Feeling depressed? Mahjong might be the answer

Study shows that for older Chinese, it might boost mental health

September 17, 2019

Science Daily/University of Georgia

When it comes to boosting mental health among older Chinese, it might be as simple as a game of mahjong, according to a new study from the University of Georgia.

Regularly playing the popular tile-based strategy game was one of several types of social participation linked to reduced rates of depression among middle-aged and older adults in China in the study appearing in Social Science & Medicine.

"Global economic and epidemiologic trends have led to significant increases in the burden of mental health among older adults, especially in the low- and middle-income countries," said Adam Chen, an associate professor of health policy and management at UGA's College of Public Health and study co-author.

Poor mental health is a major issue in China, which accounts for 17% of the global disease burden of mental disorders. On top of that, mental health issues related to social isolation and loneliness are on the rise as China's number of older adults -- as in other nations -- continues to increase.

The benefits of participating in social activities to mental health have been widely acknowledged, and some work has been done in developed nations, including the U.S. and Japan, to better understand this relationship.

But little is known about the role of social interaction and mental health outside of these settings.

"Social participation manifests itself in different formats within different cultural contexts," said Chen.

"Our paper provides evidence on the association between social participation and mental health in the context of a developing country. We also examined the rural-urban difference, which has not been examined extensively in this line of literature."

Chen and collaborators from China's Huazhong University of Science and Technology analyzed survey data from nearly 11,000 residents aged 45 years and older from the nationally representative China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study.

They looked at symptoms of depression and compared it to the type and frequency of social participation, including visiting with friends, playing mahjong, participating in a sport or social club, and volunteering in the community.

They found that, on the whole, participating in a wide variety of activities more frequently was associated with better mental health. Specifically, urban residents who played mahjong, a popular strategy game, were less likely to feel depressed.

That wasn't too surprising for Chen, as this finding was in line with other studies, but he was surprised to find that rural Chinese overall tended to report poor mental health compared to their urban counterparts.

"Traditionally, rural China featured tight-knit communities of close kinship, often with a limited number of extended large families in a village," he said. "We were expecting strong ties and communal bonds in rural China, but it appears that we were wrong."

Chen suspects that the social structures in rural China were disrupted as many able-bodied adults moved into cities to find work. While family ties remained strong, community ties weakened in rural areas.

"What is more surprising is that mahjong playing does not associate with better mental health among rural elderly respondents," added Chen. "One hypothesis is that mahjong playing tends to be more competitive and at times become a means of gambling in rural China."

The authors believe these findings may offer a guide to health practitioners designing policies and interventions to improve mental health among older Chinese.

The findings could also translate, said Chen, to Asian American communities.

"Older Asian Americans have a much higher proportion of suicidal thoughts than whites and African Americans," he said. "Improving social participation among older Asian Americans may help to address this burden to the U.S. population health that has not received due attention."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190917115420.htm

The happiest introverts may be extraverts

Advice for introverts: Fake it, and you'll be happier

September 17, 2019

University of California - Riverside

If you are an introvert, force yourself to be an extravert. You'll be happier.

That's the suggestion of the first-ever study asking people to act like extraverts for a prolonged period. For one week, the 123 participants were asked to -- in some cases -- push the boundaries of their willingness to engage, by acting as extraverts. For another week, the same group was asked to act like introverts.

The benefits of extraversion have been reported before, including those of "forced extraversion," but usually only for brief intervals. In one study, train-riders were asked to talk to strangers; a control group was directed to remain silent. The talkers reported a more positive experience.

UC Riverside researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky wanted to extend the faux extraversion to see if it would result in better well-being.

"The findings suggest that changing one's social behavior is a realizable goal for many people, and that behaving in an extraverted way improves well-being," said Lyubomirsky, a UCR psychologist and co-author of the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Psychologists favor "extravert" to the more commonly used "extrovert," due to its historic use in academia, and the Latin origins of "extra," meaning "outside."

An initial challenge for this study was the presumption that extraversion -- as a trait rewarded in U.S. culture -- is best. Many of the adjectives associated with extraversion are more flattering than those tied to introversion. Most people would rather be associated with words like "dynamic" than with words like "withdrawn."

