Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

TUESDAY, Dec. 27, 2022Living in an area with easy access to parks and rivers appears to slow the progression of devastating neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. That’s the conclusion of a new study based on more than a decade and a half tracking disease risk among nearly 62 million Americans 65 years old and up. “Prior research showed that natural environments — such as forests, parks and rivers — can help to reduce stress and restore attention,” noted lead author Jochem Klompmaker, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “In addition, natural environments provide settings for physical activity and social interactions, and may reduce exposure to air pollution, extreme heat and traffic noise.” To build on such observations, his and his colleagues looked at hospital admissions for Alzheimer’s and related dementia, as well as Parkinson’s disease. By focusing on hospital admission, Klompmaker stressed that his team was not assessing the initial risk for developing either disease. Instead, researchers wanted to know if increased exposure to nature lowered the odds that either disease would progress quickly. And on that front, Klompmaker said, researchers observed significant protective links: The greener an older individual’s surrounding environment, the lower their risk of hospitalization for either neurological illness. The finding could have bearing on millions of Americans, given that Alzheimer’s… read on > read on >

Stress is rarely a good thing for your health, but new research warns that it significantly raises the risk of a stroke. The study found that increased stress at home or work and recent stressful life events — like getting divorced or a major family conflict — were associated both with increased risk of stroke due to a clot, known as an ischemic stroke, and a stroke due to bleeding in the brain, called a hemorrhagic stroke. What to do to lower that risk? “Optimal approaches to managing, and preventing, psychosocial stress are uncertain. Previous studies have looked at interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques, client-led discussion, stress management, exercise regimens and anger management,” said study author Dr. Catriona Reddin, of the University of Galway College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, in Ireland. “The most effective approach may vary from person to person. It’s important that everyone has a strategy that works for them,” Reddin said. Her team studied stress around the world using data from a retrospective study known as INTERSTROKE in more than 26,000 people in 32 countries in North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. People who had severe work stress were more than twice as likely to have an ischemic stroke as those with no work stress, the investigators found. They were more… read on > read on >

One of the hallmarks of a COVID-19 infection has been a lost sense of smell after the infection ends. In a new study, researchers blame an ongoing immune assault on the olfactory nerve cells — cells found at the top of the nasal cavity — and a decline in the number of those cells. The study was led by a team at Duke Health in Durham, N.C. “One of the first symptoms that has typically been associated with COVID-19 infection is loss of smell,” said senior study author Dr. Bradley Goldstein, associate professor of head and neck surgery at Duke. “Fortunately, many people who have an altered sense of smell during the acute phase of viral infection will recover smell within the next one to two weeks, but some do not,” Goldstein said in a university news release. “We need to better understand why this subset of people will go on to have persistent smell loss for months to years after being infected with SARS-CoV-2,” he added. For the study, researchers from Duke, Harvard Medical School in Boston and the University of California, San Diego, analyzed olfactory tissue samples from 24 biopsies, including nine patients with long-term loss of smell after COVID-19. This approach — paired with sophisticated single-cell analyses in collaboration with Dr. Sandeep Datta at Harvard — revealed a widespread inflammatory response in… read on > read on >

If you need another reason to quit smoking, researchers have one: your mid-life brain health. Not only does smoking harm lung and heart health, but it increases the chances of middle-aged memory loss and confusion, a new study shows. The likelihood of mental (“cognitive”) decline is lower for those who quit — even if they did so only recently, according to researchers at Ohio State University, in Columbus. Past research has established a connection between smoking and Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia. This new study used a one-question self-assessment to ask participants if they were experiencing worsening or more frequent memory loss or confusion (also known as “subjective cognitive decline”). Using the 2019 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey, the researchers compared subjective cognitive decline measures for current smokers, recent former smokers and those who had quit years earlier, analyzing more than 136,000 people aged 45 and older. About 11% reported subjective cognitive decline. “The association we saw was most significant in the 45 to 59 age group, suggesting that quitting at that stage of life may have a benefit for cognitive health,” said senior study author Jeffrey Wing, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Ohio State. The researchers did not find a similar difference in the oldest group in the study, which could mean that quitting earlier is more beneficial, Wing suggested.… read on > read on >

Diets higher in fruit, vegetables and omega-3 fatty acids could improve astronaut health during long spaceflights while still sticking to requirements for what can go on board, according to new research. A new study tested this theory on a spaceflight simulation chamber on Earth with 16 people: 10 men and six women. Four individuals participated in each 45-day, Earth-based, closed-chamber mission. They either ate a standard astronaut diet or one that was enhanced with more fruits and vegetables, along with more fish and other sources of omega-3 fatty acids. While the standard spaceflight diet is currently used on the International Space Station, the enhanced diet provided more than six servings of fruits and vegetables a day and between two to three servings of fish a week. It also featured other healthy foods. The study found the enhanced diet was associated with lower cholesterol levels, lower cortisol levels (suggesting lower stress), and greater cognitive speed, accuracy and attention compared to the standard diet. It was also tied to a more stable microbiome. The report was published online recently in Scientific Reports. This enhanced spaceflight diet has significant health and performance benefits, said study author Grace Douglas, advanced food technology lead scientist for NASA in Houston, and colleagues. It may be beneficial for astronauts, even on short space missions, the research team noted in a journal news… read on > read on >

