SATURDAY, Sept. 21, 2024 (Healthday News) — Workplace anxiety. Who hasn’t experienced it? However, if that anxiety is so strong that it hurts your performance or lingers for months, you might have a problem, one expert says. Dr. Asim Shah, executive vice chair in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor Colege of Medicine in Houston, explains what can trigger workplace anxiety, how to manage it and when to seek professional help. “The goal is not to suffer and not let your anxiety affect work performance. About 60% of people experience workplace anxiety. It is common, which means you can do something about it,” Shah said. Workplace anxiety can be caused by surly co-workers, a demanding supervisor, small, annoying tasks or overwhelming major projects. If you have workplace anxiety, you might notice signs like: Feeling overly anxious or nervous Experiencing excessive sweating or trembling Obsessing about a task Having a lack of interest in your work “The anxiety becomes so overwhelming that you are unable to focus and concentrate,” Shah noted in a Baylor news release. “These feelings can impair your daily work functions.” If that continues for more than six months, Shah said it might be time to seek professional help. “Some employers might offer an employee assistance program where you can go for help. You can also start talking to…  read on >  read on >

A cavalry of sorts can come to the rescue of combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new study says. Combat veterans who regularly care for horses experience an easing of their PTSD symptoms, as well as an overall improved mental outlook, researchers found. Focusing on a horse’s welfare can help a veteran shed the hypervigilance that often accompanies PTSD, explained researcher Andrea Quinn, assistant director of the Center for Psychological Services in the Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. “When I think about what our veterans with PTSD struggle with, the results make sense,” Quinn said in a Rutgers news release. At some point, seven out of 100 veterans will develop PTSD, researchers said in background notes. Veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan have the highest rates of PTSD, with 29% experiencing it at some point, researchers noted. Veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq have a 21% rate of PTSD. For the study, published recently in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers asked six combat veterans to participate in an eight-week horsemanship program. In 30-minute weekly sessions, veterans were instructed on basic horse safety and horse behavior, then asked to groom a horse and lead it around an arena. “In the study, the veterans had to perform tasks requiring them to be very much in the moment,” Quinn…  read on >  read on >

Doctors sometimes turn to antidepressants as a means of easing older people’s physical pain, but a new expert review finds there’s little evidence to support the practice. Antidepressants may even come with hazards for seniors who don’t need them, said researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia. “Harms of antidepressant use in older people are well documented,” said study senior author Dr. Christina Abdel Shaheed. Her team found that, compared to older folks using other methods to ease pain, those on antidepressants had higher risks for falling, dizziness and injury. “These medicines are being prescribed to remedy patients’ pain, despite the lack of evidence to adequately inform their use,” said Abdel Shaheed, an associate professor in the university’s School of Public Health and the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health. The findings were published recently in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. According to the researchers, over the past 40 years there have been only 15 trials worldwide that focused on the use of antidepressants for physical pain in people over the age of 65. Poring over the data from these studies, the Sydney team found little evidence to support the use of the drugs to ease pain in seniors. Standard international guidelines do support the use of antidepressants for chronic pain generally, but the data those guidelines are based on did not focus on patients…  read on >  read on >

Would-be dads don’t have to worry that taking the epilepsy drug valproate will result in children with birth defects, a new review concludes. Valproate, an anti-seizure drug, is known to cause birth defects and developmental disorders when taken by pregnant women. But the drug does not appear to have the same impact on the fetus when taken by men hoping to become fathers, researchers report. “Our systematic review shows that evidence for any risk to the offspring resulting from paternal exposure to anti-seizure medications is scarce and inconsistent, with most studies showing no increased risk compared with unexposed controls,” wrote the research team led by co-senior author Piero Perucca, a professor of adult epilepsy with the University of Melbourne in Australia. “Therefore, the available evidence does not justify major concerns,” the team concluded. Experimental animal studies have linked anti-seizure drugs to male infertility, birth defects and developmental delays, sparking concerns that human males might run the same risks. In fact, one major government regulatory body — the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency — has gone so far as to prohibit valproate use for anyone under the age of 55 who might become a new parent. For the new review, researchers pooled data on 10 studies evaluating the effects on pregnancy of valproate taken by men. Although the data were limited, researchers found no…  read on >  read on >

