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This Valentine’s Day, are you ready for something real or still playing the field? New research suggests your friends probably share similar notions about your readiness for lasting love. Researchers at Michigan State University in East Lansing tracked data on nearly 800 young adults embedded in friend groups.   Participants answered questions about their own readiness for a relationship, how ready they thought their various friends were, and each friend’s “attachment style.” Attachment styles can be secure or insecure, the researchers explained. Someone with an insecure attachment style typically has higher levels of anxiety and/or avoidance. According to the study, friends tended to agree as to whether a particular member of the group was ready for a solid relationship or not.   If a friend wasn’t thought to be ready, they were often perceived to have an insecure attachment style. “Friendships affect so many parts of our life — not just our health and happiness, but also our romantic prospects. Friends can constrain or facilitate who we date. They can also help our romantic relationships flourish or subtly and not-so-subtly undermine them,” study co-author William Chopik, associate professor of psychology at the university, said. He believes that friends’ “judgments of readiness likely explain all sorts of reasons why friends help and hurt our chances of finding love.” Chopik and co-author Hyewon Yang hope the study…  read on >  read on >

Love doesn’t fade when one member of a family develops Alzheimer’s disease, but times of intimacy like Valentine’s Day can become tougher. Experts at the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America (AFA) acknowledge that a loved one living with dementia can have trouble expressing their feelings or remembering things as they did in the past.  However, if partners and families follow the AFA’s H.E.A.R.T guidelines, navigating Valentine’s Day can be a bit easier.   Those guidelines are: Help a loved one reminisce. Trying going through old photos together, describing them and reminding your loved one who individuals are and what events they partook in. Don’t ask “Do you remember this?”, but do talk over fun vacations, parties or other events you’ve shared. Enjoy flowers. Smells are one of the most fixed memory-triggers in the brain, and bringing a bouquet of Valentine’s blooms into the home can be joyful while helping to stimulate the brain, the AFA says.  Adapt intimacy. Dementia can rob people of the ability to verbalize emotions as they once did, but simple, shared activities can help. Sharing a meal, watching a favorite movie or taking a walk together can foster feelings of closeness. Nonverbal forms of communication — touching, smiles, eye contact — also enhance those feelings. Reaffirm feelings. An act such as reading a Valentine’s card aloud can communicate love and connection to…  read on >  read on >

A major recall of canned tuna sold in dozens of states has been issued amid concerns that a packaging defect could cause “a potentially fatal form of food poisoning,” the manufacturer said in a statement. California-based Tri-Union Seafoods announced a voluntary recall for certain tuna products sold under the Genova®, Van Camp’s®, H-E-B and Trader Joe’s brand names, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The affected cans may have a faulty pull-tab lid, which could allow them to become contaminated with the Clostridium botulinum bacterium, which causes botulism. While Tri-Union Seafoods has said no illnesses linked to the recalled products had been reported, the company warned consumers not to use the product, “even if it does not look or smell spoiled.” The recalled tuna was distributed to stores in dozens of states across the U.S., including: H-E-B label: Stores in Texas. Trader Joe’s label: Stores in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Wisconsin. Genova 7-ounce cans: Costco stores in Florida and Georgia. Genova 5-ounce cans: Harris Teeter, Publix, H-E-B, Kroger, Safeway, Walmart and independent retailers in Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas. Van Camp’s label: Walmart and independent retailers in Pennsylvania, Florida and New Jersey. Botulism poisoning is…  read on >  read on >

Yet another study is supporting the notion that the blockbuster GLP-1 drug Ozempic can help problems drinkers curb their intake. The research found that, compared to placebo, weekly injections of semaglutide (also marketed for weight loss as Wegovy) helped reduce cravings in people with alcohol use disorders. The drug also seemed to reduce the quantity and frequency of alcohol intake, researchers said. There’s a real need for new approaches to treat alcoholism, said study lead author Christian Hendershot. He directs clinical research at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Addiction Research. “Two drugs currently approved to reduce alcohol consumption aren’t widely used,” Hendershot said in a university news release. “The popularity of Ozempic and other GLP-1 receptor agonists increases the chances of broad adoption of these treatments for alcohol use disorder.” His team published its findings Feb. 12 in JAMA Psychiatry. Links between GLP-1 meds and reductions in alcohol dependence aren’t new: Patients taking GLP-1s for diabetes or weight loss quickly realized their appetite for booze fell after commencing the therapy. However, Hendershot called the new study the first randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial to investigate this effect.  The trial involved 48 adult problem drinkers who were otherwise not actively seeking treatment to cut down on their drinking.   Female participants drank more than seven drinks per week, while men drank 14 or more weekly.…  read on >  read on >

