For this post I'm reviewing a paper from Neurology, October 2010, "Homocysteine and holotranscobalamin and the risk of Alzheimer's disease" along with the accompanying editorial, "Beauty and the beast: B12, homocysteine, and the brain: A bemusing saga!" (Neurologists don't have much time for poetry, I'm guessing.)(Dear neurologists and cardiologists, sorry for making fun of you all the time.)(As if...
Minggu, 31 Oktober 2010
Jumat, 29 Oktober 2010
Quick review. The hypothalamus in our brains secretes CRH, a hormone that tells our pituitary gland to secrete ACTH, which then travels down through the blood to the adrenal glands (which sit on top of the kidneys). When stimulated by ACTH, the adrenal glands spit out adrenaline and cortisol. Pow! You are ready to fight, or run, or do whatever it is you need to do with your jacked-up stress hormones....
Kamis, 28 Oktober 2010
It seems like a straightforward topic. How does obesity affect the brain? The associations are complicated, chicken and egg sorts of problems. Does being depressed make you unable to care for yourself and exercise, so you pack on the pounds? Does being anxious send you straight for the Doritos? Or does being obese and the social stigma lead to increased stress, depression, and anxiety? Does...
Senin, 25 Oktober 2010
My interview with Leslie Irish Evans is at 3pm EST today (Monday Oct. 25th) on Blog Talk Radio. I have the honor of being her last guest on Blog Talk before she moves onward and upward to the I'm Thankful Radio Network with a potential audience of millions of people. Go Leslie!Here's a soup I threw together Sunday afternoon, a bit regretfully, as this week and next week will be our last CSA shares...
Minggu, 24 Oktober 2010
I made some pretty bold claims the other day in my post on Alzheimer's and ApoE. I want to look more closely at some of the studies cited yesterday, and to ask some critical questions to see if we can make sense of it all. The exciting thing about a blog is that I'm not the only one looking at all of this information - if you have a bright idea, please chime in with a comment or two.We...
Jumat, 22 Oktober 2010
I believe the hierarchy of medicine explains everything. Cardiologists had the EKG as soon as some poor soul was convinced to dunk his feet in (dilute) battery acid. Psychiatrists not only have no procedures (except shock therapy), we eschew modern medicine, not wearing the normal white coat uniform, not even touching our patients. We just observe,...
My friend Leslie Irish Evans of Peeling Mom Off the Ceiling is having me on her radio show next Monday, October 25th. You can hear it live at noon pacific time (which is, I hope, 3pm eastern, as that is when the interview is scheduled on my calendar), or play the recording any time thereafter. Leslie has a great website dedicated to helping moms stop being martyrs. As a mom and as...
Senin, 18 Oktober 2010
Brand new paper today in Nature Medicine - "A negative regulator of MAP kinase causes depressive behavior." I know that doesn't sound particularly exciting, but it was the top news in my daily American Psychiatric Association email digest, and made a splash in the press as well. The short version is that researchers found a gene that was twice as...
Sabtu, 16 Oktober 2010
First, some possible bad news for Paleo/Primal diet fans. See, there's a prospective cohort study of people >65 out of New York City. 2148 elderly were followed for about 4 years, and every 1.5 years they were given neurological and neuropsychological tests. In addition, a food frequency questionnaire was done at the beginning of the study to look into dietary patterns (DP). I'll just copy...
Kamis, 14 Oktober 2010
As I mentioned in my last post, the first Biosphere 2 closure experiment in 1991-1993 was rough going. Considering the circumstances (starvation, suffocation, split factions) and the poor management, I find it incredible the eight humans sealed inside finished out the two years at all. Biospherian Jane Poynter reports the overarching issue that...
Selasa, 12 Oktober 2010
Do you guys know Martin Levac? I don't either. He's someone who has been active and entertaining in the comments section of Denise Minger's big China Study post, and towards the end of those comments he started to mention some human experiments in semi-starvation. Semi-starvation means cutting lots of calories to lose weight, and is eerily close...
Minggu, 10 Oktober 2010
A little nubbin of a post tonight, mostly to get my brain churning about a topic that I need to do a bit more reading on. The Journal of Affective Disorders has a number of intriguing papers this month and next, one of them being "Association between inducible and neuronal nitric oxide synthase polymorphisms and recurrent depressive disorder."What? Doesn't sound intriguing to you? I keep an eye out...
Sabtu, 09 Oktober 2010
Back in July, I wrote a number of posts about zinc. There was Zinc! (which remains one of my most popular posts - perhaps it was the exclamation point?), Zinc, Depression, and Everything, and the optimistically titled Zinc Clarity. By all means go back and dig in, but the summary here: rather like magnesium, zinc is wasted and sequestered during periods of inflammation, but zinc is also...
Kamis, 07 Oktober 2010
Found two more studies measuring diet pattern and mood disorders!The first one is Dietary pattern and depressive symptoms in middle age from the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2009 (free full text, go take a look!). This paper is part of the large Whitehall II epidemiological study, where some 10,000 people were screened at baseline (phase 1) for all sorts of demographic characteristics, stress...
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