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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_ixyc47l wrote

Reply to comment by RainaElf in Obesity Is Now the Top Modifiable Dementia Risk Factor in the US (July 2022) by True_Garen

Good diet, exercise and sleep have as much if not more impact on depression than medication. Your brain needs good diet, exercise and sleep to function properly, it's no surprise that you will have brain disfunction like depression or dementia if you aren't doing all three.

>The diet may have a significant effect on preventing and treating depression for the individual. A diet that protects and promotes depression should consist of vegetables, fruits, fibre, fish, whole grains, legumes and less added sugar, and processed foods. In the public health nurse’s preventative and health-promoting work, support and assistance with changing people’s dietary habits may be effective in promoting depression. From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7084175/
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>Current evidence supports the finding that omega-3 PUFAs with EPA ≥ 60% at a dosage of ≤1 g/d would have beneficial effects on depression Https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0515-5

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>People with insomnia , for example, may have a tenfold higher risk of developing depression From https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/depression-and-sleep-understanding-the-connection

Studies show that exercise is just as effective as medicine.

>Four trials (n = 300) compared exercise with pharmacological treatment and found no significant difference (SMD -0.11, -0.34, 0.12). From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24026850/

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Hypernova1912 t1_iy0977h wrote

Diet and particularly exercise are effective, but keep in mind that when you're depressed it can be very hard to find the energy or motivation to cook, eat healthy meals, or exercise. Medication is useful even if it just gets you far enough to be able to do those.

Sleep is way more complicated. Insomnia predicts depression, yes, but they're also pathophysiologically linked in ways we don't quite understand. It's a symptom of depression as well as a cause. Sleep architecture changes are known, there are circadian factors, full-night sleep deprivation has a very powerful antidepressant effect until you sleep again, the list goes on. (Don't have any citations at the moment, sorry.) Of course not sleeping won't help matters, but treating depression like pure insomnia doesn't work very well.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_iy0ciwt wrote

There are probably all sorts of feedback loops between sleep, diet, exercise.

Depression is likely to cause poor sleep, which can then cause poor diet and people not feeling like exercising, etc.

It's important to try and concentrate on breaking some of these loops. The vast majority of people do almost everything wrong when it comes to their circadian rhythm, so by fixing all that can help improve things.

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