Many young adults are experimenting with “bed rotting” and other sleep trends that have gone viral on TikTok and other social media platforms, a new poll shows. Sleep experts say these trends likely won’t do any immediate harm, but they add that people would do better to see a doctor if they’re not getting adequate nighttime rest. “It is critical to differentiate whether the reason for experimenting with new ’sleep trends’ is because of existing difficulties with sleep or unsatisfactory wakefulness, as utilizing trends like ‘bed rotting’ may actually worsen the sleep problem you may be experiencing,” said Dr. Anne Marie Morse, a sleep medicine physician for Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania.  About 37% of Americans have tried one or more of this year’s viral sleep trends, according to the new survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). Members of Generation Z in particular are experimenting with these trends, with 55% saying they’ve tried at least one. “Bed rotting” has become particularly popular. It involves staying in bed, sometimes for up to a day or more, with hopes of improved rest even as the person engages in activities other than sleep, experts explained. About a quarter of Gen Zers (24%) said they’d tried bed rotting, the survey found. This trend reflects a broader shift in how people use their time in bed, experts…  read on >  read on >

“Red flag” laws are an effective means of preventing suicide, a new study finds. About one life was saved for every 17 times that an extreme risk protection order (ERPO) kept firearms out of the hands of a troubled individual, researchers reported Aug. 20 in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. “This analysis provides important information for making the case that ERPOs can save lives,” said lead researcher Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, N.C. “These laws do not affect private gun ownership rights for anyone who is not dangerous and is law-abiding, and they are broadly supported by people across the political spectrum,” Swanson added in a Duke news release. Judges issue ERPOs after determining that a person poses an imminent risk to either themselves or other people, researchers explained in background notes. The person’s guns are temporarily taken away. Laws allowing ERPOs are now active in 21 states and the District of Columbia. For the study, researchers analyzed ERPOs issued against nearly 4,600 people in California, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington. They used death records to determine whether these people had wound up committing suicide. Guns are far and away the most lethal means of suicide, with a 90% fatality rate, researchers said. In all other suicide methods,…  read on >  read on >

THURSDAY, Aug. 22, 2024 (HeathDay News) — There’s a strong association between a state’s policies and laws around the rights of transgender people and the mental health of transgender residents, a new study shows. “Trans individuals who were worried about having their rights taken away had significantly higher odds of experiencing depression and anxiety symptoms,” the study authors reported Aug. 22 in the journal JAMA Network Open. “Contrarily, those who knew about the state-level protective legislation, specifically protections against hate crimes, had lower odds of depression and anxiety symptoms,” said a team led by Arjee Restar, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle. As Restar’s team noted, there’s been a vigorous movement in recent years to either restrict or preserve a trans person’s access to health care and other services, depending on the state they live in. “In the last few years, states within the U.S. have advanced a record number of bills targeting the restriction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and other queer protections and rights; as of June 2024, more than 598 bills across 43 states had been introduced, with 43 passed specific to targeting trans people’s rights,” the research team noted. Not all states have enacted such laws. In Washington state, for example, “several measures have been taken to protect trans rights,” Restar and her team pointed…  read on >  read on >

People stricken with a severe case of COVID-19 have a higher risk of mental illness in the year following their infection, a new study warns. However, vaccination appears to ward off these effects on mental health, researchers reported Aug. 21 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. People hospitalized for COVID have a 16 times higher risk of developing depression, in one example provided by researchers. Even those COVID patients not hospitalized have more than a doubled risk of depression. However, the incidence of depression among people vaccinated against COVID was the same as that of people never infected with the coronavirus, results showed. “Our results highlight the importance COVID-19 vaccination in the general population and particularly among those with mental illnesses, who may be at higher risk of both SARS-CoV-2 infection and adverse outcomes following COVID-19,” said lead researcher Venexia Walker, a senior research fellow in epidemiology at the University of Bristol Medical School in the U.K.. For the study, researchers analyzed the medical records of more than 18.6 million adults aged 18 and older in England. All these records covered the period before COVID vaccination was available, and about 1 million of the patients had a confirmed COVID diagnosis. The research team also analyzed another group of more than 14 million vaccinated people, more than 866,000 of whom had a confirmed COVID diagnosis, and a…  read on >  read on >

Suicide rates among female doctors are significantly higher than those of the general population, a new study finds. Female doctors have a 76% higher suicide risk than average folks, researchers found. Male doctors had about the same suicide risk as the general public, but they still had an 81% higher risk of suicide compared to other professionals, according to results published Aug. 21 in the BMJ. “Suicide rate ratios for physicians appear to have decreased over time, but are still increased for female physicians,” concluded the research team led by Eva Schernhammer, an epidemiologist with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. Doctors are considered a profession at high risk for suicide, researchers said in background notes. It’s estimated that one doctor dies by suicide every day in the United States, and around one every 10 days in the U.K., researchers said. A 2004 analysis found a higher overall risk of death for both male and female physicians, driven in part by higher suicide rates, researchers noted. For this new review, researchers analyzed data gathered in 39 studies from 20 countries between 1935 and 2020. A separate analysis of the 10 most recent studies showed a decline in suicide rates for both male and female doctors over time. However, the suicide rate for female doctors remains 24% higher compared with the general population,…  read on >  read on >

