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Fish fatty foods will help during the treatment of depression

 
, medical expert
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
 
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29 October 2014, 09:00

From the depression often suffers not only the person himself, but also the people around him. Treatment of this psychological disorder is not easy, because almost half of patients do not respond to the action of antidepressants. But scientists from Denmark have developed a method to increase the effectiveness of antidepressant therapy. As it turned out, patients need to simply include more fatty fish in their diet. As the researchers explain, they tried to find the biological features of the body, because of which there is no response to antidepressants, and were able to detect the dependence of the metabolism of fatty acids in the body and the regulation of the hormonal response to stress.

As a result of the research, specialists were able to establish that in case of depressive disorders in the body, the action of hormones changes the metabolism of fatty acids.

The effect of eating fatty fish during depression was tested on seventy volunteers. In the control group, experts included 51 people. All participants checked the level of cortisol (stress hormone) and fatty acids in the body. Also, scientists recorded a diet of participants. After preliminary analyzes, the scientists gave patients a primary course of antidepressants (6 weeks), which, if necessary, increased. As a result, it was found that in those patients who did not respond to treatment, there was a disturbed metabolism of fatty acids in the body.

Further, all participants were divided into several groups, depending on the amount of fatty fish consumed. The least responded to the treatment of people whose diet was low in fish fatty varieties. In the group where fish were eaten once or twice a week, the effectiveness of antidepressant treatment was 75%. In a group where patients did not eat fish at all - the effect of therapy was observed only in 23% of cases. In the near future, specialists intend to determine the relationship between products and the effectiveness of therapy for other diseases.

According to a new study in one of the universities of the United States of America, depressive disorders, problems with sleep, concentration of attention in recent decades are diagnosed several times more often. Analyzing data on the health of about 7 million people (in particular teenagers) and comparing them with the data of the 1980s, experts found that modern adolescents are almost 40% more likely to suffer from memory problems, 74% from sleep, and twice more are turned to psychologists for help. Of all the students surveyed, almost half felt depressed, adult participants in the study often complained about poor sleep, eating disorders, fatigue, unwillingness to do anything, which are classic symptoms of depression. However, despite all the signs of depression, many denied having this disorder in their home.

Previous studies have found that in recent years, many more patients have been treated for depression than do a couple of decades ago.

Experts suggest that this trend is associated with an increase in the awareness of the population about mental disorders, in addition, in recent years, such violations in the psyche have ceased to be perceived as something shameful and reject such people. People who were diagnosed with depression twice as often began to agree to take antidepressant drugs. But experts are sure that the therapy helped patients with serious problems, but did not relieve 100% of the symptoms, which can cause many negative consequences. Also in their study, the researchers found a decrease in the number of suicides among adolescents, but rather low, in comparison with the spread of depressive state.

trusted-source[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]

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