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You’ve noticed your young child complains of headaches and rubs their eyes a lot. Does that mean it’s time to get glasses? It could, says a Baylor College of Medicine expert, and noticing these signs early is critical for young children because their schoolwork could suffer or they could lose their vision completely. “There is a period — approximately the first eight years of life — when the brain and the eye are learning to work together, and the visual system is still developing,” said Dr. Christina Weng, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Baylor. “During this time, parents should watch out for behavioral changes because they can be a sign of potential eye problems.” “When children have trouble seeing, they often act out or exhibit other signs of stress, and it can be challenging to determine the cause of their behavior,” she explained. “It is very helpful for parents to pay attention to what situations trigger their behavior.” For instance, does your child become upset when watching a movie far away from the screen? Or does he or she avoid reading or other forms of near-sight work or seem to ignore people or objects in the distance? Any of those scenarios could point to potential vision trouble, Weng said. Additional symptoms associated with vision loss include: Frequent headaches Excessive eye rubbing Holding a book, phone… read on > read on >

People with HIV can no longer be turned away if they try to enlist in the U.S. military, a federal judge has ruled. The decision, issued this week by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkma, said the Pentagon’s ban on HIV-positive people seeking to join the armed forces contributes “to the ongoing stigma surrounding HIV-positive individuals while actively hampering the military’s own recruitment goals.” “Modern science has transformed the treatment of HIV,” Brinkema wrote in her ruling. “Asymptomatic HIV-positive service members with undetectable viral loads who maintain treatment are capable of performing all of their military duties, including worldwide deployment.” Importantly, HIV can’t be spread through saliva, sweat, tears, group exercise or sharing a bathroom. Instead, most people get HIV through anal or vaginal sex or when sharing needles, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Antiretroviral therapy can also keep HIV viral loads to low or undetectable levels, and patients who are virally suppressed won’t transmit the virus through sex or syringe-sharing, according to the CDC. In recent years, the Pentagon’s policies toward HIV-positive Americans have come under legal fire. In 2022, Brinkema struck down the military’s ban on people who are HIV-positive from joining the armed forces as officers or deploying abroad, CNN reported. Following that ruling, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a memo that said people who are HIV-positive will no longer be automatically barred from… read on > read on >

Many young adults are experimenting with “bed rotting” and other sleep trends that have gone viral on TikTok and other social media platforms, a new poll shows. Sleep experts say these trends likely won’t do any immediate harm, but they add that people would do better to see a doctor if they’re not getting adequate nighttime rest. “It is critical to differentiate whether the reason for experimenting with new ’sleep trends’ is because of existing difficulties with sleep or unsatisfactory wakefulness, as utilizing trends like ‘bed rotting’ may actually worsen the sleep problem you may be experiencing,” said Dr. Anne Marie Morse, a sleep medicine physician for Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania. About 37% of Americans have tried one or more of this year’s viral sleep trends, according to the new survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). Members of Generation Z in particular are experimenting with these trends, with 55% saying they’ve tried at least one. “Bed rotting” has become particularly popular. It involves staying in bed, sometimes for up to a day or more, with hopes of improved rest even as the person engages in activities other than sleep, experts explained. About a quarter of Gen Zers (24%) said they’d tried bed rotting, the survey found. This trend reflects a broader shift in how people use their time in bed, experts… read on > read on >

“Red flag” laws are an effective means of preventing suicide, a new study finds. About one life was saved for every 17 times that an extreme risk protection order (ERPO) kept firearms out of the hands of a troubled individual, researchers reported Aug. 20 in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. “This analysis provides important information for making the case that ERPOs can save lives,” said lead researcher Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, N.C. “These laws do not affect private gun ownership rights for anyone who is not dangerous and is law-abiding, and they are broadly supported by people across the political spectrum,” Swanson added in a Duke news release. Judges issue ERPOs after determining that a person poses an imminent risk to either themselves or other people, researchers explained in background notes. The person’s guns are temporarily taken away. Laws allowing ERPOs are now active in 21 states and the District of Columbia. For the study, researchers analyzed ERPOs issued against nearly 4,600 people in California, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington. They used death records to determine whether these people had wound up committing suicide. Guns are far and away the most lethal means of suicide, with a 90% fatality rate, researchers said. In all other suicide methods,… read on > read on >

Women who suffer frequent migraines don’t have any increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, finds a new study that refutes earlier research. “These results are reassuring for women who have migraine, which itself causes many burdens, that they don’t have to worry about an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease in the future,” said researcher Dr. Tobias Kurth, director of the Institute of Public Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Germany. For the study, researchers tracked more than 39,000 women, of whom more than 7,300 had suffered migraines. During a follow-up of 22 years, 685 of the women were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease — 128 with a history of migraine and 557 with no migraine. After adjusting for other factors that can affect Parkinson’s risk, researchers found that women with migraine were no more likely to develop the neurodegenerative disease than those without. It didn’t matter if a woman had frequent migraines, or if she experienced visual auras prior to a migraine headache — the result always was no association between migraine and Parkinson’s, researchers said. However, more research is needed to confirm the lack of a link between migraines and Parkinson’s, researchers said. The findings were published Aug. 21 in the journal Neurology. “Since this study involved only female health professionals who were primarily white people, more research is needed to determine whether the… read on > read on >

