Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

A new study hints that treating low vitamin D levels with supplements might have a critical benefit for certain people: a decreased risk of attempting suicide. In a study of more than 1 million U.S. veterans, researchers found that those prescribed vitamin D were nearly 50% less likely to attempt suicide over eight years, versus those who were not prescribed the supplements. The benefit was seen specifically among veterans who had low vitamin D levels to begin with, as well as Black veterans — who may be at greater risk of insufficient vitamin D stores. Experts stressed that the study was not a clinical trial that directly tested vitamin D for reducing suicidal behavior. So it does not prove that supplements, per se, actually cause suicide risk to fall. At the same time, it’s known that vitamin D deficiency can cause depression-like symptoms, including mood changes and chronic fatigue, said Dr. Christine Crawford, a psychiatrist and associate medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Crawford, who was not involved in the study, said that in her practice, she often has patients with depression symptoms tested for blood levels of vitamin D, as well as vitamin B12, folic acid and thyroid hormones. (Deficiencies in those vitamins, or thyroid hormone disturbances, can also cause depressive symptoms.) “I think that medical evaluation is so important,” Crawford… read on > read on >

Dave Conway had a heart attack in 2018. He was only 30. The Clintonville, Ohio, resident had been experiencing fatigue and shortness of breath, finally going to the emergency room with what he thought was pneumonia. Instead, he learned he’d had a “widowmaker” heart attack and a 100% blockage in a major artery. “I thought people who had heart attacks or heart disease were older people who drink and smoke a lot and weigh much more than I did,” Conway said. “Recovery has been really tough, but I’m willing to do whatever my doctors tell me is needed to keep my heart safe in the future,” he said in an Ohio State University news release. Stories like Conway’s are becoming more common, with studies showing heart attacks and stroke are on the rise among Americans younger than 40. Certain healthy habits can help prevent heart problems — but getting younger adults to accept their risks remains an obstacle. “It is alarming that younger people don’t feel that they’re at risk for heart disease, but it’s not surprising,” said Dr. Laxmi Mehta, director of preventative cardiology and women’s cardiovascular health at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “Most young people think heart disease only happens in old people, but that’s not the case,” Mehta said in the release. The medical center surveyed 2,000 Americans, finding that… read on > read on >

Black and Hispanic women who work as hairdressers are exposed to an array of chemicals, including many that have not been previously identified, a small study finds. Researchers found that compared with women of color in office jobs, hair stylists had higher levels of various chemicals in their urine. Those substances included expected ones — ingredients known to be in salon products — but also many more the researchers could not identify. Experts said the findings underscore a need to better understand the chemical exposures inherent to salon work — and what the health effects could be. There is particular concern for Black women and Hispanic women in the industry, according to senior researcher Carsten Prasse, an assistant professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Those women may have especially high exposure to chemical hair products like straighteners and dyes, because their clients often want those services. Hair products, as well as a range of personal care products, commonly contain chemicals that are considered endocrine disruptors — meaning they may interfere with the body’s hormones. Studies have linked some of those products, including hair straighteners and dyes, to increased risks of breast, ovarian and uterine cancers in women who use them frequently. Some of the chemicals in personal care products may be familiar to consumers, such as parabens, pthalates and… read on > read on >

Chromium picolinate is a supplement that many folks take, as it’s touted to unlock insulin, burn fat and build muscle. But do you really need to add it to your diet when the mineral chromium is already present in many foods, albeit in tiny amounts? “There is little evidence or support for chromium supplementation, though advertisements suggest it can enhance muscle mass and help with weight loss and insulin sensitivity,” said Samantha Heller, a senior clinical nutritionist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. The European Food Safety Authority Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies agrees, saying there is no convincing evidence that chromium is an essential nutrient. Tell that to athletes and bodybuilders, who claim chromium picolinate supplements are a safe and effective alternative to steroids and growth hormones. And some tout chromium’s benefits in helping people with diabetes lower their blood sugar levels. According to Mount Sinai in New York City, as many as 90% of American have diets that are low in chromium. People with low chromium levels can include: The elderly Those who do a lot of strenuous exercise Those who eat a lot of sugary foods Pregnant women. Chromium picolinate benefits Low chromium levels can increase blood sugar, triglycerides and cholesterol levels, and increase the risk for diabetes and heart disease, according to Mount Sinai. Chromium supplements… read on > read on >

The “love hormone” oxytocin might not play the critical role in forming social bonds that scientists have long believed, a new animal study suggests. Prairie voles bred without receptors for oxytocin display the same monogamous mating, attachment and parenting behaviors as regular voles, according to researchers. “While oxytocin has been considered ‘Love Potion No. 9,’ it seems that potions 1 through 8 might be sufficient,” said co-senior researcher Dr. Devanand Manoli, a psychiatrist with the University of California, San Francisco’s Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “This study tells us that oxytocin is likely just one part of a much more complex genetic program.” Prairie voles are one of the few mammals known to form lifelong monogamous relationships, so they are a natural fit for researchers looking into the biology of social bonding. Studies performed in the 1990s showed that oxytocin-blocking drugs left voles unable to pair-bond, researchers said in background notes. As a result, oxytocin gained its reputation as a love hormone. To dig further into that relationship, researchers used gene-editing tools to create prairie voles that lacked functional oxytocin receptors. They then tested the altered voles’ ability to form enduring relationships with other voles. The researchers were surprised to find that the mutant voles paired up as readily as normal voles. “The patterns were indistinguishable,” Manoli said in a university news release. “The major behavioral… read on > read on >

