Feeding kids peanuts early in childhood can drastically reduce their risk of developing a peanut allergy, a new clinical trial reports. Children regularly fed peanut products from infancy to age 5 had a 71% lower rate of peanut allergies by the time they reached their teen years, researchers reported May 28 in the journal NEJM Evidence. The study “should reinforce parents’ and caregivers’ confidence that feeding their young children peanut products beginning in infancy according to established guidelines can provide lasting protection from peanut allergy,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “If widely implemented, this safe, simple strategy could prevent tens of thousands of cases of peanut allergy among the 3.6 million children born in the United States each year,” Marrazzo said in a NIAID news release. For the study, researchers tracked more than 500 kids who had earlier participated in a clinical trial to test exposure to peanut as a means of warding off peanut allergy. Half of the kids regularly consumed peanuts from infancy, while the other half avoided peanuts. Early introduction of peanut into their diets reduced kids’ risk of peanut allergy by 81% at age 5, researchers found. This new study followed up on those findings by tracking the kids into adolescence, with an average age of 13. The researchers found that… read on > read on >
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Light Therapy Might Help Heal Injured Brains
Near-infrared light pulsing into a person’s skull appears to boost healing in patients with a severe concussion, a new study finds. Patients who wore a helmet emitting near-infrared light displayed a greater change in connectivity between seven different pairs of brain regions, researchers report. “The skull is quite transparent to near-infrared light,” explained co-lead researcher Dr. Rajiv Gupta, a radiologist with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Once you put the helmet on, your whole brain is bathing in this light.” For the study, researchers tested near-infrared light therapy on 17 patients who’d suffered an injury to the head serious enough to affect their thinking or be visible on a brain scan. Patients put on the light therapy helmet within 72 hours of receiving a traumatic brain injury, and researchers used brain scans to gauge the effects of the treatment. Another 21 patients put on the helmet but didn’t receive light therapy. The researchers focused on the brain’s resting-state function connectivity, or the communication that occurs between brain regions when a person is at rest and not engaged in a specific task. Researchers took brain scans a week after injury, two to three weeks post-injury and three months after injury. “There was increased connectivity in those receiving light treatment, primarily within the first two weeks,” said researcher Nathaniel Mercaldo, a statistician with Massachusetts General Hospital. “We… read on > read on >
Kids in Noisy Neighborhoods More Prone to Anxiety
Children exposed to traffic and other noise in their neighborhoods may be at higher risk for anxiety, researchers conclude, while air pollution could raise risks for other mental health woes. “Childhood and adolescent noise pollution exposure could increase anxiety by increasing stress and disrupting sleep,” wrote a team led by Joanne Newbury, of Bristol Medical School in Bristol, U.K. The findings were published May 28 in the journal JAMA Network Open. In the study, Newbury’s team looked at data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which tracked the health of children born in England between 1991 and 1993. A total of 9,065 supplied data on their mental health into adulthood. About 1 in every 5 reported some history of psychosis, 11.4% reported depression and 9.7% reported anxiety. The researchers said that kids who’d been exposed to “noise pollution” in their neighborhoods during childhood and/or adolescence had about a 20% higher odds for anxiety as they grew older. Neighborhood air pollution was also a risk factor for mental health issues: Children exposed to relatively high levels of particulate matter (tiny bits of pollution entering the lungs) while still in the womb had an 11% higher odds for psychosis, compared to those who didn’t have such exposures, and a 10% rise in depression risk. The researchers stressed the data couldn’t prove that noise or… read on > read on >
Binge-Eating Disorder Could Be Tougher to Kick Than Thought
Prior studies have suggested that binge eating disorder may not last long, but a more rigorous look at the illness finds that just isn’t so. “The big takeaway is that binge-eating disorder does improve with time, but for many people it lasts years,” said study first author Kristin Javaras, assistant psychologist in the Division of Women’s Mental Health at McLean Hospital in Boston. “As a clinician, oftentimes the clients I work with report many, many years of binge-eating disorder, which felt very discordant with studies that suggested that it was a transient disorder,” she said in a hospital news release. “It’s very important to understand how long binge-eating disorder lasts and how likely people are to relapse so that we can better provide better care.” In binge eating disorder, which typically arises around a person’s mid-20s, people feel their eating is out of their control. Anywhere from 1 to 3 percent of American adults are thought to have the disorder. According to Javaras’ team, prior studies looking at binge eating disorder were either retrospective (meaning they often relied on people’s memory of their disorder). If they were prospective (following patients through time) they were often very small (less than 50 people) or didn’t include people tackling severe obesity. In the new study, Javaras’ team tracked outcomes for 137 adults diagnosed with binge-eating disorder for five… read on > read on >
Even a Small Urban Garden Can Boost Your Microbiome
A small urban garden can contribute to your health, especially if the garden contains rich soil, a new study shows. A one-month indoor gardening period increased the bacterial diversity of participants’ skin and appeared to improve their response to inflammation, researchers found. Growing, harvesting and consuming food produced in an urban garden every day could help city dwellers fend off disease, researchers suggested. “The findings are significant, as urbanization has led to a considerable increase in immune-mediated diseases, such as allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, generating high healthcare costs. We live too ‘cleanly’ in cities,” said lead study author Mika Saarenpaa, a doctoral researcher with the University of Helsinki in Finland. “We know that urbanization leads to reduction of microbial exposure, changes in the human microbiota and an increase in the risk of immune-mediated diseases,” Saarenpaa added in a university news release. “This is the first time we can demonstrate that meaningful and natural human activity can increase the diversity of the microbiota of healthy adults and, at the same time, contribute to the regulation of the immune system.” For this study, participants gardened using regular flower boxes, using plants bought off a store shelf. The crops included peas, beans, mustards and salads. A group of 15 people gardened using naturally derived and microbially rich soil, while another control group of 13 gardened with microbially… read on > read on >
