Pondering a move to a vegetarian or vegan diet? Your heart might be in it, but your genes might not, a new study says. Genetics are an important part of whether a person responds well or poorly to a vegetarian diet, researchers said. People with a specific genetic variant can see increased calcium levels after going vegetarian, which typically results in decreased calcium for most, researchers report in the journal PLOS Genetics. Likewise, another variant saw increased testosterone levels, which typically decline in a majority of vegetarians, researchers said. But a third variant could cause vegetarians to suffer a decline in kidney function, which usually improves on a plant-based diet, researchers said. “People with specific and immediate nutritional requirements related to these three traits should consider being tested for the variants we describe in this manuscript and making changes accordingly,” lead researcher Michael Francis, a doctoral graduate of the University of Georgia’s Institute of Bioinformatics, said in a news release. Francis himself was a vegetarian for seven years in his teens and 20s, but now eats meat as part of his diet. For the study, researchers analyzed data for more than 150,000 people, identifying 2,300 who followed a strict vegetarian diet. They found that in general vegetarians have low levels of cholesterol, which is good for heart health. But a vegetarian diet also is linked…  read on >  read on >

When it comes to health worries, cancer leads the way, a new poll shows.  The University of Cambridge poll included 2,000 adults who said their biggest concern is getting diagnosed with cancer when it’s too late to treat it. Seven in 10 respondents have that fear, while 52% fret about the impact of a cancer diagnosis on loved ones. “Cancer affects one in two of us and understandably induces fear in patients and their families,” said Richard Gilbertson, director of Cancer Research UK Cambridge Center. “People are worried that treatments won’t work or that side effects will be terrible, but also what their diagnosis will mean to their family.” Four in 10 respondents worry about getting access to the right treatment and 36% fretted about treatment side effects, the poll showed.  Asked what would make them less fearful of a cancer diagnosis, 6 in 10 said “knowing that the form of cancer I have is treatable.” Just over half (51%) said “knowing we are better at catching cancer early enough to treat.” “Outcomes can be completely transformed — better survival and less invasive treatments — if the cancer is diagnosed early enough,” said Rebecca Fitzgerald, director of the Li Ka Shing Early Cancer Institute at the University of Cambridge. “That’s why a lot of our focus now is on understanding cancer at its very earliest stage…  read on >  read on >

A new report finds research is sorely lacking on how chronic illnesses affect women, and it urged government agencies to do more to investigate how these diseases strike women differently. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine analysis, commissioned by the Office of Research on Women’s Health and released Wednesday, noted that women are disproportionately affected by chronic illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, depression and osteoporosis. “Although women on average live longer, chronic diseases may diminish women’s quality of life for years when compared with men,” the report authors wrote. “Chronic conditions in women contribute to substantial health care costs and have a significant effect on women’s productivity at work and at home.” However, a scarcity of research on women’s health “hinders a comprehensive understanding of the impact on women” of chronic illnesses, they added.  “Advances in our understanding of conditions like Alzheimer’s, heart disease and even chronic pain have largely been shaped by research focused on men. At best, this means we don’t fully understand how these conditions affect women — but at worst, it can mean a misdiagnosis, medical error or inappropriate treatment,” Eve Higginbotham, chair of the committee that wrote the report, said in a news release.  “This is not the first report from the National Academies to assert that women’s health is understudied,” she noted. “It is long overdue for federal…  read on >  read on >

The Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel has left children and parents with significant psychological scars, a new study shows. But families with a child who has autism have been especially hard hit, according to researchers from the Autism Center at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  “Parenting a child during wartime is a universal challenge, but our findings indicate that autistic children and their parents… need targeted mental health support that takes into account their unique characteristics,” said Judah Koller, the center’s co-founder and an assistant professor at the Seymour Fox School of Education. Within a month of the Hamas terror attack, all children were experiencing significant post-traumatic stress, the study found. Children with autism had what researchers described as a more pronounced response, indicative of their increased vulnerability.  Their parents, meanwhile, had higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress, highlighting the urgent need for mental health services for families affected by the ongoing conflict.  Researchers said their mental health struggles were two to four times higher than reported in a pre-war study conducted by the Azrieli National Center for Autism and Neurodevelopment Research at Ben Gurion University. “Our goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the ongoing effects of war on these vulnerable populations and to advocate for the necessary support services,” Koller said in a Hebrew University news release. For the study, his…  read on >  read on >

Financial stress persists even though rising inflation rates have eased, and the group feeling the pinch most acutely is in its peak earning years, a new poll shows. “Our biggest surprise from this poll is that the age group most likely to be affected or stressed by pressures on personal finances is not the group whose incomes are more likely to be ‘fixed’ by reliance on Social Security or retirement savings,” said health economist Helen Levy, of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Women and respondents between the ages of 50 and 64 were more likely than men or people over 65 to say they stress out about their budget, the new University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging found.  Also rattled by their finances: people in their 50s and beyond who said they are in fair or poor health. In all, 47% of respondents in that group said they’ve been hard-hit by inflation in the past year, and 52% have cut back on everyday expenses. That included 58% of the younger group — at a time when people typically have their maximum earnings — versus 45% of seniors. About 6 of 10 respondents who were Black, Hispanic or in lower income brackets said they had cut spending, as did 69% of those who said their physical health was fair…  read on >  read on >

Your schoolmate who acted like he was better than everyone else has probably shed some of that narcissistic behavior an adult. New research shows people tend to be less narcissistic as they age. Still, those who were more narcissistic as kids tended to be narcissists as adults. “One theory suggests that the social roles we take on in adulthood, for example as a partner, a parent, an employee and so on, lead to the development of more mature personality characteristics, including lower levels of narcissism,” said researcher Ulrich Orth of the University of Bern in Switzerland. Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance, according to the Mayo Clinic. They crave attention, admiration and seem to be extremely confident. Behind the mask, however, they’re unsure of their own worth and rattled by even the slightest criticism. To learn more about narcissism, Orth’s team analyzed data from 51 studies from the United States, Canada, Western Europe, China and New Zealand that examined how levels of narcissism changed over time.  In all, the studies included more than 37,200 people from 8 to 77 years of age. Some were followed for decades.  Researchers looked at three types of narcissism.  Agentic narcissists have a sense of superiority and strong need for admiration. Antagonistic narcissists are arrogant, callous,…  read on >  read on >