Most folks know they’d be healthier if they ate more plant-based foods, but only a quarter are willing to follow through and do it, a new study shows. Surveys reveal that Americans’ beliefs about eating more plants for health are often at odds with their daily dietary choices, researchers say. “U.S. consumers have favorable perceptions of foods and beverages that support human and environmental health, but that’s not translating into what they’re purchasing and consuming,” said lead researcher Katherine Consavage Stanley, a doctoral student in human nutrition, foods and exercise at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. For the study, researchers looked at data from more than a decade of nationwide surveys gathered between 2012 and 2022 by the International Food Information Council, analyzing more than 1,000 participants’ responses. Across all the years, 73% of Americans said plant proteins were healthy, compared to 39% who said animal proteins were healthy. The percentage of Americans who follow a plant-rich dietary pattern more than doubled during the decade studied, rising from 12% to nearly 26%. At the same time, however, the percentage of people eating more red meat also rose, from 13% to 19%. Generation Z (born 1997-2012) and Millennials (1981-1996) were more likely to follow a plant-rich diet than Generation X (born 1965-1980) or Baby Boomers (1946-1964), results show. But about 25% of Generation Z and Millennials also…  read on >  read on >

Vitamin supplements are a big business, with Americans spending roughly $45 billion out of more than $177 billion worldwide on pills, gummies and powders meant to boost health. About 59 million Americans regularly use some type of vitamin or supplement, spending an average $510 each year. But most folks are wasting that money, experts say. A balanced daily diet provides all the nutrients a person typically needs to maintain their health, said Dr. Matthew Silvis, vice chair of clinical operations for Penn State Health Family and Community Medicine. “If you have a well-balanced diet and you’re able to eat nutritious foods ― fruits, vegetables, etc. ― you don’t need a multivitamin or a supplement,” Silvis said in a news release. “The broad answer is most people don’t need them, despite the multibillion-dollar industry that the vitamin industry is,” he continued. “But there are populations of individuals who do need to consider a multivitamin or a supplement. And that is individualized.” Examples of people who do need specific supplements include: Pregnant women who need folic acid to prevent birth defects. Seniors with osteoporosis who can benefit from calcium and Vitamin D supplements. Vegans or people with Celiac disease who need a multivitamin to supplement the nutrients they aren’t absorbing from their diet. High-intensity athletes who regularly participate in draining workouts and fierce competition also might be…  read on >  read on >

Some people diagnosed with schizophrenia might instead be suffering from a rare visual condition that can cause other people’s faces to appear “demonic,” a new study argues. The condition, called prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), can cause others’ facial features to appear horrific — drooped, larger, smaller, out of position or stretched in disturbing ways. “Not surprisingly, people with prosopometamorphopsia often find it disturbing to look at other people’s faces,” researchers said on their website on the condition. “Fortunately, most cases last only a few days or weeks, but some cases perceive distortions in faces for years.” Unfortunately, this disorder in vision has led to a diagnosis of mental illness in some patients.  “We’ve heard from multiple people with PMO that they have been diagnosed by psychiatrists as having schizophrenia and put on anti-psychotics, when their condition is a problem with the visual system,” said senior study author Brad Duchaine, a professor of psychological and brain sciences and principal investigator of the Social Perception Lab at Dartmouth University. To help people understand PMO, Duchaine and his colleagues have produced the first case report to provide accurate and photorealistic examples of the facial distortions experienced by a specific patient with PMO. The patient, a 58-year-old man, sees faces without any distortions if they’re on a screen or on paper. But when he sees someone in person, their face appears…  read on >  read on >

Working stiffs in the United States are dying at higher rates than those in other wealthy nations, a new study finds. Death rates among working-age Americans are 2.5 times higher than the average of other high-income countries, researchers report in the March 21 issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology. These deaths among people ages 25 to 64 are being driven by car crashes, homicides, suicides, drug overdoses and other highly preventable causes, researchers said. For example, drug-related deaths increased up to tenfold between 2000 and 2019, a trend diverging dramatically from other countries. ‘Over the past three decades, midlife mortality in the U.S. has worsened significantly compared to other high-income countries, and for the younger 25- to 44-year-old age-group in 2019 it even surpassed midlife mortality rates for Central and Eastern European countries,” said researcher Katarzyna Doniec, a postdoctoral researcher with the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford. “This is surprising, given that not so long ago some of these countries experienced high levels of working-age mortality, resulting from the post-socialist crisis of the 1990s,” Doniec added in a university news release. For the study, researchers used annual death data gathered by the World Health Organization between 1990 and 2019. The data included 15 major causes of death in 18 high-income countries, including the United States, the U.K. and seven…  read on >  read on >

Many teens – especially girls – are affected by body dysmorphic disorder, a condition in which they become obsessed with perceived flaws in their personal appearance, a new study shows. BDD affects about two in every 100 teens (1.9%), according to a report published March 17 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The disorder is six times more common in girls than in boys, affecting 1.8% of girls compared to 0.3% of boys, the researchers said. These numbers show it’s important for doctors to keep an eye out for signs of the disorder, said lead researcher Georgina Krebs, an associate professor of psychology with University College London. “Since young people with BDD tend not to spontaneously disclose their symptoms unless directly asked, it is crucial that clinicians utilize BDD screening tools and ask young people directly about appearance concerns,” Krebs said in a university news release. For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 7,600 kids and teens who participated in the 2017 Mental Health of Children and Young People in England survey. The survey included a question about whether the child is ever concerned with how he or she looks. Those who answered “a little” or “a lot” underwent further screening for BDD. Nearly 70% of young people with BDD also met the diagnostic criteria for at…  read on >  read on >

