Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

In today’s highly polarized political environment, is it possible to stay up-to-date with the news of the day without getting totally stressed out? If not, is there a way to limit the emotional and physical fallout? Or is all that individual stress in service of a greater societal good? New research paints a complex picture with no easy answers. On the one hand, paying close attention to the daily doings of politicians does appear to have a way of making people feel consistently bad, investigators found. And those negative emotions appear to take a toll, they warn, in the form of poorer mental and physical health. On the upside, the study also found that staying politically informed appears to serve a larger good, motivating people to get more involved in important causes, through volunteer work or financial donations. “We expected people would have negative reactions to politics each day, but we were somewhat surprised by how consistent the effects were,” noted study author Matthew Feinberg, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. What’s clear, however, is that all that negativity seems to source back to a fundamental fact, Feinberg said: People take politics very, very personally. “They internalize what happens in the political arena,” he said. And the result is that all “the scandals, the incivility and the animosity so… read on > read on >

Not all prescription drugs and dietary herbal supplements work well together. It’s important to be aware of possible drug/supplement interactions that could be harmful, according to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), a part of the National Institutes of Health. The organization offered tips on six potential issues. The supplement St. John’s wort interacts with many types of drugs, according to the NCCIH. Most often, it speeds up the processes that would change the drug into an inactive substance, meaning a person taking a certain medication would have less of that drug in the body. It can also interact with certain types of antidepressants, causing harmful side effects. Concentrated garlic extracts can thin the blood. That’s similar to what aspirin does. It can be a problem during or after surgery. Another type of supplement, concentrated green tea, can interact with the decongestant pseudoephedrine. The herb goldenseal has a high herb-drug interaction risk with some medicines, according to recent research. Some medications have what’s known as a narrow therapeutic index, meaning that if the drug amount is too low or too high, it can be problematic. Some drugs with a narrow therapeutic index include digoxin, cyclosporine and warfarin. Patients taking herbal supplements such as Asian ginseng or St. John’s wort, along with a medicine with a narrow therapeutic index, should be closely… read on > read on >

Meditation might help a person’s gut health — but it takes a lot of meditation over a long time. Tibetan Buddhist monks appear to have gut microbes that differ substantially from others living near them, a new study reports. Those differences have previously been linked to a lower risk of anxiety, depression and heart disease, according to the study authors. The findings suggest that regular deep meditation practiced for a number of years appears to regulate the gut microbiome and improve health, the researchers said. The report was published online Jan. 16 in the journal General Psychiatry. Meditation is more frequently being used to help treat mental health problems like depression, anxiety, substance abuse, traumatic stress and eating disorders. It can also help a person deal with chronic pain. To see whether meditation has a deeper effect on human health, the investigators analyzed stool and blood samples from 37 Buddhist monks from three Tibetan temples, as well as 19 people living nearby. These monks use a form of meditation derived from the ancient Indian medical system known as Ayurveda. They have been practicing this meditation at least two hours a day for between three and 30 years, the researchers noted. Stool sample analysis revealed that the monks’ guts were significantly enriched with a number of bacterial strains. “Collectively, several bacteria enriched in the meditation group… read on > read on >

When birth rates fall in the United States, experts try to figure out what’s happening. The fertility rate is at its lowest since the 1970s — 1.71 per woman, according to a new study. But it’s not that young people today don’t want children, new research suggests. In fact, they want about as many as their parents had. Instead, young Americans may simply be having more difficulty achieving life goals in order to have kids, said study co-author Sarah Hayford, director of the Ohio State University Institute for Population Research. “You see a lot of things of like, ‘Oh, young people just aren’t interested in having children’ or ‘young people have better things to do.’ And we don’t find that,” Hayford said. “We find that young people are interested in having children and people want children. They’re planning to have children. It’s just other things that are making it hard to carry out those plans.” The U.S. fertility rate peaked during the post-World War II baby boom, at 3.58 in 1958 and reached a low of 1.77 in 1972. After a rebound, birth rates plummeted during the Great Recession starting in 2008 and continued to drop even after, Hayford said. For the study, Hayford and co-author Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used… read on > read on >

A Texas-based education initiative has found that enrolling children in poor communities in gardening and cooking classes may help boost their long-term health. Called “Texas Sprouts,” the program covered one full academic year and exposed elementary school children in 16 low-income schools access to outdoor gardening instruction, nutrition information and cooking lessons. Parents were offered similar classes. The end result? Among the kids, there was a notable post-class drop in the risk for becoming pre-diabetic and diabetic, as measured by lower blood sugar levels, and lower “bad” cholesterol levels. “We know that diets high in added sugar, specifically sugar-sweetened beverages, are linked to higher risk of type 2 diabetes in children, teens and adults,” explained study author Jaimie Davis, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas at Austin. “We wanted to design and evaluate an intervention that taught kids to garden and cook in a school setting [focused] on diet, obesity and type 2 diabetes risk factors,” she noted. The goal, said Davis, was to influence dietary habits by “essentially teaching kids where their food comes from and how to grow and cook with it.” The idea is that “if kids have ownership and autonomy over what they eat, they are more likely to have increased preference for that food and this preference can last a lifetime,” she added. All of the… read on > read on >

