Oh, The Guilt! Why You Blame Yourself For Everything When You’re Depressed

2013-04-23

Alice G. Walton, Contributor

Anybody who’s been depressed can tell you that feelings of guilt and self-blame can be overwhelming. In fact, the tendency to blame oneself excessively (and inappropriately) is a key factor in depression. Over a century ago, Sigmund Freud suggested that depression was fundamentally different from “normal sadness” in that very factor. Now, a new study shows exactly why he was right: The brains of depressed people have a “gap” in the communication between two key areas, which may explain why depression is so hard to overcome, and relapse so common.

In depression, excessive self-blame is often accompanied by the equally maladaptive tendency to overgeneralize. That is, depressed people often have a knack for (erroneously) generalizing specific situations to reflect their own self worth in a larger sense: For example, the authors say that a depressed person might think to him or herself, “If I fail at sports matches, it means I am a total failure.” Exactly how people make the leap from specific, external situations to general, internal ones has been a mystery until now.

Continue reading Oh, The Guilt! Why You Blame Yourself For Everything When You’re Depressed →

Surprising Differences Between the Male and Female Brain

2013-04-16

By Lisa Collier Cool

It’s not as simple as Mars vs. Venus, but scientists have identified intriguing differences in how men and women think that influence emotions, memory, business success, and even longevity.

In the largest brain imaging study ever conducted to compare male and female brains, Daniel Amen, MD, and other researchers analyzed imaging scans of 26,000 people. They discovered that women showed increased blood flow in 112 of the 128 brain regions they studied, indicating that on average, women’s brains are much more active than men’s.

The most striking difference between the sexes was that women have a much higher level of activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area that’s sometimes called “the brain’s CEO” because it governs planning, organization, impulse control, and learning from mistakes.

In the soon-to-be published study, men’s brains showed greater activity in regions associated with visual perception, tracking objects through space, and form recognition. However, these gender differences don’t mean that one sex has a mental edge over the other—just that their brains are wired differently.

“Even when men and women succeed at the same task, they tend to call on different strengths and areas of the brain to achieve this result,” says Dr. Amen, author of Unleash the Power of the Female Brain: Supercharging Yours for Better Health, Energy, Mood, Focus, and Sex (Harmony, 2013).

Here’s a closer look at some gender differences Dr. Amen and other researchers have identified—and how we can use them to our advantage.

Men Have Bigger Brains, But It Doesn’t Make Them Smarter

On average, men’s brains are 8 to 10 percent bigger than women’s brains. While that may not seem surprising, given that men’s bodies tend to be larger overall, even after correcting for body weight, it’s been estimated that men have about 4 percent more neurons than women do.

But before men jump on these findings as proof of brain superiority, scientists point out that these size differences aren’t distributed uniformly in all brain regions. In a study using MRI scans, Dr. Jill Goldstein at Harvard Medical School found that compared to men, women have larger volume in both the frontal cortex (the inner CEO) and the limbic cortex, involved in emotional responses.

“This may explain why women tend to be less impulsive and more concerned with emotions than men are,” says Dr. Amen, who theorizes that a bigger and more active frontal cortex suggests that women are wired for leadership—and may actually be better bosses than men.

Consider the intriguing result of a recent study in which teams of men and women were assigned tasks that involved brainstorming, decision-making, and solving visual puzzles. Teams were given collective IQ scores based on their performance.

Conventional wisdom would infer the team made up of people with the highest individual IQ scores (thus the highest total IQ) should emerge victorious. However, the collective IQ scores were based on how they completed the assigned tasks as a team. And the teams with the highest collective IQs were those with more women, Harvard Business Review reports.

The Most Surprising Facts About Testosterone

Women Have Better Memories, Worse Sense of Direction

Dr. Amen’s research shows that women have greater activity in the brain’s hippocampus. “Guys, if you wonder why your wife or girlfriend never forgets anything, here’s your answer: The hippocampus is the part of the brain that helps store memories.”

In a 2008 study, Swedish psychologists found significant sex differences in several types of memory, favoring women in all almost all of the areas studied.

