Did you know that only half of the soldiers with trauma are willing to seek treatment? Many are resistant because they do not want their symptoms to be labeled a “disorder”, as in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Can a name alone really be that powerful? According to Belleruth Naparstek, LISW, author of Invisible Heroes, there is a strong move away from using Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to describe the long-term results of severe trauma. Many military personnel dealing with this condition feel stigmatized by being told they have a disorder. Even just the diagnosis of “PTSD” can be devastating to…

We’ve all heard about the chicken or egg dilemma, but let me ask you this – when talking about depression and stroke together … what comes first? Depression or stroke? In a study published in the October 2011 volume of Stroke, depression is correlated with increased risk of stroke in females. Researchers led by Kathryn Rexrode, MD followed 80,574 women who were part of the Nurses’ Health Study. These women were 54 to 79 years old and without a prior history of stroke. They assessed depressive symptoms multiple times with a Mental Health Index. Anti-depressant use was reported every two…

We know that stress can take a toll on our bodies, but it also affects our brain. I’ve written about how it affects memory and the hippocampus. Research is now suggesting that stress also alters how we learn. This has ramifications for addiction and anything involved in the negative aspects of neuroplasticity. A recent review article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science by University of Southern California researcher Mara Mather, PhD, suggests that stress alters our decision-making abilities. Specifically, when under stress, dopamine levels in the brain’s pleasure circuit change in such a way that people overemphasize remembered rewards…

One way to measure how much age has fatigued an individual is to measure the length of their telomeres. Since telomeres naturally shorten with time many researchers use telomere length to determine cell age, and give a picture of overall brain health What are telomeres? They act as protective caps on the end of chromosomes to keep them from deteriorating. When cells replicate (think aging), telomeres are cut and become increasingly shorter. If the telomere becomes too short, it dies or at the very least, becomes dormant. I reported last year that researchers had found that middle-aged people who were…

Just a few weeks ago, I was having breakfast with my family. It was a rare opportunity to be together with both of my siblings, their spouses, and my parents – all of whom live out of state. As we got to talking, it turned out that both my sister Priscilla and my sister-in-law Susan had been among our Power of Three participants this past August. You might recall our Power of Three program, over 3,800 practitioners signed up because:   three small changes can make a big overall difference in our health at the end of a month –…

When we think of PTSD, many practitioners automatically think of soldiers, rape survivors, or childhood abuse survivors. Few of us think about other groups of people, particularly the patients in our hospitals, with a high risk of developing PTSD. According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), one of these groups would include individuals who have undergone orthopedic surgery. Daniel Aaron, MD, from Brown University’s Department of Orthopedics, was the paper’s principle author. He noted that between 20-51% of patients with musculoskeletal injuries develop PTSD, with the result being that returning…