A cancer patient’s bond with their partner can be a key factor in helping them ward off chemotherapy-related “brain fog,” a new study says Patients in a satisfying intimate relationship were more likely to resist chemo brain, the cognitive impairment that can occur during or after chemotherapy treatment, researchers report. Couples therapy aimed at enhancing a patient’s relationship quality might help folks better handle chemo’s effects on thinking and memory, researchers concluded. “Before this study, we didn’t understand that bolstering the intimate partnership before the patient undergoes chemo might attenuate their cognitive side effects,” senior researcher Leah Pyter, director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University, said in a news release. For the study, researchers tracked 48 breast cancer patients participating in a study examining links between chemo and disruptions of the gut microbiome and brain function. The patients all completed tests assessing verbal skills, attention levels and short-term memory. They also completed questionnaires reporting changes to their concentration, memory, word retrieval and mental clarity. “It was nice to be able to test these patients before they had chemo and then again after, because people can be affected by chemo and still be within normal ranges – but for them, it’s not normal,” Pyter said. Researchers also asked patients to assess their relationship satisfaction with their partners, as well as the…  read on >  read on >

Flourishing is more than just being happy, and a new global study finds some countries are doing better than others when it comes to overall well-being. Take it from researchers at Baylor and Harvard universities, who unveiled a study Wednesday that included more than 207,000 people from 22 countries and Hong Kong.  Their Global Fluorishing Study it looked at six areas of well-being: happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships and financial security, CNN reported. Indonesia ranked the highest for flourishing, followed by Mexico and the Philippines.  Surprisingly, many countries that usually rank high in the World Happiness Report, like Sweden and the United States, were only in the middle when it came to flourishing, the report showed. “The uniqueness of the Global Flourishing Study is the size: We are following 207,000 participants around the world in over 40 different languages on the six inhabited continents,” study leader Dr. Byron Johnson, professor of social sciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, said. “This gives a voice to approximately 64% of the world’s population.” Researchers plan to follow participants every year for five years to learn more about what goes into a “good life,” CNN said. One major finding? Younger folks around the world are struggling more than older adults. “Perhaps one of the more troubling features of this data is that we find when we aggregate across…  read on >  read on >

Flourishing is more than just being happy, and a new global study finds some countries are doing better than others when it comes to overall well-being. Take it from researchers at Baylor and Harvard universities, who unveiled a study Wednesday that included more than 207,000 people from 22 countries and Hong Kong.  Their Global Fluorishing Study it looked at six areas of well-being: happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships and financial security, CNN reported. Indonesia ranked the highest for flourishing, followed by Mexico and the Philippines.  Surprisingly, many countries that usually rank high in the World Happiness Report, like Sweden and the United States, were only in the middle when it came to flourishing, the report showed. “The uniqueness of the Global Flourishing Study is the size: We are following 207,000 participants around the world in over 40 different languages on the six inhabited continents,” study leader Dr. Byron Johnson, professor of social sciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, said. “This gives a voice to approximately 64% of the world’s population.” Researchers plan to follow participants every year for five years to learn more about what goes into a “good life,” CNN said. One major finding? Younger folks around the world are struggling more than older adults. “Perhaps one of the more troubling features of this data is that we find when we aggregate across…  read on >  read on >

A class of drugs used to treat epilepsy, nerve pain and anxiety do not appear to increase a person’s risk of self-harm, a major new study says. Gabapentinoids – which include gabapentin and pregabalin – have been associated with an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, researchers said in background notes. But researchers found that patients had an increased risk of self-harm prior to being prescribed gabapentinoids, and that the risk rises again shortly after they stop taking the drugs. “Our results cannot rule out a potential risk of self-harm associated with gabapentinoid prescriptions, but the association does not seem to support a direct effect of gabapentinoid treatment on self-harm because of the elevated risks observed before treatment initiation,” concluded the research team led by senior investigator Kenneth Man, a lecturer in pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety at University College London in the U.K. In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a report indicating an increased risk of suicide among people who took gabapentinoids and other antiseizure medications. To look into this, researchers analyzed health records for 10,000 adults in the U.K. who were prescribed gabapentinoids between 2000 and 2020 and had at least one recorded incident of self-harm. Results show the rate of self-harm increased by 69% in the three months prior to the start of gabapentinoid treatment, suggesting that people…  read on >  read on >

A class of drugs used to treat epilepsy, nerve pain and anxiety do not appear to increase a person’s risk of self-harm, a major new study says. Gabapentinoids – which include gabapentin and pregabalin – have been associated with an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, researchers said in background notes. But researchers found that patients had an increased risk of self-harm prior to being prescribed gabapentinoids, and that the risk rises again shortly after they stop taking the drugs. “Our results cannot rule out a potential risk of self-harm associated with gabapentinoid prescriptions, but the association does not seem to support a direct effect of gabapentinoid treatment on self-harm because of the elevated risks observed before treatment initiation,” concluded the research team led by senior investigator Kenneth Man, a lecturer in pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety at University College London in the U.K. In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a report indicating an increased risk of suicide among people who took gabapentinoids and other antiseizure medications. To look into this, researchers analyzed health records for 10,000 adults in the U.K. who were prescribed gabapentinoids between 2000 and 2020 and had at least one recorded incident of self-harm. Results show the rate of self-harm increased by 69% in the three months prior to the start of gabapentinoid treatment, suggesting that people…  read on >  read on >