Type 2 diabetes increased by nearly 20% in the United States between 2012 and 2022,  with age, race, income level, obesity and lack of exercise all playing a role in the metabolic disease’s spread, a new study reports. “Diabetes is increasing day by day in the U.S., and it will increase even more in the coming years,” said lead researcher Sulakshan Neupane, a doctoral student with the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “Diabetes costs around $412 billion, including medical costs and indirect costs like loss of productivity,” Neupane added in a university news release. “That’s a huge amount, and it’s only going to increase as more people are diagnosed.” Age is a major factor, with middle-aged people and seniors carrying a much higher risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers found. Seniors aged 65 and older were more than 10 times as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as people ages 18 to 24, results show. Middle-aged folks 45 to 64 were more than five times as likely to get such a diagnosis. Income and education also played a role. People with high incomes were 41% less likely to develop type 2 diabetes, and the college-educated were 24% less likely. Black people were the racial and ethnic group hardest hit by diabetes, with just under 16% diagnosed with the disease, researchers said. The…  read on >  read on >

Eating red meat and processed meat can increase a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a new review finds. Regularly eating 50 grams of processed meat a day — the equivalent of two slices of ham — increased by 15% a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes within the next 10 years, results showed. Likewise, eating 100 grams of unprocessed red meat daily – for example, a small steak  — was linked to a 10% higher risk of type 2 diabetes. “Our research provides the most comprehensive evidence to date of an association between eating processed meat and unprocessed red meat and a higher future risk of type 2 diabetes,” said senior researcher Nita Forouhi, a program leader in nutritional epidemiology with the University of Cambridge in the U.K. For the study, researchers analyzed pooled data for nearly 2 million people who participated in 31 different studies in 20 countries. The study also found an 8% increased risk of diabetes among people who regularly ate poultry like chicken, turkey or duck. However, that association became weaker as more factors were taken into account, while the links between diabetes and red or unprocessed meat persisted, researchers said. The study “supports recommendations to limit the consumption of processed meat and unprocessed red meat to reduce type 2 diabetes cases in the population,” Forouhi said in a Cambridge…  read on >  read on >

It’s not a replacement for actual psychotherapy, but a newly designed app could help young adults with mental health issues lower their anxiety, researchers report. The app, dubbed Maya, “can be an accessible and impactful tool for those looking for support around anxiety. It is incredible to see our ideas come to life,” said study co-first author and app designer Dr. Avital Falk. She’s associate professor of psychology in clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, in New York City. The Weill Cornell team began developing the new app in 2019, in collaboration with members of Weill Cornell Information Technologies & Services. Maya relies on a tried-and-true form of psychotherapy called cognitive behavioral therapy. It gives folks new coping skills and shifts in thinking to better help them deal with daily mental challenges. Maya helps teach these kinds of coping strategies, and it’s targeted to young adults (18 to 25). That’s an age often rife with stress, as people transition from the family home into college and the workplace. Using a variety of videos, exercises and educational content, the app helps supply needed guidance to stressed users whenever they can’t reach a clinician for help. In a trial involving 59 young adults, most seemed attracted to using the Maya app for at least 11 of the 12 weeks of the study. They did not…  read on >  read on >

Just a daily cigarette or two before or during pregnancy endangers the health of newborns, a new study warns. Infants are 16% more likely to suffer major health issues following delivery if their mothers engaged in “light smoking” of one or two cigarettes a day prior to getting pregnant, researchers found. Those newborns also have a 13% higher risk of landing in neonatal intensive care, results showed. What’s more, these risks increase with the amount a woman smokes, and remain high even if she quits partway through her pregnancy, researchers found. These results run counter to the belief by some women that it’s okay to smoke before getting pregnant or during the first three months of pregnancy, or that light smoking is unlikely to be harmful, researchers said. “There is no safe period and no safe level of cigarette smoking shortly before or during pregnancy,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Bo Xi, a professor of epidemiology with Shangdon University in Jinan, China. Doctors “should emphasize the detrimental effects of even light smoking before and during pregnancy,” the researchers added. It’s estimated that about 1 in 10 pregnant women smokes in the United States, researchers said in background notes. Smoking during pregnancy is associated with a higher risk of preterm delivery, low birth weight and underdevelopment in the womb. However, it’s not clear how…  read on >  read on >

Tirzepatide, the blockbuster GLP-1 medicine known as Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for weight loss, cut the odds that an obese, prediabetic person will develop diabetes by 94%, a new trial shows. The three-year-long trial, funded by the drugs’ maker, Eli Lilly, also found “sustained weight loss through the treatment period, with adults on the 15-milligram [mg] dose experiencing a 22.9% average decrease in body weight compared to 2.1% for placebo,” the company said in a news release issued Tuesday. “These data reinforce the potential clinical benefits of long-term therapy for people living with obesity and prediabetes,” Dr. Jeff Emmick, senior vice president of product development at Lilly, said in the release. Tirzepatide is a competitor GLP-1 drug to semaglutide, which is made by Novo Nordisk and branded as Ozempic for diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. Sales of both tirzepatide and semaglutide have boomed in recent years as people flock to the drugs to help lose excess weight. Tirzapatide and semaglutide work by boosting insulin release, helping to increase feelings of fullness and suppressing appetite. Both injected drugs were originally designed as treatments for diabetes, however. In the new trial, 1,032 people who were deemed to be prediabetic and either obese or overweight received a “dummy” placebo injection weekly or an injection of either 5 mg, 10 mg or 15 mg of tirzepatide for…  read on >  read on >