Nearly 1 in 4 parents struggle to get their child to sleep, a new poll reports. Some of this is related to poor sleep hygiene, but some also is due to dark worries harbored by the kids, researchers report. Parents of sleepless children are less likely to have a bedtime routine, more likely to leave on a video or TV show and more likely to stay with their child until they’re asleep, researchers said. “Establishing a consistent bedtime routine is crucial,” said Sarah Clark, a pediatrician and co-director of the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. “When this transition to bedtime becomes a nightly conflict, some parents may fall into habits that work in the moment but could set them up for more sleep issues down the road,” Clark said in a university news release. However, nearly a quarter of parents say their children’s sleep is often or occasionally delayed because they’re worried or anxious. More than a third of parents say their child tends to wake upset or crying in the night. More than 40% say their child moves to their parents’ bed and about 30% say the kid insists a parent sleep in their room. “Many young children go through stages when they become scared of the dark or worry that something bad might happen, causing…  read on >  read on >

Depression can be sorted into six distinct types using brain scans, a revelation that could improve treatment for many suffering the debilitating mood disorder. Researchers analyzed brain scans to identify six different biological types of depression, based on differences in patterns of brain activity, according to results published June 17 in the journal c. These differences allowed researchers to single out the potentially best treatments for three of the depression types, results show. “To our knowledge, this is the first time we’ve been able to demonstrate that depression can be explained by different disruptions to the functioning of the brain,” said senior researcher Leanne Williams, director of Stanford Medicine’s Center for Precision Mental Health and Wellness. “In essence, it’s a demonstration of a personalized medicine approach for mental health based on objective measures of brain function,” Williams said in a Stanford news release. If these findings hold, people diagnosed with depression could one day undergo a brain scan to reveal the treatment that would best work for them. About 30% of people with depression don’t respond at all to either medication or talk therapy, and as many as two-thirds find that treatment isn’t able to fully quell their depression. That’s in part because up to now there’s been no good way to know which antidepressant or type of therapy would most benefit any particular patient,…  read on >  read on >

Nicotine pouches might be less harmful than smoking or chewing tobacco, but they still pose an addiction risk to users, a new review finds. These pouches are filled with crystallized nicotine, and are placed between the gums and lips, researchers said. They are sold in various flavors and nicotine strengths. The pouches differ from Snus, which are used the same way but contain actual tobacco instead of crystallized nicotine. “Oral nicotine pouches are rapidly increasing in popularity,” said researcher Nargiz Travis, project director for Georgetown University’s Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations. “While they may present a less harmful nicotine alternative for cigarette users, there is considerable concern about them becoming a new form of nicotine dependence, especially in youth who don’t use tobacco or nicotine,” Travis said in a Georgetown news release. For the review, published June 16 in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research, researchers analyzed 45 academic and 17 industry-funded studies of nicotine pouches. About 1.5% of children and teens currently use the pouches, and under 2.5% of young people have ever tried them, researchers found. However, as many as 42% of teens and young adults have heard of them, and as many as 21% of non-tobacco-using young people were not opposed to trying them. One U.S. survey of young adults ages 18 to 34 found that among those who’d tried…  read on >  read on >

Many younger workers feel stressed, isolated and unappreciated at their jobs, a new survey has found. The 2022 Work in America survey, conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA), found that young adults are struggling in the workplace: Nearly half (48%) of workers ages 18 to 25 feel people not close to their age don’t see the value in their ideas, compared to 32% overall and 16% for workers 65 and older. Similarly, 43% of workers ages 18 to 25 feel self-conscious about their age at work, compared with 29% of all workers. About 45% of workers ages 18 to 25 say they feel lonely at work, compared to 33% of those ages 26 to 43, 22% of those 44 to 57, and 15% of those 58 to 64. Younger workers are also more likely to feel tense or stressed during the workday — 48% for those 18-25 and 51% for those 26-43, versus 42% for workers 44-57 and 30% for workers 58-64. “With more workers retiring later in life, the demographics of the workplace are changing and younger workers seem to be having the hardest time adjusting,” said Arthur Evans Jr., the APA’s chief executive officer. “At the same time, with increased remote work and the use of new technologies like AI, younger and older workers alike are facing a paradigm shift around where…  read on >  read on >

Taking a cutting-edge weight-loss drug could help extremely obese patients drop enough pounds to be eligible for bariatric surgery, a new study shows. Patients with extreme obesity — a BMI of 70 or more — are at higher risk of complications from surgery compared to people who weigh less. Weight loss prior to surgery can lower that risk, but up to now nothing’s been able to help patients lose enough weight to make a difference, researchers say. However, new GLP-1 agonist medications like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound have been shown to help people quickly shed pounds. For this trial, researchers recruited 113 extremely obese patients and assigned them to either a single GLP-1 drug, more than one GLP-1 drug or a medically supervised diet and exercise program. Patients were treated an average of 73 days. People on multiple drugs had the greatest weight loss, dropping about 13% of their total body weight. A single GLP-1 drug helped people lose a little more than 8% of their body weight, while diet and exercise helped participants drop about 6% of their body weight. The findings were presented Thursday at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery’s annual meeting in San Diego. “Combining anti-obesity medications may achieve much greater pre-surgery weight loss than other methods for those with extreme obesity,” said researcher Dr. Phil Schauer, director of…  read on >  read on >

You don’t consider yourself a lonely person generally, but sometimes have days where feelings of loneliness set in. If you’re one of those people, even that transient loss of connection with others could be impacting your physical health, a new study finds. “A lot of research is focused on loneliness being a binary trait — either you’re lonely or you’re not. But based on our own anecdotal lives, we know that’s not the case. Some days are worse than others — even some hours,” explained study lead author Dakota Witzel. “If we can understand variations in daily loneliness, we can begin to understand how it affects our daily and long-term health,” said Witzel, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State University. As Witzel’s group noted, long term loneliness is a known health risk factor — so much so that in 2023 U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy labeled loneliness a public health crisis. He noted raised rates of depression and other mental health troubles tied to loneliness, as well as a 29% higher risk of heart disease, a 32% increased risk of stroke and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia in older adults. But what about more temporary moments or days of loneliness? In the study, Witzel’s group looked at data on middle-aged Americans from the 1,538 participants in…  read on >  read on >

A new form of psychotherapy appears to work even better at treating chronic pain in older adults than gold-standard cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a new study finds. U.S. veterans who received emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET) experienced a longer and more significant reduction in chronic pain than those who underwent CBT, researchers reported June 13 in the journal JAMA Network Open. About 63% of veterans who underwent EAET reported at least a 30% reduction in pain, which is considered clinically significant, results show. By comparison, only 17% of veterans who got CBT achieved that sort of pain relief. Further, pain reduction was sustained among 41% of EAET participants six months after treatment, compared to 14% of CBT patients. EAET patients also reported greater benefits for addressing anxiety, depression, PTSD and life satisfaction, researchers added. “Most people with chronic pain don’t consider psychotherapy at all. They’re thinking along the lines of medications, injections, sometimes surgery or bodily treatments like physical therapy,” said lead researcher Brandon Yarns, an assistant professor at UCLA Health’s Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. “Psychotherapy is an evidence-based treatment for chronic pain,” Yarns added in a UCLA news release. “What this study adds is that the type of psychotherapy matters.” CBT focuses on helping patients improve their ability to tolerate pain, using exercises designed to recognize pain triggers and respond to…  read on >  read on >