Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

Narcissism is not a good look at any age, but new research suggests it fades as people enter their 40s. However, the degree of decline in narcissism varies between individuals and can be related to their career and relationships, the researchers added. Overall, the “findings should bring comfort to those who are concerned that young people are problematically narcissistic,” said study co-leader Brent Roberts, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois. “With time, it seems most people turn away from their earlier narcissistic tendencies.” Narcissism is a personality trait characterized by the belief that you’re smarter, better-looking, more successful and more deserving than others. The study included 237 participants whose levels of narcissism — specifically vanity, belief in their leadership skills and sense of entitlement — were assessed at age 18 when they were freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, and again at age 41. Most of the participants showed a decline in narcissism as they aged. Only 3% had an increase and a few had the same level of narcissism at ages 18 and 41, the findings showed. The researchers also found that each aspect of narcissism examined in the study had particular impacts on the participants’ lives. For example, those who had higher levels of vanity at age 18 were more likely to have unstable relationships and marriages, and more likely… read on >

If you’re overweight but have dodged chronic health issues like high cholesterol and high blood pressure, you might not think that losing weight is a priority. But an analysis of five years of records on 3.5 million people — underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese — has found reason for concern. The researchers discovered that even if people didn’t have any metabolic diseases at the start of the record-keeping, those who were obese were more likely than those of normal weight to develop health issues as time went on. Those health issues include coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, heart failure and peripheral vascular disease (a circulation disorder that affects blood vessels beyond the brain and heart). But no one is completely immune to health problems. Researchers also found that being at a normal weight doesn’t necessarily eliminate all risk for metabolic abnormalities, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. Indeed, 10% of those at a normal weight had at least one metabolic issue. Also, no matter what your weight, the more of those health markers you have, the greater your chances of a heart event, like an attack. This research underscores the importance of getting regular health screenings and knowing your numbers: cholesterol (total, HDL and LDL) and triglycerides; blood pressure (systolic and diastolic); and blood sugar. Then you can work with your health… read on >

When a parent is depressed, their child’s asthma care may suffer. Now, research suggests that getting a child’s asthma under control may include assessing a parents’ mental health. Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern found that treating a parent’s depression could sometimes improve symptom control in asthmatic children. About 8% of American children have asthma. Symptoms include shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing due to inflammation of the lungs and airways. “Moreover, asthma is a medical illness that is sensitive to a patient’s mood as well as medication adherence,” said Dr. E. Sherwood Brown, a professor of psychiatry. Stress and depression in children who have asthma can cause airway constriction and worsen symptoms. Then, this poor asthma control can exacerbate a child’s depression. High rates of depression among caregivers may also put stress on kids, worsening their depressive symptoms and asthma control, the researchers noted. To study the issue, the investigators followed caregivers with major depressive disorder and their children with persistent asthma for one year. They found that improvement in caregiver depression was associated with fewer asthma attacks and better asthma control for children. This improvement in asthma control occurred, in part, through reduction in the children’s depressive symptom severity. Health care providers may need to think more broadly when treating patients, Brown said in a university news release. “It might be useful to… read on > read on >

Obesity is never healthy, and that may be especially true for people who also develop multiple sclerosis. Obese people with MS are likely to see the disability linked to the disease rapidly worsen, said German researchers who followed more than 1,000 patients in a new study. Weight loss, they suggested, might help slow the progression of the disease. “The findings from this study raise important questions about the role of elevated BMI (body mass index) on mechanisms that drive neurologic disability in MS,” said Dr. Fiona Costello, a professor of neurology at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary in Canada. Obesity correlates with a higher risk of developing MS, she said. “What has not been clear is how obesity is linked to disease severity and disability progression in individuals with MS. But a large body of published literature has shown that deleterious disease associations with obesity are not unique to MS.” Obesity already has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, as well as cognitive impairment and dementia, said Costello, who had no part in the study. This study can’t prove that obesity speeds up greater disability in patients with MS, only that the two seem to be connected, the researchers noted. Still, “obtaining a normal weight is likely beneficial for people with MS,” said… read on > read on >

Poor sleep may be linked to glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness, new research suggests. The study drew on a database of more than 400,000 people to explore links between sleep and vision loss. Glaucoma is marked by progressive loss of light-sensitive cells in the eye and optic nerve damage. Left untreated, it can cause irreversible blindness. As many as 112 million people worldwide could be affected by 2040. For the new study, the researchers considered a variety of sleep behaviors. These included too much sleep as well as too little, insomnia and daytime sleepiness, being a “night owl” or a “morning lark,” as well as snoring. The investigators used data from more than 409,000 participants in the UK Biobank (average age: 57). The study defined normal sleep duration as seven to nine hours. The researchers used medical records and death data to track the health and lifespan of all participants until a first diagnosis of glaucoma, death, emigration or end of monitoring in 2021. During an average 10.5-year monitoring period, the researchers identified 8,690 cases of glaucoma. Frequent daytime sleepiness was associated with a 20% higher risk for the disease. The risk rose 12% with insomnia and 8% with short or long sleep duration. Snoring was associated with a 4% higher risk. Compared to folks who had a healthy sleep pattern, people who snored… read on > read on >

