Tackling Inflammation to Fight Age-Related Ailments

December 29, 2019

Specialists in the biology of aging have identified a rarely recognized yet universal condition that is a major contributor to a wide range of common health-robbing ailments, from heart disease, diabetes and cancer to arthritis, depression and Alzheimer’s disease. That condition is chronic inflammation, a kind of low-grade irritant that can undermine the well-being of virtually every bodily system.

But modern medical science is now gradually closing in on what might realistically enable people to live longer, healthier lives — if they are willing to sacrifice some popular hedonistic pleasures.

Source: Tackling Inflammation to Fight Age-Related Ailments – The New York Times

The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

April 8, 2019

Millions of Americans have taken antidepressants for many years. What happens when it’s time to stop?

Source: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs | The New Yorker

How to Quit Antidepressants: Very Slowly, Doctors Say 

March 9, 2019

Mustering solid evidence, two researchers have denounced the standard psychiatric guidelines for how best to wean patients from depression medications. Patients who very gradually reduced their daily dose of antidepressants over time, after years of use, were less likely to experience withdrawal symptoms. 

Patients who very gradually reduced their daily dose of antidepressants over time, after years of use, were less likely to experience withdrawal symptoms.

Source: How to Quit Antidepressants: Very Slowly, Doctors Say – The New York Times

Does Marijuana Use Cause Schizophrenia?

March 9, 2019

As the drug becomes more popular, concerns have been raised that its use can lead to psychotic disorders. Here’s what scientists know for sure, and what they don’t. 

Cannabis plants in a lab at Niagara College in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario. As marijuana use becomes more widespread and varied, some people worry that its more potent versions can cause or exacerbate mental illness.CreditCreditCarlos Osorio/Reuters

Source: Does Marijuana Use Cause Schizophrenia? – The New York Times

When is stress good for you? How stress works in the human body, to make or break us

March 4, 2018

The subtle flows and toxic hits of stress get under the skin, making and breaking the body and brain over a lifetime.

Source: How stress works in the human body, to make or break us | Aeon Essays

We need new ways of treating depression

March 4, 2018

The World Health Organization, the leading medical body in the world, explained in 2011: “Mental health is produced socially: The presence or absence of mental health is above all a social indicator and therefore requires social, as well as individual, solutions.” The United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras — one of the leading experts in the world on mental health — explained last April that “the dominant biomedical narrative of depression” is based on “biased and selective use of research outcomes.”

Experts are now looking to the social and environmental causes of the disorder affecting millions.

Source: We need new kinds of antidepressants, in addition to pills – Vox

The Danger of Putting Youth on Antidepressants

January 1, 2018

Why medication shouldn’t be the default treatment for our kids’ mental health.

On World Health Day this year, Dainius Pūras, a doctor and a representative for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, made a powerful statement. By focusing so intently on the biomedical model of treating depression, he argued, we are diverting resources from the “social and underlying determinants” that may have a larger and more lasting effect on mental health: economic injustice, political oppression, social violence. “Mental health services, policymakers, medical students,

Source: The Danger of Putting Youth on Antidepressants · The Walrus

To treat back pain, look to the brain not the spine 

December 30, 2017

Where pain lives

Fixing chronic back pain is possible only when patients understand how much it is produced by the brain, not the spine

“We always thought of it as acute pain that just goes on and on – and if chronic pain is just a continuation of acute pain, let’s fix the thing that caused the acute, and the chronic should go away,’ … ‘That has spectacularly failed. Now we think of chronic pain as a shift to another place, with different mechanisms, such as changes in genetic expression, chemical release, neurophysiology and wiring. We’ve got all these completely new ways of thinking about chronic pain. That’s the paradigm shift in the pain field.”

Source: To treat back pain, look to the brain not the spine | Aeon Essays