Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

Three anti-smoking groups announced Tuesday that they have sued the U.S. government yet again after it missed its latest deadline for enacting a ban on menthol cigarettes. This is the second lawsuit that the plaintiffs — the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, Action on Smoking and Health and the National Medical Association — have filed against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over delays in banning menthol cigarettes. The first lawsuit, filed in 2020, demanded that the FDA add menthol to its list of prohibited flavors for public health reasons. Once the agency began to take action on the issue, that lawsuit was dismissed. In the latest lawsuit, the groups claim the agency missed a March deadline for issuing a final rule on a menthol ban. Menthol cigarettes are particularly popular in the Black community. “Because of defendants’ inaction, tobacco companies have continued to use menthol cigarettes to target youth, women and the Black community — all to the detriment of public health,” the lawsuit stated. “As African American physicians, we are deeply disturbed at the continuing delays in FDA’s finalizing of the ban on menthol cigarettes,” Dr. Yolanda Lawson, president of the National Medical Association, said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “Our patients, more than any other group, become disabled and die prematurely due to the continued use of these cigarettes.”… read on > read on >

Research into germs that travel through the human digestive tract shows that some may promote obesity while others might help prevent it. Not only that, but those microbes may act differently in men versus women, the same study found. “Our findings reveal how an imbalance in distinct bacterial groups are likely to play an important role in the onset and development of obesity, with considerable differences between the sexes,” said study lead author Dr Paula Aranaz, from the Centre for Nutrition Research at the University of Navarra in Spain. Her team is slated to present the findings in May at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice. The researchers focused on an end product of human digestion: poop. They carefully analyzed the “metabolome” of stool samples from 251 female and 110 male adult volunteers, averaging 44 years of age. The metabolome is the variety of metabolite molecules that form as gut bacteria break down food, the researchers explained in a meeting news release. Aranaz’ team also used genetic profiling to identify the various types of bacteria in the stool samples. The participants ran the gamut in terms of weight — 65 were normal weight, 110 were overweight and 186 were deemed obese. Certain microbial patterns emerged when it came to correlations between gut microbes and weight. For example, folks who were obese tended to have… read on > read on >

Massive racial disparities exist in the treatment of pregnancy-related mood disorders in the United States, a new study shows. White women suffering from depression or anxiety during or after pregnancy are nearly twice as likely receive treatment as women of color are, researchers report April 1 in the journal Health Affairs. About two-thirds of white women (67%) said they received mental health treatment for their diagnosed depression or anxiety during pregnancy or in their first year of motherhood, researchers found. Comparatively, fewer than two out of five (37%) Black and Hispanic received treatment for their pregnancy-related mood disorders, results show. That number dipped to one in five (20%) for other ethnicities, including Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern and North African. “Our study in concert with existing work shows that Asian, Black and Latine birthing people, who may be at the greatest risk of postpartum depression, are the least likely to receive any form of postpartum mental health care — illustrating stark racial inequities in how postpartum depression is identified and managed in the U.S.,” said lead researcher Sarah Haight, a doctoral candidate in epidemiology with the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. Nearly one in eight people who give birth wind up suffering postpartum depression, researchers said in background notes. For the study, they surveyed more than 4,500… read on > read on >

People who gamble on sports are more likely to be binge drinkers as well, a new report finds. Both women and men who bet on sports were at least twice as likely to binge drink compared to non-gamblers, results showed. Further, the odds of binge drinking increased with the frequency of gambling. “With past research showing that sports gamblers are more likely to report symptoms of alcohol use disorder, our results suggest that individuals who wager on sports use alcohol in particularly risky ways,” the research team said in an American Psychiatric Association news release. The study was led by Joshua Grubbs, an associate professor of clinical psychology with the University of New Mexico. For the study, Grubbs’ team analyzed survey data from nearly 4,400 adults about their gambling and drinking habits. Overall, three out of four said they’d used alcohol during the previous year, and more than 1,800 were sports gamblers. Researchers found that women and men who bet on sports once or twice during the previous year were 2.4 times and 1.9 times more likely to report binge drinking, respectively. Binge drinking involves consuming five or more drinks on a single occasion for men, and four or more drinks for women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The odds also increased as either sex gambled more often: Monthly: 3.8… read on > read on >

Patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder tend to see their conditions ease after four months on the ketogenic (“keto”) diet, a small pilot study finds. While no one is saying the diet should replace standard medications, the researchers believe it could provide additional help for some. “It’s very promising and very encouraging that you can take back control of your illness in some way, aside from the usual standard of care,” said study first author Dr. Shebani Sethi. She’s an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The findings were published March 27 in the journal Psychiatric Research. Sethi said she first noticed there might be a connection between the keto diet and psychiatric health when she was working as a student in a clinic focused on obesity and weight loss. Many people with psychiatric conditions gain excess weight due to medication side effects. Sethi was helping to treat one such patient, who had schizophrenia. The patient’s auditory hallucinations (“hearing voices” can be a common symptom of schizophrenia) quieted down after being on the keto diet, she said. A search of the literature turned up little regarding using the diet to counter schizophrenia, but there was evidence it could ease epileptic seizures. Apparently the diet did so “by reducing the excitability of neurons in the brain,” Sethi explained in a Stanford news… read on > read on >

