duty:)

Resources: PLOS One, 2009, 4(1) e4153

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Paul R. Burghardt, PhD

A substantial number of Veterans will return from Iraq and Afghanistan over the next several years. This transition back to civilian life will not be trivial, and many of these individuals will need support to deal with the psychological stress they encountered while they were deployed.

An interesting study came out of a research group in Taiwan that could be used as a window into how we, the general public, can help our veterans as they return home. A study by Chung and colleagues in the Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics investigated which factors were related to cognitive and emotional health in older veterans.

The authors looked at a number of lifestyle factors and measured the level of depression and cognitive function in older veterans. What they found wasn’t exceptionally surprising, but illustrates the importance of working to build up your brain-fitness reserve.

Veterans who could read, were married, and had children or family, who didn’t smoke, avoided fatty foods, exercised for 30 minutes a day, and engaged in a hobby, had higher levels of cognitive function. The most important aspects for maintaining a higher level of cognitive function were level of depression, education, and being able to read. Depression plays a substantial role in both brain and general health, and is believed to worsen the cognitive decline in people with dementia. The prevention or effective management of depression will be an extremely important task for veterans.

Literacy is an important aspect of maintaining cognitive health. We’ve known for some time people with more education tend to have less risk of developing dementia, which was also true in this study. However, the most important aspect to education is continually challenging yourself to learn, not obtaining a degree per se.

An interesting aspect of this study was the large number of veterans who were illiterate. It’s probably obvious that illiteracy severely limits a person’s options for learning. If you couldn’t read, you wouldn’t be reading this article right now. I know it sounds obvious, but imagine all the things you read as you go about your daily tasks. Street signs, ordering food, that motion sickness-inducing news ticker at the bottom of your favorite 24-hour cable news channel. You’d miss out on a lot.

This report should really drive home how critical lifestyle choices, like diet, exercise and mental activity, can be for brain health particularly for people who have undergone substantial psychological stress. In addition, the role for social support cannot be understated. Just having someone there to interact with, help you through tough times, or just listen, is invaluable. Most creatures need social interaction, and humans are no exception. When times are tough it’s nice to know you’re not alone.

Reference:
Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics. 2008 Dec 4

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