Good Foods Boost Moods

New research reveals that some common foods enhance moods with a striking similarity to valproic acid, a widely used prescription mood-stabilizing drug.

“Molecules in chocolate, a variety of berries and foods containing omega-3 fatty acids have shown positive effects on mood. In turn, our studies show that some commonly used flavor components are structurally similar to valproic acid,” said Karina Martinez-Mayorga, Ph.D., leader of the research team, which presented its findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Valproic acid, which is sold under brand names such as Depakene, Depakote and Stavzor, is used to smooth out the mood swings of people with manic-depressive disorder and related conditions, she said.

“The large body of evidence that chemicals in chocolate, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, teas and certain foods could well be mood-enhancers encourages the search for other mood modulators in food,” she added.

While people have recognized the mood-altering properties of food for years, Martinez-Mayorga’s team is looking to identify the chemical compounds that moderate mood swings, help maintain cognitive health, improve mental alertness and delay the onset of memory loss.

Her study involved the use of techniques associated with chemoinformatics ― the application of informatic methods to solve chemical problems ― to screen the chemical structures of more than 1,700 food ingredients for similarities to antidepressant drugs and other agents with reported antidepressant activity.

She noted her team plans to move from analyzing the database to actually testing the flavor/mood hypothesis experimentally. The end result may be dietary recommendations or new nutritional supplements with beneficial mood effects, she said.

“It is important to remember that just eating foods that may improve mood is not a substitute for prescribed antidepressive drugs,” Martinez-Mayorga cautioned.

She added that eating specific foods and living a healthful lifestyle can generally boost moods for people who don’t require medication.

Karina Martinez-Mayorga, Ph.D., who described research done while working at the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, is now with the Chemistry Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Source: The American Chemical Society

Strawberries dipped in chocolate photo by shutterstock.

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Prozac May Have Antiviral Properties

The antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) appears to have antiviral properties, especially against human enteroviruses — a group of more than 60 viruses that includes poliovirus.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles discovered the unexpected property while conducting laboratory tests on cell cultures.

Although immunization has kept poliovirus under control around the world, other enteroviruses remain a primary cause of certain types of meningitis, encephalitis, conjunctivitis, and several other diseases. 

Second only to the common cold virus, enteroviruses cause an estimated 15 million infections each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Currently there are no treatments for enterovirus infections, and physicians can only offer supportive care and allow an infection to run its course.

An effective antiviral would be able to prevent millions of sicknesses annually, said the UCLA researchers. Vaccines are most effective if the immune system is taught to recognize and attack a virus. But enteroviruses have so much genetic variety that it would be too difficult to create a vaccine to prevent them.

So, in search for antiviral properties, the researchers turned to high-throughput screening (HTS), a method that allows scientists to test tens of thousands of chemical compounds in a single day using robotics.

The group recruited Dr. Robert Damoiseaux, the scientific director of UCLA’s Molecular Screening Shared Resource (MSSR), who specializes in HTS. Together they tested a collection of approved drugs and other chemical compounds and discovered several compounds that restrain enterovirus production.

Surprisingly, fluoxetine stood out from the crowd. In a series of follow-up tests, the researchers found that fluoxetine interferes with the growth and replication of coxsackieviruses, a prominent subtype of enteroviruses.

The researchers repeated the experiment on several kinds of coxsackieviruses with recurring success. Without the ability to reproduce, these invading viruses simply would die off.

Yet even with all this evidence, taking Prozac may not be the best way to clear a viral infection.

“We do not yet understand the mechanism of action, and we do not yet have any proof of antiviral effectiveness in humans or animals,” said lead researcher Paul Krogstad, M.D., professor of molecular and medical pharmacology.

Also, fluoxetine is linked to an increased risk of internal bleeding, and so too are some enteroviruses. The extra risk of hemorrhaging could possibly worsen the infection.

Krogstad said his group needs to gain a better understanding of how, exactly, fluoxetine stops viral reproduction. Overall, these findings could open the door to new drugs that target viral replication without the side effects of Prozac.

Source:  Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy

 

Prozac pill bottle photo by shutterstock.

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Bipolar Patients with History of Pot Use Show Better Cognitive Skills

Individuals with bipolar disorder who also have a history of marijuana use demonstrate advanced neurocogitive skills compared to bipolar patients with no history of use, according to research published online in the journal Psychiatry Research.

Researchers from Zucker Hillside Hospital in Long Island, NY, along with colleagues at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City compared the performance of 50 bipolar subjects with a history of marijuana use to 150 bipolar patients with no history of use with a series of standardized cognitive tests.

