The latest national data show that when it comes to suicide, Americans are increasingly resorting to firearms as their method of choice.  An analysis by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that of the nearly 50,000 suicides recorded in the United States in 2022, more than half (27,000) involved a gun.   Gun-related suicides have been on the rise over the past two decades, but they jumped by 11% during the pandemic, reported a team led by Wojciech Kaczkowski, of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.  “The persistent upward trend in firearm suicide rates since 2020 across all racial and ethnic groups, coupled with unprecedented high rates during 2022, highlight the need for continuing prevention efforts,” the researchers said in their report. In sheer numbers, white Americans suffered the highest death toll from gun suicide, the report found. But the rate at which guns are being used in suicides is rising fastest among minorities, Kaczkowski’s group noted. For example, while the rate of suicides by firearm rose by 9% among white Americans between 2019 and 2022, it rose by 28% among Hispanic Americans, 42% among Black Americans and 66% among American Indians/Alaska Natives, the study found. Why the sharp rise? Unemployment pressures during the pandemic and lack of access to mental health care may have played a…  read on >  read on >

Teens glued to Instagram, TikTok and other social media are more likely to drink, take drugs, smoke and engage in risky sexual behaviors, a new review warns. For example, spending at least two hours a day on social media doubled the odds of alcohol consumption, compared with less than two hours daily use, researchers report in the Nov. 29 issue of BMJ. The results show that teens are particularly susceptible to social media depictions of risky health behaviors like alcohol use or unhealthy eating, the investigators said. “Experimental and risk-taking behaviors are an inherent part of adolescence,” the team concluded in a journal news release. “However, as safeguards for a digital world are still evolving, precaution across academic, governmental, health and educational sectors may be warranted before the risks of adolescents’ use of social media is fully understood.” For the review, researchers analyzed more than 250 social media measures reported in 73 studies conducted between 1997 and 2022, involving 1.4 million kids ages 10 to 19. The pooled data showed that frequent or daily social media use is associated with a 48% increased risk of alcohol consumption, a 28% increased risk of drug use and an 85% increased risk of smoking, compared to infrequent surfing of social media. Social media seems to have an influence over teens’ sexual choices as well. Frequent or daily social…  read on >  read on >

Women in a Chinese study who sat for more than six hours each day faced substantially higher odds of developing uterine fibroids before menopause, a new study has found. Overall, more sedentary women had double the risk of developing the often painful and harmful uterine growths prior to menopause, say a team led by Dr. Qiong Meng , of Kunming Medical University in Kunming, China. Why the link? Obesity linked to a ‘couch potato’ lifestyle could be one factor, since “studies have shown that obesity is a risk factor for uterine fibroids,” Meng’s group noted. Sedentary lifestyles and obesity are also tied to rising levels of circulating estrogen, as well as other hormones known to contribute to fibroids, the team added. Finally, being sedentary can also help lead to deficiencies in vitamin D — yet another risk factor for these growths. The findings were published Nov. 29 in the journal BMJ Open. According to the study team, uterine fibroids are benign tumors that are exceedingly common among women. They sometimes cause no symptoms, but in many cases can trigger “abnormal bleeding, pain in the pelvic and abdominal organs, adverse reproductive outcomes of infertility,” the researchers noted. Sometimes fibroids become so severe that a hysterectomy is advised. In the new study, Meng’s team analyzed data on over 6,600 women from across China who were between the…  read on >  read on >

THURSDAY, Nov. 30, 2023 (Healthday News) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it plans to require the removal of all lead pipes from the country’s water systems. The proposed rule, an ambitious effort that will cost up to $30 billion over the next decade, would affect about 9 million pipes that send water to homes in countless communities across the United States. “Lead in drinking water is a generational public health issue, and EPA’s proposal will accelerate progress towards President Biden’s goal of replacing every lead pipe across America once and for all,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in an agency news release. “With collaboration and the focused actions proposed today, EPA is delivering on our charge to protect all Americans, especially communities of color, that are disproportionately harmed by lead in drinking water systems.” Utility companies will be expected to cover most of the cost of pipe replacements, but there is $15 billion available in the 2021 infrastructure law to help them pay for it, the agency noted. The proposal “is grounded in the best available science and successful practices utilized by drinking water systems to protect children and adults from lead in drinking water,” added EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox. “Cities like Newark, N.J., Benton Harbor, Mich., and Green Bay, Wisc. have all successfully gotten the lead out of their water…  read on >  read on >

Elevated levels of thyroid hormone appear to harm the aging brain, increasing seniors’ risk of dementia or other cognitive disorders, a new study finds. High levels of thyroid hormone — a condition called thyrotoxicosis — was associated with thinking problems whether they came from an overactive thyroid gland or from taking thyroid medication, researchers found. “Our results suggest that an increased risk of cognitive disorders is among the potential negative consequences of thyroid hormone excess, a common consequence of thyroid hormone therapy,” said senior researcher Dr. Jennifer Mammen, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. “Clinicians considering thyroid hormone therapy in older adults should avoid over-treatment by using age-appropriate treatment strategies,” Mammen added in a university news release. Some prior studies have suggested that high thyroid levels were associated with an increased risk of cognitive disorder, but those results have been mixed, researchers said. Additionally, those earlier studies didn’t include excess thyroid hormone caused by taking medication. Thyroid hormone is among the most common prescriptions in the United States, researchers said. As many as 20% of people prescribed thyroid hormone might be taking too much, putting them at risk for thyrotoxicosis. “Our goal was to investigate whether aggressive treatment practices … can also possibly cause cognitive harm,” said lead researcher Roy Adams, an assistant professor of psychiatry and…  read on >  read on >

Minding your heart health when you’re young could spare your brain from dementia decades later, new research confirms. Chinese researchers looked at data on more than 450,000 older Britons. They found that people who’d already been in poor cardiovascular health before they reached the age of 45 had a 25% higher odds of developing dementia, compared to those with better heart heath. “What surprised us most was the linear relationship between age of coronary heart disease onset and dementia,” said senior study author Fanfan Zheng. “This shows the huge detrimental influence of premature coronary heart disease on brain health,” added Zheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College in Beijing. The findings were published Nov. 29 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Doctors have long known that failing heart health can pose a threat to the brain, with links to poorer brain circulation and even strokes. But does the timing of heart disease onset matter? To find out, Zheng’s group analyzed data from the UK Biobank database. They looked at the medical records of hundreds of thousands of Britons who averaged 57 years of age when they were enrolled in the Biobank. About 12% of the participants had already been diagnosed with heart disease by the time they enrolled. The researchers then tracked cases of new-onset…  read on >  read on >

U.S. suicide numbers reached a grim new high in 2022. The increase was most acute among women over the age of 24, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, almost 49,500 people lost their lives to suicide in 2022, the report found, a 3% rise from the nearly 48,200 deaths recorded in 2021. That makes the 2022 death toll from suicide “the highest number ever recorded in the United States,” according to the CDC researchers. The data they presented is also preliminary, so “the 2022 final number of suicides is likely to be higher as additional death certificates with pending causes of death are determined to be suicides,” they noted. For reasons not explained in the report, middle-aged and older women appeared to be hit hardest by the rise in suicides. In absolute numbers, men are still far more likely than women to kill themselves: In 2022, 39,255 males died by suicide versus 10,194 females. However, the percentage increase in suicides among women in 2022 was much steeper than what was seen among men: 4% versus 1%, respectively, the CDC team noted. The 2022 rise among females was concentrated in those aged 25 and older. While suicide rates fell among younger women and female teens, it jumped 7% for women between the ages of 25 and 34. Women…  read on >  read on >