Recently, two medical controversies have made headlines: the question of whether too much salt is bad for your health and the debate over whether widely used antidepressant drugs work any better than placebo.
antidepressants
A Mystery Partly Solved: How the ‘Club Drug’ Ketamine Lifts Depression So Quickly
A new study sheds light on why the anesthetic and “club drug” ketamine can relieve depression rapidly — in hours, instead of weeks or months. The findings may help provide new targets for developing antidepressants and increase …
All Hype: Flaxseed Doesn’t Stop Hot Flashes
It was too good to be true: a study by Mayo Clinic researchers finds that flaxseed doesn’t help prevent hot flashes after all.
Drug War: How Advil May Thwart the Benefits of Prozac
The common painkillers known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), a class of medication that includes aspirin, naproxen (Aleve), and ibuprofen (Advil), can significantly reduce the effectiveness of certain …
Do We Really Need Psychiatrists to Do Therapy?
In a front page story headlined “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy,” the New York Times Saturday bemoaned the fact that most psychiatrists now focus on prescribing medications, not practicing psychotherapy.
A New Antidepressant That May Not Kill Your Sex Life
Meet Viibryd, the newest antidepressant to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for major depressive disorder. Some market analysts are already predicting potential annual sales in excess of $1 billion for the …
Prozac Aids Recovery from Stroke
A new study finds that Prozac can significantly improve recovery from stroke— the number one cause of adult disability and the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The randomized controlled trial found that while patients …
Study: Older Antidepressants, But Not SSRIs, Linked with Heart Disease
Depression may literally break your heart. Research has long connected the disorder with increased risk of heart disease and stroke, and similar concerns have been raised about medications to treat depression.
How a Study of a Failed Antidepressant Shows That Antidepressants Really Work
The British Medical Journal recently released a study finding that the antidepressant reboxetine, which is manufactured by Pfizer and has been used in Europe since 1997 — but is not approved in the U.S. — does not work at …
Mad Men’s Jon Hamm Knows a Thing or Two About Beating Depression
Mad Men‘s dashing Jon Hamm, the actor who plays confident, masterful adman Don Draper, hasn’t always felt so on top of things.
Can antidepressants have heart benefits?
While the overall benefits of antidepressants for certain patients continue to be debated, new research being presented this week at a meeting of the American Physiological Society in Anaheim, California indicates that …
Antidepressants do little for mild depression, study finds
For patients battling severe depression, antidepressant medications are still the best option for treatment, but these drugs may offer little benefit to patients suffering from milder forms of depression, according to a new analysis published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The review, which analyzed data
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For some women, antidepressants may increase stroke risk
A new study of post-menopausal women between the ages of 50 to 79 found that, those taking antidepressants had a slightly higher risk for stroke than those not taking the medications. The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, followed more than 136,000 women for about six years, and found that women taking both selective
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