Meditation Fights Progression of HIV

Researchers have found that meditation slows the progression of HIV the virus which causes AIDS.

Meditation strengthens the body’s immune system weakened by HIV. The immune system and depression is also closed linked however scientists don’t know whether depression compromises the body or a decrease in our body’s ability to resist disease somehow causes depression.

The Study Shows Meditation Helps the Immune System , reported by UCLA’s Daily Bruin, demonstrated that the T cell blood count for HIV patients who mediated was higher than those in the control group who didn’t practice mindful awareness.

Mediation appears to strengthen the immune system by reducing stress. The practice helps people live in the present moment and avoid ruminating over negative thoughts and emotions.

UCLA is at the forefront of meditation research and education through its Mindful Awareness Research Center.

A UCLA professor Jeffrey Schwartz, has developed a ground breaking technique combing mindful awareness and cognitive behavior therapy to help Obsessive Compulsive Disorder patients successfully manage their own illness. See for more

Depression and Atherosclerosis: Good News and Bad News

If you have depression the good news is that the mental anguish you suffer is not a risk factor in heart attacks or stroke. However certain physical symptoms of depression are linked to atherosclerosis, hardening of the coronary arteries, which does cause heart attacks and stroke.

A study reported in the HealthDay News, “found that depressive symptoms, but not anxiety and anger, were associated with greater thickening of the arteries over time. Further analyses indicated that only the physical symptoms of depression were associated with thickening arteries, while the cognitive and emotional symptoms of depression, such as sadness, pessimism, and indecisiveness, were not related.”

Depression’s specific physical symptoms associated with atherosclerosis are:

• Lack of sleep;
• Poor appetite;
• and fatigue.

Dr Jessie Stewart explains why the distinction between cognitive/and or emotional symptoms versus physical symptoms is important for people at risk for heart attack or stroke..

“Identifying the most harmful aspect of depression is important, because we will then know which specific components to target with our treatments.”

The best strategy is to address and manage depression up front. The good news is that you will reduce negative thinking and emotional suffering while eliminating a risk factor for atherosclerosis.

Australia Practices Restraint In Prescribing Antidepressants to Kids

Because antidepressants (SSRIs) increase the potential for suicidal thinking and behavior in adolescents, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners recommends significant qualifications around when and if these medications are to be considered in the treatment of a child.

The College recommends that antidepressants be considered only when cognitive therapy has failed and only if:

• The depression is “so severe that it interferes with the young person’s capacity to engage in counseling.”
• “or the depression is life threatening”.

No such recommended qualifications were found for family doctors in the US.

Psychiatricists Squander Patient Trust

All the controversy over whether or not drug money is corrupting psychiatric practice is helping to break trust between doctors and patient.

Stories of Harvard psychiatrists taking big money from pharmaceutical companies; and then through their institutional influence push antipsychotics on kids based on questionable bipolar diagnoses (Harvard Psychiatrists Flunk Appearance of Propriety) and the lack of drug company payment disclosure by psychiatrists who present themselves in the media as medical experts (Stealth Marketers) destroy the crediblity of the profession.

Tara Parker-Pope explains the dissolution of trust in her NYT article Doctors and Patients: A Rocky Relationship.

• “About one in four patients feel that their physicians sometimes expose them to unnecessary risk, according to data from a Johns Hopkins study published this year in the journal Medicine. And two recent studies show that whether patients trust a doctor strongly influences whether they take their medication.”

Most people are reluctant to get psychiatric treatment in the first place because of the stigma of mental illness. Now a wall has been built between doctor and patient.

Parker Pope offers other reasons for patient distrust:

• Doctors have to spend less time with their clients do to “declining reimbursements and higher costs”.;
• Media reporting of medical errors;
• Direct-to-consumer advertising of medications have encouraged people to research their own aliments.

If there is reform and greater transparency in the psychiatric community and a more equal partnership between between doctor and patient, trust could be restored. However these patient demands are nonnegotiable.

Antidepressants Give New Life

The brain of a person with depression is withered.

Studies have shown that parts of the brain’s anatomy involved in planning and emotion are smaller than normal. Some cells are “weakened, disorganized and disconnected.”*.

The more bouts of depression a person suffers the more the brain is compromised. The “black dog” is thought to be a progressive disease.

Now comes a Boston Sunday Globe article Life of the Mind How Prozac Sent Science in the Wrong Direction revealing that the most popular family of antidepressants in the world, Prozac and its kin, don’t work the way we thought they did.

Their ability to increase brain serotonin was thought to do the trick. However what Prozac and others actually do is allow our brain cells (neurons) to grow and get healthy. This is great news; but with a catch.

In the article, Eero Castren, a neuroscientist at the University of Helsinki draws a comparison to steroids and bodybuilding . “If you just sit on your couch, then steroids aren’t going to be very effective. Antidepressants are the same way: If you want the drug to work, you have to work for the drug.”

There are lots of things you can do. We’ll be covering the type of work you can do in future posts.

* from Dr Peter Kramer’s book Against Depression.