There’s good news for American mothers-to-be and their newborns: Rates of smoking during pregnancy have fallen by 36% since 2016, a new report finds. The percentage of pregnant women who smoked was already low in 2016 compared to decades past: 7.2%. But by 2021, that rate had fallen to just 4.6%. That’s according to the latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Keeping tobacco toxins away from the developing fetus is crucial to infant health. According to the March of Dimes, smoking while pregnant has been linked to higher risks of miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, ectopic pregnancy, birth defects and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), among other harms. The new data comes from a national database which is sourced, in part, by information provided by U.S. mothers around the time of their deliveries. Researchers led by the NCHS’ Joyce Martin reported that “the percentage of mothers who smoked during pregnancy declined across all maternal age groups between 2016 and 2021.” Declines were seen regardless of race or ethnicity and they occurred across the nation. Overall, Martin’s team calculated that rates of smoking during pregnancy fell by an average of 8% per year between 2016 and 2021. The pandemic year of 2020-2021 brought a particularly steep decline of 16%, they noted. Young mothers… read on > read on >

If you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam and you start to feel fuzzy-headed, the diesel exhaust from the truck in front of you might be to blame. New research found that just two hours of exposure to diesel exhaust impaired the brain’s functional connectivity, which can lower your ability to think and remember. “We compared people after diesel exhaust exposure compared to filtered air exposure. We saw that network had decreased activity,” said lead researcher Jodie Gawryluk. She is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Fortunately, the effect doesn’t last long, usually clearing in a couple of hours, Gawryluk said, but it’s not known if long-term exposure to diesel exhaust can cause permanent brain damage. “That’s certainly a possibility,” she noted. “There’s studies ongoing right now looking at whether this could be a potential risk factor for neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.” In an earlier study, Aisha Dickerson, an assistant professor in the department of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, found that work exposure to diesel exhaust was linked to an increased risk for the neurodegenerative disease ALS (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease). It’s very possible that long-term exposure can cause permanent brain damage, Dickerson said. “I would expect to see… read on > read on >

Infants exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy are more than five times more likely to die unexpectedly compared to babies of nonsmokers, a new study says. “The message is simple. Smoking greatly elevates the risk of sudden unexpected infant death,” said lead study author Barbara Ostfeld, program director of the SIDS Center of New Jersey and a professor of pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J. “Everyone who plans to get pregnant has a profoundly important reason to quit,” Ostfeld said in a school news release. Each year, about 3,400 sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUID) occur in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These deaths occur in an infant’s first year. They include those attributed to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), those with no immediately obvious cause, as well as those caused by accidental suffocation. The Rutgers analysis studied SUID in infants born in the United States, including 3.3 million births to white women and more than 857,000 births to Black women. Researchers used birth and death records maintained by the CDC for 2012 to 2013 for infants born between 24 and 42 weeks gestation. And they included SUID cases in which the infant died after hospital discharge and an autopsy was performed. While a smaller percentage of Black than white mothers reported smoking,… read on > read on >

It’s clear that staying active is key to being healthy, and fitness trackers and smartwatches have become popular tools for tracking activity. But just how many steps does someone need to take to lose weight? That’s not such a simple a question. While evidence is limited on exactly how many steps a day it takes to lose weight, experts say to get about 150 to 300 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity exercise weekly, said Amanda Paluch, an assistant professor in the department of kinesiology and Institute for Applied Life Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. That’s about an average of 22 minutes per day on the low end and 45 minutes on the high end, Paluch said. “And we do know that for weight loss and weight maintenance, you really need to get to that higher end,” Paluch said. “We do need to exercise more often at this moderate to vigorous intensity to really see weight loss,” Paluch added, but “we really haven’t figured out how much that equates to in terms of steps per day.” Tracking steps That doesn’t mean a person shouldn’t track their steps. “These types of devices can really help us with tracking and goal-setting,” Paluch said. Harvard Health cited a review of recent studies that found people who were overweight or obese and who had chronic health conditions were… read on > read on >

It may be that as many as 13% of older adults are addicted to highly processed comfort foods, a new survey finds. Craving cookies, chips, packaged snacks and soda was seen in adults aged 50 to 80, according to new data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, from the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. Women had higher numbers of addiction to these foods than men, especially those in their 50s and early 60s. Older adults who were overweight or experiencing poor mental health or isolation also had much higher percentages of possible addiction to processed foods. Researchers suggested that doctors should screen for these addictive eating habits, so that patients can get referrals to nutrition counseling or programs that help address addictive eating. “The word addiction may seem strong when it comes to food, but research has shown that our brains respond as strongly to highly processed foods, especially those highest in sugar, simple starches and fat, as they do to tobacco, alcohol and other addictive substances,” said researcher Ashley Gearhardt, an associate professor in the University of Michigan’s Department of Psychology. “Just as with smoking or drinking, we need to identify and reach out to those who have entered unhealthy patterns of use and support them in developing a healthier relationship with food,” Gearhardt said in a university news… read on > read on >