Correlation of Inflammation & Depression

Interesting Idea...
Thoughts, Opinions?

Scientists Theorize Inflammation May Trigger Some Mental Illnesses : Shots - Health News : NPR

“A Danish study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2013 looked at the medical records of over 3 million people and found that any history of hospitalization for infection was associated with a 62 percent increased risk of later developing a mood disorder, including depression and bipolar disorder.”

“Late last year, Turhan Canli, an associate professor of psychology and radiology at Stony Brook University, published a paper in the journal Biology of Mood and Anxiety Disorders asserting that depression should be thought of as an infectious disease. "Depressed patients act physically sick," says Canli. "They're tired, they lose their appetite, they don't want to get out of bed." He notes that while Western medicine practitioners tend to focus on the psychological symptoms of depression, in many non-Western cultures, patients who would qualify for a depression diagnosis report primarily physical symptoms, in part because of the stigmatization of mental illness.”

I have no doubt that depression can effect the immune system. I have several autoimmune diseases including colitis, eczema, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes. I get various outbreaks of these with my depression. Also in some cases the disease can spark depression. My cardiologist thinks my current heart problems are more from my depression and than from congestive heart failure from recent pneumonia. With the recent ebb and flow of my depression symptoms, my cardiac symptoms followed suit, so I have to agree with him.

there is a lot we don't know about these mood disorders...
brain inflammation seems to be important...

Hmm interesting! So I just need to lower my inflammation.

I think infectious disease > inflammation of brain > depression is well established. And not just depression, but a whole range of behavioral and psych impairments.

Thousands of years ago the Chinese considered parasitic infections to be a form of demonic possession. Why? Because they observed that sufferers often exhibited personality changes, volatile emotions, and other mental disturbances that were so severe it seemed they were possessed. Western medicine is largely clueless on this.

An herbalist I saw for a while said:
"I often find that people are 'mentally ill' because of physical causes that facilitate an instability of their brain chemistry. Inflammation of the nervous system by pathogenic viruses and spirochetes [as in Lyme disease] is especially common in these patients."

I feel for you Dexter. My dad had a heart problems and depression as well. There was a connection. He never had a heart bypass because he read there was a correlation between that operation, depression and even suicide.

I am glad you have a cardiologist and are taking your condition seriously. Many cyber hugs to you.

I am sure. I have chronic osteomyelitis and my depression started after the onset of osteomyelitis I estimate

I have much going on physically as well as mentally. I think the mentally caused the physically. Interesting.

Could it be the other way around- that some mental illnesses trigger inflammation?

What would the mechanism be?

This is a good review
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.co...41-7015-11-200

I have no problem with understanding that there is a relation between depression and inflammation. But what shall we try to cure first, the depression or the inflammation?

(I used a lot of Propolis when I was a student, but it didn't fix my depression).

I believe that is possible.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with Tachycardia. Did testing to figure out why my heart had suddenly started beating so quickly. It wasn't heart-disease related. We just couldn't figure out what was going on. Eventually, we tracked it down to my mental illness. It had started some time after my panic disorder decided to rear its ugly head back up. The constant anxiety, my mind and body were just pushing adrenaline and somehow it got switched to 'non-stop'.
Mental can cause physical. This has been well documented. Depression can wreck havoc on your body. Perhaps there is some way it switches on your immune system and the related hormones so that they are always on high alert, much like the prefrontal cortex in those with anxiety. From there, with the body being so interconnected, it's like a series of switches.

Interesting, though very heavy on the jargon. Glad they mention gut permeability.

I notice no mention of infectious disease or infectious organisms, nor stored environmental toxins like mold or heavy metals (e.g. mercury). Those are crazy omissions in a review of inflammatory disease.

I had pretty bad issues with tachycardia for a while. Is significantly better now. The difference was a variety of purely physiological interventions involving reducing toxin load, changing diet, dealing with chronic infections, calming the nervous system, and endocrine stuff.

I had a few panic attacks also and have had problems with severe anxiety and agitation, depression, mood disturbance, and more. These are all common in Lyme disease and in mercury toxicity and even severe nutrient deficiencies.

I also have some trauma and prolonged emotional distress in the picture, so yea it's confusing. But I thikn the physiological factors need to be addressed. They will not go away and could be the root cause. Things like panic and anxiety can seemingly be psychological phenomenon OR purely physiological.

Incidentally, a cardiac work-up revealed nothing. The cardiologist was pretty much useless. He only knew how to order tests, review the data, and feed it back to me.

In my case, I had a doctor who was pretty diligent in trying to help me. We looked into all manner of causes. Vitamin/nutrient deficiencies, endocrine tumors, blood work, gut stuff, etc.
I, and they, wanted to rule out any physiological cause because A) heart problems are something doctors take seriously, and B) I kept getting sick. As it turns out, I'm pretty darn healthy, physically speaking and as far as my levels go. No deficiencies. Nothing in my system to bring up any red flags. But my body keeps playing games.

You are right, it is important to rule out anything medical that could be the root cause and it should be addressed. Some diseases can mess with the neurotransmitters in your head, bringing on anxiety and depression. But as I said before, I think our mind can also make you physically ill as a side-effect of a mental illness. As I feel better, my body feels better. When I feel worse, I get sick again or have more problems.