Specifically, women excelled at recalling words, pictures, objects, and everyday events. They also outperformed men on such tasks as recalling the location of car keys or remembering faces (particularly those of other women).

However, the psychologists also found that men have the edge in a type of memory called visuospatial processing. For example, the study results suggested that a man would be more likely to remember how to find his way out of the woods.

There’s quite a bit of scientific evidence that men have a keener sense of direction than women do, adds Dr. Amen. “Overall, men are better at getting from point A to point B, but are also less likely to realize it if they take the wrong turn. That’s why men are famously reluctant to ask for directions: They don’t realize they’re lost.”

Women Live Longer, But On Average Men Are Happier

Studies suggest that women have greater self-control and levels of what Dr. Amen terms “appropriate worry.” For example, women tend to take better care of their health, visit the doctor more often, and behave less recklessly.

Women also have lower rates of substance abuse, anti-social personality disorder, and ADHD. And they’re 14 times less likely to go to jail—and even get fewer traffic tickets than men do.

“These points are actually quite fascinating,” says Dr. Amen, “because appropriate worry about negative consequences could be a key factor in why women outlive men. In one large study, researchers found that those with a “don’t worry, be happy” attitude—i.e. young men with motorcycles—died earlier from fatal accidents and preventable illness.”

However, the dark side of women’s higher level of worry is that they are more prone to anxiety disorders and depression, which strikes women at nearly double the rate it does men, according to the Mayo Clinic. At some point in life, about 1 in 5 women develops clinical depression.

One reason why women may be more vulnerable is that men’s brains, on average, produce 52 percent more serotonin, according to a recent study by University of Montreal researchers. This feel-good brain chemical has been dubbed “the happy hormone.”

Dealing With Stress at a New Job

By Rheyanne Weaver

Getting a new job can cause the most wonderful feeling in the world, especially in the current economy, but sometimes new changes can also add additional stress.

If you feel a little stressed at your new job, experts have some suggestions to help you make a smooth transition.

Ramani Durvasula, a clinical psychologist and author of “You Are Why You Eat,” said in an email that it is normal to be stressed when you start a new job, because there are many reasons to be stressed.

“Expectations are high, the economy is tough, it is a time of proving oneself, of learning a new routine, meeting new people, learning new personalities, mastering a new schedule,” she said. “All of this while managing the responsibilities of day to day life.”

Stress is not the only mental health side effect of starting a new job.

“Some people may report pronounced anxiety, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, problems concentrating, and in people with preexisting conditions such as depression, may even report a worsening of those symptoms,” Durvasula said.

Stress and anxiety in small amounts aren’t necessarily detrimental, though.

“If you aren’t feeling them, I would wonder if you aren’t taking it seriously,” she said. “Stress and anxiety are ways of your system saying slow down, something is coming around the bend. You can use these signals to be mindful, to be organized in your new job.”

There are other ways to succeed at your new job while also enduring some stress along the way.

“Make sure you communicate so you are clear on the expectations laid out for you, and so you don’t make mistakes in your assumptions,” Durvasula said. “Take the time to learn about your new coworkers and team around you. Get to know the place you work in.”

Here are a few ways she suggests relieving some of your new job stress:

• Make sure you get enough sleep
• Eat well and exercise
• “Organize life as much as possible (especially the night before) so mornings aren’t chaotic.”
• “Turn to others for help when possible during the transitional phase. Let your support network know you are going through a transition so they can be there for you.”
• “Make some pleasurable time for you.”
• “Use those weekends well to give yourself mini-breaks and take care of you so you have the energy to manage the transition.”

Here are some ways Durvasula suggests to make your mental health a priority during this time of transition:

• Give yourself a break.
• Don’t be your own worst critic.
• Be mindful and think about how you react and respond to situations.
• “Even if time is tight, you can still take five minutes to breathe or meditate.”
• “If you are in therapy, this is a good time to continue it so you have a place to discuss fears and feelings.”
• “Self care is critical.”

