Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

How close a person lives to a major road could have an impact on their eczema risk. New research suggests that folks who live farther from one are less likely to develop the skin condition. A 13-year medical chart review focused on patients in Denver, from infants to age 18. Those with eczema were compared to an equal-sized control group of patients without the condition. In all, the study included more than 14,000 children. The researchers calculated the distance from their homes to a road with annual traffic of more than 10,000 vehicles a day. The risk of eczema (atopic dermatitis) dropped 21% for every 10-fold increase in distance from a major road, the study found. “In the end, we found children who lived 1,000 meters [0.6 miles] or more from a major road had 27% lower odds of atopic dermatitis compared to children who lived within 500 meters of a major road,” said lead author Dr. Michael Nevid, a fellow at National Jewish Health in Denver, who pursued this research after learning about a similar study in Asia. “This is an early association study, so more work needs to be done to examine the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in the association,” Nevid said in a news release from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. The findings were published in a February online supplement… read on > read on >

More than a decade ago, the Obama administration passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 as a way to counter the toll the obesity epidemic was taking on children’s health. The goal was to markedly improve the nutritional value of federal food programs that regularly put free and/or low-cost breakfasts, lunches and snacks on the plates of nearly 30 million American students. Did it work? A new study delivers a resounding yes. “We showed that the annual change in body mass index [BMI] decreased by 10 percent in children and adolescents in America following the implementation” of the law, said study lead author Dr. Aruna Chandran. She is a social epidemiologist and senior scientist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore. What fueled the drop? School-based federal food programs provide “an estimated 50% of students’ caloric intake each school day,” Chandran noted. So, the upshot is that “accessibility to school meals and snacks represents a key opportunity for intervention to combat the childhood obesity epidemic,” she added. In the study, Chandran and her colleagues pored over BMI trends among 14,000 kids between the ages of 5 and 18. As a point of comparison, the investigators focused on two periods of time. The first fell between 2005 and the summer of 2016, before the new law was implemented; the second stretched… read on > read on >

Children who were exposed to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications their moms took during pregnancy are not more prone to neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD or autism, researchers report. The news may be welcome to women who’ve needed to take ADHD medication throughout their pregnancy. “We can see that the number of women of childbearing age who are medicated for ADHD is rapidly increasing, and therefore it is very important to garner more knowledge to be able to counsel these women,” said study co-author Dr. Veerle Bergink, director of the Women’s Mental Health Program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “We know that there is an increased risk of accidents or losing a job when women do not take ADHD medication, when it is indicated,” Bergink said in a Mount Sinai news release. “There are still unknowns, but these results may contribute to women making informed decisions about using ADHD medication during pregnancy.” Researchers at Icahn and the National Centre for Register-Based Research at Aarhus University in Denmark examined more than 1 million children born between 1998 and 2015 in Denmark and followed through 2018. The data included nearly 900 children whose mothers either continued using ADHD medication throughout pregnancy or started on ADHD medication during pregnancy. It also included 1,270 children whose mothers stopped taking ADHD medication… read on > read on >

Doctors have dubbed kids’ progression from eczema to asthma the “atopic march,” and they know more about how it affects white children than their Black counterparts. Research scheduled for presentation at an upcoming meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) sheds new light on racial disparities. The atopic march typically begins early in life with atopic dermatitis (eczema) and can eventually progress to asthma, as well as environmental and food allergies. In the new study, the researchers found that while Black children are more likely to develop asthma, they’re less likely than white children to be evaluated for eczema by an allergist. “We already know that Black children have higher rates of asthma,” said study author Dr. Ellen Stephen, an allergy/immunology fellow at Rush University Medical Center, in Chicago. “But the atopic march has just not been studied in Black children as widely as it has in white children.” Her team reviewed medical charts of nearly 1,000 children, aged 18 and under, who were diagnosed with eczema at a single medical center. In all, 728 Black children and 246 white children had an eczema diagnosis. Of those, 31% of Black children were likely to have an asthma diagnosis, compared to 10% of white children. In all, nearly 47% of Black children and 69% of white children were evaluated by an allergist.… read on > read on >

Type 1 diabetes has long been considered a thin person’s disease, but a new study challenges that notion. About 62% of adults with type 1 diabetes were overweight or obese, the researchers found. That compared to 64% of those without diabetes and 86% of those with type 2 diabetes. For the study, the researchers used data on more than 128,000 people from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey. The investigators found that 34% of adults with type 1 diabetes were overweight. About 28% had obesity. Despite these high numbers, only slightly more than half of adults with type 1 diabetes who were overweight or had obesity received lifestyle recommendations from health care providers, such as to increase physical activity or cut calories, the findings showed. The study authors said this is likely because the insulin required to treat type 1 diabetes carries the risk of dangerously low blood sugar levels (hypoglycemia) if combined with intense exercise or severely reduced calorie intake. “The lack of evidence for safe, effective methods of diet- and exercise-based weight control in people with type 1 diabetes may be keeping doctors from recommending such methods,” said study first author Michael Fang, an assistant professor in Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore. “Large clinical trials have been done in type 2 diabetes patients to establish guidelines for diet- and… read on > read on >

