Should Depressed People Avoid Having Children?

2012-06-06

Comedian Sarah Silverman, who routinely courts controversy with her edgy humor, recently made an attention-getting statement of a more intimate nature: because of her personal and family history of depression, she declared that she would not have biological children, to avoid passing her mental problems to the next generation. “I don’t want kids,” she said on The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet. “I know that I have this depression and that it’s in my family. Every family has their stuff but, for me, I just don’t feel strong enough to see that in a child.”

Pundits across the Internet praised Silverman for her honesty and sense of responsibility, duly citing research that shows that depression is deeply heritable. People with a parent or sibling with major depression are two to three times more likely than average to develop it themselves.

But what the commenters didn’t mention is that the same genes that can cause depression may also encourage the sensitivity and sensibility that gives Silverman her creative talent. Indeed, some research suggests that the same exact genetics that might lead to depression can also lead to mental superhealth, depending on whether a person endured high stress in early childhood or had a calmer, more nurturing environment.

(MORE: The Measure of a Mother’s Love: How Early Neglect Derails Child Development)

Atlantic writer David Dobbs has called such genes “orchid genes.” Like the finicky flowers, they thrive and outshine ordinary plants when grown in the perfect conditions, but otherwise rapidly wilt and die. In contrast, he describes “dandelion genes,” which allow healthy development, whether the setting is harsh or bountiful.

Some of the genes involved in risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), addiction and depression seem to share this quality, leading to vulnerability if early life is difficult but otherwise providing advantages. A recent study found also that people who had genes associated with better memory — a powerful aid to learning and intelligence — were more likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder after trauma, compared with those without the same genetic variants. People with better memories had more flashbacks.

Dobbs writes:

Focus on just the bad-environment results, and you see only vulnerability. Focus on the good-environment results, and you see that the risk alleles [or gene variants] usually produce better results than the protective ones. Securely raised 7-year-old boys with the DRD4 risk allele for ADHD, for instance, show fewer symptoms than their securely raised protective-allele peers. Non-abused teenagers with that same risk allele show lower rates of conduct disorder. Non-abused teens with the risky serotonin-transporter [gene variant] suffer less depression than do non-abused teens with the protective allele.

(MORE: Does A Better Memory Equal Greater PTSD Risk?)

Basically, whether a gene is “good” or “bad” depends on where it “lives” and how it is “raised.” And I would argue that even when people with orchid genes don’t have the benefit of a good early environment, their innate sensitivity to their condition can still often allow talent to flourish.

Artists and writers have long noted a correlation between mood disorders and creativity. A recent study of 300,000 Swedish families affected by psychiatric disorders found that people with bipolar disorder are overrepresented in creative professions. That same study showed that healthy relatives of people with schizophrenia are more likely to have creative careers, a finding that supports earlier research suggesting that the genes that lead to schizophrenia in certain conditions or combinations may produce heightened creativity in others.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in autism. Notoriously, many of the most successful people in computer science and engineering have traits similar to those seen in people with high-functioning autism — or they have the condition itself. Relatives of people with autism are more likely to be engineers, mathematicians or computer scientists, compared with the families of non-autistic people. One study found that students majoring in technical professions were more likely to have autistic relatives, while those majoring in humanities were more likely to have depressed, addicted or bipolar family members.

(MORE: Study: Some Autistic Brains Really Are Wired Differently)

This means that if you eliminate the genes that carry these mental-health risks, you may also do away with their associated benefits. The research suggests strongly that the genes associated with our most tragic psychological conditions may also carry the potential for our greatest talents and skills.

And so, while I wouldn’t presume to advise anyone about their personal reproductive decisions, I don’t think it’s necessarily “more responsible” for people with depression or other brain differences to forgo having children. Obviously, someone who cannot function due to psychiatric disease should not set out to become pregnant, and people whose conditions are untreatable or unbearable to them may want to prevent any possibility of passing on the same kind of suffering. But we should remember that, contrary to claims that the dark poet Sylvia Plath would have inevitably become insufferably twee if given Prozac, successfully treating depression or any such condition does not erase or eliminate genius, merely pain.

