Type 2 diabetes increased by nearly 20% in the United States between 2012 and 2022,  with age, race, income level, obesity and lack of exercise all playing a role in the metabolic disease’s spread, a new study reports. “Diabetes is increasing day by day in the U.S., and it will increase even more in the coming years,” said lead researcher Sulakshan Neupane, a doctoral student with the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “Diabetes costs around $412 billion, including medical costs and indirect costs like loss of productivity,” Neupane added in a university news release. “That’s a huge amount, and it’s only going to increase as more people are diagnosed.” Age is a major factor, with middle-aged people and seniors carrying a much higher risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers found. Seniors aged 65 and older were more than 10 times as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as people ages 18 to 24, results show. Middle-aged folks 45 to 64 were more than five times as likely to get such a diagnosis. Income and education also played a role. People with high incomes were 41% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, and the college-educated were 24% less likely. Black people were the racial and ethnic group hardest hit by diabetes, with just under 16% diagnosed with the disease, researchers said. The…  read on >  read on >

Eating red meat and processed meat can increase a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a new review finds. Regularly eating 50 grams of processed meat a day — the equivalent of two slices of ham — increased by 15% a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes within the next 10 years, results showed. Likewise, eating 100 grams of unprocessed red meat daily – for example, a small steak  — was linked to a 10% higher risk of type 2 diabetes. “Our research provides the most comprehensive evidence to date of an association between eating processed meat and unprocessed red meat and a higher future risk of type 2 diabetes,” said senior researcher Nita Forouhi, a program leader in nutritional epidemiology with the University of Cambridge in the U.K. For the study, researchers analyzed pooled data for nearly 2 million people who participated in 31 different studies in 20 countries. The study also found an 8% increased risk of diabetes among people who regularly ate poultry like chicken, turkey or duck. However, that association became weaker as more factors were taken into account, while the links between diabetes and red or unprocessed meat persisted, researchers said. The study “supports recommendations to limit the consumption of processed meat and unprocessed red meat to reduce type 2 diabetes cases in the population,” Forouhi said in a Cambridge…  read on >  read on >

It’s not a replacement for actual psychotherapy, but a newly designed app could help young adults with mental health issues lower their anxiety, researchers report. The app, dubbed Maya, “can be an accessible and impactful tool for those looking for support around anxiety. It is incredible to see our ideas come to life,” said study co-first author and app designer Dr. Avital Falk. She’s associate professor of psychology in clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, in New York City. The Weill Cornell team began developing the new app in 2019, in collaboration with members of Weill Cornell Information Technologies & Services. Maya relies on a tried-and-true form of psychotherapy called cognitive behavioral therapy. It gives folks new coping skills and shifts in thinking to better help them deal with daily mental challenges. Maya helps teach these kinds of coping strategies, and it’s targeted to young adults (18 to 25). That’s an age often rife with stress, as people transition from the family home into college and the workplace. Using a variety of videos, exercises and educational content, the app helps supply needed guidance to stressed users whenever they can’t reach a clinician for help. In a trial involving 59 young adults, most seemed attracted to using the Maya app for at least 11 of the 12 weeks of the study. They did not…  read on >  read on >

Just a daily cigarette or two before or during pregnancy endangers the health of newborns, a new study warns. Infants are 16% more likely to suffer major health issues following delivery if their mothers engaged in “light smoking” of one or two cigarettes a day prior to getting pregnant, researchers found. Those newborns also have a 13% higher risk of landing in neonatal intensive care, results showed. What’s more, these risks increase with the amount a woman smokes, and remain high even if she quits partway through her pregnancy, researchers found. These results run counter to the belief by some women that it’s okay to smoke before getting pregnant or during the first three months of pregnancy, or that light smoking is unlikely to be harmful, researchers said. “There is no safe period and no safe level of cigarette smoking shortly before or during pregnancy,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Bo Xi, a professor of epidemiology with Shangdon University in Jinan, China. Doctors “should emphasize the detrimental effects of even light smoking before and during pregnancy,” the researchers added. It’s estimated that about 1 in 10 pregnant women smokes in the United States, researchers said in background notes. Smoking during pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of preterm delivery, low birth weight and underdevelopment in the womb. However, it’s not clear how…  read on >  read on >

Tirzepatide, the blockbuster GLP-1 medicine known as Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss, cut the odds that an obese, prediabetic person will develop diabetes by 94%, a new trial shows. The three-year-long trial, funded by the drugs’ maker, Eli Lilly, also found “sustained weight loss through the treatment period, with adults on the 15-milligram [mg] dose experiencing a 22.9% average decrease in body weight compared to 2.1% for placebo,” the company said in a news release issued Tuesday. “These data reinforce the potential clinical benefits of long-term therapy for people living with obesity and prediabetes,” Dr. Jeff Emmick, senior vice president of product development at Lilly, said in the release. Tirzepatide is a competitor GLP-1 drug to semaglutide, which is made by Novo Nordisk and branded as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. Sales of both tirzepatide and semaglutide have boomed in recent years as people flock to the drugs to help lose excess weight. Tirzapatide and semaglutide work by boosting insulin release, helping to increase feelings of fullness and suppressing appetite. Both injected drugs were originally designed as treatments for diabetes, however. In the new trial, 1,032 people who were deemed to be prediabetic and either obese or overweight received a “dummy” placebo injection weekly or an injection of either 5 mg, 10 mg or 15 mg of tirzepatide for…  read on >  read on >

Bored? Zipping through online videos isn’t going to help you, a new study shows. Watching short snippets of videos or fast-forwarding through them makes people more bored rather than less, according to the results of seven experiments involving more than 1,200 Americans and Canadians. Such “digital switching” is less edifying than sticking with one video and watching it all the way through, said lead researcher Katy Tam, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto. “If people want a more enjoyable experience when watching videos, they can try to stay focused on the content and minimize digital switching,” Tam said. “Just like paying for a more immersive experience in a movie theater, more enjoyment comes from immersing oneself in online videos rather than swiping through them.”  Watching short videos on social media has become a common pastime, particularly as people spend more time on their smartphone, researchers said. Study participants predicted they would feel less bored by switching videos instead of watching them in their entirety, researchers said. But people allowed to freely switch between seven different videos within 10 minutes reported themselves more bored than when they watched a single 10-minute YouTube video all the way through. The participants found the longer viewing experience to be more satisfying, engaging and meaningful than flipping through a number of videos, results showed. Participants reported similar results…  read on >  read on >