How to Avoid the Holiday Blues

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

For many of us, the holiday season wouldn’t be complete without Christmas cookies, jelly donuts, plum pudding, chocolate babka, or even the much-maligned fruit cake.

But if you're prone to depression or have an inflammatory condition, you might want to avoid those sweet treats. Or at least enjoy them in moderation.

New research by clinical psychologists at the University of Kansas suggests that dietary sugars found in many holiday foods can trigger metabolic, inflammatory and neurobiological processes that can lead to insomnia, digestive problems and depression – which all enhance physical pain.

"A large subset of people with depression have high levels of systemic inflammation,” said lead author Stephen Ilardi, PhD, an associate professor of clinical psychology at KU. "When we think about inflammatory disease we think about things like diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis - diseases with a high level of systemic inflammation. We don't normally think about depression being in that category, but it turns out that it really is.

“We also know that inflammatory hormones can directly push the brain into a state of severe depression. So, an inflamed brain is typically a depressed brain. And added sugars have a pro-inflammatory effect on the body and brain."

Depression Causes Sugar Cravings

Dwindling daylight in winter can worsen depression and prompt people to consume more sweets, which provide a temporary emotional lift.

"One common characteristic of winter-onset depression is craving sugar," Ilardi said. "So, we've got up to 30% of the population suffering from at least some symptoms of winter-onset depression, causing them to crave carbs - and now they're constantly confronted with holiday sweets.

"When we consume sweets, they act like a drug. They have an immediate mood-elevating effect, but in high doses they can also have a paradoxical, pernicious longer-term consequence of making mood worse, reducing well-being, elevating inflammation and causing weight gain."

The KU research team analyzed a wide range of studies on the physiological and psychological effects of sugar, including the Women's Health Initiative study, the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, and studies of Australian and Chinese soda-drinkers. Their research is published in the journal of Medical Hypotheses.

Ilardi says consuming high amounts of sugar could be as physically and psychologically harmful as drinking too much liquor.

"We have pretty good evidence that one alcoholic drink a day is safe, and it might have beneficial effect for some people," Ilardi said. "Alcohol is basically pure calories, pure energy, non-nutritive and super toxic at high doses. Sugars are very similar."

The average American gets about 14% of their calories from added sugars – the equivalent of 18 teaspoons of sugar each day. Most people know a high-sugar diet can lead to diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular problems.

Another way to look at sugar is to think of it as fuel for bacteria.  

"Our bodies host over 10 trillion microbes and many of them know how to hack into the brain," Ilardi said. "The symbiotic microbial species, the beneficial microbes, basically hack the brain to enhance our well-being. They want us to thrive so they can thrive.

“But there are also some opportunistic species that can be thought of as more purely parasitic - they don't have our best interest in mind at all. Many of those parasitic microbes thrive on added sugars, and they can produce chemicals that push the brain in a state of anxiety and stress and depression. They're also highly inflammatory."

Ilardi recommends eating a minimally processed diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish and whole grains, while avoiding red meats, refined grains, fructose and other unhealthy foods. As for sugar, the KU researcher urges moderation -- not just during the holidays, but year-round.

How Sodas and Smoking Worsen Disability

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

Most doctors will tell you that smoking and drinking sweetened beverages like soda every day will lead to poor health. They can also worsen your risk of disability if you have rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis, according to new studies.

Researchers in Germany wanted to know how diet can affect the progression of multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic disease that attacks the body’s central nervous system, causing numbness, difficulty walking, paralysis, loss of vision, fatigue and pain.  

They surveyed 135 MS patients to see how close their diet was to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet – which limits foods that are high in saturated fat and sugar – and recommends whole grains, fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy products, lean meats, poultry and fish, nuts and legumes.

Researchers did not find a link between what the participants ate and their level of disability, but there was a strong association with what they drank.

"While we did not find a link with overall diet, interestingly, we did find a link with those who drank sodas, flavored juices and sweetened teas and coffees," said study author Elisa Meier-Gerdingh, MD, of St. Josef Hospital in Bochum, Germany.

MS patients who consumed the largest amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages – averaging about 290 additional calories per day -- were five times more likely to have severe disability than people who rarely drank sweetened beverages.

"While these results need to be confirmed by larger studies that follow people over a long period of time, and the results do not show that soda and sugar-sweetened beverages cause more severe disability, we do know that sodas have no nutritional value and people with MS may want to consider reducing or eliminating them from their diet," said Meier-Gerdingh, who will present her findings at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in Philadelphia in May.

Smoking Worsens Risk of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Previous studies have also found that smoking increases your chances of having MS and several other chronic pain conditions.

A new study by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston demonstrated for the first time that women who stop smoking can reduce their risk of developing the most severe form of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). But it takes time to have a beneficial effect.

"Ours is the first study to show that a behavior change can reduce risk for seropositive RA. Risk isn't just about genes and bad luck--there's a modifiable environmental component to the onset of this disease and a chance for some people to reduce their risk or even prevent RA," said corresponding author Jeffrey Sparks, MD, of the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy at the Brigham.

Sparks and colleagues analyzed data from the Nurses' Health Study, which tracked the long-term health of registered nurses from across the U.S.  Brigham researchers identified over 1,500 nurses who developed RA, but they were most interested in those with "seropositive" RA as opposed to "seronegative" RA. Patients with seropositive RA generally have more severe joint deformities and disability.

For seropositive RA, the risk of disability began to go down about five years after women quit smoking and continued to decrease the longer they stayed non-smokers. Participants who quit for good reduced their risk of seropositive RA by 37 percent after 30 years. The team did not find any association between seronegative RA and smoking.

"One of the lessons here is that it takes sustained smoking cessation to reap the full benefit," said Sparks, who published his findings in the journal Arthritis Care & Research.

"Whereas for other diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, quitting smoking can provide a more immediate effect, here we're seeing benefits decades later for those who quit smoking permanently."

RA is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body’s own defenses attack joint tissues, causing pain, inflammation and bone erosion. While the biological mechanisms that link smoking and the development of RA are unclear, Sparks believes that smoking may contribute to the formation of RA-related antibodies that increase inflammation.

In future studies, Brigham researchers want to extend their investigations to include men and to see if smoking cessation can prevent the formation of RA-related antibodies and stop progression of the disease.