Maybe My Vitamin D is Low...

Weight is an important contributor to depressive symptoms. I hear this all the time. Patients try to avoid drugs that will contribute to their weight gain, though at times this is not possible.  With January and the start of a brand new year, I’ve been hearing a lot of questions about the best way to lose weight. Not everyone can afford a medically supervised weight loss plan, as often insurance companies will not pay for such service. Evidence suggests that folks have the best success in losing weight when they are accountable; I’ve written about this in detail before, so look at my older posts. So how can you maintain how can you be accountable? Writing what you eat and how we exercise in a journal? Sure, that is a good idea. What I would recommend looking into are several applications and resources that I will now review.                          Lose it! This is the application that we use in our weight-los...

If you are on an antidepressant and have had some side effects, which is not uncommon, this post may be of interest for you. Often, I hear complaints of gastrointestinal nature but there are several other issues that patients continue to ask about. Now, my philosophy is that there is no free lunch. If you chose to get pharmacological treatment, chances are that, yes you will, experi now SOME side effects, even of the mild nature. The key is, the should not be debilitating and they should resolve with time. If not, talk to your provider! There are a few things that you can do to ease your symptoms while your body gets used to the new medication. Below is a link to a wonderful article from Harvard Medical School discussing just that and I recommend that you take a close look at it, if this is something that you are currently struggling with. For instance, mouth dryness is something that comes up often with my conversations with patients. Having a small bottle of water with you at all ti...

You’ll have to forgive my absence from the blog world this summer, I only now realized it has been 3 (three!!!) whole months since I published anything. But I am hoping that instead of sitting at your computer, you were able to keep busy outside and if you live in such a beautiful area as I do, I know you have gone on some wonderful adventures! As you may have read in the previous posts, our clinic recently began a Medical Weight Loss program and it is going great! Various adventures this summer bring to mind the role of physical activity and weight loss. If you are looking for scientific information, American College of Sports Medicine published a position statement arguing that minimum 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity was needed to improve health but between 200 to 300 minutes for long-term weight loss. So, what exactly is moderate intensity physical activity? This would include brisk walking, light swimming or mowing. Yes, mowing can be a form of e...

Why is a weight loss program supervised by a medical professional thought to have higher success rates than individual efforts taken by those who want to lose weight? Most patients who are looking to lose weight with supervision have already tried to do so on their own and were not successful. A program that is supervised by professionals allows patients to ask questions, receive counseling and be guided in regards to their diet, exercise, medications. Let’s talk about some data . An article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in April 2015 compared various commercial weight loss programs such as Weight Watchers or Atkins. Researchers have found that supervised weight loss programs where patients were held accountable for their nutritional intake and exercise, were most successful. Such programs include Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. So this tells us that you don’t have to necessarily go to a doctor’s office to lose weight, right? Well, let’s look at some other stu...

At the end of June, our clinic will be offering a medically supervised weight loss program. You may be wondering; why is mental health clinic offering such a program? Unfortunately, obesity and mental health difficulties sometimes go hand in hand. A meta-analysis of various studies published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2010 (JAMA of Psychiatry), discusses the link between obesity and depression. If you wondering what a meta-analysis is, simply put, authors of the paper combine a whole bunch of studies into one group, analyze the outcomes from each study and then compile them together into one article. That way, we have a better understanding of a certain topic because it takes into account several different studies. In aforementioned article, authors found that obese patients have a 58% increased risk of developing depression. Now, why would that be? One theory is that obesity, being an inflammatory state, can cause depression because inflammation alone been associa...

What is vitamin D?  It's a fat-soluble vitamin (as opposed to water soluble vitamins, such as vitamin C) that's either absorbed from foods or from sun triggering its synthesis when you're outside. Why is it important? Vitamin D helps us absorb calcium and phosphate that have a role in bone growth. That's why, if you take calcium as a supplement, it probably is combined with vitamin D! It also has other functions, as we'll get to below. Where can I find it? You can take a supplement but it's best to get it from food. I often munch on some cod liver... yuck! Just kidding! Not so fast, liver is certainly NOT making it onto my plate! Instead, I prefer to drink some orange juice (that is usually fortified with vitamin D), eat scrambled eggs and chase it down with a glass of milk. Yogurt, tuna fish or some cheeses are not too bad of choices, either! What's all this talk about vitamin D and depression? There are many reasons that cause our mood to...

When they say "an apple a day keeps a doctor away" they may also mean "keeps psychiatrist away"! Of course, jokes aside, I wish it were this simple and we could cure our mood disorders by simply changing what we consume. It is important to note, however, that while changing your dietary intake may not "cure" you, it may contribute to the success of your therapy. Some studies have found that people who are eating a diet rich in processed foods and high in sugar, may feel more "blue" than those who eat a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and fish. Get that tilapia on my plate! One of the reasons for this may be that Mediterranean-type diet is simply healthier, which means that people who consume above mentioned foods may be at a lower risk for other diseases, such as diabetes. American Diabetes Association reports that people with diabetes may have a higher risk for depression than those not suffering from diabetes; reasons aren't clear but e...