Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

Living in a noisy neighborhood with less green space negatively affects teens’ sleep, which may lead to poorer memory and thinking skills, according to a pair of studies. In a study on residential environment, researchers found that as noise levels steadily increased, so too did the time needed for teens to fall asleep. They also didn’t sleep as long as kids in quieter, greener neighborhoods. But as the average number of trees rose, teens dozed off sooner and slept longer. “For adolescents, the harms of insufficient sleep are wide-ranging and include impaired cognition [thinking skills] and engagement in antisocial behavior,” said study author Stephanie Mayne. She’s assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. As such, it critical to identify ways to prevent and treat the problem, Mayne said in a news release from the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. “Our findings suggest that neighborhood noise and green space may be important targets for interventions,” Mayne said. In Mayne’s study, 110 teens wore watches that measured their rest and activity for 14 days each in both eighth and ninth grades. The researchers mapped their home addresses to determine sound levels, tree cover, housing and population density. The second study showed how sleep loss associated with reduced time in bed affected the brain waves of… read on > read on >

Dr. Lisa Iezzoni is all too familiar with the discrimination that patients who have a disability can face: Having lived with multiple sclerosis for more than four decades and now in a wheelchair, she has also studied health care experiences and outcomes for people with disabilities for more than 20 years. But her new survey on doctors’ attitudes towards disabled patients still surprised her — not for the attitudes the survey uncovered, but how widespread those attitudes were. “I did expect that there would be a lot of physicians who viewed quality of life of people with disabilities worse than that of other people,” said Iezzoni, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “I just didn’t expect it to be over 80%. That’s most physicians. That was a bit surprising.” In her study, she surveyed 714 doctors with practices in many different specialties across the United States. A majority of physicians surveyed (82.4%) believed that people with significant disabilities had worse quality of life than people without disabilities. Just under 41% of physicians felt very confident in their ability to provide the same quality of care to patients with disabilities as they did for other patients. “You would think that if they’re caring for these patients, that they would feel confident in their ability to care for them equitably,” Iezzoni said. About… read on > read on >

Stress levels are on the rise as Americans grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic and bitter political divisions, a new American Psychological Association (APA) survey shows. On a 10-point scale where 1 means little to no stress and 10 means a great amount, adults’ average stress level clocked in at 5.6, according to the Stress in America: January 2021 Stress Snapshot. That’s higher than levels reported in APA surveys since April. Eighty-four percent of respondents in the latest survey reported feeling at least one emotion associated with prolonged stress in the prior two weeks. The most common were anxiety (47%), sadness (44%) and anger (39%). And two-thirds said they feel overwhelmed by the number of issues facing the nation. Significant sources of reported stress included the future of the United States (81%); the coronavirus pandemic (80%); and political unrest (74%). Two-thirds said the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was a significant source of stress. Among other key findings: 84% of respondents say the nation has serious societal issues that need to be addressed and 9 in 10 hope that there will be a move toward unity. “Nearly a year into the pandemic, prolonged stress persists at elevated levels for many Americans. As we work to address stressors as a nation, from unemployment to education, we can’t ignore the mental health consequences of this global… read on > read on >

If pandemic-related stress has you grinding your teeth, you’re not alone. Dentists say tooth-grinding and jaw-clenching are on the rise due to the many challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’ve been seeing an increase in the number of patients looking for appointments to replace broken mouth guards” that have been cracked or chewed through, said Dr. Leopoldo Correa, director of the Craniofacial Pain Center at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, in Boston. Grinding and clenching (“bruxism”) can cause cracked teeth, fillings and crowns; migraines and other headaches; face, neck and jaw pain. “You may resolve a stressful situation in the short term, or it may continue and develop into chronic stress,” which can result in symptoms such as fatigue, increased muscle tension, depression, an inability to fall or stay asleep, and bruxism, Correa said. “According to some data, the amount of force we create when clenching the jaw is around 300 pounds,” he said in a school news release. Five to 10 minutes of jaw and face exercise each day can help you cope, Correa suggested. Here’s what to do: Keep your teeth apart, bend your fingers and place your knuckles on each side of your face. Give yourself a self-massage, pushing down. If possible, briefly apply heat or an ice pack to the side of the face before doing the stretching exercise.… read on > read on >

Expanded unemployment benefits, passed by Congress last spring to ease the economic pain of the pandemic, appear to have held hunger at bay for millions of Americans, new research shows. Called “The CARES Act” when it was put into effect nearly a year ago, the law expanded who is eligible for unemployment benefits and how long that coverage would last. A weekly federal supplement of $600 was also added to the coverage. The move ultimately cut in half the chance that a middle-class recipient would need to eat less because of financial hardship, the study authors said. And it cut by roughly one-third the risk that a recipient would face so-called “food insecurity.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as “limited or uncertain access to adequate food.” “The COVID-19 recession is markedly different from prior recessions in that it is so concentrated among people in low-income households,” explained study author Julia Raifman. She’s an assistant professor in the department of health law, policy, and management at Boston University School of Public Health. “This has led to millions of people experiencing food insecurity,” Raifman said. “And households with children are more likely to report food insecurity,” with potentially dire implications. For example, it is “not possible for children to concentrate on school if they do not have enough to eat. And there will be… read on > read on >

Like influenza, could COVID-19 evolve to wax and wane with the seasons? New research suggests it might. Early in the pandemic, some experts suggested that SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — may behave like many other coronaviruses that circulate more widely in fall and winter. To find out if that could be true, researchers analyzed COVID-19 data — including cases, death rates, recoveries, testing rates and hospitalizations — from 221 countries. The investigators found a strong association with temperature and latitude. “One conclusion is that the disease may be seasonal, like the flu. This is very relevant to what we should expect from now on after the vaccine controls these first waves of COVID-19,” said senior study author Gustavo Caetano-Anollés. He is a professor at the C.R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The same research team previously identified areas in the SARS-CoV-2 virus genome undergoing rapid mutation. Similar viruses have seasonal increases in mutation rates, so the researchers looked for connections between mutations in SARS-CoV-2 and temperature, latitude and longitude. “Our results suggest the virus is changing at its own pace, and mutations are affected by factors other than temperature or latitude. We don’t know exactly what those factors are, but we can now say seasonal effects are independent of the genetic makeup of the virus,”… read on > read on >