So Lyubomirsky's team went for words agreed upon as most neutral. The adjectives for extraversion were "talkative," "assertive," and "spontaneous"; for introversion, "deliberate," "quiet," and "reserved."

Researchers next told participants -- both the Act Introvert group and the Act Extravert group -- that previous research found each set of behaviors are beneficial for college students.

Finally, the participants were told to go forth, and to be as talkative, assertive, and spontaneous as they could stand. Later, the same group was told to be deliberate, quiet, and reserved, or vice versa. Three times a week, participants were reminded of the behavioral change via emails.

According to all measures of well-being, participants reported greater well-being after the extraversion week, and decreases in well-being after the introversion week. Interestingly, faux extraverts reported no discomfort or ill effects.

"It showed that a manipulation to increase extraverted behavior substantially improved well-being," Lyubomirsky said. "Manipulating personality-relevant behavior over as long as a week may be easier than previously thought, and the effects can be surprisingly powerful."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190917100449.htm

Lack of sleep affects fat metabolism

September 16, 2019

Science Daily/American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

A restricted-sleep schedule built to resemble an American work week made study participants feel less full after a fatty meal and altered their lipid metabolism. One night of recovery sleep helped, but didn't completely erase the effects of sleep restriction.

We're all a little short on sleep during the work week. A new study adds to the mounting evidence about just how harmful lack of sleep can be. In the Journal of Lipid Research, researchers at Pennsylvania State University report that just a few days of sleep deprivation can make participants feel less full after eating and metabolize the fat in food differently.

Sleep disruption has been known to be have harmful effects on metabolism for some time. Orfeu Buxton, a professor at Penn State and one of the senior authors of the new study, contributed to a lot of the research demonstrating that long-term sleep restriction puts people at a higher risk of obesity and diabetes. However, Buxton said, most of those studies have focused on glucose metabolism, which is important for diabetes, while relatively few have assessed digestion of lipids from food.

Kelly Ness, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, ran the study when she was a graduate student in Buxton's lab. After participants spent a week getting plenty of sleep at home, she said, the 15 healthy men in their 20s checked into the sleep lab for the ten-night study. For five of those nights the participants spent no more than five hours in bed each night.

During the study, Ness said, she and other researchers collected data but also spent time, "interacting with the subjects, playing games with them, talking with them -- helping to keep them awake and engaged and positive."

To find out how the uncomfortable schedule affected metabolism, the researchers gave participants a standardized high-fat dinner, a bowl of chili mac, after four nights of sleep restriction. "It was very palatable -- none of our subjects had trouble finishing it -- but very calorically dense," Ness said. Most participants felt less satisfied after eating the same rich meal while sleep deprived than when they had eaten it well-rested.

Then researchers compared blood samples from the study participants. They found that sleep restriction affected the postprandial lipid response, leading to faster clearance of lipids from the blood after a meal. That could predispose people to put on weight. "The lipids weren't evaporating -- they were being stored," Buxton explained.

The simulated workweek ended with a simulated Friday and Saturday night when participants could spend ten hours in bed catching up on missed shut-eye. After the first night, they ate one last bowl of chili mac. Although participants' metabolic handling of fat from food was slightly better after a night of recovery sleep, they didn't recover to the baseline healthy level.

This study was highly controlled, which makes it an imperfect model for the real world, Ness said. It focused on healthy young people, who are usually at a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, and all of the participants were men. The researchers also wondered whether giving more recovery time would change the magnitude of recovery they observed.

Nonetheless, according to Buxton, the study gives worthwhile insight into how we handle fat digestion. "This study's importance relies on its translational relevance. A high-fat meal in the evening, at dinnertime -- and real food, not something infused into the vein? That's a typical exposure. That's very American."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190916114020.htm

Brain activity intensity drives need for sleep

September 16, 2019

Science Daily/University College London

The intensity of brain activity during the day, notwithstanding how long we've been awake, appears to increase our need for sleep, according to a new UCL study in zebrafish.

The research, published in Neuron, found a gene that responds to brain activity in order to coordinate the need for sleep. It helps shed new light on how sleep is regulated in the brain.

