Ever heard of the winter blues? This common phrase is used to describe that blah feeling that strikes during winter months when the weather is cold and the sky is gray in many parts of the country. The reality is, the winter blues is a form of depression. “When there is a shift in the season and our access to daylight, our bodies struggle to adjust to the new light and time frame,” Susan Albers, a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic, explains in an online video. This phenomenon is referred to as seasonal depression. What is seasonal depression? This type of depression is also known as seasonal affective disorder or SAD. The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) describes SAD as “changes in your mood and behavior whenever the seasons change.” Feeling hopeless, helpless or irritable are all signs of depression. When those emotions occur seasonally and last for several months, it could be SAD. Contrary to what you may think about seasonal affective disorder, it can strike at any time of the year, not just in the winter. In fact, there are two types of SAD. Fall-onset SAD or winter depression usually begins in the fall or early winter and symptoms ease in the summer. Symptoms of spring-onset SAD or summer depression begin in the late spring or early summer. Summer depression is…  read on >  read on >

Pregnancy is a difficult and potentially dangerous time in a woman’s life, and U.S. women say they aren’t getting the support they need while they’re expecting, a new HealthDay/Harris Poll has found. Nearly 2 in 5 women who are pregnant or have ever been pregnant (37%) say they have experienced barriers to getting needed care. Worse, women in their prime childbearing years (18 to 34) are more than twice as likely as those who are 35 and older to say they encountered barriers to needed health care during pregnancy and birth — 74% versus 28%. The most common barrier they cite is an inability to make doctor’s appointments because of they are unable to take time off work or find child care. One in 5 women overall (19%) — and 2 in 5 between 18 and 34 (39%) — cite that as a reason they didn’t get the care they needed, poll results showed. As a result, women are nearly unanimous in their support for paid maternity leave and better health care in pregnancy: Nine in 10 women (92%) think maternity leave is crucial for improving mothers’ health outcomes, including 64% who strongly agree. Nine in 10 women (91%) also think maternity leave is key to improving babies’ health outcomes, including 61% who strongly agree. More than 4 in 5 women (86%) say more must…  read on >  read on >

It’s a wonderful thing to try to save stray animals, but for some people it can turn into a form of hoarding thats dangerous for pets and humans alike. People who “hoard” animals may feel like they’re saving them, but caring for many pets may take a toll on their well-being and that of the animals they take in, according to a new study. “Although most folks with hoarding disorder collect objects, for some folks their main struggle is having more animals than they can care for,” said lead author Mary Dozier, an assistant professor of psychology at Mississippi State University. “Most research on animal hoarding has focused on extreme cases,” she said in a university news release. “We wanted to look at what normative patterns of animal ownership look like, particularly in a rural setting, and if there were any trends we could discover related to animal health.” To do that, Dozier and her colleague Ben Porter examined a decade’s worth of records from MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The study looked for the number of cats and dogs per household and indicators of animal health. This included positive indicators, such as dental visits, and negative ones, such as hydration problems. Dozier said people who have animal hoarding disorder may not recognize that these tendencies are impacting the health of their pets. The researchers…  read on >  read on >

Combining a swallowable gastric balloon with a weight loss drug may be a way to lose significant body weight, a new study suggests. In about eight months of combination treatment, participants lost an average of 19% of their body weight, and significantly reduced their body mass index (BMI), researchers report. “Combination therapy gives providers much flexibility and further options in managing obesity in patients who need additional weight loss or increased durability,” said lead researcher Dr. Roberta Ienca, from the Nuova Villa Claudia Clinic in Rome, Italy. “The ease of use and low rate of adverse events make it an ideal primary weight loss therapy that can be complemented by medications or other treatments,” she added. Gastric balloons for weight loss are not new, but they haven’t been popular because they require an endoscopy for placement, the study authors said. This new swallowable balloon from Allurion Technologies eliminates the need for a medical procedure. (Ienca and her two co-authors are advisors for Allurion.) In the noninvasive procedure, the balloon is swallowed as a capsule and is filled with liquid after it reaches the stomach. The outpatient procedure takes about 20 minutes. After about 16 weeks, the balloon is excreted naturally. The balloon reduces the amount of food that can be ingested, which leads to weight loss. Taking the diabetes drug liraglutide (Saxenda) enhances feelings of…  read on >  read on >

