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You might be talking to a real person while on Zoom, but it’s just not the same to your brain as a face-to-face conversation. New research using sophisticated imaging tools found that the brain activity of people engaged in conversation looks different from that of two people conversing on Zoom. “In this study we find that the social systems of the human brain are more active during real live in-person encounters than on Zoom,” said senior author Joy Hirsch. She is a professor of psychiatry, comparative medicine and neuroscience at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. “Zoom appears to be an impoverished social communication system relative to in-person conditions,” she explained in a Yale news release. Zoom, of course, is a popular videoconferencing platform. Most previous research using imaging tools to track brain activity involved single individuals, rather than pairs in natural settings. The researchers noted that human brains are finely tuned to process facial cues during in-person encounters. In this study, which recorded neural system responses in the two types of conversations, increased neural signaling among participants in face-to-face conversations was associated with increased gaze time and wider pupils. This suggested increased arousal in the two brains. Participants in in-person interactions also had increased brain wave activity characteristic of enhanced face-processing ability, the study authors said. The investigators also found more coordinated neural activity… read on > read on >

Federal regulators have sent warning letters to two companies for illegally selling probiotic products for use in preterm infants. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also sent a letter to health care providers warning of the risks. Probiotic products contain live organisms such as bacteria or yeast. They are commonly found in dietary supplements. These products may be dangerous for preterm infants and are being illegally sold to treat or prevent diseases in preemies in hospitals, such as necrotizing enterocolitis. Those young babies who are given a probiotic product are at risk of invasive, potentially fatal disease, or infection, caused by the bacteria or yeast in the probiotics, the FDA said. Certain products have contributed to invasive disease in hospitalized babies, including one death this year. They have been linked to more than two dozen other reported adverse events nationwide since 2018, according to the FDA. “Adverse events in any infant following the use of a probiotic are a concern to the FDA. We especially want to make clear that products containing live microorganisms may present serious risks to preterm infants in hospital settings,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release. “With today’s message, we want to warn parents, caregivers and health care providers that if these products are used for the prevention… read on > read on >

Fighting climate change could come down to choosing chicken for your burrito or using soy milk for coffee creamer, a new study suggests. Making simple substitutions to an everyday diet can reduce the average American’s food-based carbon footprint by more than 35%, according to an article published online Oct. 26 in the journal Nature Food. “What we’re looking at here is a small changes approach. What happens if somebody just changes one thing in their diet?” said senior researcher Diego Rose, nutrition program director at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. “What we found was that if you just made one change — if everybody that was eating a high-carbon footprint food in those categories just made one change on a given day — that you could really lower the overall carbon footprint,” Rose continued. What’s more, these substitutions also tended to improve the quality of a person’s diet, the researchers noted. A person might scoff at the thought of their bacon cheeseburger contributing to global climate catastrophe, but they would be wrong, Rose said. “What a lot of people don’t realize is that human food systems globally account for a third of greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. To assess how small substitutions might help the climate, Rose’s team analyzed diet data from more than 7,700 adults and children… read on > read on >

Millions of older Americans may be unaware they have memory and thinking impairments — mostly because their doctors aren’t diagnosing them, new research suggests. After analyzing Medicare data covering 40 million older Americans, researchers found that only a small percentage of expected cases of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) were actually diagnosed. The upshot was that more than 7 million cases went undetected. Mild cognitive impairment refers to problems with memory, judgment, language and other mental skills that are not disabling, but go beyond the occasional slips that are expected with age. MCI may turn up as forgotten appointments, regularly misplacing things, trouble following the plot of a book or movie, or difficulty navigating well-known places. Some older adults with MCI eventually develop Alzheimer’s — around 10% per year, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. But more often, MCI has other, often reversible causes, said Dr. Saket Saxena, a geriatrician at the Cleveland Clinic who was not involved in the new research. Those causes run the gamut, Saxena said — including medication side effects, low thyroid hormone, depression, untreated sleep apnea, uncontrolled health conditions like diabetes, mobility limitations and social isolation. “It is not a foregone conclusion that you’re going to develop dementia,” said senior study author Soeren Mattke, director of the Brain Health Observatory at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. And the fact that MCI has… read on > read on >

High triglycerides, widely known as an enemy of the aging heart, may not be as threatening to older adults’ brains, new research suggests. The study, of over 80,000 older adults, found those with triglycerides in the “high-normal” or moderately high range were less likely to develop dementia, versus their peers with lower triglyceride levels. Over six years, 3% of older folks with the highest triglyceride levels developed dementia — half the rate seen in the study group with the lowest triglycerides, at 6%. Experts stressed some important caveats around the findings, published Oct. 25 in the journal Neurology. The main one is the study doesn’t prove that triglycerides somehow shield the aging brain. “This particular study is not enough to derive recommendations and claim with certainty that changing triglyceride levels will affect future dementia risk,” said Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, a neurologist at Columbia University in New York City. The findings are still important, though, said Scarmeas, who cowrote an editorial published with the study. He noted that blood “lipids” — cholesterol and triglycerides — can be easily modified with diet or medication. So, if further studies show they directly affect dementia development, that would offer one way to lower the risk. Zhen Zhou, a research fellow at Monash University in Australia, led the study. She said there could be various explanations for why low triglycerides… read on > read on >

