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Skip the bacon and those holiday hot dogs: A new study finds eating processed red meats raises your odds for dementia. Overall, just two servings per week of processed red meat was linked to a 14% rise in dementia risk, compared to folks who ate less than three servings per month. The finding made sense to Heather Snyder, vice president of medical and scientific relations the Alzheimer’s Association, given what experts know about diet and the brain. “Prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and all other dementia is a major focus, and the Alzheimer’s Association has long encouraged eating a healthier diet — including foods that are less processed — because they’ve been associated with [a lowered] risk of cognitive decline,” Snyder said in an association news release. “This large, long-term study provides a specific example of one way to eat healthier.” The findings were presented Wednesday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Philadelphia. The study was led by Yuhan Li, now a research assistant in the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She conducted the study while a graduate student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Li’s team pored over 43 years’ worth of data from 130,000 people in the long-running Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. The researchers specifically looked at associations between… read on > read on >

In findings that suggest more young Americans struggling with mental health issues are getting the help they need, a new poll shows that nearly a third of American adolescents and teens received some sort of mental health treatment in 2023. That translates to over 8 million young people between the ages of 12 and 17 getting counseling, medication or another treatment, the survey from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found. “We’re pleased to see that more people received mental health treatment in 2023 than the previous year,” SAMHSA Adminstrator Miriam Delphin-Rittmon said in an agency news release announcing the survey. Among adolescents, the biggest increase from 2022 was in the number of those getting mental health medications: Nearly 14% of those age 12 to 17 received such a prescription in 2023, up from 12.8% the year before. SAMHSA officials said they saw the increase shows that mental health treatment is finally being destigmatized. Rates of adolescents getting mental health treatment has increased virtually every year since 2009, though the agency noted that changes in how the survey was done were introduced in 2021. In 2022, the survey estimated that 7.7 million youths ages 12 to 17 had received mental health treatment of some kind. The increase in 2023 amounts to more than 500,000 more young people getting treatment, SAMHSA noted. Meanwhile, the rate of adolescents… read on > read on >

Artificial intelligence is adding new luster to the old-fashioned EEG brain scan, increasing the potential usefulness of the century-old medical test, a new report says. The EEG, or electroencephalogram, tracks brain activity through a dozen or more electrodes stuck to the scalp. It is often used to detect epilepsy. But the test’s squiggly waves are difficult to interpret, so doctors have leaned on other, more expensive options like MRI or CT scans to spot early signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, researchers said. However, AI can be taught to look for abnormal brain patterns in EEGs that are too subtle for humans to detect, a new study says. AI-guided EEGs could one day help doctors distinguish between different cognitive diseases like Alzheimer’s or Lewy body dementia, researchers write in the journal Brain Communications. “There’s a lot of medical information in these brain waves about the health of the brain in the EEG,” senior researcher Dr. David Jones, director of the Mayo Clinic Neurology AI Program, said in a news release. “It’s well-known that you can see these waves slow down and look a bit different in people who have cognitive problems.” For the study, researchers had AI analyze EEG data from more than 11,000 patients who received the scan at the Mayo Clinic over the course of a decade. The AI was taught to simplify… read on > read on >

Almost 60% of adult Americans said they took a walk over the past week for leisure, and maybe even some healthy exercise, a new federal tally finds. Data from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey, a representative sampling of U.S. households, found that last year “58.7% of adults walked for leisure in the past 7 days,” although just who was walking and who stayed on the couch varied. Gender made a difference: While 60.5% of women said they walked for leisure, that was true for 56.9% of men. Younger Americans were more likely to perambulate for pleasure than older generations. “The percentage of adults who walked for leisure decreased with increasing age, from 61.8% of adults ages 18-44 and 59.1% of adults ages 45-64 to 51.6% of adults age 65 and older,” say a team led by Dzifa Adjaye-Gbewonyo of the CDC National Center for Health Statistics. Income seemed to matter: As incomes rose, the percentage of people who said they regularly walked for leisure climbed as well. For example, while more than two-thirds of people (67.2%) in the wealthiest tier did so, that fell to less than half (46.9%) for adults with family incomes below the federal poverty level, the report found. Similar trends were seen with education, with the more highly educated walking for pleasure and exercise more often than less-educated adults.… read on > read on >

Prior studies have found that statin meds can help lower liver cancer risks, and new research suggests that at least one non-statin cholesterol drug can do the same. A team led by Katherine McGlynn of the U.S. National Cancer Institute looked at the health histories of almost 19,000 people tracked by the U.K.’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink. About 3,700 of them developed liver cancer, and their medication use was compared to almost 15,000 others who did not get the disease. McGlynn’s team linked use of a non-statin form of cholesterol-lowering meds, called cholesterol absorption inhibitors, to 31% lower odds of developing liver cancer. Their findings were reported July 29 in the journal Cancer. The link held when the researchers accounted for other risk factors such as diabetes and liver disease status. The study also re-confirmed that statins lower liver cancer risk by 35%. But the use of three other medicines used to lower cholesterol — fibrates, omega-3 fatty acids and niacin — did not seem to affect liver cancer risk, the research showed. Risks attributed to another drug type, bile acid sequestrants, were inconclusive. “As few studies have examined the effects of non-statin cholesterol-lowering drugs on liver cancer risk, the results of our study require replication in other populations,” McGlynn said in a journal news release. “If our findings are confirmed in other studies, however,… read on > read on >

