Gear « Weekly Gravy

Many studies have found that getting high on weed and then getting behind the wheel is dangerous for young drivers, and now new research finds it’s no different for seniors. In a driving-simulator experiment, seniors who were long-term marijuana smokers were weaving in and out of their lanes 30 minutes after getting high, Canadian researchers report. The effect was not seen when the same drivers were tested again three hours after smoking weed. However, the seniors themselves still rated their ability to drive as “impaired.” There was one silver lining: Senior tokers tended to slow their driving speed once high, perhaps because they knew they were intoxicated, said a team led by Patricia Di Ciano, a scientist at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. Di Ciano’s team noted that the percentage of aging Boomers who regularly use marijuana continues to rise. They believe that “older adults may be particularly affected by cannabis, given age-related changes in cognition,” they added. Many seniors are also prescribed medications, and the combination of those meds with marijuana could also be problematic. While there’s been lots of study on the effect of marijuana on younger drivers, the effects of cannabis on driving among seniors “remain unknown,” according to the Toronto team. To help answer the question, they recruited 31 seniors, averaging about 69 years of age, to… read on > read on >

Do you drive with the window open? Sip coffee behind the wheel? Blast the car radio and sing along? Fidget and fuss in the driver’s seat? These sorts of driving habits could be a sign that you’re getting poor sleep because you suffer from sleep apnea, a new study suggests. Folks with sleep apnea frequently employ more than three of these strategies while driving, in an attempt to remain awake and alert, British researchers found. “Our research suggests that untreated OSA [obstructive sleep apnea] patients often use coping strategies that could be surrogate markers of sleepiness,” said researcher Dr. Akshay Dwarakanath, a consultant in respiratory medicine at the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust. People with sleep apnea have breathing that stops and starts during the night, often causing them to repeatedly wake up. They also tend to snore loudly. “Up to one fifth of collisions on the road may be caused by fatigue or sleepiness,” Dwarakanath said. “Many OSA patients drive either for personal or for professional reasons, and there is good evidence to suggest that some patients are at increased risk of collisions on the road.” For this study, researchers compared 119 people with sleep apnea with 105 people without the sleep disorder. All participants answered questions about their sleepiness in general, sleepiness while driving, strategies they use to stay alert and their history… read on > read on >

Up to 9% of American teens say they’ve engaged in what’s known as “digital self-harm” — anonymously posting negative comments about themselves on social media. As is the case with acts of physical self-harm such as cutting, this “virtual” self-harm is associated with a higher risk for thinking about or attempting suicide, according to a startling new study. It found that teens who engaged in digital self-harm were up to seven times more likely to have considered suicide and as much as 15 times more likely to have made an attempt. “We can’t say that one causes the other, but we do know they are connected in some way,” said lead author Justin Patchin. He’s co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. But why would anyone want to virtually trash themselves to begin with? Patchin said that his own research has identified multiple motivations. Self-hatred is one, he noted, as is attention-seeking. In other cases, it can be depression, an attempt to be funny, or simply boredom. Some teens admit that it’s just their way to suss out how others might react to examples of bullying, in order to “know if they were talking about me behind my back.” To gain more insight, Patchin’s team took a deep dive into survey responses offered up by nearly 5,000 middle and high… read on > read on >

Migraines are not only extremely painful, but they also appear to pose a driving risk for seniors, a new study warns. Older adult drivers recently diagnosed with migraines are three times more likely to be involved in a car crash, researchers reported recently in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. “Migraine headaches affect more than 7% of U.S. adults over the age of 60,” noted lead researcher Dr. Carolyn DiGuiseppi, a professor with the University of Colorado School of Public Health. “The U.S. population is aging, which means increasing numbers of older adult drivers could see their driving abilities affected by migraine symptoms previously not experienced,” DiGuiseppi added in a university news release. “These symptoms include sleepiness, decreased concentration, dizziness, debilitating head pain and more.” For the study, researchers tracked more than 2,500 drivers ages 65 to 79 in five sites across the United States. A previous diagnosis of migraine did not appear to influence a driver’s crash risk, results show. But a new migraine diagnosis brought with it a threefold increase in the risk of a wreck within a year, researchers found. Medications commonly prescribed for migraines did not appear to influence either crash risk or driving habits, the researchers noted. “These results have potential implications for the safety of older patients that should be addressed,” DiGuiseppi said. “Patients with a new migraine… read on > read on >

The Vietnam war was a traumatic event in American history, most especially for those who served. However, there’s a glimmer of good news from recent research: Suicide rates for Vietnam veterans over the past four decades were no higher than that of the general population. Still, between 1979 and 2019 — the period covered by the new study — almost 100,000 Vietnam War vets did lose their lives to suicide, the researchers noted. Those tragedies “merit the ongoing attention of health policymakers and mental health professionals,” they said. Suicide has long been a concern among U.S. veterans generally. According to background information in the study, Veterans Administration data for 2022 shows that “although veterans composed only 7.6% of the U.S. population, they accounted for almost 14% of US suicides.” In 2021, VA data showed that suicide accounted for about 32 deaths out of every 100,000 veterans — double the rate of suicide seen among civilians. Did the trauma faced by soldiers in the Vietnam conflict lead to even higher rates of suicide? To find out, Tim Bullman and colleagues at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., analyzed health data for over 9.5 million Vietnam veterans. Almost all were men, and close to 2.5 million served directly (were deployed) in Vietnam during the conflict. Tracking rates of suicide between 1979 and 2019, Pullman’s team… read on > read on >