Expecting or new mothers are much more likely these days to be diagnosed with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, new research shows. However, more women are also getting treated for these problems rather than roughing it out, researchers report in April 1 issue of the journal Health Affairs. “Taken together, these studies show a lot of movement in maternal mental health,” said researcher Stephanie Hall, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School. “The landscape is different, at least as far as our health care system’s ability to pick up on conditions and help people get treatment for them.” For the research, investigators analyzed claims data for people with private insurance between 2008 and 2020. They specifically looked for depressive and anxiety disorders occurring during pregnancy or in the first year of motherhood. By 2020, more than one in four (28%) women received a diagnosis of a mood disorder during either pregnancy or the first year of parenthood – a rate nearly double that seen in 2008. Further, the rate of PTSD diagnosis among expecting or new moms quadrupled, rising to nearly 2% of all those pregnant or postpartum in 2020. Fortunately, treatment also appeared to increase alongside diagnoses, researchers said. The rate at which new or expecting moms received talk therapy more than doubled, rising 16% for women diagnosed with anxiety,… read on > read on >

The seeds of high blood pressure in adulthood might be sown in youth, a new study suggests. Children and teenagers with excess weight were more likely to have high blood pressure in middle age, researchers report. In fact, there’s a linear relationship between adult high blood pressure and childhood overweight and obesity, researchers found. The heavier a child is, or the more pounds they put on during puberty, the more likely they are to have high blood pressure as an adult, results show. “Our results suggest that preventing overweight and obesity beginning in childhood matters when it comes to achieving a healthy blood pressure in later life,” said lead researcher Lina Lilja, a doctoral student with the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 1.3 billion adults 30 to 79 have high blood pressure, increasing their risk of strokes, heart attacks and kidney disease. High body-mass index in adults is strongly tied to elevated blood pressure, but it’s not clear whether excess weight in childhood contributes to this risk. To learn more, researcher analyzed data on nearly 1,700 Swedish people born between 1948 and 1968. For these people, BMI readings were taken at age 7 to 8 and again at 18 to 20. Researchers compared this to blood pressure readings, systolic and diastolic, taken among the group at ages 50… read on > read on >

A monthly long-acting injection of buprenorphine can be an easier and more effective therapy for people struggling with opioid addiction, but treatment centers aren’t much interested in using it, a new study discovers. Only one-third of treatment facilities (33%) offer long-acting buprenorphine injections to patients, according to findings published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers suspect this is because substance use treatment centers face administrative obstacles that make it more difficult to offer buprenorphine injections, compared to the daily pill form of the drug. “This paper highlights gaps that exist in the system,” said lead researcher Nitin Vidyasagar, a second-year student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. “We can now use the information to help treat people who need it the most.” Buprenorphine works by activating the same brain receptors that more powerful opioids target. However, the effects are weaker, helping addicts wean themselves off other substances like heroin and fentanyl. Analyzing federal data on substance use, researchers found that primary care doctors are more likely to offer long-acting buprenorphine shots than treatment centers. This might be because doctor’s offices face fewer regulatory and administrative hurdles to prescribe the medication as a monthly injection, the researchers said. “The takeaway is, we still have a lot of work to do to make the full complement of opioid treatment options… read on > read on >

Telehealth might be a more effective way of treating alcoholism than in-person therapy sessions, a new study reports. Alcoholics who receive treatment through telehealth were more likely to engage in more therapy visits and stick to anti-alcohol medication longer than those who venture out for alcohol use disorder therapy, researchers found. These results are “particularly important in the current context, as the United States debates whether to sustain or revoke pandemic-era policies that decreased barriers to telehealth,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Ponni Perumalswami, of the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. For the study, researchers analyzed data from the Veterans Administration gathered during the pandemic, from March 2020 to February 2021, on more than 138,000 patients diagnosed with alcohol use disorder. During the study period, 53% of patients had at least one video visit, 38% had at least one telephone visit but no video visits, and 9% had only in-person visits, researchers said. Telehealth was associated with more therapy visits and medication use compared with in-person visits, researchers found. What’s more, among those who received treatment through telehealth, video visits prompted significantly more therapy sessions than telephone visits. Black patients were less likely to receive video telehealth treatment and were more likely to have in-person visits, highlighting “important disparities in alcohol use disorder telehealth use,” researchers said. The new study was published recently… read on > read on >

U.S. rates of suicide by all methods rose steadily for adolescents between 1999 and 2020, a new analysis shows. During those two decades, over 47,000 Americans between the ages 10 and 19 lost their lives to suicide, the report found, and there have been sharp increases year by year. Girls and minority adolescents have charted especially steep increases in suicides, said a team led by Cameron Ormiston, of the U.S. National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. “An overall increasing trend was observed across all demographics,” the researchers wrote in a study published March 29 in the journal JAMA Network Open. The findings were based on federal death certificate data from 1999 through 2020. By race, sex and means of suicide, some troubling trends stood out. For example, while deaths from drug (or other substance) overdose rose by 2.7% per year between 1999 and 2020 among all adolescents, it rose by 4.5% per year among girls, specifically. That trend has only accelerated in recent years: Between 2011 and 2020, suicides by overdose jumped 12.6% per year among female adolescents, Ormiston’s group reported. All of this suggests that “adolescents are finding more lethal means of poisonings, contributing to an increase in deaths by suicide,” they said. And while suicides using guns rose 5.3% per year during 1999 to 2020 among boys, it increased even more… read on > read on >