Category: Health and Behavior

Depression and Mood Disorders Health and Behavior Psychotherapy • • • • • • By Ann-Marie Codori, Ph.D. 0 Comments

Talk to Your Children about Their Family History

It is scary to be diagnosed with depression.  However, it’s a lot less scary to be diagnosed with depression when you know that your grandmother and your uncle on your mother’s side also had it.  We may live in the age of biological psychiatry, and the NIH may have just announced their plan to map the human brain http://www.neuroscienceblueprint.nih.gov/connectome/, but we are still haunted by a view of brain illnesses that led our forefathers to drill holes in the skulls of depressed persons to let out the evil spirits.  Stigma is alive and well.  But its impact is reduced by the realization that, “It’s not my fault.”  Moreover, people diagnosed with the illness may be more open to the proven treatments (talk therapy combined with medication) when shown evidence that the predisposition is inherited, not a function of personal failure.   Most of my new patients with the illness have no idea that they are suffering from depression; they just know that they are suffering — sometimes for 30 years.  Without treatment.  Blaming themselves.  Concluding that they are worthless and that their situation is hopeless.

If depression runs in your family, do your children a favor.  Save them potentially years of suffering.  Tell them about it.


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Health and Behavior • • • • • • • • By Ann-Marie Codori, Ph.D. 0 Comments

There may be hard-wired preferences for high-fat and high-calorie foods

Archeological evidence of our human ancestors, observations of eating behavior in modern hunter-gatherer tribes, the anatomy of our digestive system and current neuro-scientific research suggest that humans may have a hard-wired preference for high-fat and high-calorie foods.  The available data lead scientists to estimate that ancient humans consumed more than half of their calories as meat, preferably large game.  Before the development of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago, ancient hunter-gatherer tribes of 25 or so members moved to different geographic locations to follow their food sources.  As one area became depleted of food, they moved to a new area.  This, as well as seasonal variation in the availability of food, must have resulted in periods of food plenty and scarcity.  It was in this unstable food environment that our “survival of the fittest” eating behaviors evolved.  One theory suggests that there would have been greater survival advantage to humans who consumed as much animal fat and carbohydrates as possible whenever possible, regardless of how hungry they may have been at the moment.  Those who had fattened up in periods of plenty would have been more likely to survive the periods of scarcity.
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Health and Behavior • • • • • By Ann-Marie Codori, Ph.D. 0 Comments

We’d better wake up to the importance of sleep!

We live in a social world that considers sleep a luxury.  A growing body of research indicates that we hold onto this attitude at our own peril.  Sunlight exposure and night-time darkness set our body’s internal clock; social demands and temptations set our social clock.  When the two are out of sync, particularly when sleep time is chronically insufficient, metabolic chaos ensues.  Even just getting a few hours per night less sleep than needed (e.g., 6 hours a night) is associated with obesity.  For example, a study published in 2011 found that healthy men and women who were experimentally restricted to four hours per night of sleep for six nights ate significantly more than others who had a full sleep.  Moreover, they consumed more calories from fat and did not compensate for it by using more calories in activity.

To read an article on this topic:  http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/01/awakening.aspx


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Individual Emotionally-Focused Therapy

Emotionally-focused therapy (EFT) for couples is a highly effective method for resolving relationship distress and creating …

At what age do humans develop emotional intelligence? The answer might surprise you.

Emotional pain typically drives the quest for psychotherapy.  Pain, after all, is nature’s signal that an organism’s …

Major Depression May Be Triggered by Teenage Stressors

A recent study using mice to mimic stress and depression in adolescents suggests that the teenage years are a particularly …