Consequently, as we as a society get better at identifying the genes that contribute to depressive, schizophrenic or autistic traits, we need to consider not just disabilities but potential. By selecting against our “worst” genes, we may run the risk of losing our greatest gifts.

MORE: The Perils of ‘Metabolic Chauvinism’

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer for TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/05/should-depressed-people-avoid-having-children/?iid=hl-main-lede#ixzz1wzJCTc6K

Stay-at-Home Moms Report More Sadness, Anger and Depression

2012-06-04

Not long ago, there was a dust-up when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen accused Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, of not fully comprehending this country’s economic issues because she had “never worked a day in her life.”

Ann Romney responded, on Twitter: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys,” she wrote. “Believe me, it was hard work.”

The controversy swirled for days: stay-at-home mothers — SAHMs — had been dissed, and they weren’t happy about it. Amid the political and cultural fall-out, Elizabeth Mendes, deputy managing editor of Gallup.com, was paying attention. Gallup.com surveys 1,000 Americans each day about topics that percolate to the top of the news cycle. The editorial team noticed that news about moms — the stay-at-home sort and the working variety — was hot. So they decided to train their sights on the maternal demographic.

“The discussion around Ann Romney and Hilary Rosen started a lot of conversations about the different types of groups of moms,” says Mendes. “We thought, What can we look at to see what’s going on with this population?”

What they found doesn’t bode well for the morale of the SAHM contingent, according to results released in May that hint at the possibility that women’s happiness just might depend on their employment status.

Gallup zeroed in on all kinds of metrics for health and well-being, comparing happiness, anger and sadness, among other feelings, in working moms and those who stayed at home, as well as in women who weren’t mothers.

Gallup looked first at categories including anger, worry, stress, depression, smiling and laughter. It found that non-working women with a child under 18 at home experienced more worry, sadness, stress and anger than moms who are employed full-time or part-time.

One of the most noticeable differences revolved around questions about depression. Gallup asked the women polled if they’d ever been diagnosed with depression and found that SAHMs were more likely to say yes than working moms. Of SAHMs, 28% reported receiving a diagnosis of depression at some point compared with 17% each for employed moms and employed childless women. “Moms who are employed, full-time or part-time, look more like the employed women group than SAHMs,” says Mendes.

So does the data suggest that employment is the key to happiness? Well, it’s true that employed moms experience fewer negative emotions than SAHMs, according to Gallup’s survey. “It’s certainly possible that it’s because they are working,” says Mendes.

Gallup also compared different income groups, splitting women into high-income, middle-income and low-income categories to explore whether finances played a role in mothers’ reported well-being. Across all three income groups, SAHMs did worse on measures of sadness, anger and depression than employed moms.

When Gallup looked at other measures of well-being — such as happiness, enjoyment, learning something interesting and stress — there were no significant differences between working moms and SAHMs in the middle- and high-income groups. But differences remained in the lower income groups. “In general, we know that a very high percentage of Americans report happiness,” says Mendes. “So it might be endemic.”

Says Mendes: “This suggests there might be something about working that is creating more positive emotions for employed moms, or there might be something about staying at home that’s creating more negative emotions,” says Mendes.

This is not the first survey to conclude that working serves moms best. In December, a study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that working moms are healthier and happier than mothers who stay at home when their children are babies and preschoolers. On the other hand, 2009 figures from the Pew Research Institute reflect a different reality. An equal number of SAHMs and working moms — 36% — reported feeling “very happy.”

So much for the mommy wars. At least as far as U.S. kids are concerned, the finding that moms who work for pay and those who don’t are equally content is a really good thing.

Bonnie Rochman is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @brochman. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/01/stay-at-home-moms-report-more-sadness-anger-and-depression-than-working-moms/#ixzz1wnhZMzze

Why am I depressed?

