Discover the Science of Health
Although chronic diseases with high morbidity and mortality such as diabetes and heart disease command the lion’s share of research dollars, people actually seek healthcare most often for skin issues such as actinic keratosis (a premalignant condition of thick, scaly, or crusty patches of skin) or acne, followed by joint disorders and back pain, according to a recent Mayo Clinic study [1].
Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) who has been crusading about the evils of sugar for decades, has watched more and more of his young patient population become obese. He recently published a study in the journal PLOS One demonstrating that increased sugar consumption directly leads to increased rates of diabetes [1].
Researchers recently examined the effects of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) on brain functioning in depressed patients and found that the psychotherapeutic approach made actual changes in the brain [1]. The study was published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
New research suggests that there is a strong link between depression and heart disease. Angelos Halaris, M.D., Ph.D., a psychiatrist at the Loyola University Medical Center, is so impressed by the strength of the correlation that he proposes a new medical subspecialty specifically to study and treat combined depression/heart disease patients. The new subspecialty, “Psychocardiology,” would be for the purpose of increasing physician and patient awareness of the strong link between the two disease processes, and would also increase the likelihood that patients with one of the two diseases — who would therefore be at risk of developing the other — would receive appropriate monitoring.
Statistics is powerful stuff. When using cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses to assess well-being in over 5,000 adults over thirty years, researchers initially found that well-being decreases with age: older people are unhappier than younger people. But when the researchers controlled for birth cohort, they found that each individual’s well-being increased with age. Sure, the 70 year olds were less happy than the 50 year olds; but those 70 year olds were happier than they were when they were 50. The study is published in the journal Psychological Science.
