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B vitamins. These powerhouse nutrients help your cells function at their best, protect your brain and heart, support your immune system and can even improve your mood and energy levels. This critical class of vitamins needs to be part of a healthy diet. According to Harvard Health, B vitamins help enzymes do their jobs, including releasing energy from carbohydrates and fat to breaking down amino acids and carrying oxygen and nutrients around the body. Two of the most essential ones are B6 and B12. Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) is found in many foods, but it is also added to foods and supplements. B6 is a coenzyme that helps more than 100 enzymes perform various functions, including the breakdown of proteins, carbohydrates and fats, according to Harvard Health. Meanwhile, vitamin B12 (cobalamin) is found in meats and fish. It can also be added to foods or supplements. It’s needed to make red blood cells and DNA, and it also has a role in the function and development of brain and nerve cells. What is vitamin B6 good for B6 helps maintain normal levels of the amino acid homocysteine, high levels of which can cause heart problems. B6 also supports the immune system and keeps the brain healthy. A recent study published in the journal Human Psychopharmacology: Clinical and Experimental found that taking vitamin B6 supplements may even… read on > read on >

As numerous U.S. states move to restrict transgender health care, a new study shows that such care can substantially improve teenagers’ mental health. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed transgender and nonbinary teenagers who received “gender-affirming” hormones — either estrogen or testosterone — for two years. During that time, researchers found, two-thirds of teens who’d had moderate to severe depression showed a marked improvement. Many also saw their anxiety symptoms wane and reported gains in their satisfaction with life. Experts who were not involved in the study said it bolsters evidence of the benefits of gender-affirming care — health care services for transgender and nonbinary people. That care can include “puberty blockers” — medications that put a pause on pubertal development — and gender-affirming hormones, which alter patients’ physical traits to better align with their gender identity. In the study, there was a direct correlation between teenagers’ mental health gains and the degree to which hormone therapy had given them their desired physical appearance. It’s known that compared with their peers, transgender and nonbinary teenagers are at higher risk of mental health issues, substance use and suicide. A survey last year by the nonprofit Trevor Project found that between 12% and 22% of transgender and nonbinary young people had attempted suicide in the past year. And few — one-third —… read on > read on >

Some college athletes take longer to recover from a concussion, but a new study offers them some good news. They may still be able to return to play — after one extra month of recovery, researchers report Jan. 18 in the journal Neurology. “Although an athlete may experience a slow or delayed recovery, there is reason to believe recovery is achievable with additional time and injury management,” said study author Dr. Thomas McAllister, from Indiana University School of Medicine. “This is an encouraging message that may help to relieve some of the discouragement that athletes can feel when trying to return to their sport. While some athletes took longer than 24 days to return to play, we found that three-quarters of them were able to return to sports if given just one more month to recover,” McAllister said in a journal news release. The study included 1,751 college varsity athletes who had concussions diagnosed by their team physician. About 63% of the athletes were men who primarily played football, soccer or basketball. The women primarily played soccer, volleyball or basketball. Participants were evaluated multiple times: within six hours of their injury; one or two days later; after being free of symptoms; after being cleared to return to play, and at six months. The athletes reported their symptoms daily for up to 14 days to medical… read on > read on >

When it comes to weight loss, what seems to matter most is how often and how much you eat, rather than when you eat. That’s the conclusion of a new study that focused on the eating habits of about 550 adults. For six months, all were asked to use a phone app to report both the timing and size of all their meals. “What we found is that, on average, the more meals people ate throughout the day, or the more large meals they ate throughout the day, the more likely they were to gain weight over time,” said study author Dr. Wendy Bennett. By contrast, “eating more small meals during the day was associated with more weight loss,” added Bennett, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in Baltimore. They found no link between when in the day people ate and any change in their weight. Bennett stressed that the findings do not speak to the pros and cons of intermittent fasting, a popular dietary practice that involves abstaining from eating for fixed periods of time. That’s because “we didn’t know people’s intentions,” she explained. “We really just followed everyday free-living people, without asking anyone to change their behavior, and without knowing who did or did not want to lose weight.” So, she noted, “We can’t draw any conclusions about… read on > read on >

In today’s highly polarized political environment, is it possible to stay up-to-date with the news of the day without getting totally stressed out? If not, is there a way to limit the emotional and physical fallout? Or is all that individual stress in service of a greater societal good? New research paints a complex picture with no easy answers. On the one hand, paying close attention to the daily doings of politicians does appear to have a way of making people feel consistently bad, investigators found. And those negative emotions appear to take a toll, they warn, in the form of poorer mental and physical health. On the upside, the study also found that staying politically informed appears to serve a larger good, motivating people to get more involved in important causes, through volunteer work or financial donations. “We expected people would have negative reactions to politics each day, but we were somewhat surprised by how consistent the effects were,” noted study author Matthew Feinberg, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. What’s clear, however, is that all that negativity seems to source back to a fundamental fact, Feinberg said: People take politics very, very personally. “They internalize what happens in the political arena,” he said. And the result is that all “the scandals, the incivility and the animosity so… read on > read on >