"There are two systems regulating sleep: the circadian and homeostatic systems. We understand the circadian system pretty well -- our built-in 24-hour clock that times our biological rhythms, including sleep cycles, and we know where in the brain this rhythm is generated," explained lead author Dr Jason Rihel (UCL Cell & Developmental Biology).

"But the homeostatic system, which causes us to feel increasingly tired after a very long day or sleepless night, is not well understood. What we've found is that it appears to be driven not just by how long you've been awake for, but how intensive your brain activity has been since you last slept."

To understand what processes in the brain drive homeostatic sleep regulation -- independent of time of day -- the research team studied zebrafish larvae.

Zebrafish are commonly used in biomedical research, partly due to their near-transparent bodies that facilitate imaging, in addition to similarities to humans such as sleeping every night.

The researchers facilitated an increase in brain activity of the zebrafish using various stimulants including caffeine.

Those zebrafish which had drug-induced increased brain activity slept for longer after the drugs had worn off, confirming that the increase in brain activity contributed to a greater need for sleep.

The researchers found that one specific area of the zebrafish brain was central to the effect on sleep pressure: a brain area that is comparable to a human brain area found in the hypothalamus, known to be active during sleep. In the zebrafish brain area, one specific brain signalling molecule called galanin was particularly active during recovery sleep, but did not play as big a role in regular overnight sleep.

To confirm that the drug-induced findings were relevant to actual sleep deprivation, the researchers conducted a test where they kept the young zebrafish awake all night on a 'treadmill' where the fish were shown moving stripes -- by imitating fast-flowing water, this gives the fish the impression that they need to keep swimming. The zebrafish that were kept awake slept more the next day, and their brains showed an increase in galanin activity during recovery sleep.

The findings suggest that galanin neurons may be tracking total brain activity, but further research is needed to clarify how they detect what's going on across the whole brain.

The researchers say their finding that excess brain activity can increase the need for sleep might explain why people often feel exhausted after a seizure.

"Our findings may also shed light on how some animals can avoid sleep under certain conditions such as starvation or mating season -- it may be that their brains are able to minimise brain activity to limit the need for sleep," said the study's first author, Dr Sabine Reichert (UCL Cell & Developmental Biology).

The researchers say that by discovering a gene that plays a central role in homeostatic sleep regulation, their findings may help to understand sleep disorders and conditions that impair sleep, such as Alzheimer's disease.

"We may have identified a good drug target for sleep disorders, as it may be possible to develop therapies that act on galanin," added Dr Reichert.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190916110556.htm

Caregiver stress: The crucial, often unrecognized byproduct of chronic disease

September 11, 2019

Science Daily/Elsevier

There is growing evidence that caregivers of patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) are vulnerable to developing their own poor cardiovascular health. Investigators report in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, published by Elsevier, on a proof-of-concept couples-based intervention in a cardiac rehabilitation setting. This intervention has shown potential for reducing caregiver distress, and future studies are evaluating its impact on both caregivers' and patients' cardiovascular health.

Nearly half of Canadians have been in caregiving roles to family and friends, with similar figures in the United States and Europe. A caregiver is broadly defined as someone who provides informal or unpaid work to a family member or friend with a chronic condition or disability. Caregivers provide crucial, rarely remunerated support to sick family members or friends. About 40 per cent of caregivers, of whom more than half are women, report high psychological, emotional, physical, social, and financial stresses imposed by the caregiving role. These factors can contribute to a higher risk of CVD among caregivers themselves. However, despite an appreciation of these issues, few approaches have been effective in reducing caregiver stress. This need is expected to increase because pressures on "cardiac" caregivers are projected to rise in the next decade as the population ages, length of hospital stays decline, and CVD and associated risk factors continue to increase.

"It is abundantly clear that caregivers need to be better supported!" said lead investigator Heather Tulloch, PhD, Division of Cardiac Prevention and Rehabilitation, University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI), and University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada. First author, Karen Bouchard, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in behavioral medicine at UOHI added, "Caregivers are critical for patients' cardiovascular health management and are an invaluable healthcare resource, contributing enormously to the Canadian healthcare system. Individuals who care for their partners may experience additional cardiovascular risk -- a risk that should be recognized and to which we should respond."

