"Coconut Water and Depression"
If you go online, you can see claims
that coconut water may be beneficial for depression.
And, they even cite studies.
There it is in black and white:
“Coconut water ameliorates depression.”
Did they just make that up?
No, click on it and there it is
in PubMed, just like they said.
And, for a limited time offer
of just $39.95, the publisher will
let you read it, but why waste your time?
It says it right there in the title
“Coconut water ameliorates depression.”
Might as well spend that 40 bucks
buying some coconut water
to boost your mood!
And, anyway, reading all the studies,
so you don’t have to:
that’s my job!
If you look at the study, it starts out
saying that plants are frequently tested
these days for their antidepressant potential.
OK, sounds good.
Therefore, coconut water, a commonly used
plant-based beverage, was selected
to explore its antidepressant potential.
With you so far.
So, rodents were selected for this study
and a “forced swim test” was conducted.
What!
The forced swim test
is one of the most widely used tests
to explore antidepressant activity.
You fill up a transparent cylinder
with water over the mouse’s head;
so, it’s forced to swim,
and you drop a mouse in and see
how long the thing struggles to keep
from drowning before you see it
simply give up and just float to the top.
And, lo and behold, you feed them
some coconut water first,
and they hold out a bit longer
before giving up,
demonstrating an antidepressant effect.
Therefore...we should use coconut water
to treat depressive disorders in people?
What!
It depresses me to even read
such wasted research opportunities.
Where did they even get this idea?
It was invented by a group of French
scientists in the 70s to model
“behavioral despair.”
Reminds me of the Harlow experiments
with “vertical chamber confinement,”
that he called the “pit of despair,”
which was basically just a metal
contraption with sloped sides.
Lock a baby monkey in it for 45 days,
and you could produce profound behavioral changes.
They end up just kind of hugging
themselves in a fetal position.
And, afterwards, after 10 weeks
alone in the chamber,
they exhibit behaviors
like “contact clinging,”
where they just come together and hug
each other for long periods of time.
It is not yet clear why confinement
in the vertical chamber is apparently
so effective at producing abnormal behavior,
but not to worry, they’ve got a lot
more studies to do.
I’ll spare you the research on puppies...
I can see why you’d want some model
to test out new antidepressant drugs,
but if you want to figure out
if pomegranates have anti-depressant effects,
why not just feed people some pomegranates,
rather than chucking some mice
off the deep end?
There are literally thousands of published
studies on food or food products
using this forced swim test,
allowing the egg industry to be like,
See, eggs may be an egg-cellent food
for preventing and alleviating
the conditions of major depression.
Why?
All because rats struggled longer?
Whereas in people, removing eggs
from the diet improves mood,
though they also removed meat;
so, it’s not clear which did what,
or maybe they were just eating
more healthy plant foods,
like soy—which the soy industry is happy
to tell you decreases depressive-related
behavior in postmenopausal rats,
who were swimming for their lives.
In people, though, the best that soy products
may be able to do was just work
as well as drugs like Prozac and Zoloft,
and we all know how little that’s actually saying.
I mean the forced swim test
is just a reaction to the acute stressful
stimulus of being placed in a container
without an escape route,
whereas human depression reflects
a chronic subjective emotional state,
an internal emotional state
and, to date, we haven’t been able
to ask animals how they’re feeling.
You can’t even just look at human behavior
and tell if someone has a depression diagnosis;
so, it’s impossible to conclude that
the swim test is some test for human depression.
The ease at which thousands of scientists do that,
however, is disquieting in that it makes
assumptions that discourage critical thought.
In fact, the whole thing has been compared
to like some Monty Python skit,
where you see if the witch floats or not.
But, today, it’s in use to label
a rodent as being depressed.