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Three out of four police officers have experienced at least one concussion, increasing their risk of mental health issues, a new study suggests. About 74% of Ohio law enforcement officers had suffered one or more head injuries during their lifetimes, researchers found. Around 30% had a head injury that happened on the job. However, fewer than 1 in 4 of the head injuries were diagnosed or treated by a doctor, researchers found. “This is an area where we have to improve awareness, just like we did in the sport concussion world,” said lead researcher Jaclyn Caccese, an assistant professor in the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. For the study, researchers surveyed 381 police in central Ohio about their lifetime head injury history. The participants also completed questionnaires assessing symptoms of PTSD and depression. Prior head injuries had occurred in 282 of the officers. These injuries occurred mostly from sports, but also were caused by falling, being hit by someone or something, car accidents or exposure to a blast, researchers said. More than 50% of participants said they had a head injury severe enough to lose consciousness, feel dazed or confused, or cause a gap in memory — all signs of a concussion. Officers with a prior head injury also were more likely to have symptoms of PTSD and… read on > read on >

Botanicals like turmeric, green tea and black cohosh may seem benign, but their overuse is being increasingly linked to liver injury. New research suggests that 7% of U.S. adults are using at least one of the six leading botanicals, the equivalent of 15.6 million people. Many are ending up in hospitals for liver toxicity, researchers report. Because there’s almost no regulatory oversight over botanicals, chemical tests of products linked to liver crises “show frequent discrepancies between product labels and detected ingredients,” noted a team led by Dr. Alisa Likhitsup. She’s an assistant professor of gastroenterology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The researchers focused on the use of six of the most popular botanicals: Turmeric, green tea extract, the Garcinia cambodgia plant, black cohosh, red yeast rice and ashwagandha. Perusing 2017-2021 data on almost 9,700 adults in a federal health database, they found high rates of botanical use. For example, Likhitsup’s group estimated that more than 11 million adults regularly take turmeric supplements, often with the notion that it can ease pain or arthritis. That’s not too far below the approximately 14.8 million who take an NSAID pain reliever for much the same reasons. Unfortunately, “multiple randomized clinical trials have failed to demonstrate any efficacy of turmeric-containing products in osteoarthritis,” and overdoing it on turmeric has been linked to serious liver toxicity, the… read on > read on >

Folks who rub their forehead and complain that a complex problem is making their brain hurt aren’t overstating things, a new review suggests. Mental exertion appears to be associated with unpleasant feelings in many situations, researchers reported Aug. 5 in the journal Psychological Bulletin. In fact, the greater a person’s mental effort, the more they experience feelings like frustration, irritation, stress or annoyance, results showed. “Our findings show that mental effort feels unpleasant across a wide range of populations and tasks,” said senior researcher Erik Bijleveld, an associate professor of psychology with Radboud University in the Netherlands. “This is important for professionals, such as engineers and educators, to keep in mind when designing tasks, tools, interfaces, apps, materials or instructions,” Bijleveld added in a university news release. “When people are required to exert substantial mental effort, you need to make sure to support or reward them for their effort.” For the review, researchers analyzed 170 studies published between 2019 and 2020 involving 4,670 people. The participants included people from a wide range of backgrounds, including health care workers, military employees, amateur athletes and college students. They represented 29 countries. The studies involved more than 350 different brain tasks that ranged from learning new technology and finding one’s way around an unfamiliar environment to practicing golf swings or playing a virtual reality game. The combined results… read on > read on >

Depression can lower a woman’s chances of surviving breast cancer, a new study reports. Women with breast cancer and depression are more than three times as likely to die as women without either condition, researchers found. By comparison, breast cancer patients who aren’t also suffering from depression are only 45% more likely to die than healthy women. “The combination is what makes the risk of death increase tremendously and leads to thousands of years of life lost,” said lead researcher Jagdish Khubchandani, a professor of public health sciences at New Mexico State University. “We found in our study that the co-occurrence of depression further reduces survival among women with breast cancer,” Khubchandani added in a university news release. “Unfortunately, many women with breast cancer do not get timely or quality care for mental health issues such as depression.” For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 4,700 women aged 45 and older, about 5% of whom had breast cancer while nearly 13% had depression. They were followed for about eight years. “More than 4 million American women are living with breast cancer today, and more than a quarter-million American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year,” Khubchandani said. “Unfortunately, a large proportion of women with breast cancer suffer from depression, poor mental health and lower quality of life.” Results show that certain… read on > read on >

As kids and teens prepare to head back to school, parents might not have protecting their child’s lung health on the top of their to-do lists. But experts say it should be. “A new school year often means a new environment for students and staff, including new asthma triggers, exposure to new viruses, peer pressure to smoke or vape and other stressors that can impact the health of students,” said Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association (ALA). “Students and staff spend a significant amount of time in school, so it is critical to their well-being and education that they are in the healthiest environment and are making the healthiest choices possible.” To that end, the ALA has created a youth initiative to help schools and caregivers address chronic lung issues like asthma, air quality and tobacco-free policies. The initiative offers information, guides and sample policies that can be implemented in schools to protect students and staff. The group is also working to educate parents, students and school officials in four key areas of lung health: Asthma: There are 6.1 million kids under the age of 18 living with asthma, a leading cause of missed school days. The ALA has in-depth resources for parents, young adults and schools on managing asthma, including a free online course for school personnel who administer asthma… read on > read on >

