Search

Major life changes may play a causative role in health through lifestyle factors, such as alcohol. The objective was to examine the impact of stressful life events on heavy alcohol consumption among French adults.Trajectories of excessive alcohol consumption in 20,625 employees of the French national gas and electricity company for up to 5 years before and 5 years after an event, with annual measurements from 1992. We used repeated measures analysis of time series data indexed to events, employing generalized estimating equations.For women, excessive alcohol use increased before important purchase (p = 0.021), children leaving home (p

Little is known about the effect of retirement on alcohol consumption. The objectives were to examine changes in alcohol consumption following retirement, and whether these patterns differ by gender and socioeconomic status.We assessed alcohol consumption annually from 5 years before to 5 years after retirement among 10,023 men and 2,361 women of the French Gazel study. Data were analyzed separately for men and women, using repeated-measures logistic regression analysis with generalized estimating equations. Five years prior to retirement, the prevalence of heavy drinking was about 16% among men, and not patterned by socioeconomic status. Among women, this prevalence was 19.5% in managers, 14.7% in intermediate occupations, and 12.8% in clerical workers. Around retirement, the estimated prevalence of heavy drinking increased in both sexes. In men, this increase was 3.1 percentage points for managers, 3.2 in intermediate occupations, 4.6 in clerical workers, and 1.3 in manual workers. In women, this increase was 6.6 percentage points among managers, 4.3 in intermediate occupations, and 3.3 among clerical workers. In men the increase around retirement was followed by a decrease over the following four years, not significant among manual workers; among women such a decrease was also observed in the non-managerial occupations. It is difficult to assess the extent to which the results observed in this cohort would hold for other working populations, other conditions of employment, or in other cultural settings. A plausible explanation for the increase in heavy drinking around retirement could be that increased leisure time after retirement provides more opportunities for drinking, and not having to work during the day after may decrease constraints on drinking.Our findings of increased consumption around retirement suggest that information about negative effects of alcohol consumption should be included in pre-retirement planning programs.

The health correlates of the metabolically healthy obese (MHO) phenotype, particularly in relation to depressive symptoms remains unclear. Accordingly, we examined the risk of depressive symptoms in this phenotype using a 16-year follow-up prospective study.A sample of 14 475 participants (75% men), aged 44-59 years in 1996, was drawn from the Gazel cohort. Obesity was defined as body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kg/m2 and metabolic health as having none of the self-reported following cardiovascular risk factors: hypertension, type 2 diabetes and dyslipidemia. Depressive symptoms were assessed by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale in 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008 and 2012. Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) were used to estimate the risk of depressive symptoms during a follow-up of 16 years.In multivariate analyses, metabolically unhealthy normal weight [Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.37; 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.25-1.51], overweight [1.44 (1.31-1.59)] and obese [1.30 (1.10-1.54)] but not MHO participants [1.04 (0.81-1.32)] had higher risk of depressive symptoms at the start of follow-up compared to metabolically healthy normal weight individuals. Depressive symptoms decreased over time in metabolically healthy normal weight individuals [0.52 (0.50-0.55)], this decrease was less marked only in metabolically unhealthy obese participants [1.22 (1.07-1.40)]. Compared to MHO participants, metabolically unhealthy obese individuals were at increased risk of depression at the start of follow-up, but with a similar reduction of this risk over time.Poor metabolic health, irrespective of BMI was associated with greater depressive symptoms at the start of follow-up, whereas a poorer course of depressive symptoms over time was observed only in those with both obesity and poor metabolic health.

BACKGROUND: Data on the association between dietary patterns and depression are scarce. The objective of this study was to examine the longitudinal association between dietary patterns and depressive symptoms assessed repeatedly over 10 years in the French occupational GAZEL cohort. METHODS: A total of 9,272 men and 3,132 women, aged 45-60 years in 1998, completed a 35-item Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) at baseline. Dietary patterns were derived by Principal Component Analysis. Depressive symptoms were assessed by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D) in 1999, 2002, 2005 and 2008. The main outcome measure was the repeated measures of CES-D. Longitudinal analyses were performed with logistic regression based on generalized estimating equations. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The highest quartile of low-fat, western, high snack and high fat-sweet diets in men and low-fat and high snack diets in women were associated with higher likelihood of depressive symptoms at the start of the follow-up compared to the lowest quartile (OR between 1.16 and 1.50). Conversely, the highest quartile of traditional diet (characterized by fish and fruit consumption) was associated with a lower likelihood of depressive symptoms in women compared to the lowest quartile, with OR = 0.63 [95%CI, 0.50 to 0.80], as the healthy pattern (characterized by vegetables consumption) with OR = 0.72 [95%CI, 0.63 to 0.83] and OR = 0.75 [95%CI, 0.61 to 0.93] in men and women, respectively. However, there was probably a reverse causality effect for the healthy pattern. CONCLUSION: This longitudinal study shows that several dietary patterns are associated with depressive symptoms and these associations track over time.