Many Americans experience a “winter funk” as the days grow shorter and temperatures turn colder, a new American Psychiatric Association poll reports. Two-fifths of Americans (41%) said their mood declines during the winter months, according to the APA’s Healthy Minds Poll. Midwesterners and Northeasterners are most affected, where 52% and 46%, respectively, said they tend to have the wintertime blues, results show. “The winter months have less light, the time change can feel abrupt and the holidays for some are overwhelming,” said APA President Dr. Ramaswamy Viswanathan. The poll showed that wintertime causes some Americans to: Sleep more (41%) Feel fatigued (28%) Feel depressed (27%) Lose interest in things they like (20%) Things that help people best cope with the winter blues include talking with friends and family (46%), sleeping more (35%) and going outside (35%). The poll also showed a difference in wintertime mood changes between women and men. More women than men said their mood declines in the winter, 45% versus 37%. The end of Daylight Savings Time also has a greater impact on women, with 33% saying the “fall back” was bad for their mental health versus 26% of men. Rural residents also are more likely than city dwellers to feel the winter blues (46% versus 36%) and struggle with the time change (31% versus 24%). These winter blues are usually mild,…  read on >  read on >

Eating fewer burgers and steaks could pay big dividends for Mother Earth, and human health, by combatting climate change, a new study suggests. Small cutbacks in beef production among wealthy nations could remove 125 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, researchers report — an amount that exceeds the total number of global fossil fuel emissions for the past three years. That could be accomplished by cutting back beef farming back by just 13%, researchers reported Nov. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Such a cutback would reduce the amount of land needed for cattle grazing, allowing forests to regrow on pastureland, researchers said. These forests would serve as a sponge for carbon dioxide emitted by cars and power plants, the study added. “We can achieve enormous climate benefits with modest changes to the total global beef production,” said Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor in New York University’s Department of Environmental Studies. “In many places, this regrowth could occur by seeds naturally dispersing and trees regrowing without any human involvement,” Hayek said in a university news release. “However, in some places, with especially degraded environments or soils, native and diverse tree-planting could accelerate forest restoration, giving regrowth a helping hand,” Hayek added. “This long-term regrowth would benefit the climate for decades to come, with significant regrowth and carbon capture beginning…  read on >  read on >

Women who are pregnant but who also have the ovarian cyst disorder polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are at higher odds of giving birth to an underweight baby, new Norwegian research shows. The risk rises even higher if the woman with PCOS is also obese, the study found. “In women of normal weight who have PCOS, we only find that their children have a lower birth weight compared to women who do not have PCOS,” noted study lead author Dr. Eszter Vanky. “It is the group of children born to mothers with obesity that stands out the most,” she added. “These babies have lower weight, shorter stature and a smaller head circumference. Obesity places an additional burden on mothers who have PCOS and their children.” Vanky is professor of clinical and molecular medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. PCOS is a common gynecologic disorder, affecting about 1 in every 8 women. It’s a hormonal condition that’s characterized by elevated levels of male hormones that can cause infrequent or irregular menstrual periods and the growth of small cysts on the ovaries. The new study looked at data on more than 70,000 children, 390 of who were born to women diagnosed with PCOS. Babies born to women with PCOS tended to have smaller birth weights, were shorter and had a smaller head circumference, compared…  read on >  read on >

Hillary Fisher thinks receiving weight-loss surgery as a teenager put her on the path to a better life. Fisher is one of 260 teens who participated in a long-term study which recently concluded that weight-loss surgery can bring lasting health benefits for obese teenagers. “It changed my life,” Fisher, now 31, said in a news release. “The improved health and self-esteem that came with the 100-pound weight loss were important to me and I would certainly do it again.” Fisher was not alone in her success: The surgery led to substantial and sustained weight loss for more than half of the study’s participants during a decade of follow-up, researchers reported Oct. 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The teens also had fewer obesity-related health problems in adulthood like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol, researchers report. “Our study presents impressive outcomes of the longest follow-up of weight-loss surgery during adolescence, which validates bariatric surgery as a safe and effective long-term obesity management strategy,” said lead investigator Justin Ryder, vice chair of research for the Department of Surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Fisher decided to undergo the surgery at age 16. “I was crushed by the daily issues I faced due to my weight, health problems and bullying in high school,” Fisher said. “After many…  read on >  read on >

If anxiety over this year’s presidential election is keeping you up at night, you’re not alone. About 17% of all U.S. adults — a striking 45 million Americans — say the election has negatively impacted their sleep, according to a survey by the National Sleep Foundation. These folks are sleeping less on the weekend and have poorer sleep quality overall, the survey found. The negative impact on sleep of the 2024 presidential election cut across all groups, including political party affiliation, results showed. “The dynamics of stressful societal events like elections and election day can adversely affect the public’s mood, and in turn sleep health, which is critical for health and well-being,” Joseph Dzierzewski, senior vice president for research and scientific affairs at the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), said in an NSF news release. “This reinforces the importance of addressing sleep health during periods of high stress.” Anxiety and sleeplessness can feed on each other, sleep experts say. People who are anxious get poorer sleep, and people who don’t sleep well are more prone to anxiety. People affected by the election are getting about 7 hours of sleep on the weekend, nearly a half hour less than those who say their sleep hasn’t been disturbed by politics, results showed. On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being excellent and 5 being poor), those worried…  read on >  read on >

The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have created a nation of homebodies in the United States, a new study finds. People are spending nearly an hour less each day doing activities outside the home, researchers reported Oct. 31 in the Journal of the American Planning Association. In essence, not going out has become the “new normal” post-COVID, experts say. Since 2019, there’s been an overall drop of about 51 minutes in the daily time spent on out-of-home activities, researchers found. People also spend about 12 minutes less time on daily travel in cars or public transportation. This decrease in time spent away from home appears to be a lasting consequence of the pandemic, researchers said, and it will affect society on many levels. For example, cities will need to rethink their dependence on folks who commute in for their workdays, noted the researchers, who are urban planners. “In a world where cities cannot rely on captive office workers and must work to attract residents, workers and customers, local officials might seek to invest more heavily in their remaining strengths,” said lead study author Eric Morris, a professor of city and regional planning at Clemson University in South Carolina. “These include opportunities for recreation, entertainment, culture, arts and more,” Morris added in a journal news release. “Central cities might shift toward becoming centers of consumption more than…  read on >  read on >

Half of young Americans between the ages of 12 and 17 spend at least four hours each day on their smartphones, computers or televisions, a new survey shows. “As technology has become more integrated into teenagers’ lives, the time spent in front of screens has continued to rise in the United States,” noted a team of researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All of that screen time might not be great for teens’ psyches: The research found that while about 27% of teens who had four or more hours per day of screen time said they’d had anxiety over the past two weeks, that was true for only 12.3% of teen with fewer hours spent looking at screens. Self-reported depression levels were also much higher (about 26%) among teens who consumed four hours or more of screen time than those who didn’t (9.5%). The new data comes from answers given by U.S. teens to a federal survey conducted between mid-2021 and the end of 2023. The survey found little difference in screen use by gender — just over 48% of boys watched TV or stared at their phones or computers for four or more hours per day, as did 52.5% of girls. Screen time did seem to rise with age, however: While 45.6% of kids ages 12 to 14 spent four…  read on >  read on >