Research shows that people with diabetes are at greater risk for depression. Moreover, people with Type 2 diabetes and severe depression experience more life-threatening complications from diabetes, and they also suffer more from depression. Each disease seems to make the other disease worse.
The challenge for doctors and scientists is to understand the relationship between the two diseases to develop interventions to offset them because effectively managing one can have positive benefits on the other.
A book recently crossed my desk that offers a unique approach to coping with depression: The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression Without Drugs. The book is filled with a clear, easy-to-understand and easy-to-follow approach to coping with depression.
Author Stephen S. Ilardi, a clinical psychologist who trained at Duke University Medical School offers a comprehensive six-step plan that is being praised by patients and physicians, alike. The plan includes familiar treatments for depression such as light therapy, exercise, social support, tweaking your thinking, proper sleep, and proper nutrition. Yet Dr. Ilardi's explanation is intriguing and uniquely insightful.
Dr. Ilardi’s revelations about the use of omega-3 fatty acids in his chapter on “Brain Foods” is worth the price of the book and can be life-changing. You will understand what a fatty acid is, the difference between 3 and 6, why they are called 3 and 6, what the proper dose is and why.
I was not so crazy about his descriptions of how stress is studied in mice, animal lover that I am. Yet, he impressed me with his succinct, comprehensive, and comprehensible explanation of how fat affects the brain and how changes in the way farm animals are fed and food is processed all conspire to rob the human brain of crucial nutrients. This could be one of the reasons depression seems so much more prevalent.
He recounted Michael Pollan’s story of a group of Australian Aborigines who developed diabetes after abandoning their traditional diet for just seven weeks, a diet that included proper ratios of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. Within two months of returning to a diet of wild-fed meat and fish and wild plants their diabetes improved.
Dr. Ilardi explains why. Briefly, our brains must have a proper ratio of these important fatty acids and we get too much omega-6 because of our diets that focus on grains and processed foods.
Omega 3 is crucial to restoring the balance to help us ward off adult-onset diabetes and “inflammation-linked” diseases associated with high-blood pressure and obesity. To restore the crucial balance, you need to either eat more foods with omega-3 or eat less foods with omega-6. Supplementation is an easy, economical solution that he explains in detail, including suggested brands and recommended doses.
Your take away message is that depression and diabetes are linked and each condition aggravates the other. Omega 3's can go a long way to helping you manage and avoid depression because “omega-3 fats have a potent antidepressant effect,” according to Illardi's book. They routinely work better than placebos, something that drugs fail to do in clinical studies.
Get Dr. Illardi’s book to get the benefit of his scientific knowledge and sound advice. Even if you don’t think you have diabetes or depression, you will learn something from his book. That's a promise.
I asked a good friend who has diabetes to tell me the most important message to be shared about diabetes. She said that many people are in denial of the obvious symptoms. Her advice, “Even if it turns out not to be diabetes...get the experts to say that. Not You! Not your friends and/or family! Taking a simple test can save your life.”
Wise advice indeed.
For more information on depression and diabetes.
American Diabetes Association.
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