Lisa Bahar, a licensed marriage and family therapist, said in an email that stress at a new job can be useful because it motivates employees and makes them work more effectively. A new job can also relieve anxiety once you master new skills and pay your bills, along with meeting new people.

“The positive is that the individual finds meaning perhaps and purpose, feels valued, is engaged in life and not excluded, is needed and feels as though there is worth to their life, that they can offer a skill that others value which engages them in a way that may have gone stagnant due to lack of employment,” Bahar said.

But sometimes it can have the opposite effect.

“Anxiety related to expectations and learning a new task can be challenging to deal with, as well as depression of feeling inadequate,” Bahar said. “On the other hand, the opportunity can relieve these symptoms if the individual has a strong social, spiritual and family support.”

She said there can also be some struggles with social anxiety, because for some people it takes more time to get adjusted and comfortable working with new people.

Bahar added that the best way to cope with stress is to be your own cheerleader. Engage in self-care and give yourself positive affirmations that you are doing well. She said to also make sure to take your lunch and breaks, and leave work on time.

“Continue and don’t impulsively leave the job, make sure you start what you finish, give yourself plenty of affirmations, acknowledge your accomplishments, smile gently and remind yourself you are valued no matter what,” she added.

Bahar also stressed that even if your job isn’t what you were expecting it to be, give yourself some time to adjust properly before you start looking elsewhere.

Google Searches Reveal Seasonal Trends in Mental Illnesses

2013-04-12

By Maia Szalavitz

It’s easy to appreciate the seasonality of winter blues, but web searches show that other disorders may ebb and flow with the weather as well.

Google searches are becoming an intriguing source of health-related information, exposing everything from the first signs of an infectious disease outbreak to previously undocumented side effects of medications. So researchers led by John Ayers of the University of Southern California decided to comb through queries about mental illnesses to look for potentially helpful patterns related to these conditions. Given well known connections between depression and winter weather, they investigated possible connections between mental illnesses and seasons.

Using all of Google’s search data from 2006 to 2010, they studied searches for terms like “schizophrenia” “attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),” “bulimia” and “bipolar” in both the United States and Australia.  Since winter and summer are reversed in the two countries finding opposing patterns in the two countries’ data would strongly suggest that season, rather than other things that might vary with time of year, was important in some way in the prevalence of the disorders.

“All mental health queries followed seasonal patterns with winter peaks and summer troughs,” the researchers write in their study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. They found that mental health queries in general were 14% higher in the winter in the U.S. and 11% higher in the Australian winter.

The seasonal timing of queries regarding each disorder was also similar in the two countries. In both countries, for example, searches about eating disorders (including anorexia and bulimia) and schizophrenia surged during winter months; those in the U.S. were 37% more likely and Australians were 42% more likely to seek information about these disorders during colder weather than during the summer. And compared to summer searches, schizophrenia queries were 37% more common in the American winter and 36% more frequent during the Australian winter. ADHD queries were also highly seasonal, with 31% more winter searches in the U.S. and 28% more in Australia compared to summer months.

Searches for depression and bipolar disorder, which might seem to be among the more common mental illnesses to strike during the cold winter months, didn’t solicit as many queries: there were 19% more winter searches for depression in the U.S. and 22% more in Australia for depression. For bipolar, 16% more American searches for the term occurred in the winter than in the summer, and 18% more searches occurred during the Australian winter. The least seasonal disorder was anxiety, which varied by just 7% in the U.S. and 15% in Australia between summer and winter months.

Understanding how the prevalence of mental illnesses change with the seasons could lead to more effective preventive measures that alert people to symptoms and guide them toward treatments that could help, say experts. Previous research suggests that shorter daylight hours and the social isolation that accompanies harsh weather conditions might explain some of these seasonal differences in mental illnesses, for example, so improving social interactions during the winter months might be one way to alleviate some symptoms. Drops in vitamin D levels, which rise with exposure to sunlight, may also play a role, so supplementation for some people affected by mood disorders could also be effective.