In this narrative review, investigators look at evidence from the fields of health psychology and relationship science and highlight the direct (e.g., physiological) and indirect (e.g., behavioral, emotional) factors that link caregiver distress with caregivers' own cardiovascular risk. For example, caregivers are more likely to continue to smoke and less likely to be physically active than individuals who provide no or low levels of care; their diets tend to be high in saturated fat intake leading to greater body mass indexes; they spend less time engaging in self-care activities and report poor preventive health behaviors; they experience less or disordered sleep; and demonstrate poor adherence to medication. Spousal caregivers have higher levels of depressive symptoms, physical and financial burden, relationship strain, and lower levels of positive psychological wellbeing compared to adult children caregivers, for example.

The researchers report that the risk of hypertension and metabolic syndrome may be directly related to high-intensity caregiving, defined as providing more than 14 hours of caregiving per week over two consecutive years. They also report findings that estimate the economic contribution of caregivers' unpaid labor to be $26 billion annually in Canada, which is projected to increase to $128 billion by 2035 (likely translating to over a trillion dollars each in the USA and Europe).

The investigators contend that the cardiovascular health of both patient and caregiver could be improved by enhancing the quality of the patient-caregiver relationship. They describe a proof of concept testing of Healing Hearts Together, a relationship-enhancement and educational program for patients and partners. Based on attachment theory, which states that close emotional bonds are essential when faced with a threat such as a cardiac event, the program guides couples through conversations in which they review information on heart health and attachment; share their unique experiences with heart disease with partners and peers; and learn to clearly communicate their need for connection and reassurance. This connection enhances couple satisfaction and problem solving. Participants reported improvements in relationship quality, mental health, and select quality of life measures. A controlled evaluation of the impact of the program on cardiovascular risk factors is underway.

"The aim of Healing Hearts Together is to increase emotional accessibility and responsiveness in couples facing CVD," explained Dr. Tulloch. "Taken together, couples-based interventions in a cardiac rehabilitation setting may be a timely and appropriate approach to reduce caregiver distress and enhance caregivers' comprehensive health outcomes. There is an emerging opportunity to care for those who care for their partners and enhance the health of both. It is important that healthcare professionals recognize the burden of caregiving and act sensitively and strategically to address these challenges."

"Detrimental effects of the caregiving experience are greater among middle-aged caregivers, those known as the 'sandwich generation,' because they balance paid work commitments and interpersonal relationships with care delivery tasks for parents, children, and/or partners," commented Monica Parry, NP-Adult, MEd, MSc, PhD, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in an accompanying editorial. She points out that men and women deal differently with caregiving and, as the landscape of heart disease in women is changing, so must our approach and understanding of the caregiving experiences of men. For example, male caregivers may struggle with the societal views of caring; feel invisible at times; and may be unsure how to assimilate the caring role, masculinity, and accessing help for themselves. "We are facing an epidemic of caregiver burden. Caregivers cannot remain under-researched, under-diagnosed, under-treated and/or under-supported," she concluded.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190911091400.htm

Once or twice weekly daytime nap linked to lower heart attack/stroke risk

But no such association found for greater frequency or duration of naps

September 9, 2019

Science Daily/BMJ

A daytime nap taken once or twice a week may lower the risk of having a heart attack/stroke, finds research published online in the journal Heart. But no such association emerged for either greater frequency or duration of naps.

The impact of napping on heart health has been hotly contested. Many of the published studies on the topic have failed to consider napping frequency, or focused purely on cardiovascular disease deaths, or compared regular nappers with those not opting for a mini siesta, say the researchers.

In a bid to try and address these issues, they looked at the association between napping frequency and average nap duration and the risk of fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular disease 'events,' such as heart attack, stroke, or heart failure, among 3462 randomly selected residents of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Each participant was aged between 35 and 75, when recruited between 2003 and 2006 to the CoLaus study. This has been looking at the factors behind the development of cardiovascular disease.

Participants' first check-up took place between 2009 and 2012, when information on their sleep and nap patterns in the previous week was collected, and their health was then subsequently monitored for an average of 5 years.

Over half (58%, 2014) of the participants said they didn't nap during the previous week; around one in five (19%, 667) said they took one to two naps; around one in 10 (12%, 411) said they took three to five; while a similar proportion (11%, 370) said they took six to seven.

