Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

A new study harnesses the power of mindfulness to help overanxious people calm themselves — and the benefit may equal the use of an antidepressant, according to researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Olga Cannistraro said practicing mindfulness certainly helped her. “There was something excessive about the way I responded to my environment,” she explained. Cannistraro, now 52, decided to join a study on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for anxiety disorders 10 years ago. The study was led by Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, who directs the Anxiety Disorders Research Program at Georgetown. MBSR “gave me the tools to spy on myself,” Cannistraro explained in a center news release. “Once you have awareness of an anxious reaction, then you can make a choice for how to deal with it. It’s not like a magic cure, but it was a lifelong kind of training. Instead of my anxiety progressing, it went in the other direction and I’m very grateful for that.” The latest study by Hoge’s team seems to confirm those earlier, positive results. Published Nov. 9 in JAMA Psychiatry, the study recruited 276 people with anxiety disorder who were seeking treatment at hospitals in Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C. All were offered either the SSRI antidepressant escitalopram (brand name Lexapro, commonly used to treat anxiety) or eight weeks of MBSR. The mindfulness… read on > read on >

THURSDAY, Nov. 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) – Getting vaccinated for COVID-19 while pregnant provides higher levels of antibodies for both mom and baby than catching the virus does, a new study finds. When pregnant women received one of the two available mRNA vaccines, researchers found that the women had 10-fold higher antibody concentrations than those who were infected naturally. The research team from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania detected antibodies as early as 15 days after the women’s first dose of the vaccine. “These findings suggest that COVID-19 vaccination not only provides robust protection for mothers during pregnancy — it also provides higher concentrations of antibodies to babies than COVID-19 infection,” said first study author Dr. Dustin Flannery, an attending neonatologist at CHOP. “Given that pregnancy is a risk factor for severe COVID-19, this study suggests pregnant people should prioritize getting vaccinated to protect themselves and their babies,” he said in a hospital news release. The researchers studied these questions by analyzing data from patients who gave birth between Aug. 9, 2020, and April 25, 2021, at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. The team members chose these dates because they found it easier to determine the origin of a patient’s antibodies. Vaccines were not widely available during part of this time frame, becoming available in December 2020. Boosters were not widely… read on > read on >

In an advance in treating spinal cord injuries, researchers have pinpointed nerve cells that are key to allowing people with paralysis to walk again. The findings come, in part, from nine patients involved in an ongoing Swiss study that is seeking to restore movement to people with paralysis. All nine rapidly regained the ability to stand and walk with the help of implants that electrically stimulate spinal nerves that control lower-body movement. Now the researchers are reporting that they’ve identified a specific group of cells in the lower spine that appear necessary for that movement recovery to happen. The hope, experts said, is that the discovery will help in refining the electrical stimulation therapy — and, eventually, aid in developing even more sophisticated ways to restore complex movement to people with paralysis. In the United States alone, as many as 450,000 people are living with a spinal cord injury, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Just over half of those injuries are in people younger than 30, most of whom are male — with traffic accidents or violence often to blame. Spinal cord injuries essentially cut off communication between the brain and the spinal nerves located below the level of the injury. But those nerve cells are not useless — just offline. And for years, researchers have been studying epidural electrical stimulation (EES)… read on > read on >

Women tend to be better able than men to recover from kidney injury, but why? Apparently women have an advantage at the molecular level that protects them from a form of cell death that occurs in injured kidneys, a new study in mice has discovered. “Kidney disease afflicts more than 850 million people worldwide every year, so it’s important to understand why female kidneys are more protected from these acute and chronic injuries,” said study author Dr. Tomokazu Souma. He is an assistant professor in the department of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, N.C. “Our study is a step toward identifying the causes, and suggests that this female resilience could be therapeutically harnessed to improve kidney repair in both sexes,” Souma said in a Duke Health news release. In the study, researchers looked at a form of cell death called ferroptosis, which is dependent on iron and oxidative stress, and has been identified as a key player in kidney diseases. The researchers used a special type of RNA analysis on mice. They found that being female conferred striking protection against ferroptosis through a particular pathway called nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor 2 (NRF2). This NRF2 is highly active in females. In males, the sex hormone testosterone reduces NRF2 activity and that promotes ferroptosis and undermines cell resiliency in kidney injury. The… read on > read on >

Mindfulness is a centuries-old practice that’s become trendy in recent years — and a new study now says it can help your heart health. Training in mindfulness can help people better manage their high blood pressure by helping them stick to healthy lifestyle changes, a new clinical trial reports. An eight-week customized mindfulness program helped people lower their systolic blood pressure by nearly 6 points during a six-month follow-up period, researchers found. That was significantly better than the 1.4-point reduction that occurred in people undergoing usual blood pressure care, researchers said during a presentation Sunday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting, in Chicago. Such research is considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. The results could be relevant to a patient’s health, given that previous studies have found that a 5-point drop in systolic pressure translates to a 10% lower risk of heart attack and stroke, said lead researcher Eric Loucks, director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University. “If we can train people in mindfulness skills and then apply those skills to people’s relationships with the things that we know influence blood pressure — like physical activity or diet or antihypertensive medication adherence or alcohol consumption — we might be able to boost the effects” of their prescribed blood pressure control plan, Loucks said. For example, in this study participants armed with… read on > read on >