People can offset hours spent sitting around with minutes of active exercise each week, a new study claims. Folks who are sedentary for eight or more hours daily can lower their overall risk of death – and especially their risk of dying from heart disease – if they perform 140 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity every week, results show. These results show the importance of encouraging people to work out every week, “particularly for individuals whose life circumstances necessitate prolonged sitting in particular, such as drivers or office workers,” said senior researcher Sandra Albrecht, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. For the study, researchers examined data on more than 6,300 people with diabetes who participated in the annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 2007 and 2018. “Managing the elevated mortality risk in this high-risk population is particularly pressing given the widespread diabetes epidemic and the tendency among adults with diabetes to sit more and move less,” said lead researcher Wen Dai, a doctoral student in epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School in New York City. As part of the survey, people were asked to estimate the amount of time they spent each week performing moderate to vigorous physical activities, as well as their time spent sitting. Federal guidelines recommend that people get at least… read on > read on >

Experts have long suspected it, but a new study confirms that folks who vape and smoke tobacco face higher risks for lung cancer than if they’d done either alone. “From a public health perspective, we have always been concerned about dual-use of both traditional and e-cig products,” said study lead author Marisa Bittoni, an oncology researcher at Ohio State University in Columbus. “This study presents clear evidence showing that vaping in addition to smoking can increase your risk for lung cancer,” said Bittoni, who works at the university’s Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. Her team tracked rates of both vaping and smoking among nearly 5,000 Columbus-area people diagnosed with lung cancer, and compared them to a group of almost 27,300 people without cancer. The results: Folks who had both smoked and vaped were eight times more likely to be in the lung cancer group than the group that was cancer-free. Moreover, people who both vaped and smoked were four times more likely to go on to develop lung cancer compared to people who had only smoked, Bittoni’s group found. The findings were published recently in the Journal of Oncology Research and Therapy. “Our findings provide the first evidence that smoking in combination with vaping significantly increases the risk of lung cancer compared to smoking alone,” said study co-author Dr.… read on > read on >

FRIDAY, Aug 2. 2024Mass shootings and other traumatic events hit community members hard, with those closest to the incident often experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) even years later, new research shows. “Outcomes of mass violence incidents in communities extend beyond direct survivors, including persistent PTSD in many adults” who live in those communities, concluded a team led by Angela Moreland, a professor of psychiatry at of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Her team looked at data from a 2020 survey taken of almost 6,000 adults. All had lived in one of six communities hit hard by a mass shooting that occurred between 2015 and 2019: Dayton, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; Parkland, Fla.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; San Bernadino, Calif.; and Virginia Beach, Va. People were asked about their exposure to the event — whether they were actually on the scene or were close to someone who was. They were also asked questions aimed at assessing possible PTSD related to the event, as well as any other past traumatic events they’d experienced and how much social support they felt they were getting. About 1 in 5 of those surveyed said they either personally experienced the shooting event or were close to someone who had. About 1 in every 4 people surveyed did meet the criteria for PTSD experienced over the year prior to the survey, and… read on > read on >

Hospitalization for a heart-related emergency can have profound effects on a person’s mental health, a new study finds. People hospitalized for heart attack, stroke or other heart-related illnesses were 83% more likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within the following year, according to results published July 31 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Not only that, but this effect lingered: Up to nearly eight years later, those hospitalized were 24% more likely to be diagnosed with a psychiatric issue, researchers found. “If you or a loved one has been hospitalized for heart disease, be aware that mental health issues may arise during recovery,” said senior researcher Dr. Huan Song, a professor of epidemiology with the West China Biomedical Big Data Center at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. “It’s important to monitor for signs of anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts. These mental health challenges are common and treatable,” Song added in a journal news release. For the study, researchers analyzed the mental health history of nearly 64,000 British adults who’d been hospitalized with heart problems or stroke between 1997 and 2020. They were compared against another 128,000 people matched for age, gender and the presence of other serious but non-heart-related illness. Within the first year of hospitalization, the rate of mental health diagnoses among heart patients was nearly twice that of people… read on > read on >

New research has added two conditions to the list of 12 risk factors that boost the chances of a dementia diagnosis. The good news? You can guard against the development of both and researchers offer advice on exactly how to do that. In a study published Wednesday in The Lancet, scientists reported that new evidence now supports adding vision loss and high cholesterol to the list of modifiable risk factors for the memory-robbing illness. “Our new report reveals that there is much more that can and should be done to reduce the risk of dementia. It’s never too early or too late to take action, with opportunities to make an impact at any stage of life,” lead study author Gill Livingston, from University College London, said in a journal news release. “We now have stronger evidence that longer exposure to risk has a greater effect and that risks act more strongly in people who are vulnerable,” Livingston added. “That’s why it is vital that we redouble preventive efforts towards those who need them most.” The new risk factors for dementia join a list that includes: Less education Head injury Physical inactivity Smoking Excessive alcohol consumption High blood pressure Obesity Diabetes Hearing loss Depression Infrequent social contact Air pollution Luckily, years of research have suggested that eating healthy, exercising and avoiding both smoking and excessive alcohol use should improve… read on > read on >