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People coming off antidepressants often struggle with emotional and social turmoil, especially if they quit their meds cold turkey, a new study reports. Challenges reported by patients quitting antidepressants included feeling overwhelmed by their emotions, finding social situations less enjoyable, and feeling detached and less empathetic towards others. “Some symptoms were so severe, family and friends of the person coming off medication encouraged them to go back on it,” said lead researcher Raqeeb Mahmood, a doctoral student in psychology with the University of Bath. For the study, researchers conducted interviews with 20 people who had attempted within the past year to withdraw from SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressants like Prozac. Stopping antidepressant therapy is known to trigger physical symptoms like restlessness, fatigue and excessive sweating. But this study, published recently in the journal Health Expectations, supports the notion that patients will also experience emotional symptoms. “From these interviews, it became clear that the lived experience of withdrawal significantly impacts individuals’ well-being,” Mahmood said in a university news release. “The participants emphasized that withdrawal is not just about physical side effects, but it also affected their emotional, cognitive and social functioning.” Some patients found the first days or weeks of withdrawal most challenging, while other struggled several months after they started coming off antidepressants. More than half of the participants said that withdrawal negatively affected… read on > read on >

Fetal exposure to opioids may change a baby’s immune system, triggering a rise in risks for eczema and asthma through early childhood, new research shows. Children born to women who used opioids during pregnancy had much higher rates of eczema, as well as conditions such as “diaper rash,” during infancy, Australian researchers report. These children also went on to have significantly higher odds for asthma and eczema by the age of 5. The findings echo those seen in prior animal studies and suggest that “prenatal opioid exposure may have a long-term impact on the immune system and child health,” the researchers said. The study was led by Erin Kelty of the University of Western Australia, in Crawley, and was published Jan. 17 in the journal JAMA Network Open. As Kelty’s team relate, rodent studies have already shown that fetal exposure to opioids “may result in immune priming, such that the immune system overreacts to subsequent and later immune activation.” The new study focused on data on outcomes for more than 400,000 children born in Western Australia between 2003 and 2018. Of those births, 1,656 children were diagnosed as having been exposed to opioids in the womb. Crunching the numbers, Kelty’s team found that short-term (just after delivery) risks for eczema and dermatitis (issues such as diaper rash) soared for babies exposed to opioids. The risk… read on > read on >

College freshmen who are more outgoing and agreeable — and less moody — are more likely to feel a sense of belonging at their new school, new research has found. Those personality traits could result in better academic performance and better mental health during college, the study authors concluded. However, two other important personality traits — conscientiousness and openness to new experiences — played no role in how well students felt they fit in at college. “Students who were more agreeable and more extroverted tended to have higher belonging in college, especially in big schools, and students who were more neurotic [that is, nervous and/or handle stress poorly] tended to have lower belonging in college,” concluded the research team, led by Alexandria Stubblebine, an independent researcher in Ocala, Fla. “Additionally, and contrary to what many people might think, openness to new ideas and conscientiousness were unrelated to students’ feelings of belonging,” the researchers added. For the study, Stubblebine’s team analyzed survey data from more than 4,700 freshman college students at 12 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. The surveys analyzed a collection of widely studied personality traits collectively called the “Big Five” — extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Students also were asked questions aimed at assessing how well they were fitting in at school. Responses showed that students with higher levels… read on > read on >

Women who consume more plant-based protein tend to age more gracefully, a new study reports. Women with diets rich in protein — especially from plant-based sources — develop fewer chronic diseases and enjoy healthier aging overall, researchers report in the Jan. 17 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Overall, women who ate more plant-based protein were 46% more likely to be healthy into their later years. “Consuming protein in midlife was linked to promoting good health in older adulthood,” said lead researcher Andres Ardisson Korat, a scientist at Tufts University’s Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, in Boston. “We also found that the source of protein matters,” Ardisson Korat added in a university news release. “Getting the majority of your protein from plant sources at midlife, plus a small amount of animal protein, seems to be conducive to good health and good survival to older ages.” For the study, researchers analyzed self-reported data from more than 48,000 women participating in the Harvard-based Nurses’ Health Study, which followed female health care professionals from 1984 to 2016. The women entered the study between the ages of 38 and 59, and all were deemed to be in good physical and mental health at the start. The research team evaluated surveys that tracked participants’ diets, and then compared that information to the women’s overall… read on > read on >

An American’s income and ethnicity could play a role in how clean the air is that they breathe, a new study finds. Air pollution emissions have fallen more in wealthier areas, and less in areas with larger Hispanic or American Indian populations. Overall, U.S. air pollution emissions have decreased substantially, but the magnitude of the change varies based on demographics, the researchers found. “Policies specifically targeting reductions in overburdened populations could support more just reductions in air pollution and reduce disparities in air pollution exposure,” said lead researcher Yanelli Nunez, an environmental health scientist with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “This is an important lesson gained from 53 years of Clean Air Act implementation, which is particularly relevant as we develop policies to transition to renewable energy sources, which will have a collateral impact on air quality and, as a result, on public health,” Nunez added in a university news release. For the study, Nunez’ team analyzed emissions data from the Global Burden of Disease Major Air Pollution Sources inventory, a collaborative academic project involving three different universities. On average, U.S. air pollution emissions declined substantially from 1970 to 2010 from all sources, except for ammonia emissions from agriculture fertilizer and organic carbon particle emissions from indoor heating of the residential sector, researchers said. Despite this overall downward trend,… read on > read on >