Patient groups were similar in regards to age, racial background, and highest education levels achieved. Bipolar patients with a history of marijuana use had similar age at onset as did study participants who had not smoked marijuana.

During the study, researchers discovered that participants with a history of smoking marijuana exhibited better neurocognitive performance than that of non-users, but there was no major difference on estimates of premorbid IQ.

“Results from our analysis suggest that subjects with bipolar disorder and history of (marijuana use) demonstrate significantly better neurocognitive performance, particularly on measures of attention, processing speed, and working memory.”

“These findings are consistent with a previous study that demonstrated that bipolar subjects with history of cannabis use had superior verbal fluency performance as compared to bipolar patients without a history of cannabis use. Similar results have also been found in schizophrenia in several studies,” said the authors.

“These data could be interpreted to suggest that cannabis use may have a beneficial effect on cognitive functioning in patients with severe psychiatric disorders. However, it is also possible that these findings may be due to the requirement for a certain level of cognitive function and related social skills in the acquisition of illicit drugs,” they said.

Source:  Psychiatry Research

 

 

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Young Adults Value Appearance More Than Health

For many young adults, beauty really is little more than skin-deep and has little to do with health.

A new investigation by University of Missouri researchers studied how college-age women view their bodies, and how they feel about media messages aimed at women.

María Len-Ríos, Ph.D., an associate professor of strategic communication, and Suzanne Burgoyne, Ph.D., a professor of theater, used a focus group to develop an interactive play about body image.

The objective of the interactive play was to encourage frank discussions about conflicting societal messages regarding weight, values and healthful choices.

“During our focus group conversations, we learned that young people don’t think about nutrition when it comes to eating,” Len-Ríos said. “They think more about calorie-counting, which isn’t necessarily related to a balanced diet.”

The focus groups included college-age women, college-age men and mothers of college-age women, who discussed how body image is associated with engaging in restrictive diets, irregular sleep patterns and over-exercising.

“We receive so many conflicting media messages from news reports and advertising about how we should eat, how we should live and how we should look,” Len-Ríos said. “Some participants said they realize images of models are digitally enhanced, but it doesn’t necessarily keep them from wanting to achieve these unattainable figures—this is because they see how society rewards women for ‘looking good.’”

During the course of the investigation, researchers completed in-depth interviews with nutritional counselors who said lack of time and unhealthy food environments can keep college-age students from getting good nutrition.

“Eating well takes time, and, according to health professionals, college students are overscheduled and don’t have enough time to cook something properly or might not know how to prepare something healthful,” Len-Ríos said.

Based on the focus group conversations and interviews, Carlia Francis, an MU theater doctoral student and playwright, developed “Nutrition 101,” a play about women’s body images.

During performances, characters divulge their insecurities about their own bodies, disparage other women’s bodies and talk about nutrition choices. After a short, scripted performance, the actors remain in character, and audience members ask the characters questions.

“When you’re developing something for interactive theater, focus groups and in-depth interviews are great at getting at stories,” Len-Ríos said.

“Many of the stories used in the interactive play—like valuing people because of their appearance and not their personal qualities or abilities—came from individuals’ personal experiences.”

Burgoyne said the play helps facilitate dialogues about nutrition, media messages and self-awareness.

“Body image is a sensitive topic, and the play helps open discussions about how individuals view themselves and how media messages influence their self-images,” Burgoyne said.

“An easy way to improve individuals’ body images does not exist, but hopefully, the conversations that arise from the performances will help develop ways to counteract the images that the media promote.”

Source: University of Missouri

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Cocoa May Slow Cognitive Impairment of Aging

If there is a more pleasurable way of staving off the cognitive impairment of aging than drinking cocoa, perhaps only red wine drinkers have found it.

Flavanols are naturally occurring antioxidants found in abundance in cocoa plants. They help the body deal with free radicals that trigger negative changes in body chemistry and help prevent blood clots.

Now, a new study led by Giovambattista Desideri, M.D., study lead author and associate professor of internal medicine and public health at the University of L’Aquila in Italy, suggests ingesting cocoa flavanols daily may improve mild cognitive impairment.

Experts say that more than six percent of people aged 70 years or older develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI) annually. Moreover, MCI can progress to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers say flavanols may aid brain health by protecting neurons from injury, enhancing metabolism, and facilitating neuronal interaction with the molecular structures responsible for memory. They are also found in tea, grapes, red wine and apples and have been associated with a decreased risk of dementia.

Indirectly, flavanols may help by improving brain blood flow.

