DEVELOPING 120 active fires burning across Canada, 30 are 'out of control'
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
A new study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders has found a correlation between a highly inflammatory diet and an increased risk for depression.
And the researchers state their findings will have an impact on public health, as it’s an indication that a controlled diet could potentially help those with depression or prevent the illness in the first place.
The participants included 30,627 individuals from the U.S. who had been studied in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a program of studies designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States from 2007 to 2018.
The study aimed to assess the association between the dietary inflammatory index (DII), which is a scoring algorithm designed to estimate how diet impacts inflammation in the body and health outcomes as a result, to the cross-sectional study of NHANES.
The participants were asked questions regarding which foods they consume as their diet, and were given a score based on their dietary inflammation, and also rated for depression.
Based off this data, the researchers found what is called a J-shaped relationship, which is defined, according to academics, as a non-linear relationship between two variables and appears as a curve that initially falls, but then rises to become higher than the starting point, between DII and depression.
Meaning, at a set point, the amount of inflammation within the body appeared to exceed the body's capacity.
Then, as the J-shape indicates, the high inflammation in the body of the participants was found to begin to correlate with a significantly higher risk for depression for participants.
This J-shaped relationship showed a positive association between depression and inflammation, which remained intact even after the researchers adjusted for factors such as demographic data, lifestyle habits, disease, body mass index (BMI), and C-Reactive Protein (CRP), which is the level of a certain protein that your liver makes that results if bodily inflammation is too high.
This confirmed the association of high inflammation and depression in U.S. adults, according to study authors.
Research has linked a high intake of inflammatory foods, such as sugar and fat and a low intake of fruits and vegetables, to chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and coronary heart disease, to name a few.
Meanwhile, other studies have shown that the Mediterranean diet, which is a low-inflammatory diet consisting of high amounts of vegetables and fruits, more seafood than meat and other high healthy-fat foods like olive oil, actually can aid in preventing, or improving chronic diseases.
And while past studies have found that many chronic diseases can actually get worse as a result of chronic inflammation in the body, which is known as a slow, long-term inflammation lasting for prolonged periods of several months to years, depression can also worsen from this chronic inflammation.
Approximately 280 million people are globally suffering with depression, according to the World Health Organization and this rate is increasing yearly.
In Canada alone, an estimated one in four Canadians struggle with depression serious enough to require treatment at some point over the course of their life.
According to Harvard Medical School, some high-inflammatory foods to avoid or limit include: refined carbohydrates, french fries or other fried foods, pop and other sugary drinks, red meat, processed meat, margarine, shortening, and lard.
Nutrient rich foods like leafy greens, nuts, tomatoes, olive oil, fatty fish and fruits should be consumed as part of an anti-inflammatory diet.
The researchers write that these findings have major implications for clinical practice as well as public health as diet is a factor that can be changed. Therefore, through choosing an anti-inflammatory diet or restricting pro-inflammatory foods, depression can be reduced and prevented, the researchers state.
The 2024 wildfire season has begun, and it's shaping up to follow last year's unprecedented destruction in kind, with thousands of square kilometres already consumed.
Veteran TSN broadcaster Darren 'Dutch' Dutchyshen, one of Canada’s best-known sports journalists, has died. He was 57. His family says 'he passed as he was surrounded by his closest loved ones.'
A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has sentenced the mother and stepfather of a six-year-old boy who died from blunt-force trauma in 2018 to 15 years in prison.
The Speaker of the Saskatchewan Legislature Randy Weekes has severed ties with the Sask. Party after accusing some members of harassment and intimidation tactics, including a situation he claimed saw the Government House Leader bring a hunting rifle to the legislative building.
Kevin Spacey is pushing back on the 'rush to judgment' against him and is being backed by some big names as he seeks to reclaim his acting career.
A ‘lifetime of abuse’ led Dallas Ly to snap and repeatedly stab his mother inside their Leslieville apartment in 2022 but he never intended to kill her, his defence lawyers argued during his murder trial in Toronto on Thursday.
A father has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of his 34-year-old daughter in southern Quebec.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assailed New Brunswick's premier and other conservative leaders on Thursday, calling out the provincial government's position on abortion, LGBTQ youth and climate change.
Canada's new $10-a-day child care program is expanding, but there's growing evidence that demand for the program is rising even faster, leaving many parents on the outside looking in.
A Starbucks fan — whose name is Winter — is visiting Canada on a purposeful journey that began with a random idea at one of the coffee chain's stores in Texas.
Members of Piapot First Nation, students from the University of Winnipeg and various other professionals are learning new techniques that will hopefully be used for ground searches of potential unmarked grave sites in the future.
ALS patient Mathew Brown said he’s hopeful for future ALS patients after news this week of research at Western University of a potential cure for ALS.
When Adam Kirschner wrote 'Slap Shot,' he never imagined the song would be embraced by his favourite team.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.