Therapy dogs can help boost the spirits of health care workers in the same way they brighten the moods of hospital patients, a new study shows.  The furry, four-legged friends reduced emotional exhaustion and job stress among a small group of workers at two surgical and two intensive care units in the Midwest, researchers report. “We brought the dogs to the units and many times we had staff in tears sitting with the dogs, telling them about their day,” said lead investigator Beth Steinberg, a senior researcher with Ohio State University’s Center for Integrative Health. “For the most part, people have an affinity to a non-judgmental, warm, furry animal that can come and just sit with them and listen,” Steinberg said in a university news release. “Dogs don’t care what you look like, how you’re feeling that day; they just know that when you need them, they’re there.” Steinberg is co-founder of Buckeye Paws, a therapy dog program initially aimed at improving the mental and emotional health of staff at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Buckeye Paws launched in March 2020, shortly before the pandemic began taking its toll on overtaxed health professionals. To see whether the program is making a difference, researchers focused therapy dog sessions with a group of 64 health care workers. The group included doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, respiratory…  read on >  read on >

Folks who are content with what they’ve got could be less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke, a new study suggests. “Our findings support a holistic approach to health care, where enhancing a person’s mental and emotional well-being is considered an integral part of preventing heart disease and stroke,” said senior study author Dr. Wen Sun, associate director of the Stroke Center at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, China. “Health care professionals might consider including strategies to improve life satisfaction and happiness as part of routine care, such as recommending regular physical activities, social activities or stress management techniques as effective ways to enhance personal well-being,” Sun added. For the study, researchers analyzed data gathered from more than 120,000 participants in the U.K. Biobank, a large-scale medical database. Participants filled out questionnaires that assessed their well-being in terms of satisfaction with family, friendships, health, finances and general happiness. Researchers compared people’s well-being with their risk of four major heart-related diseases. Results show that people with the highest well-being scores had: A 44% lower risk of clogged arteries. A 45% lower risk of stroke. A 51% lower risk of heart failure. A 56% lower risk of heart attack. Further analysis suggested that people who feel more content tend to adopt healthier lifestyles and suffer less inflammation, researchers said. “These…  read on >  read on >

Deprivation, neglect and abuse during childhood can increase a person’s long-term risk of health problems, a new study warns. “Stress is implicated in nine of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States today,” said senior researcher Dr. George Slavich, director of the UCLA Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research. “It’s about time we take that statistic seriously and begin screening for stress in all pediatric and adult clinics nationwide.” For the study, published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, researchers analyzed data on more than 2,100 participants in a long-range study funded by the National Institute on Aging. The team looked at different childhood traumas reported by the participants — financial distress, abuse, neglect, frequent moves, living apart from parents and receiving welfare. The participants also provided samples that allowed researchers to calculate 25 different disease biomarkers, and said whether they’d been diagnosed with 20 different major health conditions. Results showed that the risk of health problems in men and women increased with the amount of childhood stress they endured. Researchers also found that the effects of stress differed between men and women. Childhood stress tended to have greater effects on the metabolism of women than men, results show. On the other hand, emotional abuse and neglect appear to have greater health effects on men than women when it comes to…  read on >  read on >

As wildfires continue to burn across parts of California, a new study finds that smoke from these blazes and other air pollution could be harming kids’ mental health. Repeated exposure to high levels of particle pollution increases kids’ risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health symptoms, researchers reported. What’s more, each additional day of exposure to unsafe air significantly boosted the likelihood that a youngster would suffer mental health problems. “We need to understand what these extreme events are doing to young people, their brains and their behavior,” said lead investigator Harry Smolker, a research associate with the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science. For the study, researchers analyzed data from 10,000 kids ages 9 to 11 participating in an ongoing study of brain development. Using the participants’ addresses, they calculated how many days in 2016 each kid was exposed to particle pollution levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers unsafe. Some studies have found that these airborne particles could be small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier and affect the brain. These particles have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers; by comparison, a human hair is about 50 micrometers in diameter. Adult hospital admissions for depression, suicide and psychosis tend to increase on high pollution days, researchers said in background notes. When pregnant women are exposed to heavy particle pollution, their children…  read on >  read on >

With implications for research around postpartum depression and other health issues, scientists have tracked the changes pregnancy brings to the female brain. These changes weren’t subtle: Big shifts in what’s known as the brain’s “white matter” versus “gray matter” were observed, according to a team from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). “The maternal brain undergoes a choreographed change across gestation, and we are finally able to see it unfold,” said study co-author Emily Jacobs, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the university. The study is thought to be the first to track brain changes throughout a pregnancy, rather than looking at discrete ‘snapshots’ taken at various points in gestation. The study focused on the brain of one woman undergoing her first pregnancy. Researchers led by Laura Pritschet, a PhD student working in Jacob’s lab, took scans of the woman’s brain every few weeks — starting before pregnancy, during gestation and then for two years after delivery. The “neuroplasticity” observed in her brain was dramatic, Pritschet and colleagues report. The biggest alteration came with the ratio of white matter and gray matter within the brain. Cortical gray matter — the kid found on the wrinkly outer surface of the brain — decreased in volume as hormonal changes associated with pregnancy occurred, the researchers said. That’s not a particularly negative change, the researchers…  read on >  read on >