Salivary cortisol, serum lipids, and adiposity in patients with depressive and anxiety disorders
HPA axis refers to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and is how our bodies deal with stress. As a search term, “HPA axis” on PubMed brings about thousands upon thousands upon thousands of articles. This is a heavy focus of much research. But don’t expect your doctor to bring it up because we don’t have a medication to “treat” it. Sometimes it seems that we can’t learn about some aspect of medicine until there is a drug and a drug rep and drug commercials to do the work.
There is not surprise that this study finds alterations in cortisol levels and rhythms in patients with depression or anxiety. Medicating these conditions will not fix the HPA axis problem, and this will leave the patient at risk for things like heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
