Teaching schoolkids to practice mindfulness can boost their mental health — and, maybe, even their grades. That’s the takeaway from a new review of more than three dozen research studies on school-based mindfulness interventions, such as seated or slow-walking meditation.  In a nutshell, these programs teach kids to pay attention to the present moment and not to be judgmental about it.  “As mindfulness interventions become more widely used and extensively studied, they hold promise for fostering student well-being and mitigating the development of mental health conditions over time,” Tina Marshall and her colleagues at the Maryland research organization Westat wrote in the journal Psychiatry Online. Her team reviewed 41 studies published between 2008 and 2022 of school-based mindfulness interventions. All had at least two mindfulness components — for example, a combo of breathing awareness and awareness of body sensations. Of 24 interventions researchers identified, three had strong evidence of effectiveness: Learning to BREATHE  Mindfulness in School Project (MiSP) Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) All three included such components as awareness of breathing, bodily sensations, mental states and regulating one’s own emotions. Participants in these studies were middle and high school students. Three other interventions — Gaia Program, MindUP and a program that combined MBSR with mindfulness cognitive therapy — were also shown to be somewhat helpful in the elementary school children studied. These interventions generally promoted…  read on >  read on >

In some people, new-onset depression may stem from the same buildup of toxic plaques in the brain that have long been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study. “Our findings provide additional support for depressive symptoms as an early feature of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease,” wrote a team led by Catherine Munro. She’s a neuropsychologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.  “It’s not that depression caused Alzheimer’s disease, it’s just that Alzheimer’s disease pathology affecting this part of the brain resulted in depressive symptoms relatively early on in the course,” explained another expert, Dr. Marc Gordon, who wasn’t involved in the study.   He’s chief of neurology at Northwell’s Zucker Hillside Hospital in Great Neck, N.Y. As the Boston researchers point out, “neuropsychiatric symptoms, particularly depression, are common in Alzheimer disease.”  But the exact links between depression and Alzheimer’s have been unclear. In the new study, Munro and colleagues tracked rates of depressive symptoms in 154 people enrolled in the ongoing Harvard Aging Brain Study.  All were mentally unimpaired as they joined the study, and data were collected between 2010 and 2022.  That data included the results of PET scans taken of each patient’s brain once every two to three years for an average of just under nine years.   Those scans looked for the accumulation of amyloid protein plaques within brain tissues…  read on >  read on >

Smokers who quit the habit soon after being diagnosed with heart disease saw their odds for heart attack or death drop by almost half over the next five years, a new report found. However, those who simply cut back on their smoking saw no risk reduction at all, the same study showed. “I like to tell my patients that it is never too soon or too late to stop smoking, though the sooner a patient stops, the better to lower cardiovascular risk. And it is not enough to reduce smoking,” said study lead author Dr. Jules Mesnier, of the Hospital Bichat-Claude Bernard in Paris.  His team presented its findings Thursday in London at the annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Smoking has long been a big risk factor for heart trouble, and many heart patients may believe it’s too late to bother to quit. Not so, found the new study, which tracked the health outcomes of more than 32,000 people diagnosed with heart disease over five years. Close to 15,000 had smoked at some point in their lives and just over 4,000 were current smokers. About three-quarters of the former smokers who’d been smokers at the time their doctor told them they had heart disease made the decision to quit within a year of hearing that news. If they did so, their…  read on >  read on >

Almost half of American parents surveyed say they face “overwhelming” levels of stress on a daily basis, and in an advisory issued on Wednesday U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called parental stress an urgent public health issue. Murthy said he issued the advisory — meant to draw attention to a health issue of national importance — to “highlight the stressors that impact the mental health and well-being of parents and caregivers, the critical link between parental mental health and children’s long-term well-being, and the urgent need to better support parents, caregivers and families.” As outlined in the new report, data from 2023 show a third of parents saying they faced high levels of stress over the past month, compared to 20% of other adults. Nearly half (48%) of parents surveyed last year said that, “most days, their stress is completely overwhelming,” according to the new advisory. That’s compared to 26% of other adults expressing that same level of daily stress. According to the new advisory, some of the major stressors plaguing moms and dads include: Financial strain, economic instability and poverty  Time demands Children’s health  Children’s safety Parental isolation and loneliness Technology and social media Cultural pressures and children’s futures Murthy believes there’s a dangerous trickle-down effect of parental stress, because it can impact the mental health of their kids. In 2021, Murthy issued an…  read on >  read on >