Loneliness has been a major concern in America, particularly in the wake of the social isolation imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But friendships are not in decline in the United States, a new study has found. An American adult has an average of four to five friends, similar to numbers reported in previous research from 1970 to 2015, researchers reported July 30 in the journal PLOS One. Only 2% of people describe themselves as friendless, which also is in line with data from prior years. However, many people say they’d like to spend more time with friends or have higher quality friendships, researchers found. “Americans long for greater closeness with friends; although over 75% were satisfied with the number of friends they had, 42% felt they were not as close to their friends as they would like,” wrote the research team led by Natalie Pennington, an assistant professor of communication studies at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. For the study, researchers surveyed nearly 6,000 American adults about their friendships and well-being, as part of an ongoing multi-year research project. The data showed that people often talk with friends in person, though texting and phone calls are also common. Overall, results show that the ongoing project could shed new light on friendship and well-being, researchers said. For example, they plan to consider the varying definitions… read on > read on >

Puttering around the home or office isn’t enough to protect a person from stroke, a new study says. People need to be more active to lower their stroke risk, either by exercising in their free time or biking or walking to work, results show. “Physical activity during leisure time and as transportation is becoming increasingly important now that many jobs and domestic activities are becoming more sedentary,” lead author Dr. Adam Viktorisson, a researcher at Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, said in a news release. For the study, researchers analyzed health data for more than 3,600 people in Sweden who were tracked for about two decades. Overall, high levels of physical activity in leisure time were tied to a 66% lower risk of dying from a stroke or suffering a debilitating stroke, researchers found. Those who regularly engaged in moderate-intensity exercise had a 46% lower risk of stroke, researchers found. Examples include brisk walking, water aerobics, slow bicycling, ballroom dancing or playing doubles tennis. Regular high-intensity exercise lowered risk even more, dropping it by 53%. Examples include running, swimming laps, jumping rope, fast bicycling or aerobic dancing. Further, people who bike or walk to work had a 31% lower risk of stroke, researchers found. However, household physical activity or time spent at work was not associated with any decrease in stroke. “How… read on > read on >

U.S. gymnast Simone Biles vowed to continue her quest for Olympic gold after injuring her calf in a qualifying round at the Paris games. Meanwhile, a thigh injury forced French soccer captain Wendie Renardout of competition in a loss to Canada. And the L.A. Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard was forced to sit out the games entirely due to inflammation in his right knee, which was injured twice before. While Olympic athletes can make their sports look effortless, constant overuse of muscles and tendons can lead to big-time injuries that do more than cost them a medal, according to an orthopedic expert from Baylor College of Medicine. And the risks run through all sports — from gymnastics and distance running to swimming. Biles’ comeback after withdrawing from the 2020 Tokyo games has been a major focus of U.S. fans during the 2024 games. She’s competing in four events — vault, floor, beam and all-around. “Gymnasts are subjected to tremendous physical demands, and the repetitive nature of their trainings and performances increase the risk of injuries throughout the body,” said Dr. Jet Liu, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Baylor in Houston, who detailed the most common injuries in popular Olympic sports. For gymnasts, knee sprains, strains and torn ACL ligaments can result from high-impact jumps, flips and dismounts, he said. Ankle injuries are a common… read on > read on >

The kids are not alright. New data shows a troubling 8% annual increase in the number of American children ages 8 to 12 who died by suicide, with the sharpest increase seen among girls. Suicide has now become the fifth leading cause of death among both male and female preteens, report a team led by Donna Ruch, of Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Ruch works at the hospital’s Center for Suicide Prevention and Research. Her team published its findings July 30 in the journal JAMA Network Open. Rising rates of suicides among children have set off alarm bells for experts in recent years. “In 2021, the National Institute of Mental Health convened a research roundtable series to address the rising rates of suicides in preteens, defined as youths aged 8 to 12 years,” Ruch’s group noted. They said that, until now, there’s been little good data on suicides among preteens. To help remedy that, the Ohio group looked at data for 2001 through 2022 from a major federal online database that lists the underlying cause of death for U.S. preteens. Overall, 2,241 preteens are known to have died by suicide during the more than two decades covered by the database. Initially, there was a encouraging downward trend in these deaths between 2001 and 2007, Ruch’s group noted. However, beginning in 2008, that trend reversed.… read on > read on >

Three out of five young people who die by suicide don’t have any prior mental health diagnosis, a new study finds. People are missing the telltale signs that children, teens and young adults are troubled in ways that put them at risk for suicide, researchers said. “Our findings point to the critical need to increase equitable access to mental health screening, diagnosis and treatment for all youth,” said researcher Dr. Jennifer Hoffman, an emergency medicine physician with the Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The results also emphasize the need for safe gun storage, given how impulsive young people can be. There had been no signs of mental troubles in 2 of 3 suicides involving a gun, the most common method among young people in this study, researchers found. An estimated 22.6 million U.S. children live in households with firearms, and 4.5 million live in homes where guns are put away loaded in unlocked drawers and cabinets, researchers said. “To reduce the risk of youth suicide by firearms, counseling is needed to encourage parents to store firearms in the home safely. These messages should be delivered in community and school settings, in addition to doctors’ offices,” Hoffmann said in a hospital news release. “Secure storage laws, also known as child-access prevention laws, have also been demonstrated to reduce firearm suicide rates, and more states need to enact… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Eating Less Processed Red Meat Could Cut Your Odds for Dementia

Nearly 1 in 3 U.S. Adolescents Are Getting Mental Health Treatment

AI Is Helping Doctors Interpret a Crucial Brain Test

Six in 10 U.S. Adults Say They Walk for Leisure, Exercise

Can Non-Statin Cholesterol Meds Help Your Liver?

Friendships Are Not in Decline Among Americans: Study

Doing Everyday Chores Isn’t Enough to Protect You From Stroke

These Injuries Can Keep Olympians From the Gold

Suicides Among Kids Ages 8 to 12 Are Rising, Especially Among Girls

Most U.S. Youth Who Die by Suicide Don’t Have Diagnosed Mental Health Issue