The researchers emphasize that searches for disorders are only queries for more information, and don’t necessarily reflect a desire to learn more about a mental illness after a new diagnosis. For example, while the study found that searches for ‘suicide’ were 29% more common in winter in America and 24% more common during the colder season in Australia, other investigations showed that completed suicides tend to peak in spring and early summer. Whether winter queries have any relationship at all to spring or summer suicides isn’t clear yet, but the results suggest a new way of analyzing data that could lead to better understanding of a potential connection.

And that’s the promise of data on web searches, says the scientists. Studies on mental illnesses typically rely on telephone or in-person surveys in which participants are asked about symptoms of mental illness or any history with psychological disorders, and people may not always answer truthfully in these situations. Searches, on the other hand, have the advantage of reflecting people’s desire to learn more about symptoms they may be experiencing or to improve their knowledge about a condition for which they were recently diagnosed. So such queries could become a useful resource for spotting previously undetected patterns in complex psychiatric disorders.  “The current results suggest that monitoring queries can provide insight into national trends on seeking information regarding mental health, such as seasonality…If additional studies can validate the current approach by linking clinical symptoms with patterns of search queries,” the authors conclude, “This method may prove essential in promoting population mental health.”

This Is Your Body On Stress (INFOGRAPHIC)

2013-04-04

Your boss reams you out for a bad presentation — you break out into a sweat. Your demanding mother-in-law comes for a visit — your head pounds. Rumors swirl about possible layoffs at work — you can’t sleep. An unexpected expense takes a hit on your bank account — your stomach aches.

Here’s why: Historically, the majority of stressors facing humans were physical (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), requiring, in turn, a physical response. “We are not particularly splendid physical creatures,” says David Spiegel, M.D., director of the Center on Stress and Health at Stanford School of Medicine, who explains that plenty of other animals can outrun us, overpower us, out-see us, out-smell us. “The only thing that has allowed us to explore the planet is the fact that we can respond effectively to threats.”

Humans are equipped with a sophisticated fight or flight response that allows us to outrun a grizzly bear or fight off an animal far more powerful than we are. When stressed, the sympathetic nervous system takes control of the body, which then triggers fight or flight. (The counterpart of the sympathetic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system, also known as the “rest and digest system,” which is in control during more relaxing times. Both are part of the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary actions.) Once our bodies identify a threat, we prepare for war (or getting the heck out of there): muscles tense up, the heart starts beating faster and blood flows away from any non-essential body system.

The problem, though, is that while just a few hundred years ago our stressors were primarily physical, today the vast majority of stress is psychological — work, finances, families and the like. But our bodies have yet to catch up. And that means the stress response is still a physical one. Your boss yells, your body thinks “grizzly bear.”

What’s more, the brain isn’t always particularly good at evaluating how serious a particular stressor is. Think of lighting a sparkler (or a candle or a match) inside a house, explains Amit Sood, M.D., associate director of Complementary and Integrative Medicine and chair of Mayo Mind Body Initiative at Mayo Clinic. Now imagine you can’t tell the difference between that sparkler and a multiple-alarm fire — so each time, you send every available firefighter to put it out. “It would probably extinguish the sparkler, but it would waste a lot of resources,” he says. Similarly, when the body is constantly stressed, it’s pouring resources into fighting that stress, which can, over time, take a profound physical toll.

So to help understand what exactly is going on inside your body when you’re stressed out, we asked Sood and Spiegel to break it down. Read through the graphic, then tell us: How do you deal with stress?

The stress response starts with the amygdala, which acts as a sensor at the base of the brain by vetting every input for possible threats. When it senses danger, it shuts down the entire brain operation (now is not the time for, say, creative thinking) and prepares the body to pool all of its resources for survival, allowing you to react before you even have time to think about what is happening. When constantly, severely stressed, the amygdala can become overly sensitive and hyper-vigilant, making even relatively harmless events (such as a whiny child or a snoring spouse) seem like a threat. That explains those instinctively snappy over-reactions we can all have when feeling strung out.