Swedish researchers studying anger say it appears there is a pent-up need for anger management and that an internet-based treatment can work. Scientists from the Centre for Psychiatry Research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, had to close its recruitment site after a few weeks because there was so much demand for help with anger issues. “It is usually very difficult to recruit participants for treatment studies. For the anger study, however, it was very easy,” said Johan Bjureberg, an assistant professor at the center. The study included 234 participants, all of whom had significant anger problems. The participants were each randomly assigned to four weeks of either mindful emotion awareness, cognitive reappraisal or a combination of these two strategies, delivered online. “Many people who have problems with anger feel ashamed, and we think the internet format suits this group particularly well because they don’t have to wait in a reception room or sit face-to-face with a therapist and talk about their anger,” Bjureberg said in an institute news release. Mindful emotion awareness is focused on the ability to notice and accept one’s feelings and thoughts without any judgment and without acting on them. Cognitive reappraisal involves focusing on the ability to reinterpret thoughts and situations and identify alternative thoughts that don’t trigger difficult feelings. Combination therapy was most effective, though all options were… read on > read on >

Depression can be tricky to detect in some people, and Black women may exhibit different symptoms, leading to missed care, researchers say. Black women report sleep disturbances, self-criticism and irritability more often than the stereotypical low mood, according to a new study. As a result, standard screening tools may underdiagnose depression in Black women, the study authors said. “Based on our findings, it’s possible that health care providers may miss depression symptoms in Black women, resulting in underdiagnosis and undertreatment,” said lead author Nicole Perez. She’s a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner and postdoctoral associate at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing in New York City. In general, depression symptoms are low mood, loss of interest in activities, changes in appetite or sleep, and feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness. But more than 1,500 possible combinations of symptoms exist that meet criteria for a depressive disorder, according to the study. Research on depression has primarily been conducted in white people, increasing the chances that it will be missed among racial and ethnic minority populations, the authors noted. For this study, researchers analyzed data from 227 Black women who were screened for depression. In addition to a category called somatic symptoms that includes fatigue, insomnia and decreased libido, researchers found that Black women with depression were more likely to be self-critical, irritable and to have an… read on > read on >

Preteens who spend much of their free time watching online videos or playing video games may have a heightened risk of developing obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a new study suggests. Researchers found that among 9,200 9- and 10-year-olds they assessed, the odds of developing OCD inched up with every daily hour kids devoted to online videos (such as on YouTube) or video gaming. That doesn’t mean kids are perfectly fine until they start browsing the video website. Experts said it’s possible that those on a trajectory toward OCD start to compulsively watch videos or become “addicted” to gaming. “It’s hard to tease apart the chicken-and-egg question,” said lead researcher Dr. Jason Nagata, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. In fact, he added, it’s likely there’s a “bi-directional relationship.” That is, compulsive kids may be drawn to play video games again and again, or watch online videos, where algorithms that feed them a continuous supply of additional videos can pull them down a rabbit hole. All of that, in turn, may worsen their compulsiveness. The bottom line, Nagata said, is that parents would be wise — for a number of reasons — to keep an eye on their kids’ screen time. OCD is a chronic disorder in which people have uncontrollable, recurring thoughts that spur behaviors they need to repeat… read on > read on >

In some parts of the United States, young men face a higher risk of dying from gun violence than if they’d gone to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new study reports. Young men living in certain high-violence ZIP codes in Chicago and Philadelphia run a greater risk of firearm death than military personnel who served in recent U.S. wars, according to findings published online Dec. 22 in JAMA Network Open. Young men in Chicago’s most violent ZIP code were more than three times as likely to experience gun-related death compared to soldiers sent to Afghanistan, the researchers found, while those in Philadelphia’s most violent area were nearly twice as likely to be shot to death. In all ZIP codes studied, young men from minority groups overwhelmingly bear the risk of firearm-related death, the findings showed. “These results are an urgent wake-up call for understanding, appreciating and responding to the risks and attendant traumas faced by this demographic of young men,” said study leader Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, R.I. His team examined shooting data from 2020 and 2021 in four large U.S. cities — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia. The investigators zeroed in on shootings involving nearly 130,000 men between 18 and 29 years of age. They grouped them by… read on > read on >

Menopause and the years before it may make you feel like you’re losing your mind. Some of those feelings are changes that occur naturally in this stage of life, but other factors contribute, too, according to the North American Menopause Society (NAMS), which offered tips to achieve some peace. Changes in hormones are a big reason for the mood swings and other symptoms. While most women are accustomed to their own hormonal rhythm, it gets disrupted during perimenopause, the years before a woman’s periods stop for good, according to NAMS. Part of it is just timing — that these physical changes are happening along with other midlife stresses, such as relationship issues, divorce or widowhood. For some women, those stresses include caring for young children, struggles with teens, the return of grown children to the home or being childless. Career, education and aging parents may add to this strain. Women in midlife also may be living with changes in self-esteem or body image because society values youth, NAMS suggested in a news release. One way to feel better is to create balance. Remember to take care of your own needs, not just those of family and work. This can help you meet new challenges and maintain self-confidence. If you experienced depression when younger, you’re more vulnerable to those feelings during perimenopause. Depression is associated with… read on > read on >