Mind & Mood Archive

Research We’re Watching

Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to be effective in treating chronic back pain, but it requires regular visits with a psychotherapist and can be expensive. A team from the University of Washington designed a study to determine whether mindfulness stress reduction—a technique that can be learned and practiced on one's own—is as effective in relieving pain and restoring function as cognitive behavioral therapy or conventional treatment with drugs and physical therapy.

The researchers enrolled 342 people ages 50 to 70—two-thirds of whom were women—who'd had back pain for an average of more than seven years. They randomly assigned the participants to one of three equal groups: one group was taught to practice mindfulness stress reduction, the second received cognitive behavioral therapy, and the third received conventional treatment as needed.

People who do volunteer work may reap benefits beyond the satisfaction of helping others.

Doing volunteer work may give you a greater sense of purpose in life—a positive emotion that’s been linked to a lower risk of heart disease.
Image: monkeybusinessimages/Thinkstock

If you volunteer on a regular basis, perhaps you've experienced the emotional rewards of donating your time. What you might not realize, however, is that volunteering may offer some added advantages for your heart.

People new to yoga will eventually learn the sun salutation, a so-called "yoga flow." You can modify the sun salutation and still learn all the basic moves by using a chair and a floor mat. Learn more at Introduction to Yoga from Harvard Health Publishing.

Q. Do you think we'll ever be able to prevent Alzheimer's disease?

A. I do. Not because I'm an optimist (though I am) but because of the results of research in the past 25 years.

 Image: Thinkstock

Q. I heard regular aerobic exercise is better for the brain than strength exercises (resistance training). Is that true?

A. The study you probably heard about involved rats, not humans. The rats were made to engage each day in sustained aerobic exercise, high-intensity interval training, or resistance training, or they were allowed to just be sedentary. At the end of the study, the researchers examined the rats' brains. The rats doing regular aerobic exercise had more brain cells than the sedentary rats. However, the rats made to perform high-intensity interval training or the ones doing resistance training did not have more brain cells than the sedentary rats.

News Briefs

Don't be surprised if your doctor screens you for depression at your next visit. An update to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations for screenings, published Jan. 26, 2016, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that all adults 18 or older, including older adults, should be screened for depression when there are systems in place to ensure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and appropriate follow-up. The previous recommendations encouraged selective screening based on professional judgment and patient preferences. The new recommendation also includes pregnant and postpartum women for the first time. "Older adults often struggle with chronic disease, or the loss of a loved one, which may lead to depression," says Dr. Michael Craig Miller, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "Screening is just a way to open the door for people who might otherwise not get the help they need." Dr. Miller says screening can simply be asking if, over a two-week period, you have either had little interest or pleasure in doing things or felt depressed and hopeless.