Thanks Candi. Some time back, Mr. Britt wrote a click bait headline that exercise was found to be 1 1/2 times more effective for depression and anxiety than medications or therapy.

He reported in the article that he spoke to the lead author of the study, who has been reported elsewhere as saying what Mr. Britt claimed he did.

however, as a psychology researcher who knows how to read and interpret methodology and statistics, I actually read the study and it turns out, it didn't say anything like that. It simply said exercise can help and should be recommended more often. (When I wrote this previously, Mr. Britt directed me to some follow up comments he added to the article - but nowhere did he acknowledge that the headline was simply factually inaccurate).

Similarly, I was reading this article and concerned that he didn't even make an attempt to add a caveat after the 6 lifestyle interventions, that there are many people who adhere to those and nonetheless require some medication.

I teach mindfulness for the reduction of pain. My research on this was highly successful. However, there is not a single patient I've ever seen to whom I would say "Don't consider medication" or worse, "stop taking medication."

To conclude, I adhere to those 6 lifestyle guidelines and have tried many times to temporarily stop taking a low dose of blood pressure medication. The numbers so far have always gone up when I stop temporarily. My physician actually trusts me to modulate the dose myself, yet I feel that the wise choice for now (Im still working on it), would be to continue.

I hope that journalists who have no formal training in statistics or research methodology would make more efforts to be accurate.