Hundreds of rural hospitals across the United States are teetering on the edge of closure, with their financial status increasingly in peril, a new report reveals. More than 200 rural hospitals are at immediate risk of closure because they aren’t making enough money to cover the rising cost of providing care, and their low financial reserves leave them little margin for error, the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform report states. Overall, more than 600 rural hospitals — nearly 30% of rural hospitals nationwide — are at risk of closing in the near future, according to the report. “Costs have been increasing significantly and payments, particularly from commercial insurance plans, have not increased correspondingly with that,” said Harold Miller, president and CEO of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR). “And the small hospitals don’t have the kinds of financial reserves to be able to cover the losses.” The COVID-19 pandemic actually provided temporary relief to cash-strapped hospitals, thanks to federal grants that helped keep them open and serving patients. More than 150 rural hospitals nationwide closed between 2005 and 2019, the CHQPR report noted. Another 19 shut down in 2020, more than any year in the previous decade. But only six more closed in 2021 and 2022, because of the financial assistance hospitals received while the pandemic raged. Now that federal… read on > read on >

People suffering from depression or anxiety may be able to help themselves by helping others — even in small ways, researchers report. In a recent study of 122 people with depression or anxiety symptoms, those who started fitting small acts of kindness into their day showed an improvement in their symptoms. And when it came to boosting feelings of social connectedness, those kind gestures worked even better than two techniques used in standard “talk therapy,” the study found. Experts said the findings point to the power of simply being kind — possibly because it helps people with mental health symptoms get out of their own heads, even temporarily. “When you have these symptoms, you can become preoccupied with your own suffering — understandably,” said David Cregg, one of the researchers on the study. So intentionally focusing on others’ well-being, and choosing to support them in some small way, can free people from that mindset for a while, according to Cregg. He conducted the study as part of his PhD dissertation at Ohio State University, and is now a clinical psychologist with the South Texas Veterans Health Care System. Past research has shown that acts of kindness — writing a supportive note to a friend or buying someone a cup of coffee — can not only make the recipient feel good, but also be a boon… read on > read on >

Cannabis use in U.S. states where recreational use is legal could be contributing to children’s asthma, according to new research. A study found increases in asthma in teens where cannabis is legal, compared to states where it remains banned for medicinal and recreational use. The study also found increased asthma in children in some minority and ethnic groups. “Our findings suggest that state-level cannabis policy could have downstream impacts on children’s respiratory health,” said study first author Renee Goodwin, an adjunct associate professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Cannabis use on the rise among adults with children in the home, particularly in states that have legalized it for medical or recreational use, she noted. “Exposure to secondhand smoke is a key risk factor for asthma among children,” Goodwin said in a university news release. “This study offers a critical first step in identifying a key children’s health concern emerging in the context of rapid, ongoing changes in cannabis policy that are unaccompanied by clinical or public health guidelines for parents.” Researchers used data from the 2011-2019 National Survey on Children’s Health. It offers a snapshot of the physical and mental health of non-institutionalized U.S. children through age 17. Nationwide, they found a statistically significant drop in pediatric asthma between 2011-2012 and 2016-2017. They saw no decline since then. Asthma rose slightly… read on > read on >

As Americans struggle to eat better, plant-based diets have become the rage, but exactly what are those and how hard are they to follow? A growing number of people have turned to plant-based eating, as evidenced by the fact that the plant-based foods market increased by 29% in recent years, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Still, even though the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine says there are many health benefits to plant-based eating patterns, making the switch from consuming a diet rich in meat to one that centers on plants can be a challenge. What is a plant-based diet? “When we talk about a whole foods, plant-based diet, we mean the majority (at least 80% to 90%) of the food should be unprocessed plant-based foods — things like legumes, fruits, vegetables, seeds, whole grains and nuts,” Dr. Urvi Shah, a hematologist oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said in a recent blog post. “Some people may end up eating minimal amounts of processed plant foods or animal-based foods like dairy or meat occasionally, but not on a regular basis,” she added. Fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, seeds, fish and meat that contain a variety of micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat) should be included in a plant-based diet, according to a perspective published in the journal Advances in… read on > read on >

Doctors already test seniors’ hearing and vision. Sense of smell could be added to screenings one day, according to researchers who found links between its loss and risk of frailty in older adults. “We use our sense of smell to identify the threat of a fire or to enjoy the fragrance of flowers on a spring day. But just like vision and hearing, this sense weakens as we age,” said study co-author Dr. Nicholas Rowan. He is an associate professor of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine, in Baltimore. “We found that both impaired olfactory identification and sensitivity functions are associated with frailty, which is interesting because it shows that it’s not just your aging brain at work here, but it may also be something peripheral, like something at the level of your nose that is able to predict our impending frailty and death,” Rowan added in a Hopkins news release. For the study, the researchers analyzed data from 1,160 older adults enrolled in the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project between 2015 and 2016. Participants, average age 76, were exposed to five scents to measure olfactory identification and six scents to measure sensitivity levels. Olfactory sensitivity is the ability to detect an odor’s presence. Olfactory identification is the ability to detect and name an odor. The latter relies on higher-order brain… read on > read on >