Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

Extensive exercise regimens are keeping astronauts healthy and protecting their hearts during extended space missions, new research finds. A study from scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas found no loss of heart mass or output, and no loss of function in the heart’s ventricles, during flights that can last up to six months. The findings could have implications for treating diseases in which gravity plays a role. They also could help in planning longer missions, such as to Mars. “Our study shows that, remarkably, what we are doing in space to preserve heart function and morphology is pretty effective,” said senior study author Dr. Benjamin Levine. He is a professor of internal medicine in the division of cardiology at UT Southwestern. It has been known that when astronauts return to Earth, they typically experience a dramatic loss in blood pressure. A key cause is remodeling that the heart experiences because of space’s microgravity conditions. While in space, astronauts’ bodies don’t have to counteract the effects of gravity. That means their bodies are working less hard. It’s similar to what someone would experience while on bed rest, the researchers explained. The heart muscle mass decreases by an average of 1% per week while in space and the volume of blood that the heart holds also drops. It was not known whether the two hours… read on > read on >

Planning for your long-term financial future doesn’t just make good economic sense — it could also save your life. People in both the United States and the United Kingdom have a higher risk of dying prematurely if they aren’t engaged in long-term financial planning, according to a report published online Sept. 27 in PLOS One. In fact, the researchers found that the shorter a person’s financial planning horizon, the greater their risk of dying. “The people who live the longest are the ones who are looking years into the future,” lead researcher Joe Gladstone, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a university Q&A. “It’s very scary how many people are living week to week, month to month, paycheck to paycheck,” Gladstone added. “The majority of people are only looking financially out no more than a month ahead.” The study further revealed that long-term financial planning is most important to the health of those with the fewest means. Increases in financial planning were significantly associated with better health among households making less than $80,000 a year and with overall wealth lower than $450,000, the results showed. “Planning benefits health for financially disadvantaged people more than the advantaged, because those with greater wealth and income have a financial buffer to income or expenditure shocks, insulating them from experiencing financial hardship,”… read on > read on >

New parents bringing home their bundle of joy often carry something else with them as they leave the hospital: medical debt. That’s according to new research from Michigan Medicine that found postpartum women are more likely to have medical debt than those who are pregnant. The researchers studied this by evaluating collections among a statewide, commercially insured cohort of more than 14,000 pregnant women and more than 12,000 postpartum women. “Our findings suggest that current out-of-pocket costs before and after childbirth are objectively more than many commercially insured families can afford, leading to medical debt,” said lead author Dr. Michelle Moniz, an obstetrician/gynecologist at University of Michigan Health’s Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital. “Our study highlights the need to consider policies to reduce maternal-infant health care spending in order to ease financial hardship and distress and improve birth equity,” Moniz said in a Michigan Medicine news release. People who were seven to 12 months past childbirth living in the lowest-income neighborhoods had the highest likelihood of having medical debt. After that group, those with the most debt were pregnant women in the lowest-income neighborhoods, followed by other postpartum and pregnant women. “Having unpaid medical bills was not only significantly more common among postpartum individuals, but more common among the most socioeconomically vulnerable people,” Moniz said. “These results suggest that all postpartum individuals are at risk of… read on > read on >

Megan Thee Stallion is urging you to check on your friends. The rapper, whose offstage name is Megan Pete, is part of a new public service announcement called Seize the Awkward, a national campaign to encourage young people to talk to friends about mental health. “It’s important that we regularly check in on our friends and family and make sure to show empathy, encouragement and love when they’re struggling,” she said in a statement. “A strong support system can make a powerful difference in someone’s life.” Megan Thee Stallion’s involvement in the campaign may help reduce mental health stigma, Dr. Broderick Sawyer, a clinical psychologist in Louisville, Ky., told CNN. She is “finally making healing look as cool as it should be,” Sawyer said, adding that her involvement “is forcing the conversation to go mainstream. “Many centralizing platforms just have resources that pretend mental health is one-size-fits-all, that everyone is the same,” Sawyer said. “The truth is that people have wildly different experiences depending on their identities, and types of sociopolitical oppression they go through.” Robert Gebbia, CEO of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, told CNN that Pete’s involvement may feel more relatable as she works to reach young, marginalized people. Pete has also touched on mental health in her music: Her website, “Bad Bitches Have Bad Days Too” gathers mental health resources in… read on > read on >

The Biden administration is allocating $232.2 million in grants to help stem suicides and improve behavioral health care for at-risk groups. Suicide is happening at an “alarming” rate, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Last year alone, nearly 50,000 Americans died by suicide, up 2.6% from 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “September is National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. During this month, we are reminded that suicide is preventable, and no one should go through a suicide-related crisis alone,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said Wednesday, emphasizing that the Biden administration “is deeply committed to tackling the mental health challenges facing America, and particularly focused on addressing the alarming rates of suicide.” About $200 million of the grant will be used to build local capacity for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline and related crisis services. The national suicide hotline was revamped last year with a three-digit number to make it easier to recall in a crisis. The new lifeline received nearly 5 million calls in its first year, almost 2 million more for similar timeframes on the previous hotline, according to HHS. Still, about 82% of respondents to a National Alliance on Mental Illness poll released in July were unaware that they could call or text those three digits for mental health help. With more… read on > read on >