Weighted Blankets May Not Help Troubled Children Sleep
Weighted blankets are trendy items, largely based on the idea that the pressure of a heavy blanket will help a person more easily slip into slumber. But they do little to help troubled children sleep better, a new study has found. There was no difference in sleep between weighted and normal blankets among a group of 30 children ages 6 to 15 adopted from foster care in Texas, according to a report published recently in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. “We were somewhat surprised to find no differences in either objective or subjective sleep variables based on blanket type,” said researcher Candice Alfano, a University of Houston psychology professor and sleep expert. For the study, the group of children were asked to use weighted blankets – between 5 and 10 pounds – for two weeks, and their normal blanket for another two weeks. During the entire month, their sleep was monitored continuously using both sleep diaries and actigraphs — a wristwatch-like device that tracks sleep patterns. The weighted blankets did not help kids go to sleep easier or sleep better, results show. Weighted blankets also did not seem to improve the sleep of children who’d been abused or neglected, researchers said. Children in foster care can have persistent sleep problems, including trouble falling asleep, waking in the night and nightmares, researchers said. “We have… read on > read on >
Are You a ‘Stress Bragger’? It’s Probably Backfiring
“Ugh, I’m so busy these days I can barely think straight. It’s so crazy.” No doubt some friend or coworker (maybe even yourself) has moaned about how stressed and overworked they are. Sometimes its fully justified, but in many cases folks see it as “stress bragging,” or “busy bragging,” signaling how important and needed the person is. In those cases, stress bragging could do you more harm than good, new research shows. “This is a behavior we’ve all seen, and we all might be guilty of at some point,” said study author Jessica Rodell, a professor of management at the University of Georgia Athens’ Terry College of Business. “When I was wondering about why people do this, I thought maybe we are talking about our stress because we want to prove we’re good enough,” she said in a university news release. “We found out that often backfires.” Instead of instilling respect and sympathy in co-workers, stress braggers often are looked upon as unlikable and less competent, the study found. The data was based on a survey of 360 adults who were told to imagine that a colleague had just returned from a business conference. These imaginary colleagues uttered a variety of statements. The stress-bragging worker said “Just one more thing on my full plate. And I was already stressed to the max … you have… read on > read on >
Moms, Even When Kids Reject Your Advice, It’s Still Helping Them
Does advising your teen sometimes feel like talking to the proverbial brick wall? Don’t fret: New research shows that even when your preteen or teen gives your advice a flat “no way,” your counsel is probably having an impact. It may simply be tucked away by your child, ready for use another day. “The kids are at an age where they’re maturing and wanting to make their own decisions,” explained study lead author and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researcher Kelly Tu. “Their immediate response may be resistance or reluctance, but the advice about how to reframe the problem, consider other explanations or think about what they are learning from the experience is sticking with them,” Tu said in a university news release. “They may need time to process and evaluate it. Maybe they didn’t find it useful in that specific situation they were discussing. But perhaps they came across new experiences in middle school and now they have some strategies to pull from their toolbox because mom gave them different ways to think about academic challenges.” Tu is associate professor of human development and family studies at the university. Her team published the study in the May-June issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. The study focused on 100 mother-child pairs where the child was in the fifth grade. Tu said her team focused… read on > read on >
Had a Joint Replaced? Your Infection Risk May Rise After Chemotherapy
If you’re one of the millions of Americans walking around with a new knee or hip, your odds for an infection in that joint rise if you ever have to undergo cancer chemotherapy, researchers report. “Given the number of people of receiving total joint replacements each year, as well as the cost both physically, emotionally and financially for those who develop an infection and may need subsequent treatment, we need to understand what factors may increase the risk for postoperative infections,” said study author Dr. Janet Conway. She’s an orthopedic surgeon at the Rubin Institute for Advanced Orthopedics, and is also head of Bone and Joint Infection at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. Her team tracked outcomes for over 17,000 patients who had undergone total knee replacement, total hip replacement or total shoulder replacement. They looked at people who’d also undergone chemotherapy within a year of their joint replacement surgery. Undergoing chemo appeared tied to a higher odds for an infection in the joint that had been replaced, the team found, compared to folks with new joints who had not undergone chemo. “We became curious about the potential effects of postoperative chemotherapy and the risk of joint infection as we saw cases in our own joint replacement patients,” Conway explained in a Sinai Hospital news release. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to comprehensively… read on > read on >
Stay Safe From the Sun & That Backyard Grill This Memorial Day
Memorial Day means firing up that backyard grill for the season, hopefully under warm, sunny skies. You can be sure to enjoy the day without hazards by taking a few simple precautions, said Dr. Mike Ren, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Watch out for rising heat and humidity If Memorial day is a scorcher, hydration is key, Ren said. “A good rule of thumb is to drink water regularly throughout the day, aiming for 12 or more cups; when in the heat, drink one cup (eight ounces) of water roughly every 20 minutes,” he advised. And stay away from substances that can rob your body of water. “Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it increases urine production and can lead to fluid loss,” Ren noted in a Baylor news release. “On the other hand, sugary drinks can cause spikes and crashes in blood sugar levels,” he added. “Prioritizing water consumption is crucial for maintaining proper hydration levels. If you want to add a little flavor, low or zero-sugar electrolyte powders and supplements can be a good alternative.” Shield your skin from the sun Folks may have forgotten the sun’s dangers as winter and spring ebb away. Dr. John Wolf, professor of dermatology at Baylor, recommends slapping on a sunscreen with an SPF of 30, and using… read on > read on >