Month: January 2015

A New Perspective on Depression

- Adam Clare

Depression seemed to be talked about more last year than in previous years thanks to celebrities revealing their troubles with the affliction. There’s also been more research into depression. With more people thinking about and looking into depression we get new perspectives on the issue.

Now, some researchers are arguing that depression could be a symptom of lifestyle decisions and some influence from our evolution. The evolution aspect is rather interesting because it could be interpreted that depression is a reaction to help one person not infect others with communicable diseases.

So if people with depression show classic sickness behaviour and sick people feel a lot like people with depression – might there be a common cause that accounts for both?

The answer to that seems to be yes, and the best candidate so far is inflammation – a part of the immune system that acts as a burglar alarm to close wounds and call other parts of the immune system into action. A family of proteins called cytokines sets off inflammation in the body, and switches the brain into sickness mode.

Both cytokines and inflammation have been shown to rocket during depressive episodes, and – in people with bipolar – to drop off in periods of remission. Healthy people can also be temporarily put into a depressed, anxious state when given a vaccine that causes a spike in inflammation. Brain imaging studies of people injected with a typhoid vaccine found that this might be down to changes in the parts of the brain that process reward and punishment.

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A Veggie Diet Could Prolong Your Life

- Adam Clare

There are tons of benefits from having a vegetarian diet from improved individual health to having less of an impact on the environment. Now there’s one more reason to have a vegetarian diet, or at least something close to one, it’ll help you live longer.

Scientists have long believed that an ultra low calorie diet – aproximately 60 per cent of normal levels – can lead to greater longevity.

But now a team of British researchers have discovered that the key to the effect is a reduction in a specific protein and not the total number of calories.

That means that by reducing foods that contain the protein – such as meat, fish and certain nuts – people should live longer wiuthout the need to cut down on meals.

Dr Matthew Piper, from the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London, said that a vegetarian diet could be one way to achieve the effect.

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Will Iceland be the “Switzerland of Data”?

- Adam Clare

Iceland is the de facto home of Wikileaks and is also a country concerned with privacy issues. The country is now considering leveraging their experience and reputation of being digital-data friendly to the next level. Presently, the country is considering branding itself as the “Switzerland of Data.”

If Iceland does move ahead with this, it means that the country will become one of the most important players in the 21st century similar to how Switzerland was with banks in the 20th.

The International Modern Media Institute (IMMI), a non-profit organisation, has played an instrumental role in designing and promoting the legal framework for Iceland’s new data privacy laws.

Following the country’s 2010 financial crisis, mass protests broke out against the nepotism, corruption and lack of transparency exposed by the collapse. A group of Icelandic activists began working on an initiative to create the world’s strongest media and free speech protection laws, as well as a state-of-the-art privacy law.

Birgitta Jónsdóttir is IMMI’s spokeswoman and now represents the Pirate Party in the Icelandic parliament. She met Al Jazeera at her office in Reykjavik and explained that one of IMMI’s goals is “to allow people working on human rights or investigative journalists, as well as people who want to host data on a massive scale, to be free from worrying about privacy issues”.

She added: “Iceland should become for information what Switzerland is for money.”

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