A common antiseizure drug used to treat epilepsy, migraines and bipolar disorder does not appear to increase the risk of autism for kids exposed to it in the womb, a new study says. Topiramate does not contribute to any risk of kids developing autism if their moms took it during pregnancy, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Our findings provide needed clarity on the possible neurodevelopmental impacts of this commonly used drug,” lead researcher Dr. Sonia Hernández-Díaz, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a news release. “While our primary analyses focused on mothers with epilepsy, the study has implications for moms and moms-to-be who live with other conditions treated by topiramate as well,” she added. Topiramate can treat epilepsy and migraine by calming overactive nerves in a person’s body, experts say. Another antiseizure drug, lamotrigine, also is safe for expectant mothers to take, researchers found. However, a third drug, valproate, does appear to increase risk of autism in kids, results show. The results for lamotrigine and valproate are consistent with earlier studies. Nearly 11% of kids exposed to valproate in the womb developed autism, and the risk increased as moms took larger doses of the drug, researchers report. Researchers also noted that while topiramate appears safe for a baby’s developing brains, it remains linked…  read on >  read on >

Stressed out, anxious or desperately needing to recharge? Grab some knitting needles and a pretty ball of yarn — Swedish research shows yarncraft improves mental health without medication. “Knitters have a creative leisure interest that can also help them cope with life and so improve their mental health,” said first author Joanna Nordstrand, an occupational therapist pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Gothenburg. “I’m convinced that this is part of the reason why so many people have taken up knitting these days.” Nordstrand, who is among them, explored the mental health benefits of knitting in a study recently published in the Journal of Occupational Science. For the study, she reviewed 600 posts from the online fiber arts forum Ravelry, where stitching buffs gather to discuss their hobby.  Reinforcing a picture emerging from other studies, their posts revealed three ways in which knitting boosts health. The hobby helps folks unwind, gives them an identity as a knitter in a social context with low stakes. It can also bring structure to people’s lives — which benefits mental health. In the posts, some knitters said they noticed the change in their mental health: When they were knitting, thinking was clearer and easier to manage. “The nurses were wanting to give me [an antianxiety medication] until I told them that I preferred knitting for the anxiety,” one knitter…  read on >  read on >

People with heart disease can stay healthier if they address their emotional problems as well as their physical ailments, a new study says. Treating anxiety and depression reduced ER visits and hospitalizations among patients with heart disease, researchers report in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Psychotherapy, mood-controlling medication or a combination of the two “was associated with as much as a 75% reduction in hospitalizations or emergency room visits,” said lead researcher Dr. Philip Binkley, executive vice chair of internal medicine at Ohio State University in Columbus. Anxiety and depression are common in people with heart failure, Binkley said in a news release, and mental health is known to impact a person’s risk of other health problems. “Heart disease and anxiety/depression interact such that each promotes the other,” he said. For this study, researchers looked at more than 1,500 people admitted to the hospital for blocked arteries or heart failure. About 92% of participants in the study had been diagnosed with anxiety and 56% with depression prior to their hospitalization. The patients were between 22 and 64 years old, and all were enrolled in Medicaid, researchers said. About 23% of patients received antidepressant drugs and psychotherapy, 15% received psychotherapy alone, 29% received antidepressants alone, and 33% received no mental health treatment. The study found that the combination of medication and talk therapy reduced…  read on >  read on >

For the first time, the United States has fallen out of the top 20 spots on the annual world’s happiest nations list. Americans are now No. 23, far behind the top five countries — Finland (No. 1), Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Israel.  “The United States of America (23rd) has fallen out of the top 20 for the first time since the World Happiness Report (WHP) was first published in 2012, driven by a large drop in the wellbeing of Americans under 30,” the World Happiness Report said in a news release. The U.S. placed 15th in last year’s rankings. This decline may not come as a surprise to many Americans, with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy citing rising levels of anxiety and mental health issues among the young as a “devastating” crisis as far back as 2021. The new global happiness tally was issued to coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Happiness. It’s based on citizens’ responses from more than 140 nations and is “powered by data from the Gallup World Poll and analysed by some of the world’s leading wellbeing scientists,” the WHP explained. Rounding out the top 10 countries on the list, beginning with No. 6, are The Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Australia. Canada placed 15th and the United Kingdom, No. 20.  At the bottom of the 143-nation list: Afghanistan. …  read on >  read on >

About 1 in every 10 U.S. children ages 5 to 17 has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to the latest government statistics. The data from the National Health Interview Survey covers the years 2020 through 2022 and came from in-person or phone interviews involving a representative sample of American homes. It found that 11.3% of school-age children have been diagnosed with ADHD, with boys more likely to have this diagnosis (14.5%) than girls (8%), according to report authors Cynthia Reuben and Nazik Elgaddal, of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). ADHD is diagnosed more often among white children (13.4%) than Black youngsters (10.8%) or Hispanic (8.9%) kids, the survey also showed.  Family income seemed to matter, too:  As income levels rose, the rate of child ADHD diagnoses declined. Access to medical care also seemed to influence whether or not a child was diagnosed with ADHD.  For example, while 14.4% percent of school-age kids on public health insurance (such as Medicaid) had an ADHD diagnosis, that fell to 9.7% of children covered by private insurance, and 6.3% of kids from uninsured families, the report found.  The findings were published March 20 as an NCHS Data Brief. The NCHS is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More information Find out more about diagnosing ADHD at the Cleveland Clinic.…  read on >  read on >