Author Archives: Kaylee Mai

How Microbes Can Help You Sleep

Recent studies from the University of Tsukuba in Japan have shown that intestinal health has a very close connection with healthy brain function. Gut bacteria may influence your sleep patterns by helping to create important chemical messengers such as serotonin and dopamine. The study’s lead author, Professor Masashi Yanagisawa, stated that “microbe depletion eliminates serotonin …

13 Types of Insomnia

Sleep isn’t something that comes easy to many people, but some people find it helpful to know exactly what it is they’re suffering from. With the help of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Health has compiled a list of 13 classifications of insomnia. This slideshow provides symptoms, reasons, and statistics about sleep disorders that …

Emotional Safety Nets for Men?

Though mental illness has never discriminated, men typically find it more difficult to talk about their problems than women do, often influenced by societal pressures to remain silent. Men suffer from anxiety and depression far more than we realize, but often mask it behind greater anger, substance abuse, and risky behaviors. This often leads to …

What is Light Therapy?

Seasonal depression is sometimes used as a punchline during the winter, but for many, the waning daylight has a very real effect on one’s mental health. You may experience mood swings, shifts in eating habits, and decreasing energy levels, and for some, the symptoms are so severe that winter disrupts their entire lives. Recently, research …

Self-Care is Hard

Self-care is about, as this Psychology Today article puts it, “identifying your own unique needs and taking steps to meet them…it’s provided for you, by you.” However, for people with depression, self-care can be hard to attain. There’s a neurobiological reason for this: depression leads to dysfunction in the frontal lobes, making self-care extremely difficult. …

Celebrities with Depression

Even for celebrities always in the limelight, they’ve found that “depression never discriminates.” It can happen to anyone and even when the world is looking at you and doesn’t see it, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. These 19 celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Michael Phelps, Jim Carrey, and Dwayne Johnson, are just a …

The Truth Behind Melatonin

Melatonin is the hormone largely responsible for our sleep schedules. We tend to think of melatonin as fairly benign and many people take melatonin tablets as dietary supplements as a helpful sleep aid. However, recent studies have shown that melatonin can have harmful effects, especially when taken without any understanding of how it works or …

12 Symptoms of Dehydration

Some people have never been good at taking care of themselves, me included. This leads to issues like dehydration, which is much more common, and much more deadly, than many of us believe, sometimes even leading to loss of consciousness. This Health article gives a list of symptoms of dehydration–including some lesser known ones like …

Depression during COVID-19

It’s no surprise by now that COVID-19 has worsened people’s mental health. Data from the COVID-19 and Life Stressors Impact on Mental Health showed that all levels of depression showed a significant increase, while people with household incomes below $45,000 were 2.37 times more likely to show symptoms. What might surprise people is that not …