While childhood obesity gets a lot of attention, some kids struggle with the opposite issue — they have trouble gaining weight. So, how can parents know if their child is “too skinny?” While the best resource is likely a child’s pediatrician, experts have also weighed in on the topic. “Underlying health conditions can result in children and adolescents being underweight. Additionally, underweight can indicate malnutrition,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted in a recent study about the prevalence of underweight kids in the United States. Just over 4% of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 were underweight in the United States in 2018, according to the study. To help figure out if your child is too skinny, here’s what to know. Children are considered underweight when their body mass index (BMI) is below the 5th percentile for their age and gender on growth charts, according to the CDC study. If a child is underweight, the pediatrician may ask more about medical history or could order testing to check for undiscovered health issues, Dr. Gary Kirkilas, a general pediatrician at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, explained in a recent American Academy of Pediatrics article. “Children below the 5th percentile could have a nutritional shortfall — either not taking in enough calories or burning up more calories than they are getting, or both,” Kirkilas said.… read on > read on >

The key to losing weight sounds simple — eat less. Regardless of the diet you follow, dropping the pounds means burning more calories than you eat. That begs the question, how many calories should I eat to lose weight? According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, for most people, cutting about 500 calories a day is a good place to start. If you can eat 500 fewer calories every day, you should lose about a pound a week. Another easy way to figure out how many calories you should eat is to multiply your weight by 15, Harvard Health advises. That number will give you the number of calories you need to maintain your current weight. To lose weight, simply cut that number. But counting calories isn’t enough, says Samantha Heller, a nutritionist at NYU Langone Health in New York City. “Everyone wants a quick fix, but weight loss is not an overnight proposition. We do not gain weight nor will we lose weight quickly,” she said. “If you want to lose 10 pounds, one important tool is keeping a food diary,” Heller said. Keep track of everything you eat for five to seven days. Then review your food record. See where you can cut back on sweets, snacks, large portions and alcohol. Let those discoveries help you make a plan for losing weight.… read on > read on >

Not all prescription drugs and dietary herbal supplements work well together. It’s important to be aware of possible drug/supplement interactions that could be harmful, according to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), a part of the National Institutes of Health. The organization offered tips on six potential issues. The supplement St. John’s wort interacts with many types of drugs, according to the NCCIH. Most often, it speeds up the processes that would change the drug into an inactive substance, meaning a person taking a certain medication would have less of that drug in the body. It can also interact with certain types of antidepressants, causing harmful side effects. Concentrated garlic extracts can thin the blood. That’s similar to what aspirin does. It can be a problem during or after surgery. Another type of supplement, concentrated green tea, can interact with the decongestant pseudoephedrine. The herb goldenseal has a high herb-drug interaction risk with some medicines, according to recent research. Some medications have what’s known as a narrow therapeutic index, meaning that if the drug amount is too low or too high, it can be problematic. Some drugs with a narrow therapeutic index include digoxin, cyclosporine and warfarin. Patients taking herbal supplements such as Asian ginseng or St. John’s wort, along with a medicine with a narrow therapeutic index, should be closely… read on > read on >

Meditation might help a person’s gut health — but it takes a lot of meditation over a long time. Tibetan Buddhist monks appear to have gut microbes that differ substantially from others living near them, a new study reports. Those differences have previously been linked to a lower risk of anxiety, depression and heart disease, according to the study authors. The findings suggest that regular deep meditation practiced for a number of years appears to regulate the gut microbiome and improve health, the researchers said. The report was published online Jan. 16 in the journal General Psychiatry. Meditation is more frequently being used to help treat mental health problems like depression, anxiety, substance abuse, traumatic stress and eating disorders. It can also help a person deal with chronic pain. To see whether meditation has a deeper effect on human health, the investigators analyzed stool and blood samples from 37 Buddhist monks from three Tibetan temples, as well as 19 people living nearby. These monks use a form of meditation derived from the ancient Indian medical system known as Ayurveda. They have been practicing this meditation at least two hours a day for between three and 30 years, the researchers noted. Stool sample analysis revealed that the monks’ guts were significantly enriched with a number of bacterial strains. “Collectively, several bacteria enriched in the meditation group… read on > read on >

When birth rates fall in the United States, experts try to figure out what’s happening. The fertility rate is at its lowest since the 1970s — 1.71 per woman, according to a new study. But it’s not that young people today don’t want children, new research suggests. In fact, they want about as many as their parents had. Instead, young Americans may simply be having more difficulty achieving life goals in order to have kids, said study co-author Sarah Hayford, director of the Ohio State University Institute for Population Research. “You see a lot of things of like, ‘Oh, young people just aren’t interested in having children’ or ‘young people have better things to do.’ And we don’t find that,” Hayford said. “We find that young people are interested in having children and people want children. They’re planning to have children. It’s just other things that are making it hard to carry out those plans.” The U.S. fertility rate peaked during the post-World War II baby boom, at 3.58 in 1958 and reached a low of 1.77 in 1972. After a rebound, birth rates plummeted during the Great Recession starting in 2008 and continued to drop even after, Hayford said. For the study, Hayford and co-author Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

The B Vitamins: Put Them on Your A List

Hormonal Therapies Are Boosting the Mental Health of Trans Youth

Some Athletes May Need an Extra Month for Concussion Recovery

Do Fasting Diets Work? Study Finds Meal Size, Not Timing, Key to Weight Loss

Political News Takes Mental Toll, But Is Disengaging the Answer?

Is My Child Too Skinny? Advice on When to Be Concerned

How Many Calories a Day Can Safely Spur Weight Loss?

Herbal Remedies & You: 6 Tips to Safeguard Your Health

In Tibetan Monk Study, Hints That Meditating Can Alter Gut Microbes

Young Americans Still Want Same Number of Kids, Just Not Right Now