2012-05-28

There are many well-known depression triggers: Trauma, grief, financial troubles, and unemployment are just a few. But if you are depressed and none of these apply to you, it can be hard to pinpoint a specific cause.

In truth, there may not be a concrete reason for your depression. But here are some little-known causes to consider.

It’s no surprise that sleep deprivation can lead to irritability, but it could also increase the risk of depression.

A 2007 study found that when healthy participants were deprived of sleep, they had greater brain activity after viewing upsetting images than their well-rested counterparts, which is similar to the reaction that depressed patients have, noted one of the study authors.

“If you don’t sleep, you don’t have time to replenish [brain cells], the brain stops functioning well, and one of the many factors that could lead to is depression,” says Matthew Edlund, MD, director of the Center for Circadian Medicine, in Sarasota, Fla., and author of The Power of Rest.

Continue reading Why am I depressed? →

Study: Depression in Middle Age Linked to Dementia Later On

2012-05-10

Middle-aged men and women suffering from depression may be more susceptible to dementia down the line, a recent study reports in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Previous studies have linked depression in older adults with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, but it has never been clear which came first: was depression a risk factor for dementia or an early symptom? The new study sought to look at depression at younger ages to see if the condition preceded memory decline.

“We wanted to look at whether depression is truly causal, or if it’s a reaction to cognitive impairment, or if the changes in the brain are causing both depression and cognitive decline at the same time,” says study author Dr. Deborah Barnes of the University of California, San Francisco, and the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

(MORE: Study: Eating Omega-3s May Help Reduce Alzheimer’s Risk)

To clarify the timing of depression and memory loss onset, the research team conducted a life-course study that first looked at the incidence of depression in midlife. The team included more than 13,000 people ages 40 to 55 who were part of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program of Northern California and participated in a health examination called the Multiphasic Health Checkup between 1964 and 1973.

As part of the examination, the participants answered detailed questions about their health behaviors and medical histories, and had their height, weight and blood pressure recorded. Researchers were able to determine whether people had suffered from depression based on the self-reported information. The researchers then looked at the same people again between 1994 and 2000 to see if they were depressed in older age. Some years later, between 2003 to 2009, when the average age of the participants was 81, the researchers followed up to see whether they were diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

The study found that 14.1% of study participants had midlife depression only, 9.2% had depression only in late life, and 4.2% were depressed during both life stages. During the final six years of follow-up, 22.5% of patients were diagnosed with dementia, 5.5% were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and 2.3% were diagnosed with vascular dementia — a type of dementia resulting from brain damage due to impaired blood flow to the brain. (By contrast, Alzheimer’s disease is caused by protein deposits that interfere with brain function.)

(MORE: New Research on Understanding Alzheimer’s)

Overall, compared with people who had never been depressed, those who had depressive symptoms in middle age (but not later in life) were about 20% more likely to develop dementia later on. People who became depressed in later life were even worse off: they were 70% more likely to develop dementia than their non-depressed peers.

Further, people with late-life depression were twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s disease as those who were depression-free, and those with both midlife and late-life depressive symptoms had more than a three-fold increase in vascular dementia risk.

Because of its observational nature, the study could not firmly establish a causal association, but the findings do suggest that depression precedes vascular dementia. “The people who had depression in their mid- and late-life had an increased risk of developing vascular dementia, and [the depression] could be a true causal risk factor,” says Barnes.

She notes that it’s possible that vascular changes in the brain attributable to depression — particularly in those who have chronic depression — may increase later dementia risk. “These ongoing vascular problems are probably why they had increased risk of vascular depression,” she says.

(MORE: To Ward Off Dementia, Try Staying Healthy from Head to Toe)

As far as the link with Alzheimer’s disease is concerned, however, Barnes says depression may more likely be an early symptom, a part of the overall neurodegenerative process that leads to memory loss. “Some of the neurons in the brain that are being influenced could deal with memory and cognitive functions, but some might also be related to mood changes,” says Barnes.

