Are body temperature and depression linked? New study says, yes

A new study led by the University of California, San Francisco, found that lowering the body temperature of people with depression may have mental health benefits, since people with depression have higher body temperatures.

the study, published Today is scientific report, does not indicate whether depression causes an increase in body temperature or whether an increase in body temperature causes depression. It is also unclear whether the increased body temperature observed in depressed patients reflects a reduced self-cooling capacity, increased heat production from metabolic processes, or a combination of both.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 20,000 international participants who wore temperature-measuring devices and self-reported their body temperature and symptoms of depression each day. This seven-month study of his began in early 2020 and included data from 106 countries.

The results showed that as the severity of depression symptoms increased, participants' body temperature increased. The body temperature data also showed a tendency for people whose body temperature fluctuated less over a 24-hour period to have higher depression scores, but this finding did not reach significance.

The findings shed light on how new depression treatments work, said Ashley Mason, Ph.D., lead author of the study and associate professor of psychiatry at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neuroscience. . The few existing causal studies have found that using hot tubs or saunas may reduce depression by causing the body to self-cool, perhaps through sweating.

“Ironically, when you actually warm someone up, their body temperature may recoil and stay lower for longer than if you directly cool them down, such as with an ice bath,” says Dr. says Mason, who is also a clinical psychologist. “What if we could track the body temperature of depressed patients and time their heat therapy appropriately?”

“To our knowledge, this is the largest study to date examining the association between body temperature, assessed using both self-report methods and wearable sensors, and depressive symptoms in a geographically wide sample. ,” Mason added. “Given the rising incidence of depression in the United States, we are excited about the possibility of new treatments.”