Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned fruit-flavored vaping products in early 2020, the idea was to reverse the rapid rise in electronic cigarette use among youths. Now, a new survey of adult e-cigarette users finds that instead of quitting e-cigarettes, most vapers switched to flavored products not covered by the ban, or even went back to smoking traditional cigarettes. The ban does not appear to be working and use of flavored products continues, contends study co-author Deborah Ossip. She’s a professor in the department of public health sciences and Center for Community Health and Prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) in New York. “It really gets to the issue of, if you want to meaningfully restrict the use of flavored products, you really need to close those loopholes,” Ossip said. “And to combine that with the program of enforcing the regulations, and I think a very large public awareness campaign about why that’s happening, because there’s a lot of confused messaging around use of flavored products and e-cigarettes.” The FDA ban was on products using flavored cartridges and pods. It did not include tanks. It also did not ban disposable, flavored e-cigarette products that soared in popularity after the ban. Menthol products were also not part of the ban, said lead study author Dongmei Li, an associate professor of clinical… read on > read on >

Money may not buy happiness, but it might give low-income obese people an extra incentive to lose weight, a new study suggests. The study, of people from urban neighborhoods, found that cash rewards encouraged participants to shed some extra pounds, versus a weight-loss program with no financial bonuses. And the effects were similar whether people were rewarded for reaching their weight-loss goals, or simply for making healthy lifestyle changes. Over six months, 39% to 49% of people given cash incentives lost at least 5% of their starting weight. That compared with 22% of study participants given no monetary motivation. The caveat, experts said, is that no one knows how financial rewards pan out in the long run. In this study, the weight-loss differences among the groups had begun to narrow by the one-year point. “This would only be impactful if people could keep losing weight at this rate over the longer term,” said Karen Glanz, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics in Philadelphia. Glanz, who was not involved in the study, said that researchers still have much to learn about the role for financial incentives in weight loss — including how and when it’s best to use them. The concept itself is not new. Studies have suggested that offering people money in exchange for lost pounds can bear fruit… read on > read on >

Finally, more than two years into the pandemic, Americans are sleeping better. A new survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) found that 31% of people have had insomnia since the pandemic began. That was much lower — a 25% decrease — compared to the 2021 survey that found 56% of people were experiencing pandemic-linked insomnia. “The stress and uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic led to an increase in disruptions in our sleep quality and quantity,” Jennifer Martin, a licensed clinical psychologist and president of the AASM, said in an academy news release. “While some people continue to experience subpar sleep, the good news is that the population is feeling the impact of ‘COVID-somnia’ less now than last year. For those still experiencing ongoing sleep problems, it may be time to speak with your doctor to determine the best course of action for improving your essential nightly sleep,” Martin suggested. Among those surveyed who were still having sleep disturbances, 61% were having trouble falling asleep. About 47% were experiencing worse quality sleep, 39% were sleeping less and 33% were having more disturbing dreams. The academy recommends that those having sleep problems try some “sleep hygiene” techniques: First, maintain a consistent sleep schedule. Get at least seven hours of sleep each night. Go to bed and wake up about the same time each day,… read on > read on >

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 >

Corticosteroid injections to relieve pain in patients with knee osteoarthritis could actually be setting them back. Two new studies have discovered that, despite the temporary relief of symptoms, the injections were associated with continued progression of the disease. On the other hand, patients injected with another symptom reliever, hyaluronic acid, saw decreased progression of their knee osteoarthritis. The findings were presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), in Chicago. Research presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. “While both corticosteroid and hyaluronic acid injections are reported to help with symptomatic pain relief for knee osteoarthritis, our results conclusively show that corticosteroids are associated with significant progression of knee osteoarthritis up to two years post-injection and must be administered with caution,” said Dr. Upasana Upadhyay Bharadwaj, a research fellow in the department of radiology at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “Hyaluronic acid, on the other hand, may slow down progression of knee osteoarthritis and alleviate long-term effects while offering symptomatic relief,” she added in an RSNA news release. The UCSF study included 210 people enrolled in the Osteoarthritis Initiative, a study that has been observing 5,000 participants with knee osteoarthritis for 14 years. Among those included in the UCSF study, 140 received no injections, 44 were injected with corticosteroids and 26… 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 >