Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

While the start of the school year can give kids and teens the chance to reconnect with friends and enjoy school sports and activities, it can also trigger stressors that send many to the emergency room for mental health woes, a new report shows. Among children aged 5 to 17, emergency department visits for depression, suicidal thoughts, stress and substance abuse increased significantly in the fall and remained high through the spring, the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. “The academic school year is a time when parents and caregivers, educators, health care providers and others who regularly interact with children and adolescents can be aware of mental health concerns in children and adolescents, and be ready to respond appropriately,” a CDC spokesperson said. “Placing priority on programs and activities that protect emotional well-being like physical activity, nutrition, sleep, social, community or faith-based support, and inclusive school and community environments, may improve mental health among children and adolescents, and reduce mental health crises that require a trip to the emergency department,” the spokesperson added. The factors that contribute to the increase in mental issues — like social media, peer pressure or home life — weren’t addressed in the research, the spokesperson noted. For the study, published Sept. 22 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers used data from… read on > read on >

New research underscores the harms of e-cigarettes, showing that vaping increases the risk of asthma in teens who have never smoked cigarettes. Although e-cigarettes have fewer toxins than regular cigarettes, they still contain a mixture of harmful chemicals and raise the risk of respiratory diseases, researchers say. “Increasing knowledge about the harmful effects of e-cigarette use, implementing stricter regulations, and promoting alternative coping mechanisms for mental health are potential interventions to mitigate e-cigarette use,” lead author Taehyun Roh, of Texas A&M University, said in a school news release. Asthma causes wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness and coughing. It can be controlled by taking medicine and avoiding the triggers that can cause an attack, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This new study used data from Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a CDC survey. About 3,000 adolescents in Texas, ages 13 to 17, were questioned between 2015 and 2019. The researchers compared the results with responses from more than 32,000 teens in the broader United States. Respondents were asked whether they had ever used an e-cigarette, how often they vaped and whether they had ever been told they had asthma. Researchers said that the association found between e-cigarette use and asthma among those who had never smoked conventional tobacco products demonstrates that vaping increases the risk of asthma independently from other tobacco use.… read on > read on >

A new government report finds that federal regulators need to do more to help in the battle to keep kids and teens off tobacco. Among the report’s findings were that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs to get tough on retailers selling tobacco to youth and should improve its oversight of online retailers. The FDA should also work with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to help stop online tobacco sales to children, according to the report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). “Responding effectively to serial violators remains a challenge for FDA,” the report stated. “The small number of retailers that repeatedly violate the Tobacco Control Act are often not subjected to more punitive actions. This risks undermining FDA’s efforts to control youth access to tobacco and enforce other restrictions on tobacco intended to safeguard public health,” according to the report. The agency needs to prioritize enforcement actions against retailers with a history of noncompliance, the OIG said. The FDA plans to discuss stricter enforcement with internal experts by November, CNN reported, and the agency agreed that inspections are a key part of keeping kids from smoking or vaping. The FDA did more than 1 million inspections between 2010 and 2020 looking for underage sales, CNN reported. The agency inspected about 74% of 360,000 stores at least once. It… read on > read on >

A longstanding core belief of mental health maintains that people must confront their fears to ease the anxiety and depression stemming from those negative thoughts. Now a new study argues that, for some people, suppressing negative thoughts and worries might be a more successful strategy. Mental health actually improved for some study participants after they underwent training to help them suppress their fears about negative events that might occur in the future, researchers report. What’s more, people with worse mental health symptoms at the start of the study experienced more improvement by the end if they learned to suppress their negative thoughts. The results run counter to arguments that thought suppression is a poor coping process because it’s inevitably unsuccessful, said senior researcher Michael Anderson. He is a senior scientist and program leader with the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “For the better part of a century, starting with Freud, we’ve been told that when you do something like that — pushing distressing, fearful thoughts out of awareness — it comes back to bite you in the form of unconscious influences on your behavior, in your dreams and your emotions and motivations and moves,” Anderson explained. “This conflicts with a growing body of evidence from neuroscience and psychology that, in fact, people can and often… read on > read on >

