Healthy lifestyle can help prevent depression

A healthy lifestyle that involves moderate alcohol consumption, a healthy diet, regular physical activity, healthy sleep and frequent social connection, while avoiding smoking and too much sedentary behaviour, reduces the risk of depression, new research has found.

Healthy lifestyle can help prevent depression. Photo: Gabin Vallet/Unsplash

An international team of researchers, including from the University of Cambridge and Fudan University, looked at a combination of factors including lifestyle factors, genetics, brain structure and our immune and metabolic systems to identify the underlying mechanisms that might explain this link.

According to the World Health Organization, around one in 20 adults experiences depression, and the condition poses a significant burden on public health worldwide.

The factors that influence the onset of depression are complicated and include a mixture of biological and lifestyle factors.

To better understand the relationship between these factors and depression, the researchers turned to UK Biobank, a biomedical database and research resource containing anonymised genetic, lifestyle and health information about its participants.

By examining data from almost 290,000 people – of whom 13,000 had depression – followed over a nine-year period, the team was able to identify seven healthy lifestyle factors linked with a lower risk of depression. These were:

• moderate alcohol consumption
• healthy diet
• regular physical activity
• healthy sleep
• never smoking
• low-to-moderate sedentary behaviour
• frequent social connection

Of all of these factors, having a good night’s sleep – between seven and nine hours a night – made the biggest difference, reducing the risk of depression, including single depressive episodes and treatment-resistant depression, by 22%.

Frequent social connection, which in general reduced the risk of depression by 18%, was the most protective against recurrent depressive disorder.

Moderate alcohol consumption decreased the risk of depression by 11%, healthy diet by 6%, regular physical activity by 14%, never smoking by 20%, and low-to-moderate sedentary behaviour by 13%.

Based on the number of healthy lifestyle factors an individual adhered to, they were assigned to one of three groups: unfavourable, intermediate, and favourable lifestyle.

Individuals in the intermediate group were around 41% less likely to develop depression compared to those in the unfavourable lifestyle, while those in the favourable lifestyle group were 57% less likely.

The team then examined the DNA of the participants, assigning each a genetic risk score.

This score was based on the number of genetic variants an individual carried that have a known link to risk of depression.

Those with the lowest genetic risk score were 25% less likely to develop depression when compared to those with the highest score – a much smaller impact than lifestyle.

In people at high, medium, and low genetic risk for depression, the team further found that a healthy lifestyle can cut the risk of depression.

This research underlines the importance of living a healthy lifestyle for preventing depression, regardless of a person's genetic risk.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

NIH investigates multidrug-resistant bacterium emerging in community settings

Researchers study confluence of multidrug resistance and hypervirulence among Klebsiella pneumoniae.

High levels of particulate air pollution associated with increased breast cancer incidence

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health found that living in an area with high levels of particulate air pollution was associated with an increased incidence of breast cancer.

Connections between drinking water quality and increased lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis

High levels of some minerals and metals in environmental water supplies may increase the risk of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) pulmonary infections in people with cystic fibrosis, according to a new study.

Reduced grey matter in frontal lobes linked to teenage smoking and nicotine addiction

Findings may demonstrate a brain and behavioural basis for how nicotine addiction is initiated and then takes hold in early life.

Severe COVID-19 may lead to long-term innate immune system changes

Severe COVID-19 may cause long-lasting alterations to the innate immune system, the first line of defense against pathogens.

New insights into the structural changes associated with osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is the most common degenerative joint disease, affecting 22% of adults over age 40 globally.