Firearm injuries traumatize children, saddling them with mental health issues that include stress disorders and drug or alcohol use, according to a new study. In all, 35% of kids injured by firearms receive a new mental health diagnosis in the following year, the research found. That compares to a 26% rate of mental health diagnoses that follows a car crash, investigators said. “We know that trauma exposure, such as that experienced with a firearm injury, is a well-established risk factor for child mental health conditions, but until recently we knew very little of about the mental health consequences following a firearm injury,” said Dr. Peter Ehrlich, director of pediatric trauma care at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor. “We hope that our study will illuminate the magnitude and types of disorders most likely to arise in young firearm injury survivors, so they can receive timely diagnosis and care,” Ehrlich said in a university news release. About 20,000 young people survive firearm injuries each year. Firearms surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the No. 1 cause of death for 1- to 19-year-old Americans in 2020. Most of the children studied who were diagnosed with mental health issues had problems with drugs or alcohol or a condition like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Such disorders were twice as likely to be diagnosed in youths…  read on >  read on >

Winter weather brings with it plenty of hazards, including risks from carbon monoxide poisoning, and fires. But the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) offers suggestions for staying safe on those cold winter nights. When storms knock out power, a portable generator can be a go-to tool, but it does raise the risk of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning and can kill in minutes if not used properly, the CPSC warned in a news release. An odorless, colorless gas, CO can render someone unconscious before they even have a chance to have symptoms of nausea, dizziness or weakness. To stay safe, never operate a portable generator inside a home, garage, basement, crawlspace or shed. Even open doors or windows will not provide enough ventilation to prevent the buildup of lethal levels of CO, the CPSC advised. Portable generators should only be used outside and kept at least 20 feet from the house or any other building someone might enter, with the exhaust blowing away from the home. Keep any windows or other openings in the path of the exhaust closed. Porches and carports are still too close to the home to operate a generator safely there, the CPSC said. Generators should also be properly maintained and used exactly as instructions and warnings advise. When buying one, get the type with a CO shut-off safety feature, designed…  read on >  read on >

A national hotline that people can call in a mental health emergency went down for a day before it was restored late Thursday. Those in crisis could still reach counselors by texting 988 or visiting 988lifeline.org during the outage. The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Disaster Distress Helpline was also down. It’s unclear what happened to cause the outage, though a spokeswoman from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the agency was investigating, the Associated Press reported. “While HHS and VA [Veteran’s Administration] immediately acted to provide support to 988 callers via text, chat and alternate numbers, the disruption of phone service was unacceptable, and HHS continues to investigate the root cause of the outage,” spokeswoman Sarah Lovenheim said on Twitter. Intrado, a Nebraska telecommunications company, provides the emergency service. The company issued a statement Thursday, saying it was “working as quickly as possible to resume full service,” the AP reported. The company did not return repeated requests for comment, the AP reported. The 988 hotline started in July with mental health counselors working around the country and has answered about 8,000 calls a day since then, the AP reported. People can dial in those three numbers, similar to a 911 call, to get help. More information The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more on help…  read on >  read on >

Two common drugs that veterinarians use to kill parasites on pets could be the solution to getting rid of bed bugs. Both fluralaner and ivermectin, which are used to kill fleas and ticks on household pets, could also kill bed bugs. The newer, longer-lasting fluralaner showed especially strong potential. This new research comes from a North Carolina State University (NCSU) study that examined the drugs and their effectiveness in controlling bed bug populations on poultry farms. Entomologists and veterinary scientists from NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine tested bed bug death rates in different experiments. One included mixing blood with each of the drugs on a lab bench and letting the bugs eat it. In the other, bed bugs fed off chickens who had received the treatments topically or through ingestion. “The drugs affect receptors in the insect’s nervous system,” said corresponding author Coby Schal, a professor of entomology. Both drugs killed most bed bugs on the lab bench. Fluralaner worked even better on bed bugs that showed resistance to common insecticides, the investigators found. “The bed bug is a globally important insect,” Schal said in a university news release. “The last few decades have seen a resurgence of bed bugs in homes, and now we’re seeing bed bugs return to poultry farms. Since there is no proven method to stop bed bugs in commercial…  read on >  read on >

