Is laughter the best medicine for depression?
Hello everyone, Crystal here for DNews!
Nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas, is a molecule composed of two nitrogen and
one oxygen atoms that is best known for making us laugh!
The gas has a lot of medical applications due to its analgesic as well as its anesthetic
properties.
That means it can relieve our pain and cause us to lose consciousness.
You might have already encountered this ubiquitous gas in your dentist’s chair, or at that
party that one time where you were “trying to figure out how to use the pressurized whip
cream maker” and “accidentally” inhaled gas from a canister.
Humans exposed to laughing gas report feeling dizziness, euphoria, and well … feeling
happy!
This is probably obvious from the side effect that gives the gas its common name: laughing.
These known side effects of nitrous oxide exposure got researchers at the Washington
University in St. Louis thinking.
Why not use laughing gas to treat depression?
In a study published recently in the journal Biological Psychiatry, patients diagnosed
with treatment resistant clinical depression received two therapeutic exposures to gas.
In the first treatment session, patients were given gas that was half oxygen and half nitrous
oxide, similar to what you’re given at the dentist.
In the second session, the patients were given gas that was a only mixture of oxygen gas
and nitrogen gas, (so basically air).
The study participants were asked to answer questions about their depressive symptoms,
like insomnia, sadness, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, 2 h, and again 24 h, after the treatment.
24 h after nitrous oxide exposure, patients reported “mild” or “significant” improvement
in their depressive symptoms.
Three of the twenty study participants reported that their symptoms had disappeared almost
completely!
But it should be noted that researchers observed some placebo effects in those who received
the gas mixture that did not contain nitrous oxide.
Five patients reported mild improvement, and two reported that they felt significantly
better.
Additionally, the researchers only analyzed the effects of nitrous oxide exposure after
24 h which is not a lot of time to see “prolonged effect” and certainly too short of a time
after treatment to be able to say that depression was “cured”.
And there are a few other things to keep in mind.
This was a proof of concept study, and only 20 people participated.
A much more statistically robust study with possibly hundreds of participants would be
needed to make any conclusions about the effectiveness of nitrous oxide treatments on those with
clinical depression.
But these results are still encouraging!
If nitrous oxide does cause short term improvements in depressive symptoms, it could be a good
way to treat immediate effects of the disease while patients and their doctors wait for
prescribed psychiatric medications to take effect.
It can take weeks for patients starting on conventional psychotropic drugs to experience
relief of their symptoms, and patients can continue to suffer while the drugs build to
full potency.
Obviously more research is needed, but even if laughing gas doesn’t “cure” depression
it could be a tool for doctors to use on critical patients who need immediate help.
What do you think?
Does this study give you hope for treating depression?
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You can also come find me on twitter at PolycrystalHD