Frequent nappers (3-7 naps a week) tended to be older, male, smokers, weigh more, and to sleep for longer at night than those who said they didn't nap during the day.

And they reported more daytime sleepiness and more severe obstructive sleep apnea -- a condition in which the walls of the throat relax and narrow during sleep, interrupting normal breathing.

During the monitoring period, there were 155 fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular disease 'events'.

Occasional napping, once to twice weekly, was associated with an almost halving in attack/stroke/heart failure risk (48%) compared with those who didn't nap at all.

This association held true after taking account of potentially influential factors, such as age, and nighttime sleep duration, as well as other cardiovascular disease risks, such as high blood pressure/cholesterol.

And it didn't change after factoring in excessive daytime sleepiness, depression, and regularly sleeping for at least 6 hours a night. Only older age (65+) and severe sleep apnea affected it.

But the 67% heightened cardiovascular risk initially observed for frequent nappers virtually disappeared after taking account of potentially influential factors. And no associations with cardiovascular disease 'events' were found for nap length (from 5 minutes to 1 hour plus).

This is an observational study, and as such, can't establish cause, added to which the information on nap and sleep patterns relied on personal recall. But nap frequency may help to explain the differing conclusions reached by researchers about the impact of napping on heart health, suggest the study authors.

In a linked editorial, Drs Yue Leng and Kristine Yaffe, of the University of California at San Francisco, USA, point out that research in this area is hampered by the absence of a gold standard for defining and measuring naps, making it "premature to conclude on the appropriateness of napping for maintaining optimal heart health."

But they add: "While the exact physiological pathways linking daytime napping to [cardiovascular disease] risk is not clear, [this research] contributes to the ongoing debate on the health implications of napping, and suggests that it might not only be the duration, but also the frequency that matters."

And they conclude: "The study of napping is a challenging but also a promising field with potentially significant public health implications. While there remain more questions than answers, it is time to start unveiling the power of naps for a supercharged heart."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190909193219.htm

How stress can weaken defenses

How the 'fight-or-flight' response impairs cellular defense mechanisms

September 9, 2019

Science Daily/University of Massachusetts Medical School

Research from the lab of Mark Alkema, PhD, professor of neurobiology, sheds light on how the "flight-or-flight" response impairs long-term organism health. The study, conducted in the nematode worm, C. elegans, a common research model, was published in Nature.

When humans perceive a dangerous or stressful situation, the body releases stress hormones such as adrenalin. Adrenaline makes the heart beat faster, increases blood flow to the brain and muscles, and stimulates the body to make sugar to use for fuel. The rush of adrenaline triggers the "fight-or-flight" response which gives the person the ability to escape a predator or respond to a threat.

Dr. Alkema, working with the laboratory of Professor Diego Rayes at the National University of South in Argentina, studied the impact of the repeated activation of the "fight-or-flight" response on health in the nematode C. elegans. This small worm is a popular model organism that has helped resolve many fundamental questions in biology, ranging from development to brain function and disease.

Animals are exposed to different forms of stress. These can be abrupt, such as the appearance of a predator, or more progressive, like chronic food shortage, high temperatures, or oxidation.

"Much like in humans, repeated activation of the flight response in C. elegans drastically shortened lifespan," said Jeremy Florman, PhD candidate in the Alkema lab. "The flight response is crucial for the worm to escape from predators. But we find there is a cost; the repeated activation of the flight response reduces the worm's capacity to deal with other challenges it encounters in its environment."

In the study, investigators found that the flight response in C. elegans triggers the activation of a single pair of neurons that release tyramine, the invertebrate analog of adrenaline. In contrast, exposure to environmental challenges such as heat and oxidative stress reduces tyramine release. This stress hormone thus provides a switch that regulates the animal's response to either acute or long-term stressors.

Alkema and Rayes went on to show that tyramine stimulates the insulin pathway through the activation of an adrenergic-like receptor in the intestine. The activation of the insulin pathway can satisfy the animal's energy demands of the flight response. On the other hand, the down-regulation of the insulin pathway is needed help to protect cells from environmental stress and extend lifespan.