If you need a body image boost, go outdoors. Whether you’re in green space, a blue space near a river or the ocean or even a snowy environment, it can make a difference. “A body of evidence now exists showing that nature exposure — living close to, frequenting or engaging with environments such as forests and parks — is associated with a range of physical and psychological well-being benefits,” said study author Dr. Kamila Czepczor-Bernat, an assistant professor at the Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. “However, in contrast to previous studies which have focused on the impact of blue and green natural environments on body image outcomes, ours is the first to show the positive impact on body appreciation from spending time in snow-covered environments,” Czepczor-Bernat explained. Last winter, researchers from the Medical University of Silesia and Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in the United Kingdom studied 87 women who walked in a snowy woodland in the Silesia region of Poland in small groups. The women, with an average age of 24, completed a measure of their body appreciation before and after their walk. They also completed measures of connectedness to nature and self-compassion before the walk. Spending this short time (about 40 minutes) in nature resulted in greater body appreciation, the researchers said. The women who had high scores in self-compassion had a…  read on >  read on >

Kids who are overweight or obese often struggle with school work, and now new research provides clues on how excess weight may harm the developing brain. “The main takeaway is to raise awareness about brain health consequences of obesity besides physical health consequences, especially since obesity rates are very high and continue to rise,” said study author Simone Kaltenhauser, a post-graduate research fellow in radiology and biomedical imaging at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. About one in every five American kids is now obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the study, researchers looked at several types of brain scans in more than 5,100 kids aged 9 to 10 who took part in the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Of these, 21% were overweight and 17.6% were obese. What did they find? There were structural and functional brain impairments in kids who were overweight or obese when compared to kids who weren’t, and these changes could contribute to poor academic performance. Specifically, kids who were overweight or obese showed a thinning of the outermost layer of their brain (the cortex), and this has been linked with impaired executive functioning skills, such as planning and juggling multiple tasks. What’s more, the integrity of the brain’s white matter was impaired in the corpus callosum (which connects…  read on >  read on >

Persistent asthma may take a toll on the heart, not just the lungs, a new study suggests. When the respiratory condition is relentless, it appears tied to plaque in the carotid arteries, increasing the risk for heart attack and stroke, researchers say. The carotid arteries — large arteries on the sides of the neck — carry blood to the brain. In a study of more than 5,000 men and women, researchers found that people with persistent asthma had nearly double the odds of having plaque buildup in the carotid arteries, compared with those without asthma. Persistent asthma was defined as using daily controller medications to control asthma symptoms, such as wheezing or shortness of breath. The plaque may be a response to inflammation caused by asthma, the researchers noted. “Inflammation also plays a big role in cardiovascular disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Matthew Tattersall, an assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Tattersall cautioned, however, that this study cannot prove that asthma causes plaque buildup in the carotid arteries, only that the two may be connected. People with persistent asthma — but not intermittent asthma — also had higher levels of markers of inflammation, compared with those without asthma. But that might not entirely explain the increased plaque, Tattersall said. “There are other things, too, that could cause people…  read on >  read on >

If holiday demands get you frazzled, you can take heart from a new study: When it comes to stress, a little is good. “The bad outcomes of stress are pretty clear and not new,” said Assaf Oshri, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences. “But there’s less information about the effects of more limited stress,” Oshri said in a university news release. “Our findings show that low to moderate levels of perceived stress were associated with elevated working memory neural activation, resulting in better mental performance.” Working memory is the short-term information you use everyday for things like remembering a phone number or recalling directions on how to get someplace. For the study, the researchers analyzed MRI scans from the Human Connectome Project, a project sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Scans came from more than 1,000 people with diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. Those who reported having low or moderate stress levels had increased activity in the parts of the brain that involve working memory. Meanwhile, those who reported high stress had a decline in those areas, the findings showed. The research team assessed perceived stress levels through questions like these: “In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly?” and “In…  read on >