Stressed-out teens are likely to have more heart health risk factors in adulthood, a new study says. Teens with elevated stress levels tended to have high blood pressure, obesity and other heart risk factors as they aged, compared to those teens with less stress, researchers found. “Our findings suggest that perceived stress patterns over time have a far-reaching effect on various cardiometabolic measures, including fat distribution, vascular health and obesity,” said researcher Fangqi Guo, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “This could highlight the importance of stress management as early as in adolescence as a health protective behavior,” Guo added in a university news release. For this study, researchers analyzed data from 276 participants in the Southern California Children’s Health Study, an ongoing research project that included follow-up health assessments at average ages 13 and 24 for participants. The participants’ stress levels were measured using a perceived stress scale, and they were placed in one of four categories – consistently high stress, decreasing stress over time, increasing stress over time or consistently low stress. Researcher found that teens who had higher levels of stress into adulthood were more likely to have higher total body fat, more fat around the belly and a higher overall risk of obesity as adults, researchers found. They also tended to have worse… read on > read on >

Up to 9% of American teens say they’ve engaged in what’s known as “digital self-harm” — anonymously posting negative comments about themselves on social media. As is the case with acts of physical self-harm such as cutting, this “virtual” self-harm is associated with a higher risk for thinking about or attempting suicide, according to a startling new study. It found that teens who engaged in digital self-harm were up to seven times more likely to have considered suicide and as much as 15 times more likely to have made an attempt. “We can’t say that one causes the other, but we do know they are connected in some way,” said lead author Justin Patchin. He’s co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. But why would anyone want to virtually trash themselves to begin with? Patchin said that his own research has identified multiple motivations. Self-hatred is one, he noted, as is attention-seeking. In other cases, it can be depression, an attempt to be funny, or simply boredom. Some teens admit that it’s just their way to suss out how others might react to examples of bullying, in order to “know if they were talking about me behind my back.” To gain more insight, Patchin’s team took a deep dive into survey responses offered up by nearly 5,000 middle and high… read on > read on >

TUESDAY, Jan. 16, 2024 (HeathDay News) — Folks often feel more alert and savvy after a great workout, and dopamine might be the reason why. A small, new study by British and Japanese researchers found higher levels of the “feel good” brain neurotransmitter were released by men during exercise. In turn, that seemed tied to better performance on thinking tests, the researchers said. “These latest findings support our previous theory that cognitive performance during exercise is affected by changes to brain-regulating hormones, including dopamine,” said study co-author Dr. Joe Costello. He’s at the University of Portsmouth’s School of Sport, Health & Exercise Science, in England. The findings were published recently in the The Journal of Physiology In the study, Costello and colleagues team had 52 men engage in three separate experiments. All were having their brain activity monitored with sophisticated PET imagery during the experiments. In one trial, men were asked to work on mentally challenging tasks while cycling lying down. The second experiment had the men complete the same tasks, but this time they got “electrical muscle stimulation,” rather than a workout. The third experiment had them completing mental tasks while working out and getting the electrical muscle stimulation. Based on data from the PET scans, Costello’s group found a surge in dopamine release in the brain while men were actively working out —… read on > read on >

Magnetic zaps to the brain can significantly help people with severe depression, if the procedure is guided using MRI brain scans, a new clinical trial has concluded. On average, patients showed substantial improvements in depression, anxiety, cognition and quality of life for at least six months after undergoing MRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), results show. One-third experienced a 50% improvement in symptoms, while one-fifth managed to go into remission and remain there. “Given these patients are people who have not responded to two previous treatment attempts and have been ill for an average of 7 years, to get such a significant response rate and a fifth who have a sustained response is really encouraging,” said researcher Richard Morriss, lead for the Center for Mood Disorders at the University of Nottingham’s Institute of Mental Health in the U.K.. TMS is a noninvasive outpatient treatment in which powerful magnetic impulses are delivered to the left side of a person’s head while they are conscious. The method has been used since the 1980s to treat severe depression in people who don’t respond to antidepressants or therapy, researchers said. However, the benefits of TMS have so far proven fleeting, tending to last just one to three months, researchers explained in background notes. In this clinical trial, investigators examined whether better targeting of the magnetic pulses could provide longer-lasting benefits… read on > read on >

Employees at many companies are urged to take advantage of free wellness programs focused on mindfulness, life coaching, better sleep and many other issues. Too bad most won’t actually boost their well-being, a new study of over 46,000 British workers finds. Only one of the 90 different workplace wellness offerings appeared to boost well-being: Getting employees involved in charity work or volunteering, the researchers found. The findings “pose a challenge to the popularity and legitimacy of individual-level mental well-being interventions like mindfulness, resilience and stress management, relaxation classes and well-being apps,” concludes the study’s sole author, William Fleming. He’s a fellow at Oxford University’s Wellbeing Research Center. Fleming’s research is based on data from the Britain’s Healthiest Workplace surveys for 2017 and 2018, representing workers at 233 different organizations. He compared the survey answers of “matched pairs” of people who were working at the same company: One who was using a wellness program, and another who was not. Because it is a survey, the data only focuses on worker well-being at a specific moment in time, not before and after the introduction of workplace wellness programs. The main finding: With the exception of charity/volunteer programs, workers’ mental well-being didn’t seem to change regardless of whether or not they were involved in any of the many programs on offer. Speaking with the New York Times, Fleming said… read on > read on >