In the study, 90 elderly participants with mild cognitive impairment were randomized to drink daily either 990 milligrams (high), 520 mg (intermediate) or 45 mg (low) of a dairy-based cocoa flavanol drink for eight weeks.

Researchers controlled participants’ diet to eliminate other sources of flavanols from foods and beverages other than the dairy-based cocoa drink.

Cognitive function was examined by neuropsychological tests of executive function, working memory, short-term memory, long-term episodic memory, processing speed and global cognition.

Researchers found:

• Scores significantly improved in the ability to relate visual stimuli to motor responses, working memory, task-switching and verbal memory for those drinking the high and intermediate flavanol drinks;
• Participants drinking daily higher levels of flavanol drinks had significantly higher overall cognitive scores than those participants drinking lower-levels;
• Insulin resistance, blood pressure and oxidative stress also decreased in those drinking high and intermediate levels of flavanols daily. Changes in insulin resistance explained about 40 percent of the composite scores for improvements in cognitive functioning.

“This study provides encouraging evidence that consuming cocoa flavanols, as a part of a calorie-controlled and nutritionally-balanced diet, could improve cognitive function,” Desideri said. However, he warns that the beneficial findings may have been influenced by a variety of factors.

“The positive effect on cognitive function may be mainly mediated (influenced) by an improvement in insulin sensitivity. It is yet unclear whether these benefits in cognition are a direct consequence of cocoa flavanols or a secondary effect of general improvements in cardiovascular function.”

Furthermore, the study population was generally in good health without known cardiovascular disease. Thus, it would not be completely representative of all mild cognitive impairment patients.

In addition, only some clinical features of mild cognitive impairment were explored in the study.

“Given the global rise in cognitive disorders, which have a true impact on an individual’s quality of life, the role of cocoa flavanols in preventing or slowing the progression of mild cognitive impairment to dementia warrants further research,” Desideri said.

“Larger studies are needed to validate the findings, figure out how long the positive effects will last and determine the levels of cocoa flavanols required for benefit.”

The research is reported in the American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension.

Source: American Heart Association

Woman drinking cocoa photo by shutterstock.

How Drugs for Schizophrenia Sow Seeds of Resistance

A new study has identified why certain drugs have mixed success in treating schizophrenia; effective at first, but with chronic administration becoming less and less so.

In the study, reported online in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists investigated the external genetic reasons (called epigenetic factors) that cause treatment-resistance to atypical antipsychotic drugs.

Use of antipsychotic drugs is the standard of care for schizophrenia. Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine report that 30 percent of individuals with schizophrenia do not respond to currently available treatments.

Researchers discovered that, over time, an enzyme in the brains of schizophrenic patients, analyzed at autopsy, begins to compensate for the prolonged chemical changes caused by antipsychotics, resulting in reduced efficacy of the drugs.

“These results are groundbreaking because they show that drug resistance may be caused by the very medications prescribed to treat schizophrenia, when administered chronically,” said Javier Gonzalez-Maeso, Ph.D., lead investigator on the study.

Researchers found that an enzyme called HDAC2 was highly expressed in the brain of mice chronically treated with antipsychotic drugs, resulting in lower expression of the receptor called mGlu2 and a recurrence of psychotic symptoms. A similar finding was observed in the postmortem brains of schizophrenic patients.

In response, the research team administered a chemical called suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), which inhibits the entire family of HDACs. This treatment prevented the detrimental effect of the antipsychotic called clozapine on mGlu2 expression, and also improved the therapeutic effects of atypical antipsychotics in mouse models.

Previous research conducted by the team showed that chronic treatment with the antipsychotic clozapine causes repression of mGlu2 expression in the frontal cortex of mice, a brain area key to cognition and perception.

The researchers hypothesized that this effect of clozapine on mGlu2 may play a crucial role in restraining the therapeutic effects of antipsychotic drugs.

“We had previously found that chronic antipsychotic drug administration causes biochemical changes in the brain that may limit the therapeutic effects of these drugs,”said Gonzalez-Maeso. “We wanted to identify the molecular mechanism responsible for this biochemical change, and explore it as a new target for new drugs that enhance the therapeutic efficacy of antipsychotic drugs.”

Mitsumasa Kurita, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Mount Sinai and the lead author of the study, said, “We found that atypical antipsychotic drugs trigger an increase of HDAC2 in the frontal cortex of individuals with schizophrenia, which then reduces the presence of mGlu2, and thereby limits the efficacy of these drugs.”

As a result of these findings, Gonzalez-Maeso’s team is now developing compounds that specifically inhibit HDAC2 as adjunctive treatments to antipsychotics.

