Category: Persuasion

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Depression is an extremely common experience, which can be hard to escape from once an episode has begun.

Psychological research has found all sorts of ways that the chances of developing depression can be reduced.

From social connection, through building resilience to taking up a hobby, there are many science-backed methods for lowering depression risk.

Click the links for a fuller description of each study including the reference.

1. Social connection

Social connection is the strongest protective factor against depression.

People who feel able to tell others about their problems and who visit more often with friends and family have a markedly lower risk of becoming depressed.

The data, derived from over 100,000 people, assessed modifiable factors that could affect depression risk including sleep, diet, physical activity and social interaction.

Dr Jordan Smoller, study co-author, explained the results:

“Far and away the most prominent of these factors was frequency of confiding in others, but also visits with family and friends, all of which highlighted the important protective effect of social connection and social cohesion.”

2. Build resilience

Recalling positive memories helps to build resilience against depression.

Reminiscing about happy events and having a store of these to draw on is one way of building up resilience.

Similarly, getting nostalgic has been found to help fight loneliness and may also protect mental health.

Thinking back to better times, even if they are tinged with some sadness, helps people cope with challenging times.

3. Regulate your mood naturally

Being able to naturally regulate mood is one of the best weapons against depression.

Mood regulation means choosing activities that increase mood, like exercise, when feeling low and doing dull activities like housework when spirits are higher.

Some of the best ways of improving mood are being in nature, taking part in sport, engaging with culture, chatting and playing.

Other mood enhancing activities include listening to music, eating, helping others and childcare.

4. Eat healthily

Eating more fruits and vegetables lowers the risk of depression.

Reducing fat intake and increasing levels of omega-3 are also linked to a lower risk of depression.

The anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of fruits and vegetables may account for their beneficial effect.

Vitamins and minerals in fruit and vegetables may also help to lower the markers of inflammation, such as C-reactive protein.

Similarly, adding more fibre to the diet decreases depression risk.

This is probably why many studies link vegetarian and vegan diets to a lower risk of depression.

5. Stop obsessing about failures

Excessive negative thinking about unfulfilled dreams is linked to depression and anxiety.

When people repeatedly compare a mental vision of their ideal self with the failure to reach it, this can produce psychological distress.

Aspirations can be damaging as well as motivating, depending on how the mind deals with them and what results life happens to serve up.

Thinking obsessively about a perceived failure is psychological damaging.

6. Reduce sedentary activities

Cutting down on screen-time strongly reduces depression risk, whether or not people have previously experienced a depressive episode.

The results come from data covering almost 85,000 people.

The study…

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A 10-second break taken after learning helps the brain to consolidate new information more effectively.

Taking very short breaks is vital to effective learning, neuroscientists find.

A 10-second break taken after learning helps the brain to consolidate new information more effectively.

Recordings of the brain’s electrical activity show that there are more changes in key areas during the rest period than during learning.

Giving the brain those few seconds after learning allows it to solidify the memory.

Dr Leonardo G. Cohen, the study’s first author, said:

“Everyone thinks you need to ‘practice, practice, practice’ when learning something new.

Instead, we found that resting, early and often, may be just as critical to learning as practice.

Our ultimate hope is that the results of our experiments will help patients recover from the paralyzing effects caused by strokes and other neurological injuries by informing the strategies they use to ‘relearn’ lost skills.”

For the study, people were given a typing task to learn while the electrical activity in their brains was recorded.

Naturally, the more people practised, the better they got.

However, Dr Marlene Bönstrup, study co-author, noticed something interesting:

“I noticed that participants’ brain waves seemed to change much more during the rest periods than during the typing sessions.

This gave me the idea to look much more closely for when learning was actually happening.

Was it during practice or rest?”

When they reanalysed the data, the researchers found that performance improved more during rests than when actively practising.

The gains were even greater than those seen after a full night’s rest.

The researchers also saw large changes in beta oscillations during the rest periods.

These happened in the brain’s right hemisphere in areas of the brain known to control movement and planning.

These changes to brain waves only happened during rest and were associate with improvements in performance.

