Weekly Gravy « Weekly Gravy

All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Combining mindfulness with exercise could be the key to managing stress during a potentially turbulent 2024, a new review argues. People who exercise and practice mindfulness meditation together tend to have less worry, stress, anxiety and depression than those who only engage in either activity, according to results from 35 studies involving more than 2,200 people. Mindfulness meditation — in which people focus on being in the moment — can help people better embrace exercise by providing them motivation and helping them look past the temporary discomfort that comes with working out, said lead researcher Masha Remskar, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Bath in England. “Mindfulness is an approach that can help us ‘train up’ the psychological strengths we need to exercise and be more in tune with our bodies, as well as make exercising more interesting and help us recognize its benefits,” Remskar said in a university news release. “This may be because becoming more mindful prompts us to think differently about our lifestyle, [and] makes us more accepting and less judgmental of our own shortcomings, which can help to build healthy habits,” she added. “There is a huge potential to use mindfulness to unlock the positive benefits exercise can bring.” Exercise and mindfulness have been linked separately to improved mental health, but this is one of the first major… read on > read on >

It’s easy to see the immediate health hazards of wildfire smoke, as people struggle to breathe through a sooty haze. But a new study finds that harmful chemicals found in wildfire smoke can linger in a person’s home for weeks after the immediate threat has passed, posing a continuing health threat. The chemicals — compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — are highly toxic and can be found in household air filters, glass surfaces and cotton cloth more than a month later, researchers report. “They are associated with a wide variety of long-term adverse health consequences like cancer, potential complications in pregnancy and lung disease,” said researcher Elliott Gall, an associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Portland State University in Oregon. “If these compounds are depositing or sticking onto surfaces, there are different routes of exposure people should be aware of,” Gall added in a university news release. There’s lots of good advice out there on what to do during a wildfire, researchers noted — close windows and doors, run an air purifier, wear a mask. But there’s not much to guide people on how to best clean up afterward, researchers said. For this study, Gall and his team looked at how PAHs stuck to glass, cotton and air filters during a four-month span. They found it took 37 days for PAHs to… read on > read on >

Teenagers who’ve packed on extra pounds have a significantly increased risk of developing kidney disease as a young adult, a new study finds. Obesity increased risk of later kidney disease as much as ninefold in boys and fourfold in girls, according to results published recently in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Even a few extra pounds increased a teen’s risk of kidney disease, researchers found. “The association was evident even in persons with high-normal BMI in adolescence, was more pronounced in men and appeared before the age of 30 years,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Avishai Tsur, of the Hebrew University Department of Military Medicine in Israel. Prior research has linked high BMI to kidney disease in older folks, but there hasn’t been much investigation into the potential risks of childhood obesity for kidney health, the researchers said. The study tracked more than 593,000 Israeli adolescents ages 16 to 20 who were born after 1974, all of whom underwent medical assessments for mandatory military service. After an average follow-up of 13 years, researchers found that nearly 2,000 of the participants had developed early chronic kidney disease. The teens’ risk of kidney disease increased with their excess weight, results show. Boys with severe obesity had a nine times higher risk of kidney disease, while those with mild obesity had a nearly seven times higher risk… read on > read on >

How much a person believes in the strength of a drug might influence how powerfully that drug influences brain activity, a new study has found. Smokers told to expect a low, medium or high dose of nicotine from an e-cigarette showed a brain response that tracked with the purported dose, even though nicotine levels were actually constant, researchers said. “We set out to investigate if human beliefs can modulate brain activities in a dose-dependent manner similar to what drugs do, and found a high level of precision in how beliefs can influence the human brain,” said senior researcher Xiaosi Gu. She’s an associate professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City. For the study, Gu and her team recruited a group of people hooked on nicotine and had them puff on an e-cigarette, after telling them how powerful a nicotine dose they should expect. The participants then underwent brain scans while performing a decision-making task known to engage parts of the brain affected by nicotine. “Beliefs can have a powerful influence on our behavior, yet their effects are considered imprecise and rarely examined by quantitative neuroscience methods,” Gu noted in a Mount Sinai news release. The thalamus — an important binding site for nicotine in the brain — showed a dose-dependent response to each person’s… read on > read on >

Migraines are not only extremely painful, but they also appear to pose a driving risk for seniors, a new study warns. Older adult drivers recently diagnosed with migraines are three times more likely to be involved in a car crash, researchers reported recently in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. “Migraine headaches affect more than 7% of U.S. adults over the age of 60,” noted lead researcher Dr. Carolyn DiGuiseppi, a professor with the University of Colorado School of Public Health. “The U.S. population is aging, which means increasing numbers of older adult drivers could see their driving abilities affected by migraine symptoms previously not experienced,” DiGuiseppi added in a university news release. “These symptoms include sleepiness, decreased concentration, dizziness, debilitating head pain and more.” For the study, researchers tracked more than 2,500 drivers ages 65 to 79 in five sites across the United States. A previous diagnosis of migraine did not appear to influence a driver’s crash risk, results show. But a new migraine diagnosis brought with it a threefold increase in the risk of a wreck within a year, researchers found. Medications commonly prescribed for migraines did not appear to influence either crash risk or driving habits, the researchers noted. “These results have potential implications for the safety of older patients that should be addressed,” DiGuiseppi said. “Patients with a new migraine… read on > read on >

