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.


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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."

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More Olive Oil in Diet Could Cut Stroke Risk: Study

By Ellin Holohan
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- Adding olive oil to your diet may reduce your risk of stroke, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that older people who used olive oil intensively -- meaning they regularly cooked with it and used it in salad dressing -- were 41 percent less likely to have a stroke than those who rarely consumed it.

The lead author of the six-year study, Cecilia Samieri of the University of Bordeaux in France, said why olive oil might help reduce the risk of strokes was unclear. But it might result from people replacing less healthful saturated fats with mono-unsaturated olive oil, she added.

"We can't infer from our study which aspects of olive oil prevent stroke," Samieri said. But "it may be a substitution effect." Thus, eating fewer saturated fats improves the health of olive oil users. Prior research had documented olive oil's anti-inflammatory benefit, she added.

Properties of the oil itself, including oleic acid or polyphenols, could also hold the secret to the oil's protective effect, said Samieri, a post-doctoral faculty member in the university's department of nutritional epidemiology. Polyphenols are antioxidant nutrients that reduce inflammation in the vascular system, according to the study. Oleic acid, a fatty acid, makes up 80 percent of olive oil.

The study is published in the June 15 online edition of Neurology.

Stroke, an outcome of poor vascular health, is the third leading cause of death in the United States, according to the American Heart Association.

Strokes result from vascular bleeding or, more frequently, a blockage of blood flow to the brain. Diets high in foods containing saturated fat, such as meat and butter, have been linked to stroke.

In the study, researchers looked at how much olive oil 7,625 French people aged 65 years and over routinely used, ranging from none (23 percent) to moderate use in cooking or dressing (40 percent), to intensive use in cooking and dressing (37 percent). The participants primarily used extra-virgin olive oil, and the study controlled for stroke risk factors, such as high blood pressure, exercise, smoking and alcohol use.

After nearly six years, 148 strokes occurred. But those who used olive oil the most had a 41 percent lower risk of stroke, compared to those who used none. The overall stroke rate was 1.5 percent for the olive oil users compared to 2.6 percent for the others, according to the report.

A second study sample had some contradictory findings, the research noted. Oleic acid was measured in the blood of 1,245 participants. Among that group, 27 strokes occurred, with a 73 percent reduced risk of stroke found in people with higher levels of oleic acid, the study found. But the higher level was also linked to higher consumption of butter and goose or duck fat, which "may explain the unfavorable pattern of risk factors associated with higher plasma oleic acid," according to the findings.

A nutrition expert cautioned that people should not overuse olive oil in an effort to improve health because it is a high-calorie fat.

"The takeaway from the study is that a diet high in olive oil does have a protective benefit, but we need to look further to find out how much is beneficial while still maintaining a low-fat diet," said Heather Davis, a clinical dietitian at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

She said that the American diet is rarely lacking in fat, which is needed for healthy skin and hair, and for processing certain vitamins.

"We need to look further to establish an upper limit," said Davis. While the researchers were unsuccessful in establishing a numerical value for optimal oleic acid, "it's good that the idea is out there," she said.

She said it is important to continue the research. "We know olive oil is beneficial, but it would be advantageous to be able to determine a protective range in a patient's blood," Davis noted.

Funding for the research came from the French government and Lipids for Industry, Safety and Health, an alliance of academia and industry.

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