I hate articles like this. Implying some sorta of causal relationship with any and all scientific papers that have a correlation between two properties. You can’t write that the paper “suggests” lowering body temps would improve depression when the paper only finds a correlation between the two.
People with expensive well worn running shoes have better cardiovascular health. So let’s give people well worn running shoes to improve their health.
I like this comparison because it makes me think of a company that is administering a medical trial type program to improve cardiovascular health — I’m imagining a “farm” type place, where undergrads are on treadmills, taking new, expensive running shoes and running in them until they’re “well-worn”. It’s very silly, and I thank you for this mental image.
It’s obviously causation. That’s why there are so many depressed people in Hawaii and so few in Alaska.
Wait …
Aah, the mandatory “correlation is not causation” remark ;)
Higher body temperature is associated with depression, but severe depression will lower it to room temperature.
This is such an odd comment for people to upvote. The human body runs around 37c / 98.6f. A “room temperature” body is literally a corpse.
(Edit: I’ll leave the comment. But yes, I’m a moron.)
That’s the joke.
And you’ve now taken your first steps into the world of dark humor. Congratulations!
User name checks out.
If not for your sub thread, I wouldn’t have caught the joke, so thx 🙏
Oof.
Oh. So, thermodynamically speaking, severe depression can be classified as an abnormally high heat dissipation coefficient. Solution should be easy… Insulation. dusts off hands Physics saves the day again! Somebody tell some techbros and Peter Thiel. I smell a medtech startup!
Thays one of them billion dollar ideas, warm blankets to help treat depression.
Well, it COULD be a billion dollar idea if you used rrreally cheap materials for the blankets - like, recycled asbestos - and also produced, say, medicine for lung cancer in one of your subsidiaries.
You must be some sort of brilliant businessman, getting them at both ends like that. Where do I invest an irrational amount of money to get in on the ground floor?
Porn too? Man, all you need is alcohol and mortgages and you got everything covered.
…sorry to be breaking the fourth wall here, but man, it would be hilarious if you actually thought x.com was porn xD couldn’t blame you, though. If you weren’t playing, I see it as my moral duty to remind you of this weird timeline we are in, where Elon bought Twitter and renamed it
Wait, so if my girlfriend says I’m hot that doesn’t mean what I originally thought?
Science can talk?
I’m cold and sad. This is bullshit.
Also, I live near the research hospital. Our neighborhood is freezing and foggy, and the med students don’t bundle up. I think this data is biased bc the only warm people are at home all the time, hence statistically high per capita depression. /s
Most scientific findings are based on averages, and so a generalization will not likely apply to all people
I’ve read depression is also linked to chronic low level inflammation, and inflammation causes heat, I wonder if that’s the reason?
Anecdotally I suffer with chronic depression and always seem warm.
Most likely, yes. Depression is also correlated with lower immune function, so I’d guess that’s one of the ways it tries to compensate.
This better not make people dismiss my depression because I run cold…
No, they will continue to do that because it makes them uncomfortable.
So if you go back through records they found that old recordings had a higher body temp. The old explanation was the instruments were off calibration. But a new idea is that body temperatures used to be higher, with the idea that with better hygiene and better food supply our gut microbiome is not as active. I wonder how that all squares with this. Anyway, I hope this current finding is not focused on treating what’s likely a symptom and not the cause.
Ehh…
Interesting, but since the study was primarily a tag along survey to detecting COVID, I wonder if they controlled for folks who were on SSRI’s, and if the distribution of participants was across the equator, or primarily in areas of the world that experienced summer during the survey period (March-Oct, 2020).
It’s known that SSRI’s contribute to a heat intolerance that is typically more noticeable during summer months. It’s described as feeling warmer, and is accompanied (sometimes) by decreased production of sweat.
Heat Intolerance and Psychiatric Medications - Psychology TodayThat’s not to say there may be some (or a lot, even) merit to this study, but I’m curious about those two issues - if they had been controlled for.
The last decade has seen a particularly significant increase in depression in the United States, with prevalence rates increasing by 33% between 2013 and 2016, with the largest increase among youth and young adults
Back in the day we used to try to address depression with various talk therapies and group therapies. This wasn’t perfect and was also relatively expensive but at least it offered a sense of connection and tried to tie people back into society.
Now it’s all about pills, which are a huge money-spinner and are cheaper than talk therapy. When things make money you tend to see an increase in them.
Removed by mod
Usually, neither are pills
Worked for me.
That’s wonderful news I’m actually happy to say that was full honesty. Surely you learned in your talk therapy that you and your problems are unique Ergo so your solutions would be as well…
Well, I agree that everybody is different in certain ways but one of the main lessons of being in group was the revelation that broadly speaking we all want the same things and a lot of the mis-aimed strategies we’d adopted was stopping us from getting that stuff. A lot of people came through that community throughout the course of a year and while some of the stories were absolutely horrific, the problems were much the same, person to person.
Yes, the therapy was less effective for some than others and drugs absolutely should be available as a first-aid but I think that people should be moved on to other therapy as soon as they can use it.
I’m particularly hopeful about the results we are now seeing from psychedelic research into treatment resistant depression as I think that there are people for whom talk therapy won’t work but if you look at recent research into SSRIs it seems that some are barely improving on the placebo effect.
So yes I’m in favour of multiple approaches but it seems that SSRIs are outcompeting other treatments because the decisions are being made on the basis of cost and that means that those other treatments simply will not exist in the future.
