{"id":833,"date":"2008-01-10T09:45:16","date_gmt":"2008-01-10T09:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html"},"modified":"2008-01-10T09:45:16","modified_gmt":"2008-01-10T09:45:16","slug":"depression-hurtsi-mean-physica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html","title":{"rendered":"Depression Hurts&#8211;I Mean, Physically"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read an interview with Dr. Paul McClelland, a psychiatrist at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore about the serious physical changes in the body and brain that can be a result of depression. These conditions or complications are among them:<br \/>\n<strong>1. Anorexia.<\/strong> Many depressed patients also have eating disorders which can cause irreversible kidney damage and other complications.<br \/>\n<strong>2. Self-harm.<\/strong> Self-inflicted wounds can cause several complications.<br \/>\n<strong>3. Noncompliance with treatment.<\/strong> Depressives sometimes do not comply with a doctor\u2019s medication or treatment plan, which can lead to heart attacks, strokes, and other problems.<br \/>\n<strong>4. Self-neglect<\/strong>. If a depressive doesn\u2019t have the energy, for example, to get her annual mammogram, she could be at risk for a disease like breast cancer advancing much more quickly than had she taken the necessary precautions.<br \/>\n<strong>5. Abuse of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs<\/strong>. As I mentioned in my latest Britney article, persons with mental illness often self-medicate with alcohol or drugs to create the state of well-being that non-depressives experience on a regular basis. Habitual drinking or drugging, however, strengthens the habit, which aggravates the mood disorder, making this a viscous cycle.<br \/>\n<strong>6. Profound insomni<\/strong>a. Insomnia can trigger depression and vice versa because when a person\u2019s sleep is disrupted, that causes changes in the body\u2019s internal biological clock, known as circadian rhythm. This rhythm is a 24-hour cycle that affects our eating and sleeping patterns, brain wave activity, hormone production, and other biological activities.<br \/>\n<strong>7. Weak immune systems.<\/strong> When people are very depressed their immune system often doesn\u2019t work the way it\u2019s supposed to. And with a weakened immune system, people are more prone to infections and cancer.<br \/>\n<strong>8. Heart disease.<\/strong> When people are severely depressed, they sometimes are more prone to blood clotting, through the adherence of platelets. This could explain why people who experience depression after a heart attack or stroke have a worse prognosis than non-depressed people. They are more likely to have subsequent heart attacks and strokes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently read an interview with Dr. Paul McClelland, a psychiatrist at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore about the serious physical changes in the body and brain that can be a result of depression. These conditions or complications are among them: 1. Anorexia. Many depressed patients also have eating disorders which can cause irreversible kidney&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Depression Hurts-I Mean, Physically - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Depression Hurts-I Mean, Physically - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I recently read an interview with Dr. Paul McClelland, a psychiatrist at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore about the serious physical changes in the body and brain that can be a result of depression. These conditions or complications are among them: 1. Anorexia. Many depressed patients also have eating disorders which can cause irreversible kidney&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-10T09:45:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Depression Hurts-I Mean, Physically - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Depression Hurts-I Mean, Physically - Beyond Blue","og_description":"I recently read an interview with Dr. Paul McClelland, a psychiatrist at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore about the serious physical changes in the body and brain that can be a result of depression. These conditions or complications are among them: 1. Anorexia. Many depressed patients also have eating disorders which can cause irreversible kidney&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2008-01-10T09:45:16+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html","name":"Depression Hurts-I Mean, Physically - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-01-10T09:45:16+00:00","dateModified":"2008-01-10T09:45:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/01\/depression-hurtsi-mean-physica.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Depression Hurts&#8211;I Mean, Physically"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. Borchard","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75","name":"Beyond Blue","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/45c\/45c6e619a20a364bd981e9dda64eaa02x96.jpg","caption":"Beyond Blue"},"description":"Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet.com. She is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression &amp; Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist. You may find her at her personal blog, her website, or you may follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.","sameAs":["http:\/\/thereseborchard.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/tborchard"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}