SATURDAY, Dec. 2, 2023 (Healthday News) — The holidays are typically a happy whirlwind of gift-buying, house decorating, party planning and family gatherings, but all that work can also stress people out. Luckily, experts at UT Southwestern Medical Center say there are things you can do to keep your stress levels under control and help make your holidays happy. “Excess stress wears and tears on our bodies,” said Rita Smith, a clinical social worker in the Clinical Heart and Vascular Center at UT Southwestern. “The best holiday gifts you can give yourself are equal doses of self-care and grace.” Start with realistic expectations, which will ease the pressure of trying to be perfect. Remembering the holidays are all about gratitude will also help, said Sarah Woods, vice chair of research in UT Southwestern’s Department of Family and Community Medicine. “Think about what you’re grateful for and put it in writing,” Woods suggested in a university news release. “Focusing on the good can help you relax and cope with the not-so-good.” Another stressor during the holidays? Money. Smith said it’s best to make a spending plan for gifts and celebrations because holiday debts can be overwhelming. So, try to be practical yet creative with your gifting. Then there’s family relationships, which are sometimes strained. Woods said stress linked to difficult family relationships can produce more cortisol.…  read on >  read on >

Got a naturally sunny disposition? It might protect you from dementia as the years advance, new research shows. A team at Northwestern University in Chicago report that certain personality traits — being conscientious, outgoing and positive — appear to lower a person’s odds for a dementia diagnosis. On the other hand, being neurotic and more negative in outlook and behavior was tied to a higher risk for mental decline, the same study found. The good news: Daily behaviors are probably the key factor here, and behaviors can be changed. People’s personalities can influence whether or not daily habits are healthy or unhealthy for the brain, explained a team led by researcher Eileen Graham, an associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern. “Neuroticism is related to dementia decline, and people with neuroticism are more prone to anxiousness, moodiness and worry, whereas conscientious people are more likely to exercise, make and go to preventive health appointments and drink less,” Graham said in a university news release. “So, maybe that’s where an intervention might be useful to improve someone’s health behaviors for better health outcomes,” Graham reasoned. The new analysis focused on what psychologists have long called the “Big Five” personality traits: conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism and agreeableness. Graham’s team looked at data from eight studies. Together, the studies included more than 44,000 people —…  read on >  read on >

The latest national data show that when it comes to suicide, Americans are increasingly resorting to firearms as their method of choice.  An analysis by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that of the nearly 50,000 suicides recorded in the United States in 2022, more than half (27,000) involved a gun.   Gun-related suicides have been on the rise over the past two decades, but they jumped by 11% during the pandemic, reported a team led by Wojciech Kaczkowski, of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.  “The persistent upward trend in firearm suicide rates since 2020 across all racial and ethnic groups, coupled with unprecedented high rates during 2022, highlight the need for continuing prevention efforts,” the researchers said in their report. In sheer numbers, white Americans suffered the highest death toll from gun suicide, the report found. But the rate at which guns are being used in suicides is rising fastest among minorities, Kaczkowski’s group noted. For example, while the rate of suicides by firearm rose by 9% among white Americans between 2019 and 2022, it rose by 28% among Hispanic Americans, 42% among Black Americans and 66% among American Indians/Alaska Natives, the study found. Why the sharp rise? Unemployment pressures during the pandemic and lack of access to mental health care may have played a…  read on >  read on >

Teens glued to Instagram, TikTok and other social media are more likely to drink, take drugs, smoke and engage in risky sexual behaviors, a new review warns. For example, spending at least two hours a day on social media doubled the odds of alcohol consumption, compared with less than two hours daily use, researchers report in the Nov. 29 issue of BMJ. The results show that teens are particularly susceptible to social media depictions of risky health behaviors like alcohol use or unhealthy eating, the investigators said. “Experimental and risk-taking behaviors are an inherent part of adolescence,” the team concluded in a journal news release. “However, as safeguards for a digital world are still evolving, precaution across academic, governmental, health and educational sectors may be warranted before the risks of adolescents’ use of social media is fully understood.” For the review, researchers analyzed more than 250 social media measures reported in 73 studies conducted between 1997 and 2022, involving 1.4 million kids ages 10 to 19. The pooled data showed that frequent or daily social media use is associated with a 48% increased risk of alcohol consumption, a 28% increased risk of drug use and an 85% increased risk of smoking, compared to infrequent surfing of social media. Social media seems to have an influence over teens’ sexual choices as well. Frequent or daily social…  read on >  read on >