A growing number of U.S. kids are landing in hospital emergency rooms for a mental health crisis. Now a new study finds that many do not get follow-up care after they’re discharged. Experts said the findings, published Feb. 13 in the journal Pediatrics, are yet more evidence of the cracks in the nation’s mental health care system — especially when it comes to helping kids. Of more than 28,000 U.S. kids discharged from the ER for a mental health concern, only about half had a follow-up health care appointment within a month, researchers found. More than one-quarter were back in the ER within six months. The results are, unfortunately, no surprise, the researchers said. Past studies have illustrated the ways in which the system is failing kids in mental health crisis. “But this puts some concrete numbers on what we’re seeing in practice,” said lead researcher Dr. Jennifer Hoffmann, a pediatric emergency physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Kids in mental health crisis can end up in the ER for various reasons. Sometimes they are suicidal or have intentionally harmed themselves. Sometimes they are having a panic attack or a serious behavioral issue. Sometimes they or their parents have nowhere else to turn for mental health help. For those families, Hoffmann said, the ER is a “safety net.” “This may be the first time… read on > read on >

If you’re one of the millions seeking The One this Valentine’s Day, here’s a tip: Try swiping less. This is the main message from a new study that found excessive swiping on dating apps can cause partner choice overload, among other issues. “Dating apps may give us the impression that there is always someone better just around the corner, so we keep on swiping,” said study author Jörg Matthes, a professor of communication at the University of Vienna in Austria. “That’s not necessarily true: You may not need 99+ matches to find love.” (For the uninitiated, swiping right on a dating app means you’re interested in someone; swiping left means you’re not. Apps reward frequent swiping with more choices.) In the study of 464 dating app users between 16 and 25 years of age, those who swiped excessively were more likely to feel like potential partners were out of their league, fear being single, and /or experience partner choice overload. This was true if people listened to their gut and swiped quickly or gave potential dates more thought before swiping left or right. The more a person used dating apps, the more likely they were to be excessive swipers, the study showed. Some people use dating apps excessively, similar to compulsive gambling, Matthes said. “Excessive use can have negative psychological effects on people,” he said.… read on > read on >

An alarming new survey shows that American teen girls are experiencing record high levels of violence, sadness and suicide risk. Schools may be the answer to improving what’s happening for young people, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 3 in 5 girls — 57% — said they felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021. That’s up 60%, the CDC reported, and those numbers are double the number of teen boys experiencing sadness or hopelessness. Girls fared worse than boys across nearly all measures, though all teens reported increasing mental health challenges, experiences of violence and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. LGBTQ teens also continued to experience extremely high levels of violence and mental health concerns. “High school should be a time for trailblazing, not trauma. These data show our kids need far more support to cope, hope, and thrive,” said Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science. “Proven school prevention programs can offer teens a vital lifeline in these growing waves of trauma,” she said in an agency news release. According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), 30% of teen girls seriously considered attempting suicide. About 18% experienced sexual violence in the past year, up 20% from 2017, when the CDC started monitoring this measure. About 14% had ever… read on > read on >

Often, patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease are advised to lose weight, but that can be hard to do and takes precious time. Now, researchers report they have found another strategy can help lower liver fat in people with this condition, which affects nearly 30% of the global population. Exercise of about 150 minutes each week at a moderate intensity — the exact recommendation from public health experts at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — significantly reduced liver fat in patients, the new meta-analysis showed. “I spend a lot of my time trying to help improve the lives of our patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease [NAFLD],” said Dr. Jonathan Stine. He is an associate professor of medicine and public health sciences and a hepatologist at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, in Hershey, Pa. “At this point in time, we still don’t have a regulatory agency-approved drug therapy or even a cure for this condition. And there are roughly a hundred million adults in this country that have this,” Stine noted. While research had shown that exercise can improve liver fat, physical fitness, body composition and quality of life, there was no known specific amount of exercise that would do this. For this study, the researchers considered a 30% relative reduction in liver fat — measured by MRI scans… read on > read on >

Exposure to wildfire smoke can increase the risk of premature birth, new research suggests. For the study, the researchers reviewed birth certificates and hospital delivery data for more than 2.5 million pregnant women in California from 2007 to 2012, and used satellite images and ZIP codes to compare daily estimates of wildfire smoke intensity. The study found that from the four weeks prior to conception and through the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, 86% of the women were exposed to at least one day of wildfire smoke. They had an average exposure of 7.5 days. Wildfire smoke was significantly associated with spontaneous preterm birth, the investigators found. Each additional day of smoke exposure slightly increased the odds of delivering prematurely. “Wildfires lead to acute and abrupt changes in air quality,” said lead study author Dr. Anne Waldrop, a maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. “And some emerging evidence suggests that wildfire smoke could be worse for your health than other types of pollutants. So, even as we work to decrease other forms of air pollution, with wildfires becoming more frequent, more intense, and happening on a much larger scale, exposure to wildfire smoke is a serious public health problem, especially for vulnerable populations like pregnant people,” Waldrop said in a news release from the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Wildfire smoke… read on > read on >