Change Your Life for the Better.

Most people think of meditation as a way to fight stress and relax but the practice of meditation can be much more.

As you learn from this 30 minute video, insight meditation can bring about a deeper, more open and fuller level of happiness and peace. Robert Wright interviews Joseph Goldstein, Director of the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, MA.

Meditation is a practice, a skill and like any other skill, people have to devote time to it to see the benefits; however they can live a conventional life but experience more positively.

People develop a greater level of clarity and deepening degree of concentration. The overall goal of the practice is wisdom which I once heard best described as love and intelligence.

Your Wellbeing Diary Can Help Moderate Depression

A simple nightly diary can help you be less depressed and cultivate a sense of wellbeing. At most, it takes 5 to 10 minutes a day.

Professor Martin Segilman of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvannia, conducted a study with extremely depressed people. Participants were asked to remember 3 positive things that happened that day and write them down They could be things like: you ran into a friend, you started a book you really enjoy, you found a missing piece of jewelry.

By the simple act of writing these things down, 94% of the patients experienced significant relief from their depression. The most startling result was that participants went from “severely depressed” to “mildly to moderately depressed” in fifteen days.

I’ve taken this concept and created my wellness diary in which I make entries every night. Entries for the day include:

• Accomplishments;
• Acts of kindness extended to others;
• Acts of kindness extended to me;
• Occurrences for which I am grateful;
• And things I am looking forward to.

I have found this to be extraordinarily helpful in shifting my mood in a positive direction and keeping it there.

M.I.T. Discriminates Against Students Who Might Need Emotional Support

I just read an Newsweek article from 2004 called Dealing With Depression. I could not believe my eyes. It described MIT’s policy against admitting students who have even a hint of needing emotional support.

MIT Admissions Dean Marilee Jones says she’s looking to enroll “emotionally resilient” students. “If we think someone will crumble the first time they do poorly on a test, we’re not going to admit them,” she says. “So many kids are coming in, feeling the need to be perfect, and so many kids are medicated now. If you need a lot of phar-maceutical support to get through the day, you’re not a good match for a place like MIT.”

This is absolutely outrageous. Instead of providing the resources for qualified students who have some indication that they might need emotional support they have opted to deny them admission.

The article is about the overall problem of mental illness on college campuses; how there are 1100 students who commit suicide every year; 40% of the student population had at least one depressive episode which made it difficult to function and 30% have anxiety disorder or depression.

Some other institutions are trying to accommodate students who have depression, bipolar or anxiety by taking some of the follow steps.

• Implementing a 24 hour wellness hot-line
• Soliciting information from students with special needs such as taking medication or seeing a therapist
• Scheduling one on one appointments between therapist and student at their dorm
• Having a psychiatrist on staff

The Newsweek article also has some news about the types of support that some students with depression and other problems are receiving in high school.

As for M.I.T., they have chosen to eliminate the problem rather than address it. I believe that their admission policy is an abomination. I’ve written to M.I.T. to see if this policy is still in place.

Update after the initial post, I found the Dean of Admissions disavowed the quote. She was subsequently removed from her post because she lied on her resume.

Little Things Can Make Your Mood More Positive

An article in the Huffington Post offers some tips to cultivate personal happiness.

A tip from one of the happiness gurus is that you be aware of what you are grateful for. Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD, author of the book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want suggests you make a daily list of things that you are grateful for. This is important to people with depression become more conscious of positive things in life.

I would take Professor Lyubomirsky’s suggestions are couple of steps further. I would also

• Focus on small incidental things such as maybe a pleasant conversation with somebody you don’t really know such as a store clerk, some driver stopped and let you pull into traffic. If something fabulous happens great put it down but also focus on the little things
• LIst acts of kindness that I extend to others; holding a do for someone, taking the time to help somebody carry something to their car.

Kindness is just as important as graditude.

Here is the full article from the Huffington Post.

Mindful Awareness and Depression: Part III Being Mode

Mindful Awareness and Depression: Part I Seeing the Pattern described how sad or depressive feelings in the present moment can trigger depressive thoughts and feelings from the past which cycle us downward. Part II Doing Mode explains how we react to this emotional problem by trying to think our way out of it.

So if we can’t think our way out of despair how do we respond? How do we deal with these depressive feelings, memories, and thoughts in the present moment?

We respond to this negative inner reality through mindful awareness. The Mindful Way Through Depression defines mindful awareness as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose in the present moment, and non-judgementally to things as they are.“

The authors point out that mindfulness is:

1. Intentional – Mindfulness is a skill that we can develop to be more aware our “of present reality and the choices available to us.”
2. Experiential – Mindfulness focuses on present experience.
3. Non-judgmental - Mindfulness enables us to see things as they are and let them be.

Mindfulness is the “being mode”. Most of us have spent a lifetime building up our thinking skills but have paid little attention to developing our capacity for mindful awareness. It is a way of opening ourselves up to the world and creating a space for ourselves.

We can use the practice of meditation to develop mindful awareness. By gently being patient and persist, we can create a more constructive relationship with our emotional selves.