Sneaking cigarettes might seem like a harmless pre-teen rite of passage, but it’s more dangerous than you think, a new study warns.  Regular smoking at a young age doesn’t just lead to a higher chance of smoking later in life — it can also cause serious harm to young hearts. Experts have understood that children who smoked earlier in life were more likely to continue the habit, and the risks that come with it, later into their lives. Now, the new study gives a better idea of the damage it does early on. “Teen smoking doesn’t just increase the risk of heart disease later in life — it causes early and lasting damage to heart muscle and function,” said Dr. Emily Bucholz, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Until now, there wasn’t a lot of data on cardiac structure and function in healthy children, since assessing the hearts of healthy young people is uncommon.  Overall, persistent smoking from childhood to young adulthood was associated with an over 50% increased risk of premature heart damage, the study, published Dec. 11 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), showed. The damage, such as an enlarged heart or increased pressure in blood flow to the heart, was evident by the age of 24. This analysis followed more than…  read on >  read on >

It can feel like a shameful moment, bracing yourself to hand over a Christmas or birthday gift that’s days or months overdue for one reason or another. But slackers take heart — a new study has found that your friend or loved one likely won’t be as upset about getting that late gift as you suspect. “Go ahead and send that late gift, because it doesn’t seem to bother most people as much as givers fear,” said lead researcher Cory Haltman, a doctoral student in marketing at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business. A series of six studies showed that people receiving late gifts generally tend to be patient and appreciative, rather than annoyed or hurt, according to results published Dec. 5 in the Journal of Consumer Psychology. That runs counter to what most folks think. About 65% of Americans believe a gift should arrive on time for a holiday, birthday or other occasion, according to a survey performed by the research team. “A majority of U.S. consumers seem to think that gifts should be given on time — but our study shows that there’s more to the story,” said researcher Rebecca Walker Reczek, a professor of marketing at Ohio State University. In one study, participants were asked to imagine giving or receiving a birthday gift that would arrive either on time or two…  read on >  read on >

Ableism, or prejudice against people with disabilities, is an established problem in general healthcare. Now, a small study shows those same issues persist in mental healthcare. Sometimes, the barriers to care are physical, such as inaccessible entrances or a lack of reliable transit. Other times, the hurdles are informational, such as hard-to-use online patient portals. “Participants identified ableism as a major concern when they talked about their experiences in seeking mental health services,” said study author Katie Wang, a social psychologist and associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Conn. Some 25% of Americans live with disabilities, and many face greater mental health issues and are more likely to need counseling and medication. But are they getting that care? Maybe not. In the study, 20 disabled participants, who ranged in age from 22 to 67, had mobility problems (such as spinal cord injury), sight issues, chronic health conditions or a mixture of disabilities alongside mental health conditions. The researchers unearthed several recurring themes that exacerbated care for these folks: not understanding how much disability can harm mental health, not paying enough attention to the link between mental health and disability and unwittingly causing emotional pain during treatment. Researchers also found that being Black or transgender in addition to being disabled presented additional barriers to receiving care. “These individuals often struggle…  read on >  read on >

Heavy smoke from wildfires more frequently chokes the skies over the Western United States, but cities farther to the east are no longer being spared, new research shows. Canada’s unusually intense 2023 wildfire season smothered American cities as far off as Baltimore and New York City, according to research presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting, in Washington, D.C. “2023 was this strange year where the Canadian forests were just torched like crazy, and the Midwest got hit extremely hard,” lead researcher Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Washington, said in an AGU news release. Cities in Oregon, Nevada, Washington and other Western states have had the highest smoke levels, on average, researchers said. But in 2023, several Eastern Seaboard cities were flooded with unhealthy smoke. Further, cities in Wisconsin and Minnesota bore the brunt of incoming smoke from Canadian forest fires, they found. Smoke from forest fires impacts the health of millions of Americans each year, creating a level of haze that promotes asthma attacks and makes it harder for everyone to breathe. This smoke can travel thousands of miles from a wildfire, depending on atmospheric conditions. For this study, researchers tracked wildfire smoke using satellite data and ground-level measures of particle air pollution. Three cities in western Oregon — Medford, Grants Pass and Bend — were the…  read on >  read on >

Over 3 million Americans with asthma can’t afford to take their medications as prescribed, a new poll estimates. In total, about 1 in 6 folks with asthma are struggling to cover the costs of inhalers and other medications, according to survey results published Dec. 9 in the journal Thorax. The findings are troubling because people who skip asthma meds “are at increased risk of asthma-related adverse events, including asthma attacks and ER visits,” noted a team of Taiwanese researchers led by Dr. Chung-Hsuen Wu, of Taipei Medical University. As the researchers noted, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently estimates that over 20 million American adults — 8% of the adult population — have asthma. But how many are getting proper treatment? To find out, Wu and colleagues tracked data from major U.S. federal health surveys for 2011 through 2022. Among other questions, people with asthma were asked if cost had caused them to skip or delay their asthma treatment over the past month, or if they had consciously lowered the dosage of medicine they used due to cost. They were also asked about the frequency of asthma attacks and ER visits linked to the breathing disorder. All told, about 18% of respondents said high cost had caused them to forgo some level of recommended asthma care. This could mean that, due to…  read on >  read on >

