Are We All Heading Towards Depression?

Feeling blue or not in the mood? Is that all we need to trigger depression? Here is a list of numerous researches going on across the globe to help us understand the signs, symptoms and prevention of depression.

According to Reuters, London, depression is more damaging to everyday health than chronic diseases such as angina, arthritis, asthma and diabetes. If people are ill with other conditions then depression makes them worse. The researchers wrote in the Lancet medical journal, “We report the largest population based worldwide study to our knowledge that explores the effect of depression in comparison with four other chronic diseases on health state.

Somnath Chatterji of the World Health Organization who led the study said, “Researchers calculated the impact of different conditions by asking people questions about their capacities to function in everyday situation-such as moving around, seeing things at a distance and remembering information. The researchers assigned a number between 0 and 100 reflecting a person’s relative health score. The researchers wrote, “Our main findings show that depression impairs health state to a substantially greater degree than the other diseases.

The team used WHO data collected from 60 countries and more than 240,000 people to show on average between 9% and 23% had depression in addition to one or more of four other chronic diseases-asthma, angina, arthritis and diabetes.

Taiwan researchers have discovered that banana peel extract can ease depression and protect the retina. A research team from Taichung Chung Shan found after two years of research that banana peel is rich in serotonin, which is vital to balancing moods, the Apple Daily newspaper reported. A low level of serotonin in the brain is believed to cause depression although doctors have yet to find out the relationship between depression and low levels of serotonin.

The team also found that banana peel extract could protect the retina damage caused by light because it can cause retina cells to regenerate. The research team said it believes consuming banana peel by boiling the peel and drinking the water or by putting it through a fruit juicer and drinking the juice can help to ease depression. This should be consumed once a day or several times a week. Source of this information is from IANS.

According to the researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham,North Carolina, regular exercise may work as well as medication in improving symptoms of major depression. In a study of 202 depressed adults, the investigators found that those who went through group based exercise therapy did well as those treated with an antidepressant drug. A third group that performed home-based exercise also improved, though to a lesser degree.

Importantly, the researchers found all three groups did better than a fourth group given a placebo-an inactive pill identical to the antidepressant. While past studies have suggested that exercise can depression symptoms, a criticism has been that the research failed to compare exercise with a placebo. The new findings bolster evidence that exercise does have a real effect on depression.