Healthy lifestyle can help prevent depression – and new research may explain why

Research shows that regular good sleep and having good friends are the top 2 best ways to avoid or limit the negative effects of your depression. So my advice would be to prioritise these. Maybe its time to check your sleeping habits/sleep hygiene [www.sleepfoundation.org] and call that friend you’ve been meaning to get around to doing?

Healthy lifestyle can help prevent depression – and new research may explain why

By examining data from almost 290,000 people – of whom 13,000 had depression – followed over a nine-year period, the team was able to identify seven healthy lifestyle factors linked with a lower risk of depression. These were:

moderate alcohol consumption healthy diet regular physical activity healthy sleep never smoking low-to-moderate sedentary behaviour frequent social connection Of all of these factors, having a good night’s sleep – between seven and nine hours a night – made the biggest difference, reducing the risk of depression, including single depressive episodes and treatment-resistant depression, by 22%.

Frequent social connection, which in general reduced the risk of depression by 18%, was the most protective against recurrent depressive disorder.

Moderate alcohol consumption decreased the risk of depression by 11%, healthy diet by 6%, regular physical activity by 14%, never smoking by 20%, and low-to-moderate sedentary behaviour by 13%.