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore access to public health websites that were removed or modified in response to a Trump administration executive order on gender. The order, issued Feb. 11 by U.S. District Judge John Bates, grants a temporary restraining order requested by Doctors for America, a nonprofit group that sued the administration over the website removals. The affected sites, some of which have been online for decades, contain public health information on HIV prevention, youth health risks, fertility treatments and more. The ruling states that the two health agencies removed the sites without explanation and likely violated federal law. “By removing long relied upon medical resources without explanation, it is likely that … each agency failed to ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action,’ ” Bates wrote. He ordered the CDC and FDA to restore access by the day’s end Tuesday, a process that staff members were scrambling to complete. “It was a double waste for us because we took them offline, put some of them back, edited others and now are putting it back again,” a federal health official who wanted to remain anonymous told The Washington Post. The removed sites included: The CDC’s guidelines for HIV and PrEP, a medication…  read on >  read on >

Even if a teen is at a healthy weight, just thinking they are overweight can greatly raise their odds for self-harm, a new study finds. “What we found was that the perception of being overweight has a much stronger effect of suicidal ideation than the objective measure of weight,” said study lead author Philip Baiden. He’s associate professor of social work at the University of Texas at Arlington. In the study, Baiden and colleagues looked at 2015-2021 data on more than 39,000 U.S. teens, ages 14 to 18, collected by surveys conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Some of the data focused on key factors in these kids’ lives: Their families’ socioeconomic status, dynamics within the family, pressures at school and tough issues experienced in childhood.  Other information about their lives was also gleaned from parents and other caregivers and school records. The Texas team focused especially on any self-reports of suicidal thoughts (ideation). Teens who thought they were overweight had triple the odds of these intrusive thoughts, the study found. “Even after adjusting for established suicidal ideation risk factors such as feelings of hopelessness, bullying, cyberbullying, substance use and demographic variables, we still found a connection between how adolescents feel about their weight and whether they are considering self-harm,” said study co-author Catherine LaBrenz.  “We also found that females…  read on >  read on >

It was a bit safer to go into the water last year: Unprovoked shark attacks worldwide fell by about a third in 2024 compared to the year before, new data show. The United States continues to be the most likely country in which to get bitten by a shark, according to the annual International Shark Attack File from the Florida Museum of Natural History. Twenty-eight of the 47 unprovoked shark attacks recorded in 2024 occurred in U.S. waters. Shark attacks typically average about 70 per year over a 10-year period, so 2024 numbers were unusually low. Australia ranked second on the list, with multiple bites reported, followed by reports of one attack each from Egypt, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, the Republic of Maldives, Mozambique, French Polynesia, Thailand, and Turks and Caicos. Four of the 47 attacks recorded worldwide in 2024 proved fatal, which is also a marked decline, the Florida team said.  Unprovoked attacks do not include injuries that arise after a person intentionally or unintentionally initiates contact with a shark, including spearfishing and releasing sharks from nets or hooks. Within the U.S., Florida had the most shark bites on record last year, at 14, and eight of those occurred in Volusia County, where Daytona Beach is located. Volusia County has long been dubbed the “shark bite capital of the world.” “Many of…  read on >  read on >

Chronic ills like heart disease, asthma or diabetes afflict a majority of U.S. workers, but 60% of those affected say they’ve kept their health issue a secret from employers, a new poll finds. More than a third of workers battling chronic conditions also said they’d skipped a necessary medical appointment over the past year for reasons related to work. “Workers commonly feel stigmatized by their conditions, and this can have a profound effect on both their work and their health,” survey lead author Gillian SteelFisher concluded. She directs the Harvard Opinion Research Program and is a principal research scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The new poll was conducted in early October of last year. It included a nationally representative sampling of 1,010 part-time and full-time working adults, all of whom were part of organizations with 50 or more employees. A majority of those polled — 58% — said they had at least one form of chronic health condition, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes or asthma.  Among this group, 76% said they needed to find the time and resources to manage their health issue during working hours, but 60% said they had never informed their boss that they had a chronic health condition. “Though employers may think they know their employees’ needs, poll results suggest there are widespread and…  read on >  read on >

Want to thrive in tough, stressful times? Stay playful. That’s the take-home message from a new study of who fared best, in terms of mental resiliency, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers said the findings have relevance to weathering any sort of trying times. “Playful” people differ from others in that they display “greater optimism when envisioning future possibilities,” are more creative when it comes to solving problems, and attempt to “infuse quality and enjoyment into everyday activities,” explained study lead author Xiangyou “Sharon” Shen of Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis.  Her team’s study, published Feb. 9 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, tracked the mental health outcomes for 503 individuals throughout the pandemic.  Psychologists already acknowledge playfulness as an important personality trait, and there’s even a Playfulness Trait Scale to measure it.  According to Shen, during the pandemic folks who scored high on the scale “actively altered challenging situations, found creative substitutes for what was lost, viewed obstacles as opportunities for growth and maintained a strong sense of control over their responses.” More playful people tended to stress out less during the COVID years, compared to less-playful types, the study found. Shen said that playful folk did not necessarily engage in different activities or do any particular activity more often.  Instead, they became more deeply involved in whatever activity they were in; were more…  read on >  read on >