Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

Do you struggle to sleep during the week and play catch up on the weekend? Do you toss and turn all night long and start the day in a fog? Are you a napper? Or are you among the lucky folks who have no problem getting enough shuteye? Researchers at Penn State University report that most Americans fit one of these four descriptions — and how people sleep is a good predictor of their long-term health. “Sleep is an everyday behavior. Sleep is also modifiable,” said lead researcher Soomi Lee, director of the Sleep, Stress, and Health (STEALTH) laboratory at Penn State. “Better sleeping habits can make many significant differences, from improving social relationships and work performance to promoting long-term healthy behaviors and healthy aging.” Her team looked at data from more than 3,600 participants in the Midlife in the United States study. Researchers looked at participants’ self-reported sleep habits. That included how long they sleep, whether they’re satisfied with their sleep, their daytime alertness and chronic health conditions. More than half of participants were identified as insomnia sleepers — struggling to doze off then sleeping only a little. Over a 10-year period, this sleep style was associated with a significantly higher likelihood of heart disease, diabetes, depression and other chronic health conditions. Researchers said the study primarily included healthy adults, so it may not… read on > read on >

College students who use drugs like Adderall to help them focus on their studies may be setting themselves up for trouble. Researchers asked 700 undergraduates across the United States about drugs commonly used by students — including ADHD medications like Adderall, cannabis, nicotine, alcohol, MDMA and ecstasy. They also asked about students’ academic performance and physical and mental distress. They found that using one substance appears to prime the brain for using others. Lead author Lina Begdache, an associate professor of health and wellness studies at Binghamton University, State University of New York, said the finding is important because many students use these so-called “study drugs” without understanding how they affect the brain. Adderall is a medication prescribed to help people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) focus. “Since these are prescribed medications to promote focus in individuals who actually have ADHD, students may think that they are safe to use and that the drug may give them an academic edge,” she said in a university news release. Instead of an edge, students may find one substance leads to another, Begdache warned. Researchers linked use of one substance to generally poorer mental health and lower ability to fight off stress. And less frequent use led to mental distress — potentially promoting continued use. The findings were published recently in the International Journal of Psychological and Behavioral… read on > read on >

Researchers are zeroing in on the reasons why women who battle depression may be more likely than men to develop heart disease. A study published March 12 in the journal JACC: Asia underscores the need to tailor prevention and management strategies according to sex-specific factors, researchers said. This “may help in the development of targeted prevention and treatment strategies” for the heart health risks faced by depressed patients, said corresponding author Dr. Hidehiro Kaneko, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Tokyo in Japan. Depression in the third-leading cause of disease worldwide. It has been linked to an increased risk of heart problems including heart attack, angina, stroke and death. Women who are depressed are at a greater risk of heart problems than their male peers with depression, but the reasons have not been understood. For this study, Kaneko’s team evaluated data from nearly 4.2 million people who were listed in a Japanese health claims database between 2005 and 2022. Of those, nearly 2.4 million were men. Researchers looked at participants’ weight, blood pressure and fasting laboratory test results at their initial exam. Those with depression had previously received that diagnosis. Researchers found that women with depression were more likely than men to have one of the heart problems investigated — heart attack, stroke, angina, heart failure and atrial fibrillation. Researchers suspect women… read on > read on >

People diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show a marked decline in their two-year risk for death once they start taking medication, new research shows. That was particularly true for deaths due to accidents and drug overdose. People taking ADHD drugs also showed no higher risk of dying from natural causes — suggesting the meds are safe for users’ heart health. Medications like Ritalin, Concerta and others probably lower users’ odds for an early death “by alleviating the core symptoms of ADHD and other psychiatric co-morbidities [illnesses], leading to improved impulse control and decision-making,” concluded a team led by Zheng Chang, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Better impulse control and healthier decisions help people with ADHD avoid tragedies like fatal accidents and drug overdoses, the researchers said. As Chang’s team noted, prior research has shown that people with ADHD face double the odds for deaths from “unnatural causes” — events such as accidents, suicide and unintended drug overdoses. Many people struggle with the decision to start ADHD medications, however, so the new study wanted to see if the drugs might lower death risks. Chang’s team gathered data from multiple Swedish health registries. In all, they amassed medical histories on almost 149,000 Swedes who’d been diagnosed with ADHD between the ages of 6 and 64. Within three months of their diagnosis, about 57% of… read on > read on >

When states let gun owners carry a firearm openly without a permit, death rates soar. Significantly more people died by firearms and suicides in states that have relaxed open carry laws, a nine-year study of death data from all 50 states shows. “Our analysis suggests that because of the change in the law, which provides easier access to firearms, we saw an increased firearm suicide rate and total suicide rate,” said principal study author Dr. Jose Diaz, a professor of surgery at the University of South Florida in Tampa. His team evaluated annual rates of firearm-related deaths, total suicides and total homicides from 2013 to 2021. Death data came from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the study period, 19 states barred open carry or required a permit, and five states switched to open carry laws without a permit. Twenty-six states already allowed open carry without a permit before 2013. Over the study period, firearm deaths jumped 45% nationwide, from 33,636 in 2013 to 48,830 in 2021. Researchers found a significant link between more liberal gun laws and rates of firearm-related deaths. Total suicide rates rose by about 57%, while suicides by firearm rose 18% in states that switched to permitless open carry, the data showed. There was no link between permitless open carry laws and homicides related to firearms. Diaz said… read on > read on >

