Taking vitamin pills and other supplements won't prevent depression, but promoting better eating habits might help, new research suggests.
The study included more than 1,000 overweight or obese people in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain who were at risk for depression, but were not currently depressed.
Excess weight is often linked with depression, the researchers noted.
Half of the study participants took daily supplements containing folic acid, vitamin D, omega-3 fish oils, zinc and selenium. Half took a placebo pill.
Half were also counseled about their eating habits and urged to limit snacking and follow a healthy Mediterranean-style diet.
In a one-year follow-up, the researchers discovered that the supplements worked no better than the placebo in helping ward off depression.
Similarly, the counseling was not effective overall, though it seemed to help prevent depression in participants who attended a recommended number of sessions.
That suggests counseling works only if people get an adequate "dose" of therapy and make significant changes in their diet, according to the study
ed March 5 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Because depression is such a common problem, finding effective and widely available ways to prevent depression at a population level is an important goal," said study co-author Ed Watkins.
He's a professor of experimental and applied clinical psychology at the University of Exeter in England.
"Diet and nutrition held promise as one means to reach large numbers of people. However, this trial convincingly demonstrates that nutritional supplements do not help to prevent depression," he said in a university news release.
Between 2009 and 2016, there were 195 documented incidents of explosion and fire involving electronic cigarettes, according to the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA).
ReplyDeleteThe incidents resulted in 133 injuries -- 38 severe enough to warrant hospitalization, the USFA says.
In October 2016, doctors at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle reported treating 15 patients with injuries from e-cigarette explosions over a nine-month span, according to a letter they published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Injuries included flame burns, chemical burns and blast injuries to the face, hands, thighs or groin, the Seattle doctors said.
Dr. Hamad Husainy, a staff physician with Helen Keller Hospital in Florence, Ala., said, "It's not so rare that we're considering this a freak event that happens. This is a potential problem, and as these things become more and more popular, it's probably going to become more prevalent."
Husainy said his hospital saw two such cases in one week a couple of years ago, with e-cigarette explosions causing burns and breaking facial bones.
No one is exactly sure what causes e-cigarette explosions, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"I can't tell you why it exploded," Russell said of the teen she treated. "He said he was just [using] it like regular and it just exploded."
Some evidence suggests that the lithium-ion batteries that power the devices might be at fault, the FDA noted.
To help prevent e-cigarette explosions, the FDA recommends that users:
Buy vape devices with safety features such as vent holes and protection against overcharging.
Replace e-cig batteries if they get damaged or wet.
Keep loose batteries in a case to prevent contact with coins, keys or other metal objects in your pocket.
Always charge a vape device with the charger that came with it, never on one meant for phones or tablets.
Don't charge a vape device overnight, or leave it charging unattended.
According to Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, "The vast majority of vaping devices on the market carry the same fire risk as other products that use lithium-ion batteries, such as cellphones and laptops."
Conley said, "Adults looking to use these products to quit smoking should not be discouraged by rare events like this, especially since most or all of the incidents linked to the injuries present here involve advanced 'mechanical mod' devices that likely represent less than 1 percent of American vaping product sales today."