S.A.D., Covering the Basics

As the winter arrives, many people here in Maine experience Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) not to be confused with the Standard American Diet (also S.A.D.) although SAD may affect SAD (both ways).  Here's a blog post by another N.D. that covers the basics.

Walnuts Don't Make You Gain Weight, and They Ease Stress?

I posted on my weight loss page some time ago a very interesting study that involved walnuts.  Individuals who ate walnuts in addition to their regular diet did not gain the expected amount of weight.

Now we have Andrew Weil weighing in (pun intended) that walnuts also ease stress.  Wonderful!  Nothing on candied walnuts though, so take your walnuts straight. 

Penelope Trunk: An Underused Superstar.

I'm one of the few people who can claim to have purchased both Timothy Ferriss' Book and Penelope Trunk's book.  Unfortunately Ms. Trunk's book I purchased at a dollar store.  I did so because I wondered specifically why her book was there and Ferriss' book was a best seller.  Here is someone who did everything right, but still her book is at the dollar store.  So when I came across her delightful discussion of Ferriss, I was really pleased.  Her book is not representative of her writing as a whole.  It is dense, doesn't flow, and makes you feel excluded from the cool people before you even start.  Ferriss' allure is that he claims his book is for everyone, which is complete nonsense (gramma isn't web savvy, and uncle Joe needs his dialysis).  But he also generated an enormous upswell for his book from blogs like Trunk's.

Check out Trunk's blog for really useful tips from someone who looks like they should be the life of the party while hiding in the broom closet. 

Probiotic Capsules: A New Pharmacy Section in the Supermarket.

I'm suddenly seeing a great number of probiotic products on the supermarket pharmacy section shelves.  Looking through the claims and labels, these products are overwhelmingly similar to health food store offerings with one exception.  They are not refrigerated. 

Consumer reports did an analysis of probiotics some years back and found that the die off from manufacture date to purchase time was pretty extraordinary.  An equivalent metaphor would be packaged fish.  It might be possible to package fish well enough that they wouldn't start to stink, but that would be a pretty gamey fish by the time you got it. 

For any and all of you considering probiotics, either go to a refrigerated product or use the yogurts in the dairy aisle.  Ounce for ounce probiotic capsules are more concentrated, but we generally eat far more yogurt at a sitting.  So they work out to be equivalent.  Consumer reports found that all yogurt brands continued to have live bacteria. 

If you are determined to buy probiotics, consult someone like me.  I can at least tell you what brands are doing independent testing at the consumer end to make the little guys are still alive. 

The Value of Real Fats.

We've got a group of NDs who really like good fats and point out that fat doesn't necessarily mean disease or obesity.  It's hard to reconcile this viewpoint with the reality of obesity in our society.  On the other hand, all the low fat foods we've been stuffing ourselves with haven't made us any thinner. 

I'm not a convert to high fat, but I think it's worth thinking about real food vs. processed food. 

Here's the link to the AANP article. 

A Book I Should Have Written: Prostate Cancer Expose.

I haven't even read this book, but I already love it because of the title alone.  I've added some of my own data on alternative treatments at my website. 

Inositol and Bipolar Disorder: Do Not Supplement On Your Own.

It's rare to see a supplement so directly problematic for a drug, but inositol regulation may be how lithium works in the brain.  As such, patients wanting to supplement with inositol could be inactivating their lithium.  Definitely discuss and monitor with your physician. 

Here's a link to the August 2010 study and here's the abstract below.  Another study looks at the complexities of the interaction (inositol supplementation might even be helpful, but don't chance it.)

Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2010 Aug 26. [Epub ahead of print]


Association analysis between polymorphisms in the myo-inositol monophosphatase 2 (IMPA2) gene and bipolar disorder.

Bloch PJ, Weller AE, Doyle GA, Ferraro TN, Berrettini WH, Hodge R, Lohoff FW.

Psychiatric Pharmacogenetics Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Abstract

Linkage studies in bipolar disorder (BPD) suggest that a susceptibility locus exists on chromosome 18p11. The myo-inositol monophosphatase 2 gene (IMPA2) maps to this genomic region. Myo-inositol monophosphatase dephosphorylates inositol monophosphate, regenerating free inositol. Lithium, a common treatment for BPD, has been shown to inhibit IMPA2 activity and decrease levels of inositol. It is hypothesized that lithium conveys its therapeutic effect for BPD patients partially through inositol regulation. Hence, dysfunction of inositol caused by IMPA2 irregularity may contribute to the pathophysiology of BPD. In this study, we hypothesize that genetic variations in the IMPA2 gene contributes to increased susceptibility to BPD. We tested this hypothesis by genotyping 9 SNPs (rs1787984; rs585247; rs3974759; rs650727; rs589247; rs669838; rs636173; rs3786285; rs613993) in BPD patients (n=556) and controls (n=735). Genotype and allele frequencies were compared between groups using Chi square contingency analysis. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) between markers was calculated and estimated haplotype frequencies were compared between groups. Single marker analysis revealed several associations between IMPA2 variations and BPD, which were subsequently rendered non-significant after correction for multiple testing. Although our study did not show strong support for an association between the tested IMPA2 polymorphisms and susceptibility to BPD, additional larger studies are necessary to comprehensively investigate a role of the IMPA2 gene in the pathophysiology of BPD.

Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

PMID: 20800640