The authors say that further research is needed to confirm their findings, and they acknowledge that the current study had some weaknesses: for one thing, midlife depression was assessed using a single question on a questionnaire. The dementia diagnoses were also based only on reported symptoms and medical histories and did not involve brain imaging or tests of spinal fluid. The researchers also did not look at depression history prior to midlife nor did they take into account the influence of genetic factors on Alzheimer’s disease.

The authors are hopeful that continued research will explore all of these unanswered questions and, most importantly, determine whether treating depression in midlife can help stave off later dementia. It’s a difficult area of research since it is unethical not to treat someone with reported depression and thus hard to find comparisons.

“One of our take home messages is that depression in older adults is not something that should be ignored,” says Barnes. “Depression is not a normal part of aging. … Depression can be devastating by itself, but it can also be associated with increased risk of developing dementia and it is likely to a precursor to dementia. Older adults should be followed a little closer to see if they develop these impairments and depression.”

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/08/study-depression-in-middle-age-linked-to-dementia-later-on/#ixzz1uRjDGp8v

How I’m fighting depression with exercise

2012-04-23

Depression is a challenging, albeit important, discussion. It is even difficult to write about.

I am one of many who occasionally suffer from depression. It is usually just a minor case of the blues, but on occasion it turns into all out sadness – so much so you ache.

You purposely stay away from things that make you happy, you don’t like yourself, and you cry a lot (when you’re alone). You hate yourself for feeling badly while really being so incredibly fortunate.

My guess is that this fact would be a shock to the great majority of people who know me or work with me because I hide it so well. On the outside, I am always thought of as the happy one, the positive one, the person who is always smiling. If I were in a beauty pageant I would be in the running for Miss Congeniality!

On the inside, my life is filled with pain and emotions that are either incredibly high or incredibly low. It’s exhausting.

Continue reading How I’m fighting depression with exercise →

Why Shift Work and Sleeplessness Lead to Weight Gain and Diabetes

2012-04-13

Studies show that shift work and other sleep disturbances like jet lag can disrupt your body clock and increase the risks of obesity and diabetes. But, until now, researchers haven’t really been sure exactly how these changes affect the body’s metabolism.

To find out, Dr. Orfeu Buxton, an assistant professor in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues invited 21 men and women to participate in a study in a controlled laboratory setting, where they would have their sleep-wake cycles purposefully disrupted. Over the course of five weeks, the researchers determined when and how much the participants slept, ate and exercised. Although lab-based studies have previously examined the health effects of interferences with the body’s natural circadian rhythm, most of those trials have lasted only about a week or two.

Buxton, who is also an associate neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was interested in analyzing the effects on metabolism and diabetes risk of longer-term, or chronic, changes to the circadian clock — such as those experienced by shift workers and frequent travelers.

After an initial period of adequate sleep, in which the men and women spent 10 hours in bed each night, Buxton and his team gradually started to dial back the amount of the participants’ slumber. In addition to getting less sleep, the study volunteers were also asked to go to bed and wake up four hours later each day while in the lab, a technique devised to mimic traveling one east-west time zone per day. Eventually, the participants found themselves sleeping during the day and waking at night, just as shift workers do. “We imposed a disrupted cycle and schedule of activities, from sleeping, waking, eating and fasting that was in misalignment with their endogenous 24-hour circadian clock,” says Buxton. “Nobody would do a night shift as punishing as this.”

What Buxton and his colleagues found, however, was worth the trouble. The resting metabolic rate of the volunteers by the end of the five weeks was 8% lower than where they had started. Over a year, says Buxton, such a slowdown of metabolism could translate into a 10-lb. weight gain if people’s diet and exercise habits remained the same. That could explain why night shift workers tend to gain more weight and have a higher likelihood of obesity than day workers; such weight gain is linked to an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.

