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People with depression have higher body temperatures, suggesting that lowering your temperature may have a mental health advantage, according to new research from the University of California, San Francisco.
The study, published in Scientific Reports, does not indicate whether depression raises body temperature or whether a higher temperature causes depression. It is also unknown whether the higher body temperature seen in people with depression reflects a decreased ability to cool down, increased heat generation from metabolic processes, or a combination of both.
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The researchers analyzed data from more than 20,000 international participants who wore a device that measures body temperature and also reported daily on their body temperature and symptoms of depression. The seven-month study began in early 2020 and included data from 106 countries.
The results showed that with each increasing level of severity of depression symptoms, participants had higher body temperatures. The body temperature data also showed a trend toward higher depression scores in people whose temperatures had fewer fluctuations over a 24-hour period, but this finding did not reach significance.
The findings shed light on how a new approach to treating depression might work, said Ashley Mason, PhD, lead author of the study and associate professor of psychiatry at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. A small set of existing causal studies has found that using hot tubs or saunas can reduce depression, possibly by causing the body to cool itself, for example through sweating.
“Ironically, warming people can actually lead to a reduction in body temperature that lasts longer than simply cooling people directly, such as through an ice bath,” said Mason, who is also a clinical psychologist at the Center Osher for Integrative Health at UCSF. “What if we could track the body temperature of people with depression to properly time heat-based treatments?”
“To our knowledge, this is the largest study to date examining the association between body temperature (assessed using self-report methods and wearable sensors) and depressive symptoms in a geographically large sample,” Mason added. “Given the rising rates of depression in the United States, we are excited about the possibilities of a new treatment avenue.”
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