Amygdala

After picking up on a potential threat to safety, the amygdala sends impulses to an area of the brain called the locus coeruleus, which awakens your whole body to prepare for either fight or flight. “It’s like you took four big lattes and just infused those in your brain,” Sood says. The locus coeruleus triggers the release of a chemical called norepinephrine, which mobilizes sugars from around the body to fuel an effective stress response and activates the sympathetic nervous system.

Locus Coeruleus

Once the amygdala communicates with the locus coeruleus to fuel an immediate stress response, it sends signals to the prefrontal cortex, located in the higher cortical brain. The prefrontal cortex is more rational, and can help to evaluate how real a stressor is — it learns from experience and tells the amygdala when a response is unwarranted. “It’s like your elderly grandpa in your brain,” Sood says. Just as the amygdala can condition itself to become over-vigilant, we can strengthen the prefrontal cortex through mindfulness practices — like meditation — to help avoid overreactions.

Prefrontal Cortex

Ever find you get the sustained attention span to finish a project in the final hour before a deadline? Here’s why: During times of stress, a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex acts like a telephoto lens, allowing you to zoom in on a problem and ignore everything else that’s happening. This area of the brain can help you to detach when necessary to take stock of what needs to be done. This also explains why some people are able to stay strategic and calm during a serious crisis, such as being attacked or fighting in war (and why later people sometimes describe feeling as if the events were unreal or dreamlike when they were actually happening).

Anterior Cingulate Cortex

This is a crucial area of the brain that helps with memory — it doesn’t actually store all the memories, but decides where you will store what. “It’s the director of the orchestra,” Sood says. But when excessive cortisol (a stress hormone) is in your system, it can kill the hippocampus nerve cells, causing memory problems (that’s why you can never find your keys when you’re perpetually frazzled). The good news is that you can get those nerve cells back. What works? Meditation, relaxation, a generally healthy lifestyle and cultivation of compassion, gratitude, forgiveness and acceptance.

Hippocampus

Once the amygdala picks up on a threat, it talks to a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which in turn releases chemicals telling the pituitary gland, a small gland near the brain, to react. The pituitary gland then tells the adrenal glands, located on top of the kidneys, to pour out steroids (including the stress hormone cortisol) and adrenaline to fuel the sympathetic nervous system and mobilize sugars from various parts of the body to give it more energy.

Adrenal Glands

The cortisol released from the adrenal glands functions mainly to raise glucose levels to energize the body. And that glucose is secreted from the liver.

Liver

The flight or fight reaction pushes blood flow to the muscles, and away from the skin, to prepare you for war. This redistribution of blood flow, depending on the person, can either cause you to look paler or to flush (plus the autonomic nervous system can control the size of small arteries in the skin, causing blushing). This response is helpful when you really need it. But when it’s happening at a low grade all the time in response to chronic stress, it can actually cause the skin to age faster. You might also start perspiring, as your body wants to cool off in case you need to start running. What’s more, stress can aggravate certain skin conditions, such as psoriasis or rashes. And cortisol, the stress hormone, increases oil production and can stimulate acne. For some people, stress triggers a release of histamine in the body, which can then cause an inflammatory response that shows up in the form of hives or rashes.

Skin

There’s a reason you get a “gut feeling.” The intestines are like a second brain, Sood says, packed with nerve cells. In moments of acute stress, gastrointestinal functioning decreases so that the body’s energy goes toward fighting or fleeing instead of digesting food. That means the body doesn’t always properly process the food, which can dis-regulate activity in your gut. And when people are chronically stressed, it can affect the motility of the gastrointestinal system, which might lead to constipation, diarrhea, indigestion, reflux or bloating. Extreme acute stress can cause people to lose control of their bowels, which is where the term scared — well, you know — comes from.

Intestines

Craving a big, fat piece of chocolate cake after a tough day of work? There are several complicated factors that can trigger stress eating. Among them, feeling anxious can cause you to crave chocolate or carbohydrates, both of which will trigger a release of serotonin, a feel-good chemical, in the brain. And those calorie- and fat-packed foods make us feel better, even if it’s just temporary. Some research has also indicated that stress might up the hunger hormones in your body. Even worse? Increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol have been linked to the storage of excess abdominal fat.

