Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

People with a genetic predisposition for high cholesterol can lower their levels by taking fish oil supplements, a new study shows. The results indicate that lifestyle can be a powerful influence on artery-clogging cholesterol, even if a person’s genetics tends to make those levels higher, researchers said. “Recent advances in genetic studies have allowed us to predict someone’s genetic risk of high cholesterol,” said lead researcher Yitang Sun, a doctoral graduate from the University of Georgia’s Department of Genetics. “But the current prediction has room for improvement because it does not consider individual differences in lifestyles, such as taking fish oil supplements,” Sun added in a university news release. About 1 in 4 Americans — more than 86 million — have high cholesterol, the researchers said in background notes. Millions more are at risk for high cholesterol because of their genetics, the researchers added. For the study, researchers used genetic data on more than 441,000 British residents to calculate each person’s genetic likelihood of high levels of cholesterol. The study participants are taking part in a large-scale research project called the UK Biobank. As part of that project, the people also reported in a questionnaire whether they take fish oil supplements and provided a blood sample for a cholesterol check. Results show that participants taking fish oil had lower blood cholesterol levels than would be… read on > read on >

Kids and teens around the world are consuming more sugary drinks, increasing their risk of future health problems, a new study finds. Young people consumed nearly 23% more sugar-sweetened beverages in 2018 compared to 1990, according to the report published Aug. 7 in the BMJ. “Sugary beverages increase weight gain and risk of obesity, so even though kids don’t often develop diabetes or cardiovascular disease when they are young, there could be significant impacts later in life,” said lead researcher Laura Lara-Castor. She’s a postdoctoral scholar in nutritional epidemiology at the University of Washington. The study provides the first global estimates of sugary drink intake by kids and teens, researchers said. For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 1,200 surveys completed during the three-decade study period. The data assessed the dietary habits of children from 185 countries. The research team specifically looked at consumption of soda, juice drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and home-sweetened fruit drinks like aquas frescas. Their definition of sugary drinks did not include 100% fruit juices, diet sodas or sweetened milks. Sugar-sweetened beverage intake averaged 3.6 servings a week globally, and ranged from 1.3 servings a week in South Asia to 9.1 in Latin America and the Caribbean. Children and teens in 56 countries representing 238 million young people – about 10% of the global youth population – averaged… read on > read on >

Remember your besties from high school? Sure, they made a lasting impression, but science suggests they influenced the trajectory of your health, too. It’s not that far-fetched: Your friends carry genes that may or may nor predispose them to mental health issues ranging from addiction to anxiety and depression. That can influence the mental health of the people in their friend circle, according to researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Peers’ genetic predispositions for psychiatric and substance use disorders are associated with an individual’s own risk of developing the same disorders in young adulthood,” said study lead author Jessica Salvatore. “What our data exemplifies is the long reach of social genetic effects,” she said in a Rutgers news release. Salvatore is an associate professor of psychiatry at the university. It’s a relatively new field of research called socio-genomics: How one person’s genetic makeup (“genotype”) can influence a wider network of people. Just how powerful is the socio-genomic effect? To find out, Salvatore’s group looked at Swedish data on over 1.5 million individuals born in Sweden between 1980 and 1998. They then pinpointed exactly where everyone went to school in their teen years. That was followed up by a deep dive into local medical, pharmacy and legal registries that documented any history of substance use and mental health disorders for the same individuals in adulthood.… read on > read on >

David Lynch, who transformed television and film with series such as “Twin Peaks” and movies like “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive,” announced Monday that he is battling the lung disease emphysema. Lynch, 78 and a former long-time smoker, first spoke about his illness in an article for Sight and Sound, a magazine from the British Film Institute. Although emphysema is limiting his mobility, Lynch said that he could continue directing, just remotely. He confirmed his diagnosis on a social media post. “Yes, I have emphysema from my many years of smoking,” Lynch said. “I have to say that I enjoyed smoking very much, and I do love tobacco — the smell of it, lighting cigarettes on fire, smoking them — but there is a price to pay for this enjoyment, and the price for me is emphysema.” He added that he quit smoking two years ago. “Recently, I had many tests and the good news is that I am in excellent shape except for emphysema,” Lynch said. “I am filled with happiness, and I will never retire.” According to the American Lung Association, over 3 million Americans are living with emphysema. “Emphysema causes damage to the lung tissue and alveoli or tiny air sacs. Over time, this damage causes the tiny air sacs to break and create one big air pocket instead of small ones,” the… read on > read on >

There’s a hint of good news for parents concerned about teen mental health: After 57% of U.S. teen girls surveyed in 2021 said they felt “persistent sadness,” that number declined somewhat by 2023, to 53%, new government data show. In the latest biennial poll of over 20,000 high school students nationwide, called the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that pandemic-era rates of despair may be ebbing, although they remain high. “One of our main priorities at CDC is improving Americans’ mental health,” Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science, said in an agency news release. “The data released today show improvements to a number of metrics that measure young people’s mental well-being — progress we can build on. However, this work is far from complete.” In general, girls tend to feel persistent sadness more than boys: About 28% of boys surveyed in both the 2021 and 2023 surveys said they felt that way. In other survey findings, suicide risk among girls did not change between the two surveys. However, a rise in suicide attempts among Black students that appeared in 2021 has now declined significantly. “These data show that we’ve made some progress in tackling these issues in recent years, which proves that they are not insurmountable.… read on > read on >