The scientists learned something else interesting about another mechanism that put the disrupted sleepers at higher risk of diabetes: the combination of having their circadian clocks reversed (sleeping during the day and waking at night) and the poorer sleep they got as a result had an effect on their insulin levels. After three weeks in the lab, the participants produced about a third less insulin from the pancreas in response to meals; with less insulin available to break down glucose, blood glucose levels started to rise and three of the 21 volunteers showed high enough levels to qualify them as pre-diabetic. (Fortunately, during the nine day washout period at the end of the study, during which participants were allowed to resume their natural day-night cycles, their glucose levels went back down to normal.)

The findings suggest that circadian disruptions combined with inadequate sleep affect the body differently than does sleep deprivation alone. In previous studies in which volunteers slept less, but maintained their natural sleep-wake cycles, they showed less sensitivity to insulin, but there was no change in the amount of insulin released by the pancreas. In the current study, adding changes to the circadian clock seemed to have a more profound effect on the pancreas. Both pathways can contribute to an increased risk of diabetes, but in different ways, says Buxton. “The body responds to sleep restriction in one way, and circadian disruption combined with sleep restriction in a very different way,” he says.

The findings highlight how important the sleep-wake cycle can be for metabolism and health. “It’s harder to dismiss the [observational] studies and workplace studies that show night work is a health risk,” he says. “We’ve shown unhealthy mechanisms can occur even in healthy subjects, so the time for dismissing night work as a health risk is well past.”

The same is true for jet lag, especially if it’s persistent, such as for pilots and other flight personnel. Buxton is hoping to study pilots in training before they start regularly crossing time zones, to see if the same effects he found in the lab also appear in the real world. In the meantime, it’s worth noting that while much of the attention for preventive health has focused on diet and exercise, sleep is an important part of that equation. “If you’re not getting enough sleep, then it’s hard to find the energy to exercise,” says Buxton. “And if you’re not getting enough sleep, you not only eat more than you need but you tend to make poorer food choices. So in terms of obtaining optimum health, all three pillars — diet, exercise and sleep — are important.”

Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/04/12/why-shift-work-and-sleeplessness-lead-to-weight-gain-and-diabetes/?iid=hl-main-lede#ixzz1rtW8Uj77

Do we really give introverts a hard time?

2012-03-30

t is often assumed extroverts do best in life, but according to a new best-selling book, introverts are just as high achievers. It claims there is a bias towards extroverts in Western society. So do we discriminate against introverts?

Barack Obama, JK Rowling and Steve Wozniak.

They might not immediately stand out as introverts, but according to Susan Cain, American author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Can’t Stop Talking, they are.

That is because she says, contrary to popular opinion, introverts are not necessarily shy or anti-social, they just prefer environments that are not over-stimulating and get their energy from quiet time and reflection.

Continue reading Do we really give introverts a hard time? →

How Getting Tipsy May Inspire Creativity

2012-03-26

A new study finds that men who got moderately drunk on vodka cranberries did better on tests of inspired thinking.
From Billie Holliday and Amy Winehouse to Coleridge and Kerouac, artists have long claimed alcohol and other drugs as muses for their creativity. But is there really a connection between intoxication and inspiration?

Increasingly, science is confirming that altered states of consciousness — whether induced by drugs, alcohol, sleepiness, travel or anything else that removes us from our usual way of seeing the world — do indeed improve creative thought. The inhibition of what researchers call executive functioning, which includes focus and planning — abilities that decline when we’re under the influence — may be what lets us generate new ideas and innovative solutions, instead of remaining fixed on the task at hand.

Continue reading How Getting Tipsy May Inspire Creativity →

5 Tips to Overcome Emotional Eating

2012-03-20

Drowning your sorrows in ice cream won’t help you feel better in the long run. Here are five ways to keep junk-food urges from devolving into a full-fledged binge.

Could work stress be causing your expanding waistline? A recent Finnish study found that women who had job burnout were more likely to turn to food for comfort and to eat uncontrollably, compared with women who weren’t overworked. The study‘s authors suggested that obesity treatment should include evaluations of people’s work stress and emotional eating habits.