Folks taking dietary supplements intended to help their heart health are just wasting their money, a new clinical trial suggests. Six supplements widely promoted as heart-healthy — fish oil, cinnamon, garlic, turmeric, plant sterols and red yeast rice — didn’t do a thing to lower “bad” low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol or improve heart health, researchers found. “Compared to placebo, none of the supplements had a significant decrease in LDL cholesterol,” said lead researcher Dr. Luke Laffin, co-director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Blood Pressure Disorders. In fact, two of the supplements made matters worse, Laffin said during a presentation on the findings Sunday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting, in Chicago. The study findings were published Nov. 6 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The garlic supplement actually increased LDL cholesterol by nearly 8%, while plant sterols decreased “good” high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels by more than 7%, the results showed. The clinical trial also demonstrated that statins are incredibly effective in lowering cholesterol. A low dose of cholesterol-lowering rosuvastatin (Crestor) prompted, on average, a nearly 38% decrease in bad LDL cholesterol, Laffin said. “Every participant randomized to rosuvastatin had at least an 18.2% reduction in LDL cholesterol, with half receiving over 40% reduction in LDL cholesterol,” Laffin said. “Whereas with all the supplements and placebo, you might as well… read on > read on >

Adult cancer survivors, particularly those who have undergone chemotherapy, have an increased risk for serious pelvic and vertebral fractures, new research shows. “These findings are important as the number of cancer survivors living in the United States is projected to rise to 26.1 million by 2040. Research like this seeks ways for cancer survivors to have a better quality of life after their diagnosis,” said study lead author Erika Rees-Punia. She is a behavioral and epidemiology researcher at the American Cancer Society. “Fractures of the pelvis and vertebrae are more than just broken bones — they are serious and costly,” Rees-Punia added in a society news release. The researchers analyzed data from the Cancer Prevention Study-II Nutrition Cohort linked to Medicare claims from 1997 to 2017. Of about 92,400 participants they assessed, more than 12,900 had had a frailty-related bone fracture. Investigators compared that group to people without a history of cancer. Cancer survivors who were more recently diagnosed within five years with an advanced stage cancer had the highest risk of fracture compared to those with no previous cancer. Vertebral and pelvic fractures drove this higher risk. Survivors who received chemotherapy were more likely to have a fracture compared to survivors with no past chemotherapy. Researchers found this association was stronger within five years of diagnosis but was still suggestive even after the five-year… read on > read on >

Routine eye checks can help ensure seniors know if they’re developing any age-related vision issues. An expert from Baylor College of Medicine spells out what seniors need to know. “Don’t blame vision issues on just aging eyes. Get your eyes checked out because it can be a more serious issue that can be treated,” said Dr. Sumitra Khandelwal, associate professor of ophthalmology at Baylor. “If you wait too long, there may not be ability to treat it.” Among the issues is dry eye. As the skin gets drier with age, so do eyes. Artificial tears can help. “If your skin is dry and you wait until it’s very papery to put lotion on it, it won’t help as much as if you put lotion on the skin daily to prevent dryness — the same goes for your eyes. As you get older, you notice dryness and irritation. This is when you should start using artificial tears,” Khandelwal said in a college news release. Artificial tears are available as over-the-counter drops, ointments and prescription eye drops. It’s also possible to get a prescription medication to reduce eye inflammation and increase tear production, Khandelwal said. Catching problems early is important. Otherwise, the dry eye can become so advanced it may not be treatable. Cataracts are one of the most common age-related eyesight issues. With these, the clear… read on > read on >

In a finding that suggests more Americans than ever are struggling with their sight as they get older, researchers report that nearly 20 million adults have age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Broken down, about 18.3 million people aged 40 and up had an early stage of the condition in 2019, while almost 1.5 million people had late-stage AMD. “There haven’t been many new examination-based studies of the prevalence of AMD, and the only nationally representative data on AMD were last collected in 2008. So, this limits the ability of researchers to update the estimates,” said study author David Rein, director of the public health analytics program at NORC at the University of Chicago. “I think a strength of our study is our use of other data sources such as Medicare claims and population data from the Census Bureau to create contemporary estimates.” AMD is one of the leading causes of blindness in the United States. It is characterized by intermediate-sized drusen, which are deposits under the retina, and retinal pigment epithelium abnormalities. It affects the macula, which is part of the retina that controls sharp, straight-ahead vision, according to the U.S. National Eye Institute. The condition comes in two forms: Dry AMD involves the thinning of the macula, while wet AMD is less common and causes faster vision loss. With wet AMD, abnormal blood vessels grow… read on > read on >

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed limiting the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to minimally addictive levels, but there’s been concern that the drop in nicotine could exacerbate anxieties in smokers who might already battle mood issues. However, a new study shows that while cigarettes with nicotine at 5% of the normal dose can help anxious or depressed smokers quit, they do so without adding to mood or anxiety problems that led them to smoke in the first place. “There do not appear to be any concerning, unintended consequences of having to switch to very low nicotine cigarettes,” said lead researcher Jonathan Foulds, a professor of public health sciences and psychiatry at Penn State University School of Medicine. “On the contrary, it appears that the result is that smokers feel less addicted to their cigarettes and more able to quit smoking when offered relatively brief assistance with follow-up appointments plus nicotine replacement therapy,” he said. Smokers with mood and anxiety disorders showed no signs of “over-smoking” the very low-nicotine cigarettes, nor was there any sign that switching to them made their mental health worse, Foulds said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has proposed limiting the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to minimally addictive levels. Doing so could not only lessen addiction, but also reduce exposure to toxic substances and increase the odds… read on > read on >