A variety of risks can make it more likely that someone develops Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias. Now you can add neighborhood environment to that list. A new study finds low income levels and a lack of green spaces are among the factors that can harm brain health. “Social determinants of health have a major impact on cognition, as well as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health,” said lead author Lilah Besser. She’s a research assistant professor of neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Comprehensive Center for Brain Health. “Understanding these interactions is crucial in developing interventions to improve brain health in individuals living in disadvantaged neighborhoods,” Besser explained in a university news release. Past research has shown that a type of brain damage known as white matter hyperintensities has been linked to higher risks of Alzheimer’s disease and dementias, as well as stroke. Other studies have found an increased risk of dementia in lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. This study built on that, using MRIs of 1,260 people. The participants were cognitively normal and age 65 or older. Scans were taken approximately five years apart. The researchers measured changes in white matter hyperintensities and brain ventricle size. They also assessed associations between neighborhood green space, neighborhood income and the MRI scans. “We found that white matter worsening was more likely for individuals in lower… read on > read on >

Even a little exercise can counter the harms of sitting all day, a new study suggests. Prolonged sitting raises your odds for an early death, but just 20 to 25 minutes of physical activity a day may offset that risk, researchers found. “If people, for any reason, are sedentary for most of the day, small amounts of physical activity will still lower the risk of death substantially,” said lead researcher Edvard Sagelv, from UiT The Arctic University of Norway, in Tromso. That can even include light intensity exercise like cleaning. For the study, Sagelv and his team reviewed data on nearly 12,000 older adults. They found that being sedentary for over 12 hours a day — perhaps either watching TV or sitting at a desk — raised the risk of early death, but only in those getting less than 22 minutes of moderate exercise a day. “Individuals doing more than 22 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day, the equivalent of the World Health Organization’s 150 minutes per week guidelines, had no increased risk of death with more sedentary time,” Sagelv said. This study, however, can’t prove that exercise alone lowered the risk of premature death, only that there appears to be an association. Still, the study “is a reaffirmation of our fundamental need to move our bodies if they are to reward us with… read on > read on >

Researchers say they have developed a simple blood test that can spot biomarkers associated with bipolar disorder, potentially easing diagnosis. For the study, British researchers used both an online psychiatric assessment and a blood test to diagnose the condition. Many patients had previously been misdiagnosed with major depressive disorder. “People with bipolar disorder will experience periods of low mood and periods of very high mood or mania,” said first author Jakub Tomasik, a senior research associate at the University of Cambridge. “But patients will often only see a doctor when they’re experiencing low mood, which is why bipolar disorder frequently gets misdiagnosed as major depressive disorder,” he said in a university news release. On its own, the blood test could diagnose up to 30% of patients, researchers said. It was even more effective when combined with a digital mental health assessment. While still a “proof of concept” study, the blood test could eventually complement existing diagnostic tools, the authors said. It could also help researchers understand the biological origins of mental health conditions. “When someone with bipolar disorder is experiencing a period of low mood, to a physician, it can look very similar to someone with major depressive disorder,” said study leader Dr. Sabine Bahn, a professor of neurotechnology at the University of Cambridge. “However, the two conditions need to be treated differently: if someone… read on > read on >

Getting a certain number of steps each day can help people improve their fitness, but new research shows it also can pay off in the operating room. The odds of complications within 90 days after hospital discharge were reduced by half if a patient was getting more than 7,500 steps a day before their procedure, the study found. These postoperative complications typically occur after a patient returns home. About 30% of patients suffer these problems, which can include infection, blood clots and wound complications. “I think it’s probably more an assessment of an individual’s overall fitness and their health generally,” said study co-author Dr. Anai Kothari, an assistant professor with a specialty in surgical oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “We use a lot of information to try to decide and think through surgical risk. My hope is that this is an additional point of reference that practitioners can use.” Surgeons can already better understand a person’s risk by knowing they have certain health conditions, such as diabetes, Kothari said. Knowing how active that patient is could add information about their risks. What do the results tell doctors? “[The] first is we can actually use wearable devices to give us insight into a domain of their health and fitness that we may previously not have had an opportunity to do. This can be a… read on > read on >

Health workers are experiencing ever-increasing levels of harassment and burnout in the wake of the pandemic, a new federal survey has found. Reports of harassment on the job more than doubled during the pandemic years, and nearly half of health care workers often experience feelings of burnout, according to survey results published Oct. 24 in a new Vital Signs report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The survey is the first to describe in detail the mental health crisis among health care workers that first developed during the pandemic, federal officials said. “To label our current and longstanding challenge a crisis is an understatement,” said study senior author Dr. Casey Chosewood, director of the Office for Total Worker Health at the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). “Many of our nation’s health care systems are at their breaking point,” Chosewood continued. “Staffing crises, lack of supportive leadership, long hours of work, and excessive demands and inflexibility in our nation’s health systems all must be addressed. We’re calling on employers to take this information to heart and take immediate preventive action.” The findings came from a survey on workplace quality that’s conducted on a regular basis by NIOSH. More than 13% of health workers said they had been harassed at work in 2022, compared with 6% in 2018 — before… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

This is Your Brain on Zoom

FDA Issues Warning on Dangers of Probiotic Products for Preemie Babies

Even Small Dietary Changes Bring Big Benefit to the Planet

7 Million Americans Have Mild Cognitive Impairment and Don’t Know It

High Blood Triglycerides Could Help Ward Off Dementia

Neighborhood Parks Could Help Your Aging Brain

Even a Little Physical Activity Can Offset a Day Spent Sitting

Blood Test Could Speed Diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder

7,500 Daily Steps Before Surgery and Complication Risks Plummet

Many U.S. Health Care Workers Face Harassment, Burnout