That beautiful park you walk through could be hiding dangerous levels of lead. So, too, could the soil under the play equipment where your children slide and swing. New research in the United States finds that urban parks built on sites where waste was incinerated could be hotspots for lead. “We found that city parks and playgrounds built on the site of a former waste incinerator can still have greatly elevated levels of lead in their surface soils many decades after the incinerator was closed,” study co-author Daniel Richter, a professor of soils at Duke University School of the Environment, said in a university news release. Lead exposure has been linked to potential long-term health problems, especially in children. It can affect the brain and nervous system, slow growth and development, and cause learning and behavioral problems. Cities across the United States and Canada burned trash in municipal incinerators for decades. Most were closed in the 1970s because of pollution concerns. To study whether this led to continued soil contamination in land repurposed as parks, the researchers collected and analyzed surface soil samples from three city parks in Durham, N.C. The sites held incinerators that closed in the early 1940s. Samples collected from a two-acre section of one park had lead levels over 2,000 parts per million. That’s more than five times higher than the…  read on >  read on >

A new study is adding to evidence that the party drug “ecstasy” can boost the benefits of talk therapy for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In a clinical trial, researchers found that three months of talk therapy, assisted by carefully monitored doses of ecstasy (MDMA), worked significantly better than therapy alone. Of 52 patients who completed MDMA-assisted therapy, about 87% were considered responders. That meant they had meaningful reductions in the recurring nightmares, flashbacks, crippling anxiety and other symptoms that plague people with PTSD. In fact, 71% no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis by the study’s end. That compared with a rate of 48% among the 42 patients given talk therapy plus a placebo. Experts said the findings, published Sept. 14 in the journal Nature Medicine, offer more evidence that MDMA-assisted therapy is a “real” treatment for PTSD. “It’s not a panacea,” cautioned lead researcher Jennifer Mitchell, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. For one, not everyone responds to the approach. And a big unanswered question, Mitchell said, is how long do the benefits last after therapy has ended? MDMA gained a bad reputation related to its use as a party drug, where it’s better known as ecstasy or molly. Its intoxicating effects include feelings of well-being, empathy and emotional openness. But the psychiatry field has long…  read on >  read on >

Everyday products used for cleaning or freshening the air may release hundreds of hazardous volatile organic compounds, according to new research. Both conventional and “green” products emitted these VOCs in an analysis by the Environmental Working Group, though the green cleaners had less of them. “This study is a wake-up call for consumers, researchers and regulators to be more aware of the potential risks associated with the numerous chemicals entering our indoor air,” said lead research Alexis Temkin, a senior toxicologist at EWG. “Our findings emphasize a way to reduce exposure to hazardous VOCs — by selecting products that are ‘green,’ especially those that are ‘green’ and ‘fragrance-free,’” she said in an EWG news release. In all, scientists tested 30 cleaning products. They included a mix of multipurpose and glass cleaners, as well as air fresheners. The analysis detected 530 unique VOCs, including 193 with the potential to cause health harms such as respiratory system damage, increased cancer risk and developmental and reproductive problems. While VOCs affect both indoor and outdoor air, their impact inside is much greater, according to the study. Their effect on indoor air is two to five times more than that on outdoor air, and possibly as much as 10 times more, researchers said. Some products emit VOCs for days, weeks or even months. On average, products labeled green emitted about…  read on >  read on >

A lot of older adults have digestive diseases that can be debilitating. They can also be linked to loneliness and depression, a new study says. “These conditions are very common in ambulatory care,” said gastroenterologist Dr. Shirley Cohen-Mekelburg, who specializes in problems like inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis at University of Michigan Medicine. While there has been a greater emphasis on figuring out why so many Americans are developing digestive diseases, current approaches often fail to consider the impact of psychosocial factors, Cohen-Mekelburg said. “As physicians, it’s important for us to pay attention to psychosocial factors involved in the lives of our patients, but they often go overlooked,” she said in a Michigan Medicine news release. “These factors have the potential to significantly impact gastrointestinal health, and they also play a crucial role in the overall well-being of our patients.” A team of gastroenterologists and hepatologists (specialists in the liver, gallbladder and pancreas) examined rates of loneliness, depression and social isolation in older adults both with and without digestive diseases and “wanted to quantify these numbers with self-reported rates of poor health,” Cohen-Mekelburg said. They used data from 2008 to 2016 from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, which has a representative sample of about 20,000 people ages 50 and up and their spouses. Cohen-Mekelburg noted that loneliness is subjective…  read on >  read on >

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 >