Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

Stress is flooding the nation as the 2024 U.S. presidential election nears its climax. This stress is only natural, but it can be managed, said Eric Storch, vice chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences with Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “There is uncertainty with change,” Storch said in a Baylor news release. “People worry about how their lives will change depending on the election results or that the elected individual may not represent them or their values — this can heighten feelings of distress throughout the election.” A new poll from the American Psychological Association shows just how distressed Americans are: About 77% of adults are stressed about the future of the nation, while 69% are worried about the upcoming election. It’s tricky to manage that stress, so Storch recommends a mixed bag of tactics to help keep it together through the end of the year: Take control over the things within your power to control, such as actively supporting your political position and voting Limit exposure to the media, which can trigger fresh stress Understand that whether your candidate wins or loses, another election will take place in the future Focus on stress relievers like physical activity, good sleep and socializing with loved ones If you find your anxiety unmanageable, seek counseling “Distress can be channeled into feelings of helplessness, or it can… read on > read on >

Baby Boom seniors are divorcing at rates triple that of a few decades ago, a new study has found. “Gray divorce” among folks 65 and older increased to 15% in 2022 from 5% in 1990, according to research from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University. Increased life expectancy and the fragile nature of second, third or fourth marriages could play a factor in this trend, said researcher Susan Brown, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. “This cohort of individuals experienced the divorce revolution in the 1970s as young adults, and many eventually remarried,” Brown said. “We know that remarriages are more likely to end in divorce than first marriages, which could be one cause for the increase.” However, divorce rates among middle-aged Gen X’ers 50 to 64 slightly declined in 2022, researchers noted. This means that “gray divorce” is largely a phenomenon among the Baby Boomer generation, the researchers concluded. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, Bowling Green researchers also found that an increasing number of seniors never married – a percentage that steadily rose from 5.2% in 1990 to 6.6% in 2022. At the same time, widowhood has declined by more than 14% during the past three decades, thanks to increases in life expectancy. “Traditionally, when we’ve studied older adults, we tend to confine… read on > read on >

At-home brain stimulation therapy can safely and effectively treat severe to moderate depression, a new clinical trial shows. Rates of treatment response and depression remission were three times higher in people receiving the noninvasive brain stimulation, researchers said. “The study results bring promise that an innovative treatment modality may become available for patients suffering from mood disorders some time in the near future,” said co-lead researcher Dr. Jaire Soares, chair of psychiatry with the University of Texas McGovern Medical School. For the study, 174 people diagnosed with depression were randomly assigned to receive or forego brain stimulation during a 10-week course of treatment. Those receiving brain stimulation got five 30-minute sessions a week for the first three weeks, followed by three 30-minute sessions a week for the next seven weeks. The therapy is called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), in which a current of between 0.5 to 2 milliampere is applied to the scalp through two electrodes. This amount of electricity causes at most a slight tingling sensation along the scalp. The stimulation was self-administered by patients in their own homes, researchers said. About 45% of people receiving the stimulation wound up with their depression in remission, compared with 22% of the control group, researchers found. “The burden of depression is mostly keenly felt by the 280 million people worldwide currently managing symptoms. While a… read on > read on >

Smokers find it easier to quit if they’re automatically offered support, even if they didn’t ask for it, a new clinical trial finds. Quit rates were higher among health system patients placed in an “opt-out” program, in which tobacco cessation medications and counseling are automatically prescribed upon learning they smoke, researchers found. It’s called an “opt-out” program because people get the meds and counseling unless they opt out of it. After a month, 22% of people in an opt-out group had quit smoking, compared with only 16% of smokers who had to opt into the cessation program, researchers reported recently in the journal JAMA Network Open. “Health care providers don’t ask patients if they would like to get evidence-based care for other conditions like asthma, high blood pressure or diabetes,” said senior researcher Kimber Richter, a professor of population health with the University of Kansas Cancer Center. “They just identify a health condition and provide the best care possible.” “For no reason, we’ve always treated tobacco dependence differently — we wanted to see what would happen if we proactively treated tobacco dependence,” Richter added in a university news release. For the clinical trial, nearly 750 smokers receiving medical care from the University of Kansas Health System were asked about their desire to quit, and then randomly placed into one of two groups. Those assigned to… read on > read on >

An overwhelming majority of teens and young adults are worried about how climate change will affect their future, a new survey has found. About 85% of 16- to 25-year-olds are worried about the impact of climate change on people and the planet, according to the survey of nearly 16,000 people from all 50 states. That includes nearly all who identify as Democrats (96%), as well as overwhelming numbers of independents (86%) and Republicans (75%). In almost all states, as least half of teens and young adults reported being very or extremely worried, results show. “Given the environmental crises happening all around, these findings should not be surprising,” said lead researcher Eric Lewandowski, a clinical psychologist with the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City. “Nonetheless, it is stunning to find such high levels of distress, and desire and plans for action, in young people across the country, in every state and of every political stripe.” The survey also found that: More than 60% say climate change makes them feel anxious, powerless, afraid, sad and angry More than one-third (38%) say their feelings about climate change affect their ability to function daily Three-quarters (76%) said the future is frightening, with climate change weighing on future life decisions such as where to live (69%) and whether to have children (52%) Two-thirds (66%) believe climate change… read on > read on >

