Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
This paper is a meta-analysis of more than 300 studies in humans that looked at links between psychological stress and measures of the immune system. It found that very short, acute stressors (minutes) were tied to increases in some natural (innate) immune measures and decreases in some specific (adaptive) immune…
This review looked at studies that measured cortisol (a stress hormone) after people visited forests, a practice called forest bathing or shinrin-yoku. The authors found that people in forest groups had lower salivary cortisol than people in urban groups, both before and after the visits. The reviewers say the change…
This paper combined past studies (a meta-analysis) and a genetic test (Mendelian randomization) to look at blood testosterone and depression in women. The meta-analysis found that women with depression have significantly different serum testosterone levels than healthy women, with a clear result in premenopausal women and weaker (borderline) results in…