When hospitals support trauma survivors’ mental health during and after treatment, patients are less likely to return in crisis, researchers report. There’s no uniform guidance on how to offer mental health services to these patients, noted lead study author Laura Prater. Fewer hospital readmissions are a good sign that people’s mental health needs are being met at home. “Being in the emergency department is traumatic in its own right, plus returning to the scene where you first received care following an injury or assault is not ideal,” Prater said. “Managing trauma and the mental health fallout from that trauma is best done at home, where you’re in a safe location.” Prater is now assistant professor of health services management and policy at Ohio State University’s College of Public Health. She completed the study while at the University of Washington. Her team studied five years of data on patients who experienced traumatic incidents such as motor vehicle crashes, shootings and domestic violence. The first-of-its kind analysis included 171 patients who were seen at a University of Washington trauma center. They were randomly chosen to receive standard care or a comprehensive mental health intervention. The intervention had three parts: having trauma survivors describe their personal concerns; coordinating hospital care and providing enhanced mental health treatment; and round-the-clock access to support after patients left the hospital. Three to… read on > read on >

The world is being flooded with internet-driven misinformation, but there are ways to counter fake news with the facts, a new report says. These include aggressive fact-checking, preemptively debunking lies before they take root and nudging people to be more skeptical before sharing information, the American Psychological Association analysis found. The product of more than a year’s work by a panel of international experts, the report explains why anyone is susceptible to misinformation if it’s presented in an enticing way. For example, a person is more likely to believe misinformation if it comes from an apparently credible source or a group to which they belong, the report revealed. People also are more likely to believe false statements if they appeal to powerful emotions like fear or outrage, or if they paint groups viewed as “others” in a negative light. “’Echo chambers’ bind and isolate online communities with similar views, which aids the spread of falsehoods and impedes the spread of factual corrections,” the report said. And misinformation is viral – people are more likely to believe it the more it is repeated, even if it contradicts their own personal knowledge. “It is effortful and difficult for our brains to apply existing knowledge when encountering new information; when new claims are false but sufficiently reasonable, we can learn them as facts,” the report said. “Thus, everyone is… read on > read on >

It might seem that surfing the web could cause a person’s mental health to suffer, but a landmark new study has concluded that internet use poses no major threat to people’s psychological well-being. Researchers compared country-level internet and broadband use to the mental well-being of millions of people in dozens of countries, and came away with no evidence that the internet is causing widespread psychological harm. “We looked very hard for a ‘smoking gun’ linking technology and well-being and we didn’t find it,” said senior researcher Andrew Przybylski, a professor of human behavior and technology at the Oxford Internet Institute in the U.K. The team also looked more closely at specific age groups as well as gender and, again, came up empty-handed — refuting concerns that internet use might be harming the psychological health of younger people and women. “We meticulously tested whether there is anything special in terms of age or gender, but there is no evidence to support popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk,” Przybylski noted in an Oxford news release. In fact, average life satisfaction has increased more for females over the past two decades, researchers found. For the study, researchers compared data from two different reports on well-being and mental health against the amount of internet and smartphone use. They examined data on the mental health of 2… read on > read on >

About one in eight military families are turning to food banks and community pantries to make ends meet and feed their children, a new study finds. More than 13% of military families with at least one child said they used a food bank at least once in the past 12 months, according to a 2021 survey of more than 8,300 families with an active service member in the U.S. Army or Air Force. The odds of using a food pantry increased by 35% for each dependent child in the family, the results showed. “If we look at the American population in general, about half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck,” said lead researcher Catherine O’Neal, an assistant professor in the University of Georgia’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “So, it’s not really all that surprising that what we’re seeing with the military reflects the broader population.” Army families were 131% more likely to use a food bank than Air Force families, and lower-ranking service members were more likely to need a food bank than those of higher rank, researchers found. Asian, Black and multiracial families were about 50% more likely to use a food bank than White families. Previous research has shown that about one in four military families experience some level of food insecurity. Given this, researchers suspect more military families might… read on > read on >

A Mr. Magoo with thick glasses peering out from behind the wheel might not inspire confidence from his fellow motorists, but a new study shows other types of vision loss might be even more dangerous while driving. Loss of peripheral vision also can dramatically increase the risk of a car crash, Australian researchers presented in findings this week at the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s annual meeting in San Francisco. Such research is considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. Eye chart tests check for visual acuity, or the ability to see distant objects clearly, and state laws generally require motorists to have 20/40 vision or better in at least one eye to drive unrestricted. But researchers instead focused on visual field, or how widely a person can see when staring straight ahead. A wide field of vision would allow drivers to see potential hazards on either side of a car while still paying attention to what is in front of them. The research team at Western Australia University evaluated nearly three decades’ worth of data on more than 31,000 drivers aged 50 or older. More than 4,000 of the older drivers (14%) had been involved in at least one car crash, and more than half of those were experiencing some extent of visual field loss. Analysis showed that visual field loss of any sort… read on > read on >