Welcome to Joy Lab!: Welcome to the Joy Lab podcast, where we help you uncover and foster your most joyful self. Your hosts, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek, bring you the ideal mix of soulful and scientifically sound tools to spark your joy, even when it feels dark. When you're ready to experiment with more joy, combine this podcast with the full Joy Lab program over at JoyLab.coach
Henry: Hello, I'm Henry Emmons, and welcome to Joy Lab.
Aimee: And I'm Aimee Prasek. Here at Joy Lab, we infuse science with soul to help you build your resilience and uncover your joy. And today we're talking about the shocking correlation between dandruff and depression. Which is again, an episode that I was in charge of, much like the psychics episode from long ago.
Um, but to be clear, these things aren't properly correlated. We'll talk about that in a bit here. But here's why I tie these two together. I think dandruff and depression are two of the most over pathologized experiences in human life. And with these two, I suppose they do get worse in winter.
So there you go.
Henry: Gosh, you know, you're right. I hadn't actually thought about this relationship before, and I had not... it hadn't occurred to me that they both get worse in the winter, but it just totally makes sense. So, there's two things that jumped to my mind right away. The first has to do with the way we make diagnoses.
I seldom diagnose dandruff in clinical
Aimee: hope you don't, throw that back right at you if
Henry: I don't even know if it qualifies as a medical condition. Probably not, at least not all by itself. But maybe if it's part of something like psoriasis, I don't know.
Aimee: Yes. we are not diminishing that
Henry: that can be really uncomfortable. That can But, I do have a lot of experience in how we diagnose depression, and I agree with your point, Aimee, the term depression has really lost most of its meaning for me. We just use it so freely. And I think it's come to refer to any human experience of unpleasant emotions as if it's just this one thing called depression. And it is not. There are so many different forms that it can take. But, you know, for lots of reasons, we've come to use the term depression for all of that.
I think basically it's come to mean a bad mood.
And then to your point about over pathologizing it. I agree that I think it is strongly over diagnosed. I think if you were to take 100 people who have been diagnosed with clinical depression and really, really took a close look, I think you'd find that about 20 of them, so 20 percent actually have clinical depression, at least the way I define it. The other 80 percent might have some of the same symptoms, but they're caused by some temporary life challenge, stress, or something else that if it's not addressed then these symptoms will not get better in the long run. So the other thing that jumps out at me is just how, how careful we need to be about correlations because you read this kind of thing all the time and whenever we hear it we just think, "Well, this is science."
This is truth. But a correlation between two things like this might not mean anything at all. So, I think we have to be a bit skeptical when we hear things like that.
Aimee: Yeah. That was my clickbait title, wasn't it? But marketing, you know, thrives on causal fallacies and shaky correlations like that. I'd actually say depression and dandruff are correlated like ice cream sales and murder rates. Uh, yeah, they both have a confounding variable of weather.
So folks can, yes, yes, folks can look that up if they're really interested in causal fallacies.
I think this is a really good example. Anyway, uh, my point here is that nearly or, you know, nearly every single person will experience dandruff and depression in their life. Not clinical depression, perhaps, but as you said, Henry, bad moods, stress, challenging life situations, dry scalp. And we'll experience these things many times in our lives.
And there is nothing wrong or weak about experiencing those kinds of moods or getting knocked down by life every once in a while. I think, um, we've been jaded by cosmetic companies, by pharmaceutical companies and much of our medical system who have taken these very normal experiences and flattened and bifurcated them in such a way that you're either clinically depressed or you're not Or you have this terrible disease of dandruff, or you don't. And it's just not true as we're saying here.
Just as you said, Henry, that doesn't dismiss the severity that can happen either. I think for some of us, at some point in our lives, we may experience a depression that is impacting our life in such a way that we need more care. We need more support. We need treatment, medication, more intense therapies, whatever, we might experience a clinical depression.
But to say that all of our depression falls into that category, that is, it is abnormal, that it needs to be treated the same way no matter what, dismisses the very natural experiences of sadness and depression that are part of our human experience. I think periods of low mood, periods of depression, amidst loss, struggle, stress are as natural to living as dandruff in the winter.
Henry: So, I actually do have mild psoriasis. And I have had dandruff in the past that just was miserable. Mostly because it's just so itchy. Now, I have also, as I've mentioned before in our podcast, I have had a tendency for my mood to dip in the winter. Nothing severe. I've never taken medication for it, but I would if it got bad. Mostly, I have found natural ways to deal with both of these problems. And one of the things I've done for years now is to take a daily omega 3 supplement.
Aimee: Helps your scalp too, huh?
Henry: So, I think so. I can, I can stop it in the summer and I'm fine, but I'll add it back in the fall and winter. So, based on this conversation, I think this is what's helping both of these conditions.
Might just be another correlation, and I'm giving too much meaning to it, but you would have a hard time getting me to give up my omega 3 supplements.
So, to your larger point, I agree completely. It's a normal part of the human condition to experience all of the emotions, even those that we don't like. You know, and up to a point, they are completely compatible, even, with a joyful life. If they get too strong, then they do block our access to joy, but even that is temporary. And when that happens, well, then we want to do whatever we need to in order to restore ourselves to our more natural, resilient mood.
Aimee: Yeah. You noted to a key there, I think Henry with an itchy scalp and winter depression that you cared for yourself. I think so often like dandruff, depression, it's been stigmatized in such a way that it gets us into this box of shame or embarrassment. I think it adds that judgment that has made these, two conditions so much more burdensome and then we don't reach out.
So for me, one of the most important aspects of getting out of the deepest pits and reoccurring pits of depression was not to be ashamed of it, really, not, not to be embarrassed by it, to not fear it or fight it so much. It made my journey out of the severity of it possible because I could see it more clearly.
I think without the harsh judgment, without aversion, I could see the layers of it, even the wisdom in it, and also the places where I could apply skills to chip away maybe at the suffering that I was layering onto it at times. And that's not romanticizing. depression either. It's more of an invitation to strip away the unnecessary layers of judgment and stigma and to see it for what it is.
Then you can seek out support, you know, you can practice new skills, you can get treatment or any of, or all of the above. You just can't do that when you keep it stuffed down and sort of frosted in shame, right? So I hope the message that is rising up here is an encouragement to move beyond the judgments of how we should feel and to really tune into what we are really experiencing without shame, to really see it for what it is, and then we can work with that experience if need be.
Or maybe we just brush some flakes off our shoulders because we're not broken. And we don't need to be fixed, head and shoulders. Uh, it's those, actually those steps you highlight, Henry, and that we work on in Joy Lab program. See what is, accept what is, and choose wisely. So I want to close our time today with some wisdom from C. S. Lewis from his book, The Problem of Pain. I think it's some encouragement to not let our judgments or shame block our self care. Um, to encourage openness, to practice new skills, uh, and boost that willingness to share and reach out for more support. Here it is. "Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear.
The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden. It is easier to say, my tooth is aching. than to say my heart is broken."
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