It’s not just a stressful workweek, but also a fight with the spouse, a visit with the in-laws or an all-around low mood that can make the chocolate ice cream beckon that much more seductively. “Stress, anxiety, depression, really any kind of strong emotion can trigger an emotional binge,” says Dr. Joy Jacobs, clinical eating disorder psychologist and assistant clinical professor at University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. “Emotional eating happens whenever someone has an emotion they do not know how to handle, even happiness, and they channel it into an eating experience.”

But while self-medicating through fatty foods can provide temporary comfort, the aftermath is usually bleak. In the short-term, you’re likely to feel regret for binging; in the long-term, you may be setting yourself up for weight gain and related health problems. And spikes in consumption of junk food may end up worsening your mood overall. “We tend to go for the chocolate when we’re stressed out,” says Dr. Susan Albers, psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic Family Health Center and author of 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food. “It increases our blood sugar and we feel good, but then we experience a sudden drop. That drop makes you even more moody and you will want even more sugary snacks.”

One easy trick for curbing cravings is simple distraction. Doctors recommend finding alternatives to eating, such as calling a friend or reading a magazine — one study found that knitting helped take people quit obsessing over food. The same technique may help you overcome other bad habits too, from smoking to biting your nails.

“It’s good to get your hands engaged in something else so you cannot eat at same time,” says Albers. “Do something soothing to calm you down. It will also help you find other things that relax you besides food.” If you can distract yourself for a few minutes, the urge to eat should subside.

Logging your daily food intake can help you recognize your emotional eating triggers. Dr. Jacobs recommends jotting down the time of day you feel hungry and how you feel emotionally. This process helps differentiate between when you’re feeling physical versus emotional hunger.

“Physical hunger is usually accompanied by symptoms like a growling stomach or lightheadedness. Emotional hunger is when you want to eat, but not because you are physically starving,” says Dr. Jacobs. “People think they want to eat, but do not know why. They do not connect it to an emotion.”

Once you know your triggers, you can develop a plan for the next time you want to reach for the peanut butter jar. “If there is a certain time of day you are more likely to binge, you can change up your routine. If it’s right after work, you can do something else before going home. By changing up your routine, you ensure binging does not become a natural course of events for you. Emotional eating will not become a habit,” says Jacobs.

“You cannot be eating mindfully and emotionally at the same time,” says Albers. Mindful eating means creating an awareness of your eating habits and taking in all the sensations you experience when you eat. As you eat, savor each bite and pay attention to how you’re feeling.

“It is important to learn how to connect the feelings we get when we eat back to our physiological reactions — back to the reasons we should be eating in the first place,” says Albers. “It is about breaking our autopilot eating behaviors. We often don’t realize how much we are eating. We lose track and often overeat because we are eating mindlessly.”

Dr. Edward Abramson, professor of psychology at California State University, teaches mindful eating in his emotional eating workshops. “We have to start paying attention to our automatic eating behaviors. If a Doritos commercial comes on TV, we suddenly reach for a salty snack. When we are more deliberate about how we eat, we increase our awareness and decrease our consumption,” says Abramson. “I tell people, when you are standing in front of the fridge with the urge to eat, stop for a minute and ask yourself what do you really need right now. You may just be bored or anxious.”
Exercise helps you unwind and puts you in a better position to deal with heightened emotions. After reviewing literature on the neurocognitive aspects of eating behaviors and the impact of physical activity on the brain, researchers from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston concluded that exercise is a great way to deal with food temptation. According to the researchers, exercise strengthens the brain’s powers of executive function — thinking ahead and controlling inhibitions — which makes it easier to say no to a second helping of dessert.

Dr. Albers specifically recommends yoga for emotional eaters. “Yoga can help you deal with temptations and be a more mindful eater,” she says. “It creates body awareness. It reduces the fight-or-flight emotion you get when you’re stressed out and increases your levels of serotonin and dopamine, which help your mood.”