Smoking during pregnancy is a significant risk factor for premature births, but drinking coffee is not, new research suggests. Women who smoked during pregnancy were 2.6 times more likely to give birth prematurely compared to nonsmokers, a risk that was double that of previous estimates, the University of Cambridge scientists found. “We’ve known for a long time that smoking during pregnancy is not good for the baby, but our study shows that it’s potentially much worse than previously thought. It puts the baby at risk of potentially serious complications from growing too slowly in the womb or from being born too soon,” said Gordon Smith, head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Cambridge, in the United Kingdom. The study also showed that with prenatal smoking, a baby was four times more likely to be small for its gestational age. This brings the risk of potentially serious complications, including breathing difficulties and infections. On the other hand, high caffeine intake from coffee or other drinks did not have the same effect, even though it’s been shown previously to be associated with lower birth weights and possibly fetal growth restriction. In this study, scientists measured levels of chemical byproducts created when substances such as tobacco and caffeine are processed in the body. The investigators recruited more than 4,200 women who attended the Rosie Hospital, part… read on > read on >

A new study suggests there may be a link between job loss and miscarriage or stillbirth. The risk of miscarriage or stillbirth doubled after a pregnant woman or her partner lost a job, European researchers found. Their study was published Sept. 28 in the journal Human Reproduction. “Further research would need to be carried out to understand if losing one’s job actually causes the increased risk of pregnancy loss,” said author Selin Köksal, senior research officer at the University of Essex Institute for Social and Economic Research in England. She said it would be helpful to look at different socioeconomic groups to assess exactly how a job loss relates to higher risk of a miscarriage or a stillbirth. “Is it because of economic hardship, or an experience of an unexpected event or is it due to loss of social status?” Köksal said in a journal news release. “These are the questions that I am hoping to answer in the future.” For this study, the researchers used data from a survey of 40,000 U.K. households conducted between 2009 and 2022. The data included more than 8,000 pregnancies for which there was information on date of conception and outcome. Overall, 11.6% ended in miscarriage, though the number is likely higher because many pregnancies are lost before women realize they’re expecting. Researchers also found 38 stillbirths, representing 0.5%… read on > read on >

A newer understanding of multiple sclerosis (MS) suggests that psychiatric conditions like anxiety and depression may emerge long before classic MS symptoms. “For a long time, it was thought that MS only really began clinically when a person experienced their first demyelinating event, such as in the form of vision problems,” said senior author Helen Tremlett. She is a professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia’s Djavad Mowafaghian Center for Brain Health, in Vancouver. “But we’ve come to understand there is a whole period preceding those events where the disease presents itself in more indirect ways,” Tremlett said in a university news release. The findings were welcomed by Sharon Roman, an MS patient for 25 years. “We take many things in life for granted — walking, balance, vision, speech, even the simple act of swallowing — until one day it’s taken from us by MS,” Roman said in the news release. “The better we can identify the early signs and symptoms of MS, the earlier we can recognize, diagnose and treat it. We can help prevent people from being diagnosed the way I was, with a massive attack and hospitalization, and prevent the losses I’ve experienced. Earlier treatment may help slow progression.” MS is an autoimmune disorder with varied symptoms that can make it harder to diagnose and more easily confused with other… read on > read on >

Suffering from PTSD may take a toll on your sex life if you’re a woman, new research reveals. About 10% of women have PTSD symptoms because of combat exposure, childhood abuse and sexual violence. Little research has been done looking at how these symptoms might affect sexual functioning among midlife women. “As women age, there are many reasons why sexual functioning may become an issue for them,” said Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director for the North American Menopause Society. “This study highlights the need for health care professionals to ask about any history of trauma and open up the dialogue with their patients on this sensitive issue,” she said in a society news release. Researchers studied this in more than 100 postmenopausal women ages 45 to 66. The authors accounted for factors such as age, race/ethnicity, education, vaginal estrogen use, alcohol use and depressive symptoms. Study participants needed to have met certain criteria — they had to have experienced PTSD symptoms and had sexual activity within the month prior to evaluation. On average, women who reported moderate and severe PTSD symptoms also reported lower sexual functioning. The authors then considered specific aspects of PTSD symptoms. They found that greater avoidance/numbing symptoms were related to poorer sexual functioning. The results will be presented Wednesday during the Menopause Society’s annual meeting, in Philadelphia. Findings presented at medical… read on > read on >

Nurses, health technicians and health care support workers face a higher risk of suicide than the general U.S. population does, an alarming new study shows. Researchers pointed out these workers have to perform stressful tasks while caring for ill patients and managing heavy workloads, with little control over patient outcomes. Not only that, but “health care workers’ relationship roles are often characterized as having a kind of a high achievement and a perfectionistic or compulsive personality traits that can make them excessively devoted to their work and have trouble taking time off,” said study first author Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor in Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry. “And all of this can contribute to poor self-care and delay them recognizing a need for help. There’s also a lot of stigma that continues just around mental health care.” The study, published Sept. 26 in the Journal of the American Medical Association,, looked at a nationally representative group of more than 1.8 million adults ages 26 and older in data that spanned from 2008 through 2019. Health care workers were divided into six groups — physicians, registered nurses, other health care-diagnosing or treating practitioners, health technicians, health care support workers, and social/behavioral health workers — and compared them with non-health care workers. Analysis of the data showed that health care support workers, registered nurses and health technicians… read on > read on >