The cost to American families of caring for a child with a mental health condition rose by almost a third between 2017 and 2021, a new report finds, to an average $4,361 per year. Overall, American families spent an estimated $31 billion in 2021 on child mental health services, which now make up nearly half (about 47%) of all child medical spending, the report found. The findings “underscore the large financial burden associated with pediatric mental health conditions on the U.S. health care system,” said a team led by Theoren Loo. He works for Brightline, a California company focused on virtual mental health care for kids. The findings were published March 11 in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open. As the study authors noted, “the prevalence of pediatric mental health conditions and the demand for behavioral health services is growing in the U.S.” In 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a report outlining “alarming increases in the prevalence of certain mental health challenges” among kids. In the study, Loo’s group tracked 2017-2021 federal data on medical spending from a representative sampling of American households. They found that diagnoses for mental health conditions in kids ages 5 to 17 rose by almost 22% over those five years. By 2021, about one in every four (25.9%) American children was diagnosed with a mental health… read on > read on >

Kids struggling with mental health problems have a tougher time recovering from a concussion, a new study finds. These troubled kids tend to have more emotional symptoms after concussion and take longer to fully recover, results show. In fact, the more mental health diagnoses a child had, the worse their emotional symptoms and the longer their recovery following a concussion, researchers reported recently in the journal Sports Health. “While research has emphasized the negative mental health effects that persist after a concussion and how they can impact development and recovery, it’s also very important to consider the burden these children and adolescents face prior to their injuries, and how their preexisting mental health status can impact recovery,” said senior researcher Dr. Matthew Grady, a pediatric sports medicine specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Concussions are a common childhood injury, with about 2 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occurring each year in the United States, researchers said in background notes. These mild traumatic brain injuries can cause a variety of problems with brain function, emotions, sleep and vision, researchers said. A child’s physical health prior to concussion is known to influence their symptoms and recovery time. To see whether that held true for mental health as well, researchers analyzed data on more than 3,100 kids who had suffered a concussion. The research team checked the… read on > read on >

Days clogged with numerous after-school activities are detrimental to the mental health of over-scheduled high school students, a new study finds. Researchers also found that these “enrichment’ activities — tutoring, sports, school clubs and even homework — are unlikely to benefit students academically. Many folks think extra study time or tutoring will lead to better grades, but the new study shows many students are at their limit, said researcher Carolina Caetano, an assistant professor of economics with the University of Georgia College of Business. “We found that the effect of those additional activities on cognitive skills, that last hour, is basically zero,” Caetano said in a university news release. “And what’s more surprising is that the last hour doing these activities is contributing negatively to the child’s non-cognitive skills.” In other words, academic overload is causing high schoolers to lose out on social and emotional abilities — well-being, emotional control, resilience and communication, Caetano said. Caetano said it’s best to think of the relationship between enrichment activities and these social and emotional skills as a curve. For a while, an additional hour of studying, tutoring or group activities will help students improve their academic performance. But the more time a student spends on enrichment, the less time they have to relax, freely socialize or sleep – activities valuable for life skills and knowledge retention, Caetano… read on > read on >

Wegovy (semaglutide), the weight-loss version of blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic, was approved on Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to help prevent heart attack, stroke and heart death. “Wegovy is now the first weight-loss medication to also be approved to help prevent life-threatening cardiovascular events in adults with cardiovascular disease and either obesity or overweight,” Dr. John Sharretts, director of the Division of Diabetes, Lipid Disorders and Obesity in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in an agency statement. “This patient population has a higher risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke,” Sharretts explained. “Providing a treatment option that is proven to lower this cardiovascular risk is a major advance for public health.” According to the FDA, over 70% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, putting them at added risk for heart attack or stroke. In one multinational study involving over 17,600 people, participants received either injected Wegovy or a placebo injection. All participants also got standard-of-care management of their blood pressure and cholesterol plus counseling on exercise and healthy eating. “Wegovy significantly reduced the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events [cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke], which occurred in 6.5% of participants who received Wegovy compared to 8% of participants who received placebo,” the FDA said. It’s thought that this expanded approval from the FDA could remove… read on > read on >

Folks worried about becoming flabby in middle age should check out what their parents looked like when they were that age, a new study says. People are six times more likely to become obese in middle age if both their parents were chubby during that time of their lives, according to research to be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in May. Further, having just one obese parent more than triples a person’s odds of middle-aged obesity, researchers found. These findings demonstrate that the established association between childhood obesity and parental weight doesn’t fade as a kid ages, said lead researcher Mari Mikkelsen, a doctoral research fellow of community medicine at the Arctic University of Norway. “Obesity in childhood, and especially in adolescence, tends to follow the individual into early adulthood, and so we suspected it would also follow them into middle age,” Mikkelsen said in a meeting news release. “We found that this is indeed the case — children whose parents lived with obesity are much more likely to be in living with obesity themselves when they are in their 40s and 50s, long after they have left home,” Mikkelsen added. For this study, researchers analyzed health data on more than 2,000 parent-offspring pairs who took both took part in an ongoing health research project called the Tromso Study. All the offspring were… read on > read on >