Drugs already used by millions to lower cholesterol might someday have a new role: Relieving asthma and COPD. That’s the hope of a new line of research underway at the University of California, Davis. A study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health is seeking to determine whether a “statin inhaler” might reduce the airway inflammation that makes breathing difficult for folks with illnesses like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Taking a statin pill has no significant effect on the airways, but “delivering statins directly to the lung via inhalation might achieve better local tissue drug levels, and therefore, better clinical results,” theorized lead investigator Amir Zeki, a professor of internal medicine who specializes in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at UC Davis. This research is still in its early stages. However, if it pans out it might offer another treatment option to the more than 26.5 million Americans with asthma and the more than 16 million battling COPD. Zeki’s team is focusing on what’s known as airway smooth muscle (ASM) — tissue which lies within each airway’s wall and helps control airflow. The inflammation that drives asthma can trigger a tightening of smooth muscle, restricting airways. This “hyperactivity” of smooth muscle also plays a role in COPD, the researchers explained. Treatments such as asthma bronchodilators already target receptors on specific… read on > read on >

People who are early risers appear to be at greater risk of developing anorexia, a new study claims. This differs from other disorders like depression, binge eating and schizophrenia, all of which appear to be associated with folks being “night owls,” the researchers noted. “Our findings implicate anorexia nervosa as a morning disorder in contrast to most other evening-based psychiatric diseases and support the association between anorexia nervosa and insomnia as seen in earlier studies,” said senior study author Hassan Dashti, an assistant investigator in Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine in Boston. Previous research has suggested a link between eating disorders and the internal clock of the human body, which controls sleep cycles and affects nearly every organ in the body, researchers said in background notes. For this study, the team examined genes specifically associated with anorexia, looking to see whether people with a higher genetic risk for the disorder also tended to have a specific sleep cycle. The team discovered a two-way association between genes linked to anorexia and genes associated with waking early and going to bed early. Having anorexia could lead a person to be an early bird, and an earlier wake time could mean a person is at higher risk of anorexia. An elevated genetic risk score for anorexia was also associated with a higher… read on > read on >

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating reports of additional dangers linked to several wildly popular weight-loss drugs. In a quarterly report issued this week, the agency said it is investigating cases of hair loss; aspiration (when food or other objects get into the airways); and suicidal ideation in people who used the medications. Some of the drugs in this class, known as GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RA), include Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound. While these reports can turn out to be false alarms, previous investigations have prompted the FDA to update a drug’s labeling or call for additional study on the issue. This isn’t the first time the agency has looked into potential complications with these weight-loss drugs: Last year, the agency investigated reports of intestinal obstructions linked to the medications. Ozempic’s labeling was subsequently updated to acknowledge that risk, CBS News reported. “We are aware that, as part of those monitoring efforts, [the] FDA is evaluating several potential signals related to GLP-1 RA medicines and has posted information about those ongoing assessments on its website,” a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic and Wegovy, told CBS News. “Novo Nordisk stands behind the safety and efficacy of all of our GLP-1 RA medicines when they are used as indicated and when they are taken under the care of a licensed healthcare professional,” the spokesperson added.… read on > read on >

An electrical zap to the brain can temporarily render a person more susceptible to hypnosis, a new study shows. Participants became more easily hypnotized after paddles placed against their scalp delivered two 46-second rounds of electrical pulses to a precise location in their brain, researchers reported Jan. 4 in the journal Nature Mental Health. This increase in their susceptibility to hypnosis lasted for about an hour, results show. These findings could make hypnotherapy a viable treatment for people who otherwise couldn’t be deeply tranced, the researchers said. “We know hypnosis is an effective treatment for many different symptoms and disorders, in particular pain,” said lead researcher Afik Faerman, a postdoctoral scholar in psychiatry at Stanford Medicine. “But we also know that not everyone benefits equally from hypnosis.” About two-thirds of adults are at least somewhat prone to hypnosis, and 15% are considered highly hypnotizable, researchers said in background notes. “Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention, and higher hypnotizability improves the odds of your doing better with techniques using hypnosis,” senior researcher Dr. David Spiegel, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, said in a university news release. Spiegel has studied hypnotherapy for decades, using it to help patients control pain, lower stress and stop smoking. Up to now, hypnotizability has seemed to be a stable trait in people that changes little… read on > read on >

A tasty vegetarian salad could be the fresh meal that fuels a space flight to Mars, a new study contends. Researchers came up with the salad while searching for the optimal “space meal” that would supplement prepackaged foods on long voyages between planets. The salad contains soybeans, poppy seeds, barley, kale, peanuts, sweet potato, and sunflower seeds, according to a report in the journal ACS Food Science & Technology. These ingredients meet male astronauts’ special nutritional needs and can be grown in space, the researchers said. Astronauts in space burn more calories than humans on Earth do, researchers said in background notes. They also require extra nutrients like calcium to stay healthy during extended periods of weightlessness. Previous efforts have explored ways to grow food in space, but no specific fresh meals have been developed for future space travel, noted senior researcher Volker Hessel, a professor of sustainable chemical engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia. For this study, researchers assessed combinations of fresh ingredients that could be grown in space because they require less water, fertilizer, time and area. They also considered whether inedible portions of the grown foods could be recycled onboard a spaceship. After settling on their space salad, the researchers whipped one up and subjected it to an Earthbound taste test for four people. One tester raved about the salad,… read on > read on >

Weekly Gravy

Look Good – Feel Good – Feed Good

A little about: Weekly Gravy

All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Better Mental Health in ’24? Try Mindfulness + Exercise

Cleaning Toxins From Your Home After a Wildfire: Experts Offer Tips

Obese Kids Could Be at Risk for Kidney Trouble Later

Nicotine Study Shows Mind’s Power When It Comes to Drugs

Migraines Could Raise Crash Risks for Older Drivers

Could Inhaling a Statin Help Ease Asthma, COPD?

Could ‘Early Birds’ Be at Higher Risk for Anorexia?

FDA Looking Into New Risks With Popular Weight-Loss Drugs

Brain Zaps Can Make Folks More ‘Hypnotizable’

Here’s the Ideal Salad for Men on Long Spaceflights