Some studies have found links between depressive symptoms and body temperature, but many questions remain.
A group of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) analyzed data from 20,880 people collected over a seven-month period and confirmed this People who suffer from depression tend to have a higher body temperature.
Correlation does not mean causation. No matter how comprehensive the study is – which included people from 106 countries – and no matter how detailed it was published by Nature, it is not enough to prove that higher body temperature is the cause of depression or that depression causes warming of the body cause the body.
However, it does suggest that there is a connection that should be investigated. If something as simple as staying cool can help combat the symptoms of depression, then it has the potential to help millions of people around the world.
“To our knowledge, this is the largest study to date to examine the association between body temperature – measured using self-report methods and wearable sensors – and depressive symptoms in a geographically large sample,” said Ashley Mason, a psychiatrist at UCSF.
Why temperature can affect depression
According to the researchers, this connection could have several reasons. Depression may be related to metabolic processes that produce extra heat or biological cooling functions that do not function properly. Or there is a common cause, such as psychological stress or inflammation, which affects both body temperature and depressive symptoms separately.
This is something future studies could investigate. We currently know that depression is a complex, multifaceted illness with likely many different triggers and that body temperature may play a role.
Previous research has found this Hot tubs and saunas can ease symptoms of depression, albeit in small sample groups. The resulting self-cooling through sweating may also have a psychological effect.
“Ironically, warming people can cause a new drop in body temperature that lasts longer than directly cooling them down, such as with an ice bath,” says Mason. “What if we could track the body temperature of people with depression to properly plan heat-based treatments?”
The study data showed that as self-reported depression symptoms increased in severity, average body temperature increased. Some association was also observed between higher depression scores and lower diurnal temperature fluctuations, although not at a statistically significant level.
It is estimated that around 5% of the world’s population suffers from depression. Therefore, efforts to understand and effectively treat them are now more urgent than ever. Each new discovery brings more hope for tackling the problem.
REFERENCE
Elevated body temperature is associated with depressive symptoms: results from the TemPredict study