by Christine Hsu for Counsel & Heal:

Postmenopausal women who suffer from depression may be at an increased risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, new research suggests.

A new study revealed that postmenopausal women who are on antidepressants or suffer from depression are more likely to have a higher body mass index, larger waist circumference and inflammation.  Researchers explain that these factors are all strongly linked to diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“It may be prudent to monitor post-menopausal women who have elevated depression symptoms or are taking antidepressant medication to prevent diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” researcher Dr. Yunsheng Ma of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said in a news release.

by Medical XPress:

CLA researchers now have the first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect brain function in humans. In an early proof-of-concept study of healthy women, they found that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics through yogurt showed altered brain function, both while in a resting state and in response to an emotion-recognition task.

The discovery that changing the bacterial environment, or microbiota, in the gut can affect the brain carries significant implications for future research that could point the way toward dietary or drug interventions to improve brain function, the researchers said.

by Ansa Varughese for Medical Daily:

A woman’s stress is anything but easy, from juggling work to taking care of family to upholding her appearance. A new book reveals that it can take a true psychological toll on her health.

The Stressed Sex: Uncovering The Truth About Men, Women and Mental Health, written by Jason Freeman, a professor of clinical psychology and senior clinical fellow of the Medical Research Council at the University of Oxford, was published on Thursday.

Freeman’s investigation found that psychological disorders are 20 to 40 percent higher in women than men.

Women suffer from higher rates of depression, panic disorders, phobias, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and eating disorders.

by Todd Neale for MedPage Today:

Depression appears to be a risk factor for stroke among middle-age women, even after accounting for other variables, an Australian study showed.

Among women in their late 40s and early 50s who were followed for up to 12 years, meeting criteria for depression was associated with more than double the likelihood of having a stroke (OR 2.41, 95% CI 1.78-3.27), according to Caroline Jackson, PhD, and Gita Mishra, PhD, of the University of Queensland in Australia.

The relationship was partly explained by age, socioeconomic status, lifestyle, and physiological factors, but remained statistically significant after adjustment for those variables (OR 1.94, 95% CI 1.37- 2.74), they reported online in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

by Sally Rummel for TC Times:

If you’re making lists to help you remember all that you have to do in a day, the most important list by far is your grocery list.

That’s because the food you buy at the grocery store will actually help you “supercharge” your brain, if you make the right choices. Even as people age chronologically, we can maintain a healthy brain into “old age” by adding these smart foods to our daily diets.

Not surprisingly, women and men require different foods, because there are clear differences between male and female brains.

by David Hurst for The Daily Mail:

The brain is one of the last frontiers of medicine — we still don’t really know how all those blood vessels, brain cells and nerves work together to shape our lives and our health.

The average brain weighs 3lb (1.36kg) — or around 2 per cent of the total body weight. But it consumes up to 20 per cent of the body’s energy, more than any other organ, as well as  20 per cent of its oxygen. One of the greatest enigmas of the brain is the role of gender. For instance, women seem to be more prone to dementia and depression, yet neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s  disease strike more men.

Why is this so? More controversial is the suggestion that gender doesn’t just affect the health of your brain, but the way it works — and how effective it is at different tasks.

by Cole Petrochko for MedPage Today:

Women who had surgically induced menopause at an early age saw a decline in cognitive function and possible signs of Alzheimer’s disease pathology, researchers reported here.

Among women who had surgically induced menopause, younger age was significantly tied to declines in episodic memory (P=0.0003), semantic memory (P=0.0022), and global cognition (P=0.0007) compared with women who had natural menopause, according to Riley Bove, MD, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues.

Younger age at surgical menopause was also significantly associated with global Alzheimer’s disease pathology (P=0.038) and neuritic plaques (P=0.013), Bove said at the meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. However, no significant association was seen with incident Alzheimer’s disease (P=0.093).

Bove noted that estrogen was neuroprotective in animals models and that prior studies had shown that “loss of estrogen associated with early age at menopause may increase risk of cognitive decline, especially in surgical menopause.”

by Steve James for NBC News:

Researchers have found that the virus that causes cold sores, along with other viral or bacterial infections, might be associated with memory loss, and if further studies establish such a link, it could eventually prove helpful in preventing strokes or Alzheimer’s disease.

A long-term study of a group of people in one neighborhood of New York City found that those with higher levels of infection in their blood — meaning they had been exposed to various pathogens such as the herpes simplex type 1 virus that causes cold sores — were more likely to have cognitive problems than people with lower levels of infection in the blood. The results, released Monday, are published in the March 26 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

by Nancy Walsh for MedPage Today:

At a recent meeting of the Institute of Medicine in Washington  on sports-related concussions in youth, several speakers pointed out that almost no public attention has been paid to head injuries in women and girls. But in fact, females are more susceptible to these injuries for reasons such as differences in head and neck structure, and cerebral blood flow.

One of the speakers, Katherine Price Snedaker, has established a Web site, pinkconcussions.com, to gather and disseminate information about the topic and to encourage further research. She noted that the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine has issued a position statement in which findings about women’s concussion are buried in the report, but included these findings:

by Michael Smith for MedPage Today:

The blood of healthy postmenopausal women may offer signs of increased risk of small areas of brain damage, dubbed white matter hyperintensities (WMH), which have been linked to memory loss, researchers reported.

In a prospective observational study, women who began with higher levels of thrombogenic microvesicles were more likely to have greater volumes of WMH 4 years later, according to Kejal Kantarci, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis, and colleagues.

One implication is that preventing formation of thrombogenic microvesicles may reduce the burden of WMH, which have been associated with memory loss and the risk of stroke, Kantarci and colleagues argued in the Feb. 13 issue of Neurology.

Thrombogenic microvesicles are shed by activated platelets, the researchers noted, and may affect the brain’s microstructure along with conventional risk factors such as hypertension, age, and smoking.