The old joke holds that fatherhood causes a man’s hair to go prematurely gray. Whether or not that’s true, being a father does appear to put men at greater risk of poor heart health later in life, a new study finds. Dads tended to have worse heart health than men without kids, based on factors like diet, exercise, smoking, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar, researchers reported in the journal AJPM Focus. “The changes in heart health we found suggest that the added responsibility of childcare and the stress of transitioning to fatherhood may make it difficult for men to maintain a healthy lifestyle, such as a healthy diet and exercise,” said researcher Dr. John James Parker, an assistant professor of pediatrics and general internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 2,800 men ages 45 to 84. Although fathers had worse heart health, the study also found they actually have lower death rates than men without kids. That might be because fathers have a better social support system, and social connectedness has been linked to a lower risk of death, Parker said. “Fathers may also be more likely to have someone as their future caretaker [i.e., their children] to help them attend medical appointments and manage medications and treatments as they…  read on >  read on >

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 >

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 >

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 >

“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 >