Dr Cohen said:

“Our results suggest that it may be important to optimize the timing and configuration of rest intervals when implementing rehabilitative treatments in stroke patients or when learning to play the piano in normal volunteers.

Whether these results apply to other forms of learning and memory formation remains an open question.”

The study was published in the journal Current Biology (Bönstrup et al., 2019).

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These two treatment strategies might be the secret to maintaining weight loss.

Losing weight can be easier than avoiding regaining it.

However, Danish scientists have found a combined therapy to maintain weight loss, once it has been achieved.

In the study, obese participants, after an 8-week low-calorie diet, lost more than 13 kg.

After this initial weight loss, those who received an exercise program combined with obesity medication, saw twice the decrease of body fat than the other groups.

Nearly half of the world’s population is overweight and 1-in-6 are obese.

They face serious health consequences such as infertility, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and premature death.

There are many successful plans for losing weight, but the problem is that most people will regain weight over time.

The Danish study reveals the possible ways to sustain weight loss over a long period of time.

The research team enrolled 215 Danes with obesity and poor fitness to take a low-calorie diet weight loss program for 8 weeks.

The subjects lost 13.1 kg plus a significant reduction in blood pressure and blood sugar levels during this period.

Then they were divided into four groups:

• One group received an appetite-inhibiting obesity medication (3.0 mg per day of liraglutide) only.
• A combination group received the obesity medication plus an exercise program.
• The other two groups received a placebo medication instead of liraglutide, however, one of these two group also did an exercise program.

The exercise program consisted of 75-minutes vigorous intensity activity or a 150-minutes moderate-intensity activity per week.

Nutritional and diet counselling were regularly provided for all the groups to maintain their healthy weight loss.

Professor Signe Sørensen Torekov, the study’s senior author, said:

“This is new knowledge for doctors, dietitians and physical therapists to use in practice.

This is evidence that we have been missing.

The problem is that people are fighting against strong biological forces when losing weight.

The appetite increases simultaneously with decreased energy consumption, and this counteracts weight loss maintenance.

We have an appetite-stimulating hormone, which increases dramatically when we lose weight, and simultaneously the level of appetite-suppressing hormones drops dramatically.

In addition, a weight loss can provoke loss of muscle mass, while the body reduces the energy consumption.

Thus, when the focus in obesity treatment has been on how to obtain a weight loss — rather than how to maintain a weight loss — it is really difficult to do something about your situation,”

The liraglutide (obesity medication) group and the exercise group still kept the 13 kg weight off while the placebo group put half of the weight back after one year.

The combination of liraglutide with the exercise showed amazing results as participants in this group lost 16 kg, twice as much body fat, increased muscle mass, lowered blood pressure, decreased blood sugar, and had better fitness levels than the other groups.

Professor Torekov said:

“It is an important aspect to highlight, as you do not necessarily get a healthier body from losing weight if, at the same time, you lose a lot of muscle mass.

It is great news for public health that a significant weight loss can be maintained with exercise for approximately 115…

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The trait is not normally associated with intelligent people.

People who are generous by nature have a higher IQ, research finds.

Generous people are unselfish and sometimes deny themselves so that others can have more.

Although generosity is not something people usually associate with intelligence, psychological research clearly shows a link.

Intelligent people may be more generous partly because they can afford it.

People with higher IQs generally have greater resources, or can expect to recover what they have given away later on.

The conclusions come from a study in which 96 people played games that involved either donating to others or keeping things for themselves.

The results revealed that intelligent people were more generous to others.

In contrast, those who kept more for themselves tended to be less intelligent.

The study’s authors used the results of SAT tests, which can be converted into approximate IQ scores.

They write:

“We find that subjects who perform better on the Math portion of the SAT [Scholastic Aptitude Test] are more generous in both the dictator game and the SVO [Social Value Orientation] measure.

[…]

Our results involving SAT scores […] suggest that measures of cognitive ability, which are less sensitive to the intrinsic motivation of the subject, are positively related to generosity.”

The study was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (Chen et al., 2013).

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