No time limit to depression danger
If you've had a heart attack and are also suffering from depression, you are at a higher risk for sudden death—not only in the months following the attack—but even up to five years after.
Conventional thinking has been based on the theory that the danger of depression causes risk only in the months immediately following your attack. But a recent study with 750 patients proves the danger lingers.
Of the 750 participants, 106 died during the five years following their initial heart attack event. Of those who died, 62 of them had been diagnosed with depression.
There were several factors that were evaluated for and then removed from the final analysis. For instance, factors which lower risk of death such as being younger and being female. The factors that increased the risk included smoking and/or having diabetes.
These were analyzed and adjusted for so that the sole focus would be on the risk that depression plays.
Major depression was associated with the highest risk of mortality, though minor depression was still associated with a significant risk.
Participants were interviewed by the research team rather than filling out one of those traditional self-assessments. This way, answers can be more finely interpreted rather than stuck in rigid categories that allow for an explanation behind the answer. For instance, if a participant reports having difficulty sleeping, is it because they're depressed or is their neighbor's dog barking?
One explanation offered as to why depression creates an on-going risk for heart attack patients is the very nature of depression, which is recurring, ebbing and flowing over the course of years.
Prior study results show that those patients who took medication for their depression did not see an accompanying reduction in mortality risk—or a second heart attack. The research team believes this is because drug treatments don't work for all patients—a theory that has been proven in recent headlines about the ineffectiveness of depression meds in all but the most severely depressed patients. (I wrote to you about this last week.)
Because these treatments aren't working for most, the researchers are conducting a study to see the effects that adding omega-3s will have on both heart health and depression. This is one set of results I don't recommend waiting for. We already know this natural wonder is great for your heart and for battling depression. I recommend you take at least 2,000 mg total EPA plus DHA daily.
A second well understood mood support is folate—30 to 40 percent of people with depression need to get more folate. Make sure you get enough from B- vitamin-rich liver, and a variety of beans, nuts and leafy green vegetables. If you supplement, take 800 micrograms of the 5-methyltetrahydrofolate form, which is able to pass though the blood-brain barrier and into the brain where it's needed.