Kids whose families left distressed neighborhoods had significantly fewer severe asthma attacks, with improvements greater even than those seen with medication. New research found that children whose families participated in a program that enabled them to move to areas with less poverty, and better schools and parks had about 50% fewer severe attacks. After moving, there were about 40 severe asthma attacks per year for every 100 children, compared to 88 before the move. “That degree of improvement is larger than the effect we see with asthma medications,” said senior study author Dr. Elizabeth Matsui, a professor of population health and pediatrics at Dell Medical School of the University of Texas at Austin. “We were also surprised to find that improvements in neighborhood stressors, including feeling safer in their new community and experiencing better social cohesion with neighbors, seemed to be major factors in the improvements in asthma,” Matsui added in a university news release. The study attributed between 20% and 35% of improvement in asthma symptoms to a reduction in neighborhood-related stress. The study included 123 children, aged 5 to 17, whose families enrolled in a six-year housing mobility program in Baltimore. After moving, children had asthma symptoms just three days over two weeks, compared to five days before. “These findings confirm what we’ve long suspected: A big part of the asthma burden is…  read on >  read on >

Many American women fear childbirth, and the COVID-19 pandemic did not calm those feelings, new research shows. “Our results showed really high rates of childbirth fear in our sample,” said Zaneta Thayer, co-author of a new study and an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. Moreover, childbirth fear was linked to higher odds for preterm birth, the researchers found. “Since there’s no pre-pandemic U.S. data, we cannot compare our data to that context but we know that the rates are very high compared to other international studies on the subject that have been published pre-pandemic,” Thayer said in a college news release. About 62% of study participants had clinically high levels of childbirth fear, also known as “tokophobia,” the researchers found. The figure among Black mothers was much higher. They had a 90% higher chance of having childbirth fear than white mothers, which may reflect experiences with racism during their obstetric care, the study authors said. The researchers also found that people in the lowest household income category, $50,000 or less per year, and those with no college degree had high levels of childbirth fear. High-risk pregnancy, prenatal depression and a pre-existing health condition were also associated with childbirth fear. For the study, the researchers used data from an online survey conducted from April 2020 to February 2021. It included prenatal…  read on >  read on >

A chemical used to degrease industrial parts that was also used as a surgical anesthetic until the 1970s may increase the risk for Parkinson’s disease, researchers report. Their new study found that two years of heavy exposure to the liquid chemical TCE may boost Parkinson’s risk by 70%. TCE, or trichloroethylene, lingers in the air, water and soil. It has been linked to certain cancers. For the study, researchers compared Parkinson’s diagnoses in about 160,000 U.S. Navy and Marine veterans. A little more than half came from Camp Lejeune, a Marine base in Jacksonville, N.C., where TCE used to degrease military equipment fouled the water. Between 1974 and 1985, service members spent at least three months at Camp Lejeune or Camp Pendleton in California. TCE levels in the water at Camp Lejeune were 70 times higher than maximum safety level. Water at Camp Pendleton was not contaminated. Data included follow-up health information from 1997 to 2021, by which time the veterans might have been expected to develop Parkinson’s disease. In all, 430 vets were diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The risk for those who spent time at Lejeune was 70% higher than that for Camp Pendleton vets. On average, service members were stationed at their camps for about two years, beginning at age 20. They were diagnosed with Parkinson’s at an average age of 54 for Lejeune…  read on >  read on >

Americans are less anxious than they were in early 2020, at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, but many still have anxiety about keeping themselves or their families safe. In a new poll by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), 70% of U.S. adults reported being anxious or extremely anxious about keeping safe. About 78% of adults expressed anxiety over inflation. About 70% were anxious about a potential recession. And 67% had worries about gun violence, including 42% who were “very anxious” about gun violence, which was an increase of 5% over the previous month. “Ongoing stress about our basic needs can lead to other negative mental health effects,” said APA president Dr. Rebecca Brendel. “The impact of this stress means that psychiatrists will need to continue work with the communities they serve, the larger mental health field and policymakers to ensure those who need care can access it,” Brendel said in an APA news release. The association surveyed about 2,200 adults between April 20 and April 22, weighting the data to approximate a target sample of adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race and region. Overall, 37% felt more anxious this year than at this time last year. That was also an increase of 5%. In all, 30% said they had talked about mental health issues with a mental health professional in the past…  read on >  read on >