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Saturday, October 1, 2011

Personality Disorder Test

This test, sponsored by 4degreez.com, is meant to help determine whether or not you have a personality disorder. It is not meant to be used as a diagnostic tool, but rather as a tool to give you insight into a potential disorder that may be having a negative impact on your life. If you believe you may be suffering from a personality disorder or any other disorder, you should ask your family doctor to recommend a therapist in your area to meet with.


GO TO TEST

Diet and depression: can food help fight the blues?

A healthy diet can help reduce your risk of a range of chronic diseases, but could it also help ward off depression?
by Claudine Ryan


Most of us already know that a healthy diet can help ward off is a range of chronic diseases, including heart disease and diabetes.
Now a growing body of research suggests it might also boost the health of our minds – although we're only just beginning to understand why.
"Intuitively we know that our physical health has an impact on our mental health and vice versa, but it's really been only since the end of 2009 that good scientific studies have looked at the link between diet and mental health properly," says Dr Felice Jacka, a researcher at the Barwon Psychiatric Research Unit at Deakin University.
And it's raising some exciting prospects.

Food and mood

Jacka herself recently looked at the dietary habits and mental health of more than of 3000 adolescents, who had their diet and mental health measured in 2005 and then again in 2007.
As expected, the biggest predictor of a participant's mental health in 2007 was their mental health in 2005; but the researchers also found that diet quality in 2005 – either healthy or unhealthy – often predicted mental health in 2007.
Jacka says this relationship was clear, even after taking into account other variables known to affect someone's mental health, such as age, gender, level of physical activity, weight and socio-economic status.
"What we found with this study, which was very important, is that adolescents whose diet improved over that period, their mental health also improved on average," Jacka said.
She made similar findings in an earlier study, which examined the diets of more than 1000 women.
In other words it seems what you eat really matters to your mental wellbeing and might even provide a way of fighting the epidemic of depression.
"It doesn't have to be a perfect diet ... but you should try to make sure you are getting the recommended two [serves of] fruits and five [serves of] vegetables every day. You should also aim to eat your lean red meat, fish twice a week and the whole grains," she says.
Jacka admits it's hard to be 100 per cent certain that it's diet affecting your mental health and not the other way around. But the evidence is pointing that way.
"I think the burden of evidence now supports the hypothesis that the quality of your diet matters in terms of the risk for mental health problems," Jacka says.

Omega-3 fatty acids

While Jacka's interest is your whole diet, Dr Bronwyn Hegarty, a physiologist and researcher from the Black Dog Institute at the University of New South Wales, is particularly interested in the role of omega-3 fatty acids and mental health.
Omega-3s play a crucial role in healthy brain function and research has shown that people with depression have lower levels of some omega-3s in certain parts of their brain.
Omega-3s are associated with several biological processes that are linked to depression, such as growth of brain cells, your brain cells' ability to communicate with each other, gene expression and inflammation.
Omega-3s are essential fatty acids found mainly in seafood, but also in certain plants and red meat. And while most of us are no longer consuming enough omega-3s, our increased consumption of another type of fat known as omega-6s might be relevant too. (Omega-6s are found in red meat, especially grain-fed beef, and certain plant oils used in making processed foods.)
"One of the theories is that the problem that is leading to depression and other chronic diseases – especially associated with inflammation – is that there is an imbalance between omega-6 and omega-3s," Hegarty says.
Inflammation is your body's defence against external pathogens, such as microbes or bacteria. But it's believed that inflammation can also play a role in depression and other chronic health conditions, including cardiovascular disease.
"We're now realising that diet may be very important in determining whether you have this low inflammatory state, which seems to be, not necessarily underlying, but definitely associated with a lot of the chronic diseases as diverse as cardiovascular disease to depression and diabetes."