"This shows how a dynamic regulation of a stress neurohormone regulates the trade-off between acute and long-term stress responses," said Alkema. "The worm never ceases to amaze me; it keeps revealing fundamental molecular and neural mechanisms that may underlie even extremely complex human biology and disorders. Given the striking conservation of stress response mechanisms from worms to humans, it will be very interesting to see whether in humans the fight-or-flight response and stress neurohormones negatively impact health and aging through the activation of the insulin pathway."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190909134912.htm

New research provides hope for people living with chronic pain

September 9, 2019

Science Daily/University of Calgary

Researchers have been investigating which brain circuits are changed by injury, in order to develop targeted therapies to reset the brain to stop chronic pain.

When you experience severe pain, like breaking or shattering a bone, the pain isn't just felt at the sight of the injury. There is an entire network of receptors in your body running from the site of the injury, through your nervous system, along the spine and into the brain that reacts to tell you how much pain you are feeling. This system goes into high alert when the injury occurs, and then usually resets as you heal. However, sometimes, the system doesn't reset, and even though the injury has mended, nerve damage has caused your brain to be permanently altered. It means you still feel the pain, even though the injury has fully healed.

Dr. Gerald Zamponi, PhD, and a team with the Cumming School of Medicine's Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) and researchers at Stanford University, California, have been investigating which brain circuits are changed by injury, in order to develop targeted therapies to reset the brain to stop chronic pain.

"It's a terrible situation for many people living with chronic pain, because there is often very little that works for them to control their pain," says Zamponi, senior associate dean (research) and a professor in the departments of Physiology & Pharmacology and Cell Biology & Anatomy at the CSM. "This doesn't just impact people who have experienced peripheral nerve damage. There are cases of people having a stroke and are experiencing severe pain afterward in another part of their body. It may also explain why some people who have lost a limb can still feel pain in the limb even though it's no longer there."

Working closely with Dr. Junting Huang, PhD, and Dr. Vinicius Gadotti, PhD, co-first authors on the study, along with Dr. Zizhen Zhang, PhD, the team utilized optogenetics to study the neuron connections in the brains of mice. Optogenetics allow scientists to use light to target and control individual neurons in the brain. With this tool, researchers are able to map a pathway showing which neurons are communicating with each other to process a pain signal and then communicate this information all the way back through the spine where painful stimuli are first processed.

"We've known that certain parts of the brain are important for pain, but now we've been able to identify a long range circuit in the brain that carries the message and we've been able to show how it is altered during chronic pain states," says Zamponi who is also a member of the CSM's Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute.

Much of the research for chronic pain has been focused on the spinal cord and targeting nerve fibres where the pain response is processed. Treatment with current pain relief medications is often ineffective and can have serious side effects. This new understanding of the pain signaling circuit may allow scientists to develop new drug therapies and targeted brain stimulation treatments to address chronic nerve pain, and hopefully provide relief for pain sufferers. Working with mice, Zamponi's lab has proven that targeting certain pathways in the brain can interfere with the pain signal and stop pain sensation.

"If you understand how the brain rewires itself, you can interfere with that and you can restore it. That's important," says Zamponi. "If you think about it, there are some drugs you don't want to give to kids who have chronic pain. What if you could non-invasively stimulate certain brain regions or inhibit them, and bring pain relief that way? I think it would be a tremendous, alternative approach to taking drugs."

Zamponi expects the results the lab has seen in mice will be comparable in humans. While the human brain is very complex, the communication network is similar in the animal brain. Findings are published in Nature Neuroscience.

The Zamponi lab is already applying this research to investigate how this brain circuit interacts with other parts of the brain involved in more complex behaviours like the interaction between pain pathways and addiction, depression, and anxiety.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190909113027.htm

Gut bacteria may be linked to high blood pressure and depression

September 5, 2019

Science Daily/American Heart Association

A study of bacteria in the gut identified differences between people with high blood pressure compared to those with high blood pressure plus depression, according to preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association's Hypertension 2019 Scientific Sessions.

"People are 'meta-organisms' made up of roughly equal numbers of human cells and bacteria. Gut bacteria ecology interacts with our bodily physiology and brains, which may steer some people towards developing high blood pressure and depression," said Bruce R. Stevens, Ph.D., lead author of the study and professor of physiology & functional genomics, medicine and psychiatry at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, Florida. "In the future, health professionals may target your gut in order to prevent, diagnose and selectively treat different forms of high blood pressure."