Weight Gain

With the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the body is primed to fight — it can’t tell the difference between a grizzly bear or an annoying boss. And that means your muscles will tense up, as your body prepares itself to either fight the attacker or escape it. That constant tension can aggravate existing muscular conditions, or cause pain all its own. “You need that if you’re going to start running very soon,” Spiegel says. “You don’t need it if you have a bad back and your boss is yelling at you.”

Muscles

The fight or flight response causes muscles to tense up, preparing you to either fight or run. But over time, maintaining constant tension in your neck can cause your head to ache.

Head

With the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the heart starts pumping out blood faster and harder to the rest of the body, fueling it for action. “Initially the changes are functional and reversible,” Sood says. “But eventually, the changes become structural and irreversible.” Your body will start to think you need to constantly maintain a high blood pressure and the heart muscles can become thicker. Unchecked, chronic stress has been linked to increased risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke.

Heart

During sleep, the relaxed parasympathetic system is in control and the active sympathetic nervous system gets very quiet. But when you’re acutely stressed, the sympathetic nervous system doesn’t want to shut itself down. “You still want to protect yourself from whatever the danger is,” Spiegel says. Plus, when your brain is hyper-aroused from ruminating over all those daytime anxieties, it tends to be more difficult to drift off to sleep.

Sleep

Because the body is diverting resources to the systems required for immediate survival, the immune system can become suppressed. And not only does that make you susceptible to new viruses (one study found that people who recently experienced a major stressful life event were more likely to catch a cold), but it can also activate existing infections and viruses. Stress can affect the regulation of inflammation, and increased inflammation can, in turn, exacerbate conditions such as asthma, inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis. That inflammatory response also means we’re less able to fight off infections, making symptoms worse.

Immunity

It’s a no-brainer that the last thing we feel after a long, stressful day is sexy. The stress response is a physical one, and when we’re feeling threatened, sex is the least important priority. Stress activates the sympathetic nervous system (read: an uptick in heart rate and blood pressure), while the more relaxing parasympathetic nervous system is involved in sexual arousal. And, at the most basic level, people typically need to feel comfortable and relaxed to be in the mood for sex, not strung-out and distracted.

Libido

When you’re under pressure, the body is diverting all of its resources toward immediate survival, not future goals like reproduction. “Fertility is a long-term evolutionary privilege we have to transmit our genes,” Sood says. “We don’t want to have babies if I don’t know if I’m going to live through the next two minutes.” Not to mention: Stress can really zap sex drive.

Fertility

While the long-perpetuated myth that stress can turn your hair gray is yet to be conclusively proven, we do know that too much stress can stimulate hair loss. Hair naturally cycles through growth and rest phases — but when we’re experiencing acute, severe stress, the body might start to divert resources away from the hair, meaning it can spend a longer amount of time in the resting phase, a condition called telogen effluvium. The result is less hair growth and, at the same time, more hair loss. Chronic stress can also trigger a disorder called trichotillomania, where people feel compelled to pull or twist hair — whether it’s from the scalp, eyebrows, eyelashes or other body parts — until it falls out.

Hair

When we’re stressed out, our muscles tense up to prepare for the fight or flight response — and this includes the muscles in the jaw. Why some people are more likely to tense up in the jaw than others “is less clear, but we commonly ‘clench our teeth’ when stressed, fearful or angry,” Spiegel says. Tension can also trigger teeth-grinding.

Jaw

The body needs more oxygen to fuel the fight or flight response, which can cause us to start breathing more rapidly. And in order to breathe quickly, we take shallow, more superficial breaths instead of fewer, deep ones. Before you know it, you’re short of breath and, in severe cases, maybe even hyperventilating. Consciously taking deep breaths can have the opposite effect by activating the calming parasympathetic nervous system. Stress also predisposes us to inflammation, which can make asthma attacks more likely.

Lungs

Sources: Stanford School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States Of America, American Heart Association