If you are middle-aged or older, you may often feel lonely and isolated as you deal with the strains of daily life. Now, a new survey suggests you are far from alone: More than one-third of middle-aged and senior Americans feel that way. The good news? That means that loneliness and isolation has mostly returned to pre-pandemic rates among older Americans, the researchers noted. The bad news? Some older adults still have much higher rates of social isolation than others, particularly those dealing with major physical or mental health problems. “At the surface, this might seem like great news, that we’re back to where we were before COVID-19 struck,” said lead researcher Dr. Preeti Malani, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. “But that baseline was not good, and it was especially bad for some groups of older adults, who continue to have very high rates of loneliness and social isolation,” Malani said in a university news release. About 33% of adults ages 50 to 80 felt lonely some of the time or often in 2024, about the same rate as in 2018 (34%), according to results from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. During the pandemic years, as many as 42% of older adults reported this level of loneliness, the researchers noted. Meanwhile, 29% of older…  read on >  read on >

Americans are falling farther behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to health and life expectancy, a new study shows. Life expectancy in the United States is expected to increase to 79.9 years in 2035 and 80.4 years by 2050, up from 78.3 years in 2022, researchers reported. That sounds good, but it’s actually a modest increase that will lower the nation’s global ranking from 49th in 2022 to 66th in 2050 among 204 countries around the world, they found. “The rapid decline of the U.S. in global rankings from 2022 to 2050 rings the alarm for immediate action,” said co-senior study author Dr. Stein Emil Vollset, an affiliate professor with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle. “The U.S. must change course and find new and better health strategies and policies that slow down the decline in future health outcomes,” Vollset added in a university news release. The United States is also expected to rank progressively lower than other nations in the average number of years a person can expect to live in good health, researchers reported Dec. 5 in the Lancet journal. The U.S. ranking in healthy life expectancy will drop from 80th in 2022 to 108th by 2050, results showed. The comparative health of U.S. women is expected to fare worse than that of men. Female…  read on >  read on >

Eating lots of ultra-processed foods appears linked to a buildup of fat in the thighs, which in turn raises a person’s odds for arthritis in the knees, new research shows. “In an adult population at risk for but without knee or hip osteoarthritis, consuming ultra-processed foods is linked to increased fat within the thigh muscles,” said study lead author and radiologist Dr. Zehra Akkaya, who conducted the research while at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Her team presented the findings Wednesday in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Ultra-processed foods are made mostly from substances extracted from whole foods, like saturated fats, starches and added sugars. They also contain a wide variety of additives to make them more tasty, attractive and shelf-stable, including colors, emulsifiers, flavors and stabilizers. Examples include packaged baked goods, sugary cereals, ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat products and deli cold cuts.   As Akkaya’s team explained, it’s long been understood that the health of the thigh’s musculature plays a role in the development of arthritis in the knee. A buildup of fat within the thigh has been linked to a higher odds for knee arthritis. A decline in thigh muscles “is potentially associated with onset and progression of knee osteoarthritis,” Akkaya said in an RSNA news release, and “on MRI images, this decline can…  read on >  read on >

Fatty liver disease may contribute to fragmented sleep patterns, robbing already sick people of good rest, a new study finds. These folks woke up more often in the night, and then lay awake longer waiting for slumber to reclaim them, researchers found. These patients also reported taking longer to get to sleep. And their sleep remained poor even after researchers gave them tips for better slumber. “Those with [fatty liver disease] demonstrated significant fragmentation of their nightly sleep due to frequent awakenings and increased wakefulness,” said investigator Sofia Schaeffer, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel’s Center for Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases in Switzerland. Fatty liver disease, formally known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), occurs when fat builds up in a person’s liver. It’s commonly linked with obesity or type 2 diabetes, and can lead to inflammation, scarring and liver failure. Fatty liver disease currently affects an estimated 30% of adults, and is expected to affect more than 55% by 2040, researchers said in background notes. Earlier studies have indicated that fatty liver disease might disturb a person’s sleep cycle, but these have relied on sleep questionnaires, researchers said. For this study, scientists sought to gather objective data by having people wear wrist monitors that tracked their sleep patterns. Researchers recruited 46 adult women and men with fatty liver disease, as well…  read on >  read on >

Access to psychotherapy has increased substantially among Americans, particularly young adults, a new study has found. About 12% of young adults received psychotherapy in 2021, followed by 8% of the middle-aged and 5% of seniors, researchers found. Overall, the percentage of U.S. adults receiving psychotherapy rose from about 7% in 2018 to 9% in 2021, and telemedicine may be the reason why. Nearly 40% of adults who got psychotherapy in 2021 had at least one session using telemedicine. However, that means psychotherapy is also significantly more available to adults with more money, higher education and full-time employment. “While psychotherapy access has expanded in the U.S., there’s concern that recent gains may not be equally distributed, despite or maybe because of the growth of teletherapy,” said researcher Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of epidemiology and psychiatry with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, in New York City. “This increase in psychotherapy use, driven by the rise of teletherapy, has largely benefited socioeconomically advantaged adults with mild to moderate distress,” Olfson added in a Columbia news release. For the study, researchers analyzed survey data on medical expenditures collected between 2018 and 2021 from a total of more than 86,600 adults. As the researchers explained, teletherapy is more convenient for many patients, and is less stigmatizing than showing up at a therapist’s office. Dr. Manish Sapra is…  read on >  read on >