For a needed mood boost, skip social media and strike up an in-person conversation with someone instead. Face-to-face socializing boosts mood more than screen time, a new study finds. People often expect that will be the case, but they don’t always follow that instinct, according to the researchers. “These findings suggest that people may use their smartphones because they enable them to escape the unpleasant experience of being alone, or because they do not recognize or prioritize the mood benefits of social interaction,” the study authors wrote in the report published online recently in the Journal of Social Psychology. “We were interested in getting a sense of how people compare their options, both in terms of how they expect to feel and then how they actually feel after doing these things,” lead author Christina Leckfor, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia in Athens, said in a university news release. For the study, the researchers divided participants into four groups. Two groups predicted how they would feel about different actions, and two groups completed the assigned actions. All of the groups then ranked options from most to least enjoyable. They also used a scale to rate how likely they were to experience a positive or negative emotion from a task. When given three options — using a smartphone, sitting alone or talking to a…  read on >  read on >

Using both tobacco and marijuana is tied to significantly higher odds for depression and anxiety, a new study suggests. Among nearly 54,000 U.S. adults, those who used both substances experienced anxiety or depression at nearly twice the rate of nonusers, researchers found. “Smoking weed and tobacco does not help to deal with anxiety and depression, and may exacerbate mental health issues in the long run,” said lead researcher Nhung Nguyen, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. More research addressing the use of tobacco and cannabis is needed to understand effective prevention and treatment efforts for this “emerging public health issue,” Nguyen added. Co-use of marijuana and tobacco is increasing nationwide as more states legalize cannabis, the researchers noted, suggesting this could set the stage for mental health issues. “Coordinating tobacco and cannabis cessation with mental health treatment may be beneficial for people with co-use of tobacco and cannabis,” Nguyen said. “In addition, screening for use of tobacco and cannabis should be implemented in mental health treatment settings.” Why the combination of tobacco and marijuana might cause depression and anxiety isn’t clear. “The interaction between tobacco and cannabis on health in general and on mental health in particular is not fully understood,” Nguyen said. Moreover, this study can’t prove that the combination of tobacco and pot causes depression and anxiety,…  read on >  read on >

A healthy lifestyle — especially getting enough sleep — may offer substantial protection against depression, new research suggests. The study, of more than 287,000 British adults, found that several lifestyle factors seemed to curb the risk of developing depression over the next nine years. Among them were eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, staying socially active, not smoking and — most importantly — regularly having a good night’s sleep. Each healthy habit mattered on its own, the study found. People who exercised had a lower risk of future depression than couch potatoes did, for example. But the more good habits, the better: Study participants who adhered to at least five of seven healthy habits had a 57% lower risk of depression, versus those who followed none or only one. Major depression is a complex disease, with genetic vulnerability playing a key role. And one of the important findings in this study, the researchers said, was that a healthy lifestyle benefitted people, regardless of the genetic cards they’ve been dealt. “Lifestyle has a strong protective role across different levels of genetic risk for depression,” said study author Christelle Langley, a research associate at the University of Cambridge. The findings, published Sept. 11 in the journal Nature Mental Health, are based on data from the UK Biobank. It’s a huge research project collecting health and genetic…  read on >  read on >

Air pollution has long been known to harm the heart and lungs, but new research suggests it might also raise the risk of breast cancer. Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) discovered that the largest increases in breast cancer incidence were among women who, on average, had higher levels of particulate matter pollution (PM2.5) near their home in the years before enrolling in the study. Particulate matter is released through motor vehicle exhaust, burning oil or coal, wood smoke/vegetation burning and industrial emissions. The particles are small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs. “We observed an 8% increase in breast cancer incidence for living in areas with higher PM2.5 exposure. Although this is a relatively modest increase, these findings are significant given that air pollution is a ubiquitous exposure that impacts almost everyone,” study author Alexandra White, head of the Environment and Cancer Epidemiology Group at NIEHS, said in an institute news release. “These findings add to a growing body of literature suggesting that air pollution is related to breast cancer.” For the study, the researchers used data from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, which enrolled more than 500,000 men and women between 1995 and 1996 in California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina and Louisiana, as well as in the…  read on >  read on >