Aromatherapy: an efficient therapy for anxiety/depression? It’s time to stop such nonsensical pseudoresearch

This randomized controlled trial was aimed to investigate the effect of aromatherapy massage on anxiety, depression, and physiologic parameters in older patients with acute coronary syndrome. It was conducted on 90 older women with acute coronary syndrome. The participants were randomly assigned into the intervention and control groups. The intervention group received reflexology with lavender […]

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Homeopathy is effective for anxiety and depression disorders!!! Or isn’t it?

The purpose of the study was to compare utilization of conventional psychotropic drugs among patients seeking care for anxiety and depression disorders (ADDs) from general practitioners (GPs) who

• strictly prescribe conventional medicines (GP-CM), 
• regularly prescribe homeopathy in a mixed practice (GP-Mx), 
• or are certified homeopathic GPs (GP-Ho). 

The investigation was an epidemiological cohort study of […]

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Dlisted | Gwyneth Paltrow Continues To Be A Ridiculous Person

Do you ever get the feeling that asshole expert (takes one to know one) Gwyneth Paltrow is just super-bored and actually just engaged in a trolling long game? Maybe all of her foolishness is an effort to combat the ennui that stems from being a rich white lady with very little adversity in her life? No, she’s not bright enough for that and is probably really this annoying. It was bad enough that she’s fancied herself “Gwyneth Paltrow, Cooch Counselor” for the past couple of years.

Now US Magazine reports that she’s lecturing depressed people on how to deal with their illness...

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Yoga for depression? Unimpressive science from impressive institutions

The title of the press-release was impressive: ‘Columbia and Harvard Researchers Find Yoga and Controlled Breathing Reduce Depressive Symptoms’. It certainly awoke my interest and I looked up the original article. Sadly, it also awoke the interest of many journalists, and the study was reported widely – and, as we shall see, mostly wrongly.

According to its authors, the aims of this study were “to assess the effects of an intervention of Iyengar yoga and coherent breathing at five breaths per minute on depressive symptoms and to determine optimal intervention yoga dosing for future studies in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD)”[…]

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Aromatherapy for depression? I would not bet on it

Aromatherapy is popular and pleasant – but does it have real health effects? The last time I tried to find an answer to this question was in 2012. At that time, our systematic review concluded that “the evidence is not sufficiently convincing that aromatherapy is an effective therapy for any condition.” But 5 years can be a long time in research, and more up-to-date information would perhaps be helpful. […]

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St John’s Wort for depression: the biggest success story of alternative medicine | Edzard Ernst

I have blogged about the herbal antidepressant before; for instance about the fact that it can cause potentially dangerous herb-drug interactions. When taken alone, however, it seems to be both safe and efficacious in reducing the symptoms of depression. This notion has just been confirmed yet again.

A new systematic review evaluated St. John’s wort […]

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