Kids with good physical fitness are more likely to grow into teens with better mental health and brain function, a new study has found. Children who performed better at shuttle sprints scored better on cognitive tests as teenagers, researchers found. In addition, better cardio fitness in childhood added up to lower levels of stress and depression among teenagers, results show. “Our results should encourage policymakers as well as parents and guardians to see the significance of physical fitness more holistically, as poor physical fitness can increase mental health challenges and impair cognitive skills needed for learning,” said lead researcher Eero Haapala, a senior lecturer of sports and exercise medicine at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland. In the study, researchers followed the physical fitness of 241 Finnish kids for eight years, tracking them from childhood through to adolescence. Tests of physical fitness were compared to scores of kids’ thinking ability and emotional health. The findings, published recently in the journal Sports Medicine, showed that the more fit the kids were, the less stress and depression they reported as teenagers. This could be because kids with better physical health have more self-esteem and better mental resilience, researchers said. However, the researchers warned that kids who spend more times with screens might find the benefits of physical fitness blunted a bit. “The whole of society should support… read on > read on >

Depression can make it tougher for athletes to recover from a concussion, and vice versa, a new study finds. Student athletes who have both concussion and depression have significantly worse symptoms for both conditions, researchers reported recently in the journal Brain Research. What’s more, electrical signals in the brain are more disrupted among people with both concussion and depression than among those with only one of these conditions, the researchers noted. “We wanted to measure — both subjectively and objectively — whether these two neurological conditions also have a compounding effect on each other, and our study demonstrated that they do,” said lead researcher Owen Griffith, a doctoral candidate in kinesiology with Penn State. For the study, researchers studied 10 male and 25 female college athletes. All received EEG brain scans and underwent screenings for concussion and depression symptoms. Those who had both depression and concussion reported nearly twice as many symptoms of depression as those who had either condition alone, results showed. Likewise, those with both depression and concussion reported significantly worse and more prolonged post-concussion symptoms than those who suffered a concussion but no depression. The EEG brain scans showed that people had less coherent brain wave patterns if they suffered both concussion and depression, researchers said. These EEG measurements show that functional connectivity between brain areas is significantly disrupted in people with… read on > read on >

Is vaping finally losing its coolness for American teens? The latest tally of federal data finds that 550,000 school kids, mostly high schoolers, quit using e-cigarettes in 2024. Vaping rates fell from 10% of high school students in 2023 to 7.8% this year, “reaching the lowest level ever measured” by the National Youth Tobacco Survey, reported a team of researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health. However, with more than 2 million youth using tobacco products and certain groups not experiencing declines in use, our mission is far from complete,” Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, said in a news release announcing the new data. Rates of use of traditional cigarettes are also extremely low: Only 1.4% of middle- and high-school kids now smoke, the report found. The only bit of bad news: A relatively new tobacco product on the scene, nicotine-laden tobacco pouches, which people place between the cheek and gum, are showing upticks in popularity among teens. Pouches now rank as the second most popular tobacco product, with 2.4% of high school students using them regularly. “Nicotine pouch sales have substantially increased nationwide since 2016,” noted the team led by CDC investigator Ahmed Jamal, and “nearly one million (890,000)… read on > read on >

A new diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or other dementia often spurs a person to move from their home, new research shows. “One possible explanation is that individuals with dementia and their caregivers may choose to move closer to family or informal caregivers, either with independent housing arrangements or entering formal long-term care services,” wrote a team led by Momotazur Rahman, an associate professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown University in Providence, R.I. The study was published Oct. 14 in the journal JAMA Network Open. The researchers used Medicare data on the residential histories of over 1.6 million Medicare beneficiaries. All had received a diagnosis of either dementia, heart attack, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or colon cancer in 2016. Each person’s domicile (including nursing homes) was tracked over the eight years before and after the 2016 diagnosis — 2012 through 2020. In the four years before a dementia diagnosis, there was no difference observed in where people lived or whether they relocated, the study found. However, within the four years of a dementia diagnosis, 22% of people moved to a different U.S. county, Rahman’s group found. That’s a 40% jump in relocations compared to folks who’d been diagnosed with other conditions, such as heart attack or COPD. People with a dementia diagnosis were also more likely to move to another state, the study… read on > read on >

Doctors might be overprescribing sedatives to stroke survivors, a new study warns. About 5% of people are prescribed a benzodiazepine following a stroke, to help calm anxiety and improve sleep, researchers found. Benzodiazepine meds include Valium, Ativan and Xanax. But these prescriptions often are for pills that last longer than a week, which could hamper a person’s recovery and increase their risk of addiction. “We found a pattern of potential oversupply with these initial benzodiazepine prescriptions, which would be enough for patients to become long-term users or possibly addicted,” said researcher Julianne Brooks, a data analytics manager at Massachusetts General Brigham in Boston. “The benzodiazepine prescriptions given under these circumstances may lead to dependence.” For the study, researchers analyzed a decade’s worth of Medicare claims data on first-time prescriptions for benzodiazepines among more than 120,000 stroke victims aged 65 and older. “For this older age group, guidelines recommend that benzodiazepine prescriptions should be avoided if possible,” Brooks said. These sedatives increase the risk of falls, broken bones, memory problems, confusion and other harmful effects, the researchers said. “However, there may be cases where benzodiazepines are prescribed to be used as needed,” Brooks noted. “For example, to treat breakthrough anxiety, a provider may prescribe a few pills and counsel the patient that the medication should only be used as needed.” Researchers found that about 5% of… read on > read on >