Blog – Page 5 – Éiriú Eolas

Jun 06 2019

Low carb and mental health: The food-mood connection

Eating a low-carbohydrate whole-foods diet appears to be a powerful strategy for protecting and improving the health of the body. Could this same nutritional strategy benefit the brain as well? Emerging science and clinical experience suggest that the answer is a resounding yes.1 Many people think of mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and ADHD as chemical imbalances that require medication, but how often do we stop to wonder what causes these chemical imbalances? While medications are clearly helpful and important for some individuals, one could argue that the most powerful way to change brain chemistry is through food - because that's where brain chemicals come from in the first place. This logical idea has given birth to the new and exciting field of nutritional psychiatry, dedicated to understanding how dietary choices affect our mood, thinking, and behavior. Emerging science...

Jun 05 2019

Anxiety may be alleviated by regulating gut bacteria

Éiriú Eolas

Health & Wellness

People who experience anxiety symptoms might be helped by taking steps to regulate the microorganisms in their gut using probiotic and non-probiotic food and supplements, suggests a review of studies published today in the journal General Psychiatry. Anxiety symptoms are common in people with mental diseases and a variety of physical disorders, especially in disorders that are related to stress. Previous studies have shown that as many as a third of people will be affected by anxiety symptoms during their lifetime. Increasingly, research has indicated that gut microbiota -- the trillions of microorganisms in the gut which perform important functions in the immune system and metabolism by providing essential inflammatory mediators, nutrients and vitamins -- can help regulate brain function through something called the "gut-brain axis." Recent research also suggests that mental disorders could be treated by regulating the intestinal...

Jun 05 2019

Mum dies after shunning NHS treatment for curable cancer and going vegan instead

Éiriú Eolas

Health & Wellness

A mum who was diagnosed with treatable breast cancer has died after shunning medicine in favour of living a vegan and holistic lifestyle. Katie Britton-Jordan, from Dalbury Lees, Derbyshire, was told she had triple negative breast cancer in July 2016 after finding a lump in her breast while feeding daughter Delilah when she was three. She was offered a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy that would save her life but instead chose alternative methods including taking up a vegan diet. Her husband Neil announced Katie's death on Facebook yesterday. ...

Jun 04 2019

Men more likely than women to face mental illness and substance abuse

Éiriú Eolas

Psychology

June marks National Men's Health Month, an opportunity to examine the prevalence of drug misuse and substance use disorders (SUDs) in men. Compared to women, men are more likely to engage in illicit drug use and to begin using alcohol or drugs at a younger age. These risk factors contribute to a rate of substance dependence in men that is twice that of women; men are also more likely to experience an opioid overdose. In fact, of the 47,600 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2017, two-thirds were among men. This disparity is also true for alcohol and other drugs. For example, men are more likely to drink excessively, which is associated with higher rates of alcohol-related deaths, hospitalizations, and risky behavior, such as drinking and driving. For other drugs, such as marijuana, use in males is higher, as is the prevalence...

Jun 04 2019

Research helps shed new light on circadian clocks

Éiriú Eolas

Psychology

Can your liver sense when you're staring at a television screen or cellphone late at night? Apparently so, and when such activity is detected, the organ can throw your circadian rhythms out of whack, leaving you more susceptible to health problems. That's one of the takeaways from two new studies by University of California, Irvine scientists working in collaboration with the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, Spain. The studies, published today in the journal Cell, used specially bred mice to analyze the network of internal clocks that regulate metabolism. Although researchers had suspected that the body's various circadian clocks could operate independently from the central clock in the hypothalamus of the brain, there was previously no way to test the theory, said Paolo Sassone-Corsi, director of UCI's Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism and senior author of one of...