Exercise for Depression

According to an article in the Harvard Mental Health Letter, exercise may be beneficial for people with severe depression. Of course exercise is helpful for everyone, no matter what the health issues, but here are some reasons exercise can be particularly helpful to depressed people:

* enhanced body image
* social support from exercise groups
* distraction from everyday worries
* heightened self-confidence from meeting a goal
* altered circulation of the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, and endorphins

It’s certainly worth exploration. If people can do something relatively simple to make themselves feel a little better, maybe they won’t need as many drugs and will be able to lead more normal lives.

Medical News That Annoys Me

Two stories on Good Morning America this morning really got me riled up. The first had to do with the vaccine for Human Papilloma Virus or HPV. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that the vast majority of sexually active people contract at some point in their lives.

There are more than 100 varieties of the disease, about 5.5 million new cases a year, 20 million people in America have it, and about three out of four people aged 15 to 49 will contract it at some point in their lives.

It isn’t fatal for most people, and most people never know they have it. But in some cases, depending on the strain, it causes cervical cancer.

So you would think a vaccine for this virus would be wonderful news. About 14,000 women get cervical cancer each year and 5,000 die. This is a vaccine that will save lives.

The trouble is, it really needs to be given to girls before they are sexually active, and some think that this will give those girls a license to fornicate and that they’ll be given the mistaken impression that they are protected from all sexually transmitted diseases because of this one shot. Because girls are stupid, and all they want is sex. At age 10.

Anyway, that was bad enough, but then there was a story about a pill you can take to make your hair straight if it is curly or curly if it is straight. The pill is still in development, apparently, but the folks at L’Oreal think they can design hormones that will change the shape of the hair’s root bulb (I’m not making this up) to make your hair grow whichever way you prefer.

To which Diane Sawyer said something along the lines of Who researches this? And Robin Roberts said something about it making a lot of money.

Bingo. While L’Oreal admittedly is not a drug company, it’s part of a disturbing trend. Companies are much more interested in producing products, including drugs, that will help baby boomers with low self-esteem pretend they’re not getting any older. There’s more money in erectile disfunction than in producing the next new AIDS drug (or preventing cervical cancer, for that matter).

Both of these stories illustrate to me that this country and the medical/beauty/drug industries have their priorities all out of whack. We’d rather pretend children don’t have sex than give them a vaccine that could save their lives decades down the road. And instead of spending energy and money on social issues that really matter, companies direct funds to researching genetic mutation in the name of beauty (I can’t imagine what else those “hormones” might do to a body).

Makes a girl want to go live in a cave, I tell you.

To the source:
American Social Health Association
ABC News

World Diabetes Day

It’s World Diabetes Day, and the focus this year is on foot and leg amputations. The risk of a leg amputation is 15-40 times greater for a person with diabetes, according to a news release. People of Hispanic and African ancestry are 1.5 to 2.5 times more likely to suffer from foot problems and undergo amputations than Caucasians. In 2002, about 82,000 non-traumatic lower-limb amputations were performed among people with diabetes.

More than 20 million Americans have diabetes, and 60 to 70 percent suffer nerve damage because of the disease. This damage, when severe, can lead to the need for amputations from unnoticed infection when feeling is lost in the limb.

“It is imperative that awareness be raised about the serious risk of amputation for people with diabetes,” said Dr. Robert Rizza, president of the American Diabetes Association. “Diabetes is the most frequent cause of non-traumatic lower-limb amputations, and the importance of educating patients about how to recognize the warning signs of neuropathy and prevent its complications cannot be stressed enough.”

For more information about diabetes, visit the American Diabetes Association.

Reader’s Digest “Live it down Plan”

A year ago, I was diagnosed with high cholesterol. I was a tech support agent, who sat behind a computer, a phone, and desk for most of the hours in my week. I also ate a lot of junk food and didn’t get enough exercise, mainly because my job involved too many hours and too much stress. After a painful kidney stone, I decided “office work” was no longer for me, and I entered the wilderness and manual labor as an archaeologist. I never did check to see if my cholesterol is high, but I could almost guarantee you its at a safe place now. I plan to get checked again on my next break. I now hike about 10 miles a day when at work, eat healthier and live much more stress free.

Much of what I have to thank is Reader Digest’s “Live it down plan,” which pushes more fish in the diet, fish oil supplements, multi-vitamins, cognitive healthier eating and more exercise. I’ve lost a lot of weight as well. I couldn’t suggest a better plan, especially one that doesn’t require you to give up things like alcohol, chocolate and meat.

Preparing for Flu

President Bush yesterday asked Congress for more than $7 billion to prepare the nation for a possible pandemic of avian flu, the deadly strain from birds that has killed 60 of the 120 people it has infected in Asia.

The flu at this time is only spread through contact with infected birds, but it is expected the flu will eventually mutate so that it can be transmitted from person to person. When that happens, it is expected to spread across the globe quickly and be very deadly because people living on the planet today have no immunity to this strain.

There is one drug that seems to have some effect on the flu, but the company that makes it recently stopped providing it to the United States because of fears people are stockpiling the drug in preparation for the avian flu.

According to the New York Times the president’s plan earmarks $2.8 billion for researching more reliable and faster ways to produce vaccines, $1.2 billion to buy 20 million doses of a vaccine against the current strain of avian flu and $1 billion to buy the antiviral medications Tamiflu and Relenza. (Check out the rest of the story here.)

Some Democrats say the plan is not strong enough, since a similar plan that passed the Senate last week cost $8 billion.

Whatever your politics, it’s true that the president is trying to prepare for this emergency because of the lack of response to Hurricane Katrina. But it’s good to see the government making plans in case this deadly outbreak does come to pass in the near future.

World Vegan Day

Today, Nov. 1, is World Vegan Day, designed to shine a spotlight on vegans and, this year, to show that there is no such thing as a “typical” vegan.

To prove that, a website has been opened to allow vegans to post pictures and profiles, which you can view here.

From the look of things, though, most vegans are women 20 to 30 years old. And maybe that is what’s typical. I fall in that age range and I’ve certainly had vegan tendencies (though I love cheese and honey too much to give up all animal products).

For those who don’t know: vegan is a form of vegetarian living that involves no use of animal products of any kind. Vegans don’t eat meat, eggs, dairy, honey, etc., don’t wear leather or use down comforters.

I’m attracted to the vegetarian/vegan lifestyle because of its low impact on the planet, and on your body. It really is a healthy way to live if you are mindful of the things you are putting into your body and so long as you fuel yourself with nutritious things, which you should be doing anyway.

If you want to learn more about becoming a vegan, check out Vegan.com for news and articles or Vegan Action for more on making the switch. It’s something worth thinking about, even if you just had a vegan day once a week or something. It will make a huge difference in the way you eat and the way you feel. Happy eating!