Participation in youth sports is becoming a “haves” versus “have-nots” situation, a new study shows. Income, education and social class are determining who can play in youth sports leagues, with the children of more privileged families more likely to hit the field or court, researchers reported recently in the journal Leisure/Loisir. “Childhood social class matters when it comes to whether you have the opportunity to participate in organized sports, something which is a relatively recent development,” said lead researcher Chris Knoester, a professor of sociology at Ohio State University. “We found that privileged families seem to be leveraging their advantages to strategically and intentionally invest in organized sports participation,” Knoester said in a Ohio State news release. “That can give their children big benefits.” For the study, researchers analyzed data from a survey conducted in 2018 and 2019 at Ohio State in which nearly 4,000 American adults were asked about their sports participation as children. There’s been a significant increase over the past 60 years in kids playing organized sports, results showed. About 70% of American kids who turned 18 by 2015-16 said they took part in some sort of organized youth sports, up from slightly more than half of those born in the 1950s, researchers said. However, children from privileged families are increasingly dominating organized sports, the study found. There were essentially no class… read on > read on >

THURSDAY, Aug. 22, 2024 (HeathDay News) — There’s a strong association between a state’s policies and laws around the rights of transgender people and the mental health of transgender residents, a new study shows. “Trans individuals who were worried about having their rights taken away had significantly higher odds of experiencing depression and anxiety symptoms,” the study authors reported Aug. 22 in the journal JAMA Network Open. “Contrarily, those who knew about the state-level protective legislation, specifically protections against hate crimes, had lower odds of depression and anxiety symptoms,” said a team led by Arjee Restar, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle. As Restar’s team noted, there’s been a vigorous movement in recent years to either restrict or preserve a trans person’s access to health care and other services, depending on the state they live in. “In the last few years, states within the U.S. have advanced a record number of bills targeting the restriction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and other queer protections and rights; as of June 2024, more than 598 bills across 43 states had been introduced, with 43 passed specific to targeting trans people’s rights,” the research team noted. Not all states have enacted such laws. In Washington state, for example, “several measures have been taken to protect trans rights,” Restar and her team pointed… read on > read on >

High levels of fluoride in drinking water may dim the intelligence of children, a new U.S. government report shows. Based on an analysis of published research, the potentially controversial report marks the first time a federal agency has determined there is a link between drinking twice the recommended amount of fluoride and lower IQs in kids. “Since 1945, the use of fluoride has been a successful public health initiative for reducing dental cavities and improving general oral health of adults and children,” the report stated. “There is a concern, however, that some pregnant women and children may be getting more fluoride than they need because they now get fluoride from many sources, including treated public water, water-added foods and beverages, teas, toothpaste, floss and mouthwash, and the combined total intake of fluoride may exceed safe amounts.” Importantly, “the determination about lower IQs in children was based primarily on epidemiology studies in non-U.S. countries such as Canada, China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Mexico where some pregnant women, infants and children received total fluoride exposure amounts higher than 1.5 mg fluoride/L of drinking water,” the report authors stated. “The U.S. Public Health Service currently recommends 0.7 mg/L, and the World Health Organization has set a safe limit for fluoride in drinking water of 1.5 mg/L.” One expert welcomed the findings. “I think this [report] is crucial in… read on > read on >

People stricken with a severe case of COVID-19 have a higher risk of mental illness in the year following their infection, a new study warns. However, vaccination appears to ward off these effects on mental health, researchers reported Aug. 21 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. People hospitalized for COVID have a 16 times higher risk of developing depression, in one example provided by researchers. Even those COVID patients not hospitalized have more than a doubled risk of depression. However, the incidence of depression among people vaccinated against COVID was the same as that of people never infected with the coronavirus, results showed. “Our results highlight the importance COVID-19 vaccination in the general population and particularly among those with mental illnesses, who may be at higher risk of both SARS-CoV-2 infection and adverse outcomes following COVID-19,” said lead researcher Venexia Walker, a senior research fellow in epidemiology at the University of Bristol Medical School in the U.K.. For the study, researchers analyzed the medical records of more than 18.6 million adults aged 18 and older in England. All these records covered the period before COVID vaccination was available, and about 1 million of the patients had a confirmed COVID diagnosis. The research team also analyzed another group of more than 14 million vaccinated people, more than 866,000 of whom had a confirmed COVID diagnosis, and a… read on > read on >

Suicide rates among female doctors are significantly higher than those of the general population, a new study finds. Female doctors have a 76% higher suicide risk than average folks, researchers found. Male doctors had about the same suicide risk as the general public, but they still had an 81% higher risk of suicide compared to other professionals, according to results published Aug. 21 in the BMJ. “Suicide rate ratios for physicians appear to have decreased over time, but are still increased for female physicians,” concluded the research team led by Eva Schernhammer, an epidemiologist with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Doctors are considered a profession at high risk for suicide, researchers said in background notes. It’s estimated that one doctor dies by suicide every day in the United States, and around one every 10 days in the U.K., researchers said. A 2004 analysis found a higher overall risk of death for both male and female physicians, driven in part by higher suicide rates, researchers noted. For this new review, researchers analyzed data gathered in 39 studies from 20 countries between 1935 and 2020. A separate analysis of the 10 most recent studies showed a decline in suicide rates for both male and female doctors over time. However, the suicide rate for female doctors remains 24% higher compared with the general population,… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Does Your Child Need Glasses? Look for These Signs

Federal Judge Rules That U.S. Military Cannot Reject HIV-Positive Enlistees

Are ‘Bed Rotting’ and Other TikTok Sleep Trends Good for You?

Laws That Remove Guns From ‘At Risk’ People Save Lives

No Link Found Between Migraines, Parkinson’s Disease

Kids’ Organized Sports Are Increasingly for the Well-Off

State Laws Strongly Affect Mental Health of Trans People, Study Finds

Government Report Links Excessive Fluoride in Water to Lowered IQs in Kids

Vaccination Could Shield Against Mental Issues Following Severe COVID

Female Doctors Face Higher Risk for Suicide