Women in a Chinese study who sat for more than six hours each day faced substantially higher odds of developing uterine fibroids before menopause, a new study has found. Overall, more sedentary women had double the risk of developing the often painful and harmful uterine growths prior to menopause, say a team led by Dr. Qiong Meng , of Kunming Medical University in Kunming, China. Why the link? Obesity linked to a ‘couch potato’ lifestyle could be one factor, since “studies have shown that obesity is a risk factor for uterine fibroids,” Meng’s group noted. Sedentary lifestyles and obesity are also tied to rising levels of circulating estrogen, as well as other hormones known to contribute to fibroids, the team added. Finally, being sedentary can also help lead to deficiencies in vitamin D — yet another risk factor for these growths. The findings were published Nov. 29 in the journal BMJ Open. According to the study team, uterine fibroids are benign tumors that are exceedingly common among women. They sometimes cause no symptoms, but in many cases can trigger “abnormal bleeding, pain in the pelvic and abdominal organs, adverse reproductive outcomes of infertility,” the researchers noted. Sometimes fibroids become so severe that a hysterectomy is advised. In the new study, Meng’s team analyzed data on over 6,600 women from across China who were between the…  read on >  read on >

THURSDAY, Nov. 30, 2023 (Healthday News) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it plans to require the removal of all lead pipes from the country’s water systems. The proposed rule, an ambitious effort that will cost up to $30 billion over the next decade, would affect about 9 million pipes that send water to homes in countless communities across the United States. “Lead in drinking water is a generational public health issue, and EPA’s proposal will accelerate progress towards President Biden’s goal of replacing every lead pipe across America once and for all,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in an agency news release. “With collaboration and the focused actions proposed today, EPA is delivering on our charge to protect all Americans, especially communities of color, that are disproportionately harmed by lead in drinking water systems.” Utility companies will be expected to cover most of the cost of pipe replacements, but there is $15 billion available in the 2021 infrastructure law to help them pay for it, the agency noted. The proposal “is grounded in the best available science and successful practices utilized by drinking water systems to protect children and adults from lead in drinking water,” added EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox. “Cities like Newark, N.J., Benton Harbor, Mich., and Green Bay, Wisc. have all successfully gotten the lead out of their water…  read on >  read on >

Elevated levels of thyroid hormone appear to harm the aging brain, increasing seniors’ risk of dementia or other cognitive disorders, a new study finds. High levels of thyroid hormone — a condition called thyrotoxicosis — was associated with thinking problems whether they came from an overactive thyroid gland or from taking thyroid medication, researchers found. “Our results suggest that an increased risk of cognitive disorders is among the potential negative consequences of thyroid hormone excess, a common consequence of thyroid hormone therapy,” said senior researcher Dr. Jennifer Mammen, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. “Clinicians considering thyroid hormone therapy in older adults should avoid over-treatment by using age-appropriate treatment strategies,” Mammen added in a university news release. Some prior studies have suggested that high thyroid levels were associated with an increased risk of cognitive disorder, but those results have been mixed, researchers said. Additionally, those earlier studies didn’t include excess thyroid hormone caused by taking medication. Thyroid hormone is among the most common prescriptions in the United States, researchers said. As many as 20% of people prescribed thyroid hormone might be taking too much, putting them at risk for thyrotoxicosis. “Our goal was to investigate whether aggressive treatment practices … can also possibly cause cognitive harm,” said lead researcher Roy Adams, an assistant professor of psychiatry and…  read on >  read on >