Source:The Mount Sinai Hospital/Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Overconfidence Drives Social Status, Even When Unfounded

Believing that you are cool, hip, talented, clever, and better than most, may lead to admiration and prestige, and, unfortunately, detrimental consequences.

In a new study, scientists came to the conclusion that individuals develop a cocky self-perception as a means to enhance social status.

Researchers have long known that many people are frequently overconfident — that they tend to believe they are more physically talented, socially adept, and skilled at their job than they actually are.

Investigators also say that overconfidence can often have a detrimental effect on an individual’s performance and decision-making.

Still the allure of social status promotes overconfidence, said Cameron Anderson, Ph.D.,  a co-author of the study, to be published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“Our studies found that overconfidence helped people attain social status. People who believed they were better than others, even when they weren’t, were given a higher place in the social ladder. And the motive to attain higher social status thus spurred overconfidence,” said Anderson.

Experts say that social status is the respect, prominence, and influence individuals enjoy in the eyes of others.

Within work groups, for example, higher status individuals tend to be more admired, listened to, and have more sway over the group’s discussions and decisions.

Researchers say these “alphas” of the group have more clout and prestige than other members. Anderson believes the new findings are important because they help shed light on a longstanding puzzle: why overconfidence is so common, in spite of its risks.

In the study Anderson found that falsely believing one is better than others has profound social benefits for the individual. Moreover, these findings suggest one reason why in organizational settings, incompetent people are so often promoted over their more competent peers.

“In organizations, people are very easily swayed by others’ confidence even when that confidence is unjustified,” Anderson said. “Displays of confidence are given an inordinate amount of weight.”

In fact, the researchers say that organizations would benefit from taking individuals’ confidence with a grain of salt. Yes, confidence can be a sign of a person’s actual abilities, but it is often not a very good sign.

In the study, the authors conducted six experiments to measure why people become overconfident and how overconfidence equates to a rise in social stature. For example:

In one of the experiments, researchers examined 242 MBA students in their project teams and asked them to look over a list of historical names, historical events, and books and poems, and then to identify which ones they knew or recognized.

Terms included Maximilien Robespierre, Lusitania, Wounded Knee, Pygmalion, and Doctor Faustus. Unbeknownst to the participants, some of the names were made up.

These so-called “foils” included Bonnie Prince Lorenzo, Queen Shaddock, Galileo Lovano, Murphy’s Last Ride, and Windemere Wild. The researchers deemed those who picked the most foils the most overly confident because they believed they were more knowledgeable than they actually were.

In a survey at the end of the semester, those same overly confident individuals (who said they had recognized the most foils) achieved the highest social status within their groups.

It is important to note that group members did not think of their high status peers as overconfident, but simply that they were terrific.

“This overconfidence did not come across as narcissistic,” said Anderson. “The most overconfident people were considered the most beloved.”

Another experiment sought to discover the types of behaviors that make overconfident people appear to be so wonderful (even when they were not).

Behaviors such as body language, vocal tone, rates of participation were captured on video as groups worked together in a laboratory setting.

These videos revealed that overconfident individuals spoke more often, spoke with a confident vocal tone, provided more information and answers, and acted calmly and relaxed as they worked with their peers. In fact, overconfident individuals were more convincing in their displays of ability than individuals who were actually highly competent.

“These big participators were not obnoxious, they didn’t say, ‘I’m really good at this.’ Instead, their behavior was much more subtle. They simply participated more and exhibited more comfort with the task – even though they were no more competent than anyone else,” Anderson said.

Two final studies found that it is the “desire” for status that encourages people to be more overconfident.

For example, in Study 6, participants read one of two stories and were asked to imagine themselves as the protagonist in the story. The first story was a simple, bland narrative of losing then finding one’s keys.

The second story asked the reader to imagine him/herself getting a new job with a prestigious company. The job had many opportunities to obtain higher status, including a promotion, a bonus, and a fast track to the top. Those participants who read the new job scenario rated their desire for status much higher than those who read the story of the lost keys.

After they were finished reading, participants were asked to rate themselves on a number of competencies such as critical thinking skills, intelligence, and the ability to work in teams.

Those who had read the new job story (which stimulated their desire for status) rated their skills and talent much higher than did the first group. Their desire for status amplified their overconfidence.

So, if overconfidence is a natural tendency for some, how can individuals recognize that this may be a potential flaw rather than an asset?

Anderson and other members of the research team believe their study will give people the incentive to look for more objective displays of ability and merit in others, instead of overvaluing unsubstantiated confidence.

Source: University of California – Berkeley Haas School of Business

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