The chronically sleep-deprived may be more likely to succumb to anxious snacking. Getting adequate sleep has been shown to reduce your cortisol levels — the hormone that rises when you’re anxious or stressed. “Not getting enough sleep contributes to depression, irritability and reduced ability to control stress and anxiety. All of these things will further contribute to vulnerability for emotional eating in at risk individuals,” says Jacobs.

A recent study presented at the American Heart Association’s annual Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism conference found that people who were sleep deprived tended to overeat. In fact, compared with people who got to sleep as much as they wanted, those who were rousted out of bed too early ate 550 additional calories every day. Healthland’s Alice Park wrote:

Getting a consistent and sufficient amount of sleep each night may play an important role in regulating how much we eat and how many calories we burn, and it may also help determine when we eat. Eating when we should be sleeping, for example, may increase the risk of weight gain, as the body is more likely to turn nighttime calories into fat rather than burning them off.

Overeating? Maybe you’re burned out at work

2012-03-19

Work can be a real burden for some people. They feel overwhelmingly exhausted and cynical toward their workplace environment, and believe their efforts are not valued.

In other words, they are burned out.

A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition connects these sentiments with overeating and controlled eating behaviors.

The experiment involved 230 working women. Those who were experiencing workplace burnout at the beginning of the experiment were more likely to have emotional and uncontrolled eating than those without burnout. This held true even after 12 months.

Among those without burnout, uncontrolled eating decreased significantly over the year.

“Among overweight and obese subjects, failure to make changes due to burnout and reduced resources may impair self-esteem and self-efficacy, which are important for achieving success in weight maintenance,” the study authors wrote.

Consistent with previous research, body mass index tended to be associated with uncontrolled eating and emotional eating. And overweight and obese individuals were more likely to engage in these behaviors, too. However, there was no significant difference in weight between people with and without burnout. And almost half of the people with burnout were of normal weight.

There are, of course, individual differences when it comes to responding to stress – some people actually eat less when they are stressed out, while others eat more. Weight loss and gain under stress varies, also.

The researchers also did not take into account the participants’ weight history, whether they had made significant changes before the study in terms of weight loss. This could have impacted the results.

A study involving more participants is needed to corroborate the findings of this particular investigation. But from what is known so far, experts recommend confronting the burnout head-on.

“What I find in a lot of people is that food is not the issue. They’re not necessarily eating the food for a physiological reason, but they’re doing it for a psychological reason. It just happens that food is so readily available,” says Meagan Mohammadione, R.D., L.D., at the Emory Bariatric Center in Atlanta, who was not involved in the study.

Dr. Melina Jampolis, physician and nutrition expert for CNNHealth.com, also views stress as a critical issue for nutrition. If stress isn’t addressed and managed in a long-term way, dietary and exercise changes are very challenging, she wrote in an e-mail.

In fact, short-term diet changes could actually aggravate the stress women feel by altering their brain chemistry and decreasing critical nutrient intake. For example, reducing carbohydrates could lower mood, which is already low.

“This really ties in to the growing body of research looking at the ‘medication’-like properties of food in some cases, their impact on neurotransmitters in the brain, and also the interaction of the hypothalamic/adrenal(stress)/pituitary access and weight control,” she wrote.

And note that this study was only done on women. Mohammadione says she sees many more women than men suffering from emotional eating. And while women tend to eat a lot when they’re overwhelmed, men’s emotional eating seems to be more tied to the perception that they need to finish everything on their plate – at least, in Mohammadione’s view.

So what about cravings when you’re at work, when the vending machine is tempting you with junk food? Mohammadione recommends planning to have healthy snacks readily available at work, such as baby carrots and apples, “so that [when] you absolutely do have to eat, you have a better choice.”

Also, take a walk, she said. Just stepping away from your desk and getting a little exercise can replace that chocolate bar you were going to munch on.

“The emotional eating, it hits very quickly,” Mohammadione said. “Your response to it has to be very quick as well.”

Mindfulness techniques are being used to help people with eating problems. It’s a way of being conscious and nonjudgmental about the emotions you’re having, and translating that awareness to the practice of eating. For more information, check out the Center for Mindful Eating.