This might come across as harsh, but.....
GO TO THE LIBRARY!
Or hit PubMed for peer reviewed articles. >>
Please don't take my reply as kind of harsh but......
Some of us work full time jobs and raise families and don't have the time or energy to do the research we would do if we were full time students. That's why it's great to discuss these things online; those of us who are curious but not experts in the field can learn from those who know.
luv2run wrote:
This might come across as harsh, but.....
GO TO THE LIBRARY!
Or hit PubMed for peer reviewed articles.
There are studies out there that you can use.
~~~~~~
Seriously are you so closed minded to not understand that an open forum like this is to share information. I hope you are
never struck with the pain and hardship of anxiety and depression. We who have been troubled by this condition are cursed by "your type" as weak or "hey get it together attitudes. We certainly did not to acquire this burden by chance. Yes , I can read WEB-MD but input from others who suffer is far more "soulful" than some jouranal (JAMA) article.
Please have some compasion......this is a sensitive topic for many.
Usher wrote:
I would be interested to see if there have been studies linking depression to QUALITY of running. It's one thing to exercise by running non-competitively; it's another thing to train with the expectation of getting good results. Are there problems with depression with runners who put a big part of themselves into the sport and get little in return?
Yeah, that would be a great study, a dissertation waiting to be written. I know that I STILL get depressed at times because I'm old and no amount of training produces the results it once did. And that's been true for more than a decade now. But it's s different kind of depression than what's commonly called "clinical depression."
Having been in the mental health business for almost twenty years now, I'd say anecdotally that the depressed people I've worked with have been pretty inactive.
Great point about drinking. When I am not running I drink so much more. The addictive side of my personality comes out a lot more when I am not running.
The zoloft.com site says that 20 million people in the US within a year are clinically depressed? Isn't that where the term "Prozac Nation" comes from? Are they saying all these 20 million people have chemical imbalances in the brain? I just wonder if it is caused by outside sources like digestion of preservatives in food, exposure to radiation, exposure to genetically engineered viruses? Or is it caused by the hopeless meaningless suburban materialistic 45-hour-work-week enslaved lifestyles that we choose to live? How much is a HMO physician/psychiatrist going to spend time with his patient before prescribing a pill? If I take one of those "are you depressed" surveys, well, hell yeah I am depressed. But I don't know whether I want to be defined as being "clinically depressed" unless they show me some phyical evidence that there really is a chemical imbalance in my brain.
Flagpole Willy wrote:
I also am not the same person when I'm not running a lot - got to be at least at 30 MPW for me to feel good.
Right now the running is going great - only ran 5 yesterday, but it was great. I'm keeping two runs each week on the low side right now just to keep the injuries at bay.
you are a prime candidate for mental illness Willy.
What about the effects on a runner when he is not able to run (due to injury, etc.)? I know when it happens to me, I get pretty down. It might be interesting to see also if the psychological effects of quitting other addictive substances/activities are the same as those related to quitting running, since I believe I am (we are) addicted to it.
I read once that depression is non-existant among nomads. take that for what it's worth.
There's another anti-drug take on depression which says that everyone's brain chemistry is different and that the chemicals which produce feelings of happiness and well-being do not exist in constant quantities in all people. In other words, it may be natural for some people to feel happy and have positive dispositions and equally natural for others to feel unhappy and negative and that the second group is not pathological, it's just how they are in much the same way that some people can eat loads and stay thin and others retain weight easily.
We've developed an ideology which assumes that happiness is a "natural" state and that those who aren't happy must have something wrong with them. The drug industry has capitalized on that and sold loads of drugs that purport to compensate. Obviously the drugs are successful enough to turn a profit for the companies that make them and I know several people who say anti-depressants have made a world of difference for them. I've also read many studies which show that anti-depressants do only the slightest bit better than placebos.
There was a great series of "Dilbert" comics running a week or two ago where Dilbert was given anti-depressants for a skin rash, still had the rash, eventually grew an exoskelton, and was happy through it all.
I heard about a DI runner who became seriously injured, not being able to run for several months. The guy became so depressed from not running that he had his friends push him on his wheelchair on some of the trails that he used to run on. This seemed to alleviate some of his depression.
Its pretty interesting because the guy was getting some of the benefits of running through association only, not from his endorphines being boosted or increased seritonin levels.
Thanks for all the advice. I appreciate it Oh and about the library comment. I was in the middle of doing my own research when I posted this topic. I figured there were people on this board with more experience and knowledge on the topic that could help point me to ideas. I fully expect to do plenty of research on this on my own. It also looks like I've generated an interesting discussion topic.
I am very busy with school work so I won't go into to much detail about what I am doing but I have found two interesting sources already. One is called "Running as Therapy", edited by Sachs and Buffone. The other is a compilation of journal articles by the New York Academy of Sciences. It is called "The Marathon: physiological, medical, epidemiological, and psychological studies." It was published in 1977 but it is still very interesting. It is about 1000 pages and it has 80 articles.
My initial thought was to research how running is good for depression the average person who takes it up. That is as a therapy for depression. It would be more interesting, although it might not fit my class, to look at competitive runners who are depressed while running or who become depressed when injured.
As a personal example I have been struggling with a hip flexor/ bursitis for about 15 months, and I have definitely had to deal with depression in various degrees.
PS Hi Paul, its Tom!!
Usher wrote:
<< This might come across as harsh, but.....
GO TO THE LIBRARY!
Or hit PubMed for peer reviewed articles. >>
Please don't take my reply as kind of harsh but......
Some of us work full time jobs and raise families and don't have the time or energy to do the research we would do if we were full time students. That's why it's great to discuss these things online; those of us who are curious but not experts in the field can learn from those who know.
However, the initial post was a student starting on a project for a class. You might want to read the whole thing.
I also feel like $##^%$#^% during a taper or injury/illness.
I am pretty happy, not suicidal by any means. But I cannot understand how the average Joe can go a whole day without any desire to run.
I wonder if we are inclined to chose running because of a propensity towards mental illness. I wonder if depression contributes to great running the way it does to great art, literature, and music. Do you think Gerry Lindgren, Mary Slaney, Pre were depressed?
Ever notice how any anorexics become elite runners.
Wasn't there a girl running the 10,000 at NCAAs who just up and ran off the track and jumped off a bridge?
This is a good topic.
Check out books by Theodore Kostrulaba, I think I got the spelling right. He's a psychiatrist who has messed with this topic.
bump - this is a great topic
In the future, you might want to look at the link between the serotonin and motor systems in the brain (gong back to that article in the American Scientist). The two systems are connected. E.g. repetitive motor movements seem to increase production serotonin.
I go through serious withdrawal symptoms when I stop running all of a sudden. These are over in a couple of days. Sounds like going cold turkey doesn't it. One weird think I get going cold turkey from running is I get spontanous nose bleeds. What is this shit? I swear it wasn't this hard to get off drugs. Just ran out of money and that's it. But running is a different animal, where is the off switch on this ride??
Thaddeus Kostrabala (spelling?) wrote Joy Of Running in the 70s. He may have been the first psychiatrist to combine running with therapy. 1 hour on the track, one hour therapy. I met him once. Interesting dude.