Good sleep is important for the health of overweight men and women, a new study shows. Heavy-set people who stay awake too late tend to have a higher risk of metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions that increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other chronic health problems. “Our research shows that disruptions in the body’s internal biological clock could contribute to negative health consequences for people who may already be vulnerable due to weight,” said lead investigator Brooke Shafer, a postdoctoral researcher with the Oregon Health & Science University’s (OHSU) Sleep, Chronobiology and Health Laboratory. What’s more, poor sleep produces different health risks between men and women, results show. For the study, researchers recruited 30 people with a BMI greater than 25, which put them into an overweight or obese category. The research team used saliva samples to figure out the time in the evening when each person’s body started producing the hormone melatonin, which kicks off the process of falling asleep. The participants then logged their sleep habits over the following seven days. Researchers used the sleep diaries to determine who had a narrow versus wide window between melatonin onset and sleep. A narrow window means that someone falls asleep shortly after melatonin onset, and a wide window means the opposite. A narrow window suggests the person is staying awake…  read on >  read on >

Your heart health before and after a heart attack might be influenced by how loud your neighborhood is, new research suggests. One study found that people under 50 were more prone to heart attack if they lived in a noisy area, while another study showed the prognosis for heart attack survivors was worse if neighborhood noise was an issue. “These data provide some of the first insights that noise exposure can affect prognosis,” said Marianne Zeller from the University of Burgundy and Hospital of Dijon, in France. She’s the lead author of the second study. Both studies were presented Tuesday in London as part of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) annual meeting. Construction, cars honking, crowd noise: It can all be a chronic source of stress for urban dwellers, and stress is a known heart risk factor. To determine the impact of a noisy neighborhood on cardiovascular health, doctors in Bremen, Germany, assessed the neighborhood noise levels of 430 people aged 50 or younger who were brought to a hospital for a heart attack (clinically known as a myocardial infarction). People with low levels of heart risk factors — issues such as diabetes or smoking — were more likely to be admitted to the hospital with a heart attack if they happened to live in a noisy neighborhood, said a team led by Hatim…  read on >  read on >

Many young adults are experimenting with “bed rotting” and other sleep trends that have gone viral on TikTok and other social media platforms, a new poll shows. Sleep experts say these trends likely won’t do any immediate harm, but they add that people would do better to see a doctor if they’re not getting adequate nighttime rest. “It is critical to differentiate whether the reason for experimenting with new ’sleep trends’ is because of existing difficulties with sleep or unsatisfactory wakefulness, as utilizing trends like ‘bed rotting’ may actually worsen the sleep problem you may be experiencing,” said Dr. Anne Marie Morse, a sleep medicine physician for Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania.  About 37% of Americans have tried one or more of this year’s viral sleep trends, according to the new survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). Members of Generation Z in particular are experimenting with these trends, with 55% saying they’ve tried at least one. “Bed rotting” has become particularly popular. It involves staying in bed, sometimes for up to a day or more, with hopes of improved rest even as the person engages in activities other than sleep, experts explained. About a quarter of Gen Zers (24%) said they’d tried bed rotting, the survey found. This trend reflects a broader shift in how people use their time in bed, experts…  read on >  read on >

“Red flag” laws are an effective means of preventing suicide, a new study finds. About one life was saved for every 17 times that an extreme risk protection order (ERPO) kept firearms out of the hands of a troubled individual, researchers reported Aug. 20 in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. “This analysis provides important information for making the case that ERPOs can save lives,” said lead researcher Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, N.C. “These laws do not affect private gun ownership rights for anyone who is not dangerous and is law-abiding, and they are broadly supported by people across the political spectrum,” Swanson added in a Duke news release. Judges issue ERPOs after determining that a person poses an imminent risk to either themselves or other people, researchers explained in background notes. The person’s guns are temporarily taken away. Laws allowing ERPOs are now active in 21 states and the District of Columbia. For the study, researchers analyzed ERPOs issued against nearly 4,600 people in California, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington. They used death records to determine whether these people had wound up committing suicide. Guns are far and away the most lethal means of suicide, with a 90% fatality rate, researchers said. In all other suicide methods,…  read on >  read on >