If you’ve ever experienced an immobilizing sense of panic when faced with a difficult or threatening situation, you’re not alone. It turns out that the well-documented fight-or-flight instinct for self-preservation isn’t a guaranteed reaction. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that stress can actually lower your ability to effectively assess new threats because it can distract you, leading you to pay less attention to what’s going on around you and impair your ability to react in your own best interests. Furthermore, a study in the Journal of Neuroscience found that stress can keep you from making positive changes in your life by holding you back, as though your feet were stuck in mud. It can color your thinking, making situations seem worse than they really are. So, for instance, just when you should be taking steps to get out of a difficult situation, you end up doing nothing. If stress has you paralyzed, it’s important to take steps to “un-freeze” your thinking. While relaxation techniques, like deep breathing, can help you refocus in moments of high stress, everyday actions can work together to lower daily low-grade stress levels. Specifically, find ways to exercise more — physical activity redirects your energy. To keep blood sugar on an even keel, limit your intake of sugary foods. If caffeine gives you…  read on >

Loneliness can take a heavy toll on heart patients — including a higher risk of death in the year after hospitalization, researchers found. “This study confirms what has also been indicated in previous research regarding the serious health consequences of loneliness,” said lead researcher Anne Vinggaard Christensen, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark. “Loneliness should be considered a serious risk factor in patients with cardiac disease and should be included in risk evaluation of patients,” added Christensen, who is with the hospital’s heart center. The Danish researchers cautioned, however, that their findings can’t prove that loneliness caused people to die, only that loneliness and the risk of death appear to be connected. But the differences in mortality between those who felt lonely and those who didn’t can’t be explained by their medical condition alone, they said. Loneliness is a subjective experience, one that is distressing and unpleasant, the researchers noted. The connection between loneliness and health is complex, Christensen said. People who are lonely or socially isolated tend to have more unhealthy lifestyles. They smoke more, are less likely to be physically active and don’t take their medication, she said. “Having a social network helps motivate people to make healthier choices,” Christensen said. “A social network can act as a buffer for stress.” Also, lonely people have been found to have higher levels of stress…  read on >

More than 300 million people worldwide — or 4% of the population — have a rare disease, a new study finds. A disease is considered rare when it affects fewer than five in 10,000 people, according to a European definition. Until now, it’s been difficult to gauge how widespread rare diseases are. But a team led by a French research institute has analyzed the scientific literature on thousands of rare diseases and created a database that makes it possible to estimate how many people worldwide have them. Of the more than 6,000 diseases in the database, 72% are genetic, and 70% start in childhood. In addition, 149 diseases are responsible for 80% of rare disease cases identified worldwide. Rare cancers, as well as rare diseases caused by infection or poisoning, weren’t included. “Although rare diseases are individual and specific, what they have in common is their rarity, and the consequences which result from that,” said project coordinator Ana Rath, a researcher at INSERM in Paris, where the database was developed. Because of a lack of research, health provider expertise and suitable treatments for rare diseases, these illnesses cause significant suffering to many patients and families worldwide, an INSERM news release noted. Understanding how many people have rare diseases is key to identifying priorities for health and research efforts, understanding the burden these diseases place on…  read on >

People struggling with anxiety, depression or other psychiatric problems shouldn’t pin their hopes on medical marijuana, a new review suggests. Dozens of studies involving more than 3,000 people did not provide compelling evidence that medical cannabis can help treat disorders of the mind, the review authors concluded. “Cannabinoids are often advocated as a treatment for various mental disorders,” said senior researcher Louisa Degenhardt, deputy director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “Clinicians and consumers need to be aware of the low quality and quantity of evidence for the effectiveness of medicinal cannabinoids in treating mental disorders and the potential risk of adverse events.” Medical pot might even make matters worse, the study authors said. Those adverse events can include worsening the occurrence of depression, anxiety and psychotic symptoms, the researchers found. But advocates for marijuana law reform say the real lesson to be drawn from the evidence review is that medical pot remains under-researched. “The absence of compelling evidence in favor of these cannabinoids appears to stem primarily from the absence of good research. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” said Mitch Earleywine. He’s a professor of psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and an advisory board member of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform…  read on >