Stevens said there's potential for this research to uncover treatment approaches that could improve outcomes in people with treatment-resistant hypertension. Nearly 20 percent of patients with high blood pressure don't respond well to treatment, even with multiple medications.

The researchers isolated DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid, the carrier of genetic information) from gut bacteria obtained from the stool samples of 105 volunteers. They used a new technique involving artificial-intelligence software to analyze the bacteria, which revealed four distinct types of bacterial genes and signature molecules. Surprisingly, the investigators discovered unique patterns of bacteria from people with 1) high blood pressure plus depression; 2) high blood pressure without depression; 3) depression with healthy blood pressure; or 4) healthy subjects without depression or high blood pressure.

Stevens said the results suggest different medical mechanisms of high blood pressure that correlate with signature molecules produced by gut bacteria. These molecules are thought to impact the cardiovascular system, metabolism, hormones and the nervous system.

"We believe we have uncovered new forms of high blood pressure: 'Depressive Hypertension' (high blood pressure with depression), which may be a completely different disease than 'Non-Depressive Hypertension' (high blood pressure without depression), which are each different from 'Non-Hypertensive Depression,'" Stevens said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190905161408.htm

Furry friends ease depression, loneliness after spousal loss

September 5, 2019

Science Daily/Florida State University

As Healthy Aging Month is underway this September, Florida State University researchers have found the companionship of a pet after the loss of a spouse can help reduce feelings of depression and loneliness in older adults.

The study, funded by The Gerontological Society of America and the WALTHAM Centre for Pet Nutrition and published in The Gerontologist, examined depressive symptoms and loneliness among people age 50 and older who experienced the loss of a spouse through death or divorce.

"Increasingly, there's evidence that our social support networks are really beneficial for maintaining our mental health following stressful events, despite the devastation we experience in later life when we experience major social losses," said Dawn Carr, lead author and FSU associate professor of sociology. "I was interested in understanding alternatives to human networks for buffering the psychological consequences of spousal loss."

Carr and her team compared individuals who experienced the loss of a spouse to those who stayed continuously married. Then they explored whether the effects of spousal loss differed for those who had a pet at the time of the death or divorce.

They found all individuals who lost their spouse experienced higher levels of depression. However, people without a pet experienced more significant increases in depressive symptoms and higher loneliness than those who had pets. In fact, those who had a pet and experienced the death or divorce of their spouse were no lonelier than older adults who didn't experience one of those events.

"That's an important and impressive finding," Carr said. "Experiencing some depression after a loss is normal, but we usually are able to adjust over time to these losses. Persistent loneliness, on the other hand, is associated with greater incidents of mortality and faster onset of disability, which means it's especially bad for your health. Our findings suggest that pets could help individuals avoid the negative consequences of loneliness after a loss."

Carr's team used data from a sample of older adults who participated in an experimental survey about human animal interaction as part of the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study in 2012, and linked the data with additional data collected between 2008 and 2014. They identified pet owners as those participants who either had a cat or a dog.

"In everyday life, having a cat or dog may not make you healthier," Carr said. "But when facing a stressful event, we might lean on a pet for support. You can talk to your dog. They're not going to tell you you're a bad person, they're just going to love you. Or you can pet your cat, and it's calming."

The researchers noted that additional studies should be conducted to explain why having pets helps maintain mental health better. However, Carr suggested part of it may relate to whether you feel like you matter to someone.

"Oftentimes, the relationship we have with our spouse is our most intimate, where our sense of self is really embedded in that relationship," Carr said. "So, losing that sense of purpose and meaning in our lives that comes from that relationship can be really devastating. A pet might help offset some of those feelings. It makes sense to think, 'Well at least this pet still needs me. I can take care of it. I can love it and it appreciates me.' That ability to give back and give love is really pretty powerful."

The findings have potential consequences for social policies. For instance, it may be beneficial to include companion animals in the treatment of people residing in senior-living facilities, or reducing barriers to pet ownership in such settings.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/09/190905102549.htm