New research reveals that the brain is much more flexible than once thought and can change rapidly during treatment for major depression. People receiving inpatient treatment for major depression had increased brain connectivity after just six weeks, German researchers report. They compared brain connectivity — various brain regions acting together in generating thought, emotion and behavior — in 109 patients with serious depression to that in a control group of 55 volunteers without depression. MRI scans were used to identify which brain areas were communicating with others before and after treatment. “We found that treatment for depression changed the infrastructure of the brain, which goes against previous expectations. Treated patients showed a greater number of connections than they had shown before treatment,” said lead researcher Jonathan Repple, who was part of the University of Muenster team that did the study. He’s now a professor of predictive psychiatry at the University of Frankfurt. The research was presented recently at a meeting of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, in Vienna and online. For the study, patients with depression were treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), psychological therapy or medication, or a combination of all therapies. The researchers then rescanned participants’ brains, counting the number of connections. They also retested for depression. The upshot: Patients who showed the most response to treatment had developed more new connections than those… read on > read on >

For women, the key to getting ahead at work could be getting more shut-eye. Quality sleep boosted women’s moods, which then made them more intent on work achievements, a new study found. Researchers from Washington State University and University of Minnesota-Duluth surveyed 135 U.S. workers (men and women) twice a day for over two weeks to study this issue, gaining 2,200 observations. The study asked the women and men at noon daily about the previous night’s sleep and their current mood. In the evenings, the investigators asked participants about their intentions to pursue more responsibility, status and influence at work. While men and women in the study had both good and bad quality of sleep over the two weeks, women had lowered intentions about their work status after a poor night’s sleep. Men’s work intentions weren’t impacted by sleep quality. “When women are getting a good night’s sleep and their mood is boosted, they are more likely to be oriented in their daily intentions toward achieving status and responsibility at work,” said study author Leah Sheppard, an associate professor in WSU’s Carson College of Business. “If their sleep is poor and reduces their positive mood, then we saw that they were less oriented toward those goals.” The reason for these gender differences may be men and women tend to differ in emotion regulation, as well… read on > read on >

A new analysis illustrates the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade: In numerous states, women now have no choice but to travel long distances to get an abortion. One-third of American women of reproductive age must now drive excessive distances, the researchers reported. Twice as many women must now travel more than an hour to get abortion care. And some are having to drive even longer distances to access an abortion. “We need to understand the diminished access to this essential health service in order to better understand what resources we need to invest to regain that access,” said senior study author Yulin Hswen, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “We were startled to see that populations of major metropolitan areas now have to travel several hours for care,” she added in a university news release. In the South, where numerous neighboring states have eliminated access to abortion services, travel times grew the most, the findings showed. Median travel times to access an abortion had been 15 minutes, roughly, in Texas and Louisiana before the Supreme Court ruling this summer. It is now more than six hours, with an average increase of eight hours in Texas, the investigators found. In states with total or six-week abortion bans, travel times increased… read on > read on >

Scientists have found one more way Flipper is a lot like people: The sharp rise in antibiotic resistance affecting humans is also happening to dolphins. The discovery stems from a 13-year study of bottlenose dolphins in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon. “We’ve been able to provide a large database of information in order to continue learning from these impressive animals,” said Gregory Bossart, senior vice president and chief veterinary officer at the Georgia Aquarium, one of four partners in the new study. The research, published Sept. 15 in the journal Aquatic Mammals, follows a report last week that bottlenose dolphins in the English Channel harbor “a toxic cocktail” of chemicals, including some that have been banned for decades. For the latest study, the researchers analyzed antibiotic resistance in 733 samples of bacteria collected between 2003 and 2015 from 171 bottlenose dolphins in the lagoon on Florida’s eastern coast. Some of the bacteria are also a threat to humans. In all, over 88% were resistant to at least one antibiotic, the researchers found. Resistance was highest to erythromycin (nearly 92%), followed by ampicillin (77%) and cephalothin (about 62%). Similar to trends in people, resistance to ciprofloxacin among E. coli samples more than doubled during the study. And rates of resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa — a cause of respiratory and urinary infections in people — were the highest… read on >

Spending time on their phones or online doesn’t harm teens’ mental health, according to a new study that challenges a widely held belief. “It may be time for adults to stop arguing over whether smartphones and social media are good or bad for teens’ mental health and start figuring out ways to best support them in both their offline and online lives,” said study co-author Candice Odgers. She’s a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). For the study, researchers surveyed more than 2,000 10- to 15-year-olds at public schools in North Carolina and tracked nearly 400 of them on their smartphones for two weeks. The young people reported on any mental health symptoms three times a day, as well as their daily digital technology use. Neither using more types of digital technology or spending more time using it was associated with worse mental health, the researchers found. When links between digital technology use and mental health were found, they were minor and positive, according to the report. For example, participants who sent more text messages reported feeling better than those who texted less often, the findings showed. “Contrary to the common belief that smartphones and social media are damaging adolescents’ mental health, we don’t see much support for the idea that time spent on phones and online is associated with… read on >