Fireworks displays can cause worse air quality than wildfire smoke, a new study reveals. About 60,000 firework shells exploded over Manhattan’s East River as part of Macy’s Fourth of July show in 2023, researchers said. The colorful bursts caused air pollution in New York City to spike dramatically, with levels many times higher in the hours after the display than was caused by smoke from a Canadian wildfire that had blanketed the region a month before. Particle pollution levels peaked at 3,000 micrograms per cubic meter of air at a sampling site near the display, and 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter at two other nearby sites, results show. For comparison, New York City’s average daily particle pollution levels are 15 micrograms per cubic meter, researchers said. Those levels reached just 460 micrograms per cubic meter when wildfire smoke choked and reddened the Manhattan skies in June 2023. In addition to air pollution, water samples collected from the East River contained more than double the usual level of metals sometimes used to make fireworks explode in brilliant colors. These include nickel, lead and antimony. “Our findings suggest that major firework displays can create a temporary spike in air pollution that may pose a health risk to both humans and the environment,” said lead researcher Terry Gordon, a professor with the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Fireworks… read on > read on >

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Three out of four police officers have experienced at least one concussion, increasing their risk of mental health issues, a new study suggests. About 74% of Ohio law enforcement officers had suffered one or more head injuries during their lifetimes, researchers found. Around 30% had a head injury that happened on the job. However, fewer than 1 in 4 of the head injuries were diagnosed or treated by a doctor, researchers found. “This is an area where we have to improve awareness, just like we did in the sport concussion world,” said lead researcher Jaclyn Caccese, an assistant professor in the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. For the study, researchers surveyed 381 police in central Ohio about their lifetime head injury history. The participants also completed questionnaires assessing symptoms of PTSD and depression. Prior head injuries had occurred in 282 of the officers. These injuries occurred mostly from sports, but also were caused by falling, being hit by someone or something, car accidents or exposure to a blast, researchers said. More than 50% of participants said they had a head injury severe enough to lose consciousness, feel dazed or confused, or cause a gap in memory — all signs of a concussion. Officers with a prior head injury also were more likely to have symptoms of PTSD and… read on > read on >

Botanicals like turmeric, green tea and black cohosh may seem benign, but their overuse is being increasingly linked to liver injury. New research suggests that 7% of U.S. adults are using at least one of the six leading botanicals, the equivalent of 15.6 million people. Many are ending up in hospitals for liver toxicity, researchers report. Because there’s almost no regulatory oversight over botanicals, chemical tests of products linked to liver crises “show frequent discrepancies between product labels and detected ingredients,” noted a team led by Dr. Alisa Likhitsup. She’s an assistant professor of gastroenterology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The researchers focused on the use of six of the most popular botanicals: Turmeric, green tea extract, the Garcinia cambodgia plant, black cohosh, red yeast rice and ashwagandha. Perusing 2017-2021 data on almost 9,700 adults in a federal health database, they found high rates of botanical use. For example, Likhitsup’s group estimated that more than 11 million adults regularly take turmeric supplements, often with the notion that it can ease pain or arthritis. That’s not too far below the approximately 14.8 million who take an NSAID pain reliever for much the same reasons. Unfortunately, “multiple randomized clinical trials have failed to demonstrate any efficacy of turmeric-containing products in osteoarthritis,” and overdoing it on turmeric has been linked to serious liver toxicity, the… read on > read on >

Folks who rub their forehead and complain that a complex problem is making their brain hurt aren’t overstating things, a new review suggests. Mental exertion appears to be associated with unpleasant feelings in many situations, researchers reported Aug. 5 in the journal Psychological Bulletin. In fact, the greater a person’s mental effort, the more they experience feelings like frustration, irritation, stress or annoyance, results showed. “Our findings show that mental effort feels unpleasant across a wide range of populations and tasks,” said senior researcher Erik Bijleveld, an associate professor of psychology with Radboud University in the Netherlands. “This is important for professionals, such as engineers and educators, to keep in mind when designing tasks, tools, interfaces, apps, materials or instructions,” Bijleveld added in a university news release. “When people are required to exert substantial mental effort, you need to make sure to support or reward them for their effort.” For the review, researchers analyzed 170 studies published between 2019 and 2020 involving 4,670 people. The participants included people from a wide range of backgrounds, including health care workers, military employees, amateur athletes and college students. They represented 29 countries. The studies involved more than 350 different brain tasks that ranged from learning new technology and finding one’s way around an unfamiliar environment to practicing golf swings or playing a virtual reality game. The combined results… read on > read on >