Another way to make your home a more wellness-centered space is by eliminating sources of blue light during the evening hours. According to Ben Spielberg, who is a neuroscientist and CEO of TMS & Brain Health, this is because it inhibits the production of melatonin. “Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland, and is responsible for telling the body when to go to sleep”, he says. “Blue light can mimic the wavelengths of natural light, which interferes with the body’s melatonin release and ultimately can lead to insomnia and irregular sleep patterns. By avoiding and/or suppressing blue light, the pineal gland is able to secrete healthy amounts of melatonin undeterred, leading to a healthy full night’s rest.”

There are countless sources of blue light we all have in our homes including screens, light bulbs, and small appliances. While you can’t eliminate all exposure, there are ways to reduce it. Get rid of LED and florescent bulbs and swap them out for red bulbs. If red bulbs aren’t aesthetically appealing, an amber light such as the Hoogalite Bulb is a better option.

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Prince Harry is leaving the royal life to keep his wife Meghan Markle and eight-month-old son Archie safe and away from the media scrutiny that killed his mother Princess Diana in 1997, according to two experts.

Prince Harry, 35, doesn’t want the same tragic circumstances surrounding his mother Princess Diana’s death happen to his own family and it’s one of the main reasons he’s “stepping away” from royal duties, according to one expert. Meredith Sagan, MD, MPH, Lead Psychiatrist at TMS & Brain Health in Santa Monica, says that the Duke of Sussex and his wife Meghan Markle’s decision to stop being “senior royals” could have something to do with the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that Harry most likely endured after his mother’s shocking death, which was the result of a car accident that happened while she was being chased by paparazzi in 1997. He was just 12-years-old at the time.

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Pervasive and insidious, Major Depressive Disorder is one of the most common mood disorders in the United States, afflicting upwards of 17 million adults each year. The global impact is, by some accounts, larger than the entire population of the United States. It is characterized by a combination of overwhelming feelings of sadness and/or guilt, lack of energy and motivation, insomnia or hypersomnia, anxiety, agitation, and difficulty concentrating.

Sometimes these symptoms follow a diurnal pattern, such that they worsen in mornings and evenings. Ultimately, these symptoms are so debilitating in so many people that depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.

We normally think of talk therapy and antidepressant medication as the “gold standard” of treatment for depression. Unfortunately, the research shows that this is more of a temporary band-aid affixed to an underlying issue, as opposed to a treatment for the root cause. Longitudinal research suggests that over the lifetime, at least 73% of individuals diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder will endure future episodes, while 90% of individuals with at least three previous episodes will endure more (Mueller et al., 1999; Hollon et al., 2006; Wojnarowski et al., 2018; Solomon et al., 2000). Additionally, this has a multiplicative effect, such that each depressive episode significantly raises the probability for a future depressive episode, regardless of whether traditional treatments were utilized (Solomon et al., 2000).

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Hormone specialist Dr. Gary Donovitz and Ben Spielberg, founder of TMS and Brain Health join Dr. Drew to discuss transcranial magnetic stimulation and ketamine infusion therapy.  These cutting-edge techniques have been scientifically proven to treat depression and a variety of other conditions, including ADHD, OCD and insomnia.  Dr. Drew and guests also discuss how hormone replacement can improve mental health and take questions from callers.

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If you’re like me, you’re on your sixth rewatch of The Office and there’s no real end in sight. It’s just one of those classics that seems to get funnier and more ridiculous every time. But do you know what goes on in your brain when you keep coming back for more? Though it’s easy to pinpoint how you feel when you watch the show, it takes a little more research to learn what happens to your brain when you watch reruns of The Office.

Shows like The Office feel addicting because of the way your brain reacts to watching them. “Our brains respond very well to getting the same things multiple times,” Sophie Scott, PhD, professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, tells Bustle. Because of a phenomenon called the “mere familiarity effect,” you might tend to appreciate things that repeat just because they’re familiar. Knowing something good is coming can be a source of comfort to you, which helps explain why you re-watch the same thing twice.

Ben Spielberg, M.S., founder and CEO of TMS Brain Health, a Los Angeles brain health center, explains that pleasure also plays a role in why you watch shows like The Office over and over again. “When we engage in positive behaviors that are supposed to feel pleasurable, a neurotransmitter called dopamine is released into the brain,” he tells Bustle. “Dopamine release leads to positive mood changes such as happiness and comfort, but dopamine can also lead to perseveration and compulsive behaviors.” So when your brain realizes that watching Michael make crass and ridiculous comments is enjoyable, you keep watching to get those positive feelings.

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MRI scans may be able to detect physical and functional changes in the brain that could be markers for major depression.

Two new studies presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) may also point to new pathways for future research and therapy.

Researchers, led by Kenneth Wengler, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in New York, say they discovered that people with major depression have less water move across their blood-brain barrier, particularly in the amygdala and the hippocampus, than those who didn’t have major depression.

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In schizophrenia patients, single sessions of continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over the right inferior parietal lobe (IPL) briefly but “substantially” improved gesture performance accuracy and manual dexterity, researchers say.

“Single sessions of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) last about one to three minutes and result in a temporary change in local brain function that lasts for approximately 30 minutes,” Dr. Sebastian Walther of the University of Bern in Switzerland told Reuters Health by email.

“Other TMS protocols are used to treat neuropsychiatric conditions and repeated daily administration of TMS for 2-3 weeks typically enhances the behavioral effect for a duration of several weeks or even months,” Dr. Walther said. “Thus, the single sessions tested in our study are not useful in clinical settings, but repeated administration may work out well. It could also pave the way to enhancing the training effects of group psychotherapy. The idea is to prepare the relevant brain network using TMS in order to amplify the training effects that are exerted by psychotherapy.”

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