A staggering number of teen girls are experiencing an insidious form of relationship abuse: reproductive coercion. Researchers report that it affects 1 in 8 adolescent girls who are sexually active. Reproductive coercion is a form of abuse in which a girl or woman is pressured into pregnancy. From a male partner threatening to leave if his female partner refuses to have his baby, to poking holes in condoms before sex, the coercion can take shape in a variety of ways. “Reproductive coercion is a form of power and control exerted via influencing women’s health, sexuality and health care behavior,” said study co-author Heather McCauley, an assistant professor of social work at Michigan State University. She added that the findings highlight a broader public health issue. “Our society so often normalizes the abusive experiences girls and women have in their relationships, making it difficult for young people to recognize that what they are experiencing is not healthy,” McCauley said. Researchers described the new study — published in the August issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology — as the largest look to date at how many teen girls face this pressure. Most studies of reproductive coercion have focused on young adult women. For the study, McCauley and her colleagues analyzed data collected from 550 sexually active girls between age 14 and 19 at eight school-based health…  read on >

If you’re satisfied with your life, you probably have emotional well-being. Emotional well-being can be mastered just like any other skill, according to Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. How? By developing four key traits, said Davidson, a neuroscientist. The first is resilience. Research at the Center for Healthy Minds found that, over time, regular mindfulness meditation can help you learn how to bounce back from adversity. Mindfulness meditation teaches you to become aware of your thoughts and emotions, center yourself and decide how you would like to proceed with the rest of your day. (Find out more at mindful.org.) Having a positive outlook is the second key trait — both finding the positive in others and being positive in the way you approach life. Another type of meditation called compassion meditation is said to bring measurable changes after two weeks of 30-minute-a-day sessions. The goal is to switch from being judgmental to being caring. Next is improving your attention level. A Harvard study found most people spend nearly half of their waking hours not paying attention to what they’re doing. Letting the mind wander typically makes people unhappy, the researchers concluded. Practice focusing on the here and now, one task or activity at a time. Finally, become more generous of spirit. This means feeling happy for…  read on >

Living in the city can be hard on the senses and the spirit, but spending some time in a tree-lined park could counteract that stress, new research suggests. “Over a three-month period, we collected tweets from 4,688 Twitter users before, during and after they posted from the park,” explained study author Aaron Schwartz. He’s a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Vermont’s school of environment and natural resources and the Gund Institute for Environment. All of the 160 parks that were visited in the study were located in the city of San Francisco. About 100,000 tweets were analyzed by a hedonometer, a kind of online happiness dictionary that ranks words according to their happiness content. Tweeting “jail,” for example, would bank a score of less than 2, while a tweet of “hahaha” would render a score nearly 8. After comparing pre-park tweets to post-park tweets, the study authors concluded that parks trigger a mood bump equivalent to that seen at Christmas, the day hedonometer happiness levels hit their peak. The team didn’t track how long participants spent in parks, so they can’t say how short a visit might trigger a mood change. And some parks turned out to be better mood boosters than others. Large regional parks with lots of tree cover and vegetation conferred the biggest happiness lift, while paved urban plazas offered the…  read on >

High blood pressure can be a killer. But a new study finds that more than half of younger patients — those under 65 — who are prescribed high blood pressure meds either stop taking them within a few months or don’t take them as prescribed. But stopping treatment can prove dangerous, even for the relatively young, the study’s lead author warned. “Blood flow is a physical action. Your vessels are being slammed by waves of blood every time your heart pumps,” explained Gabriel Tajeu. He’s assistant professor of health services administration and policy at Temple University in Philadelphia. “That’s why the younger population is important,” he said in a Temple news release. “Somebody may have blood pressure that is a bit high, but they have been exposed to it for 10, 20 years, causing a lot of damage to their vascular system.” About 100 million U.S. adults have high blood pressure, and the number is rising. In the new study, Tajeu’s group tracked the rate of prescription refills for blood pressure medications issued to more than 370,000 patients younger than 65. All of the patients had private insurance. The researchers found that 23.5% of the patients stopped taking the drugs within the first nine months. And of those who kept using the medications, 40% had “low adherence” — taking the prescribed amount less than 80%…  read on >

Transgender college students are two to four times more likely than their classmates to have mental health problems, researchers say. They analyzed data from more than 1,200 gender-minority students on 71 U.S. campuses who took part in an annual nationwide survey. Gender-minority means their gender identity differs from the sex assigned to them at birth. About 78% of the students met criteria for one or more mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-injury and suicide risk, the survey found. Besides transgender individuals, gender minorities include people who are gender nonconforming, genderqueer and nonbinary. Nearly 60% of them screened positive for clinically significant depression, compared to 28% of students whose sex assigned at birth aligns with their current gender identity (cisgender). “There has never been a more important time for colleges and universities to take action to protect and support trans, genderqueer and nonbinary students on campus,” said lead author Sarah Ketchen Lipson, an assistant professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University. Researchers also found that transgender men and genderqueer students (those who identify with neither, both or a combination of male and female genders) are particularly vulnerable. That requires further study, Lipson said in a university news release. Previous research has shown that transgender college students experience near-constant discrimination and harassment and have higher dropout rates. Campus bathrooms and…  read on >

If you spend a lot of nights watching the clock instead of sleeping, new research suggests you may need to be as concerned about your heart health as you are about lost shut-eye. People with genetic variants linked to insomnia have an increased risk of heart disease, heart failure and stroke, according to the study. “Good sleep is important for reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease,” said study author Susanna Larsson. She’s from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. “A potential explanation for our observed associations between insomnia and heart disease and stroke is that insomnia problems potentially lead to the metabolic syndrome, including high blood pressure, increased body weight and type 2 diabetes, which increase the risk of coronary artery disease and stroke,” she said. Insomnia affects up to 30% of the general population, the study authors said. More than 200 genetic variants are associated with insomnia complaints. For the new study, the researchers looked at health information on more than 1.3 million people in Europe. The investigators compared whether or not genetic variants linked to insomnia were also associated with the risk of heart conditions and stroke. The study found that people with a genetic predisposition to insomnia had a higher risk of heart disease, heart failure and stroke that affected large blood vessels. Other types of stroke were not increased. The researchers…  read on >