Police killings of unarmed Black people are robbing the Black community of a precious commodity – sleep. Black adults across the United States suffer from sleep problems after they’re exposed to news of killings that occur during police encounters, a new study published Feb. 5 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine finds. Specifically, Black adults experienced increases in short sleep, lasting fewer than seven hours a night, and very short sleep of less than six hours nightly. “These findings show that poor sleep health is another unfortunate byproduct of exposure to these tragic occurrences,” said lead researcher Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani, an associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “Exposure of Black Americans to police violence — which disproportionately effects Black individuals — adversely impacts sleep health of these individuals, a critical keystone that further impacts our mental, physical and emotional well-being,” Venkataramani added in a university news release. For the study, researchers analyzed changes in sleep duration tracked by two separate federal surveys, and tied those changes to data on officer-involved killings around the nation. Results showed that about 46% of Black adults reported short sleep versus 33% of white respondents. For very short sleep, the numbers were 18.4% for Black adults and 10.4% for whites. Researchers speculated that awareness of the deaths…  read on >  read on >

If you’re over 65, you likely struggle sometimes to hear conversations clearly, but ignoring that may prompt even more serious health problems, experts say. If left unchecked, hearing loss can lead to social isolation and depression — two conditions known to raise dementia risk, said Dr. Leah Ross, a physician in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at Penn State Health’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. Hearing impairment is the third most common chronic condition faced by older adults, Ross said. Yet, only 20% of these folks have had a hearing test in the past five years, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. While more than half of adults acknowledge they struggle with hearing problems, only 11% have sought treatment. “A lot of times, people are suffering with hearing impairment for years before they even say anything to their doctors,” Ross noted in a Penn State news release. The good news? “It is a modifiable risk factor,” Ross said. “There’s something we can do about it.” What’s missed by not treating hearing loss is what it can trigger, Ross explained. In her practice, she often sees this familiar scenario: An older adult with hearing loss discovers his or her hearing has declined to the point where they have trouble understanding conversations. They start to skip social events and stay at home, as their world shrinks and…  read on >  read on >

Accessing mental health care via telehealth boomed during the pandemic, and it continues to be a valuable resource for patients. However, it could still be tough to find, depending on the clinics available in your area, new research finds. “We found considerable variation in the types of services telehealth offered by mental health clinics across the U.S.,” said study author Jonathan Cantor, a policy researcher at RAND Corp., a nonprofit research organization. His team published its findings, based on a “secret shopper” study, in the Feb. 2 issue of JAMA Health Forum. Between late 2022 and March 2023, Cantor and his colleagues tried phoning more than 1,900 outpatient mental health treatment facilities treating adults across the United States. For more than 500 clinics called, the researchers failed to reach anyone. “The fact that we could not reach anyone at one in five facilities suggests that many people may have trouble reaching a clinic to inquire about mental health care,” Cantor noted in a RAND news release. Of the remaining 1,404 clinics that did have someone respond to the “secret shopper” queries, 87% said they were accepting new patients and 80% said they offered telehealth services. Those services varied in terms of how they were offered. For example, about half of clinics offering telehealth said it was available via video appointments only, 5% said it was…  read on >  read on >

Even mild cases of COVID can trigger insomnia in most people, a new study reports. About three out of four people with mild COVID (76%) reported experiencing insomnia following their illness. Further, nearly one in four (23%) said they’d experienced severe insomnia, according to results published Feb. 5 in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. “If you experience insomnia after COVID-19, don’t think that is normal,” said lead researcher Huong Hoang, head of the surgical nursing unit at Phenikaa University in Vietnam. For the study, Hoang and colleagues surveyed more than 1,000 adults who’d been diagnosed with COVID but did not require hospitalization. The surveys were conducted between June and September 2022. Half of the participants said they woke more often in the night. A third said they found it harder to fall asleep, had worse sleep and slept for less time. The severity of COVID infection did not seem linked with the severity of insomnia, researchers noted. Although COVID patients without symptoms scored lower on an insomnia index, the difference was not statistically significant. There were two groups of patients who did appear more likely to have insomnia following COVID — people with a preexisting chronic condition and people who scored highly for symptoms of depression or anxiety. Both of those groups had a higher rate of insomnia than the rest of the COVID…  read on >  read on >