As working class neighborhoods gentrify, you’ll likely see rents rise, pricey restaurants move in — and maybe also a rise in gunshot wounds, researchers say. In U.S. neighborhoods that gentrified, gun injuries were 62% higher than they were in similar neighborhoods that hadn’t gone upscale, according to a new study. Overall firearm incidence was also 26% higher in these gentrifying neighborhoods compared to non-gentrifying neighborhoods. “To prevent firearm injuries in these communities, we must understand where the behavior is stemming from,” said study co-author Molly Jarman, of the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “It’s vital we begin to investigate the factors causing social disruption and housing displacement, such as gentrification, to develop and implement targeted interventions to prevent firearm injuries,” Jarman added in a hospital news release. Gentrification can improve certain conditions in poorer neighborhoods, the authors noted, but it can also lead to rising housing costs, which can displace the people who live there. That creates a high-stress environment, adding to known links to gun violence such as poverty, income inequality and minority status. “The solution is complicated, but our findings reveal an opportunity to identify communities that may be at increased risk of firearm violence,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Sarabeth Spitzer, of Brigham’s department of surgery. “Hopefully, this allows support and resources, such… read on > read on >

More people around the world are exposed to wildfire smoke that has the potential to harm human health, and their numbers are growing, new research finds. More than 2 billion people are exposed to at least one day of potentially health-impacting wildfire smoke each year, a figure that has grown by almost 7% in the past decade, according to a study led by Australian scientists. Moreover, each person in the world had on average 9.9 days of exposure per year, a 2% increase over 10 years, the researchers found. They also said exposure levels in poor countries were about four times higher than in high-income countries. The recent Canadian wildfires that spread smoke across North America highlighted the increase in severity and frequency of wildfires due to climate change. “The exposure to air pollution caused by landscape fire smoke traveling hundreds and sometimes even thousands of kilometers can affect much larger populations, and cause much larger public health risks,” said Yuming Guo from Monash University’s School of Population Health and Preventive Medicine. “Mapping and tracking the population exposure to landscape fire-sourced air pollution are essential for monitoring and managing its health impacts,” Guo said in a university news release. This will also help prevention efforts and strengthen arguments for mitigation of climate change, he added. Those health impacts can include increased death and disease, with… read on > read on >

A lot of people who think they don’t have secondhand smoke exposure actually do, according to a new study that compared survey answers with blood tests. According to the results of sensitive blood tests, more than half of American adults in the study had recently been exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke. Most were not aware of it. “There is no safe level of secondhand smoke exposure, and long-term exposure can increase the risk of many chronic conditions, such as coronary heart disease, respiratory disease and cancers,” said lead author Ruixuan (Roxanne) Wang, a doctoral candidate in the College of Public Health and Health Professions at the University of Florida. “We want people to be aware of their exposure so they can take protective actions,” she said in a university news release. Researchers analyzed data from 13,000 participants in the National Health and Examination Survey between 2013 and 2020. They looked for the presence of cotinine in respondents’ blood. This indicates exposure to nicotine in the last few days and is the gold standard for determining tobacco exposure. The study detected this nicotine byproduct in the blood of 51% of people. But less than half of participants reported being exposed to smoke. People of all demographics significantly underreported their exposure, but Black respondents had the highest rates of exposure and underreporting. “We think this report will… read on > read on >

When Canadian wildfire smoke shrouded the New York City skyline and spread to parts of New England this summer, millions of East Coast residents saw firsthand just how pervasive it can be. Now, a new study quantifies exactly what wildfire smoke is doing to hard-fought gains in cleaning up the air, even in Eastern states not typically affected by wildfires. “Since 2000, there’s been enormous progress on improving air quality throughout much of the contiguous U.S., however around 2016 those declines in PM2.5 began to stagnate or even reverse in some states,” said study author Marissa Childs, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Wildfires release fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, into the air, driving pollution. These tiny particles can travel deep into the lungs and bloodstream and trigger an asthma attack, heart attack or strokes, among other risks. Specifically, wildfire smoke affected PM2.5 trends in nearly 75% of the 48 contiguous states since 2016, erasing nearly 25% of the air quality gains made since 2000 largely thanks to the Clean Air Act, a landmark environmental law, the study found. This is the equivalent of four years of air quality progress, Childs said. So why are things so out of hand? Climate change has caused warmer, drier conditions that spur longer and more active wildfire seasons, Childs explained. For the study,… read on > read on >

Highly processed packaged foods and drinks may be quick, cheap and tasty, but new research suggests they’re also likely to up your risk for depression. Among big consumers of ultra-processed foods, depression risk may rise by as much as 50%, the new study found, particularly when those foods are artificially sweetened. “Given what we know about these foods and the important role of diet in mood, we were not surprised to find this association,” said study author Dr. Andrew Chan, vice chair of gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. At issue, he said, are foods that are “highly altered, often through industrial processes such as hydrogenation.” Hydrogenation is a chemical manufacturing process that significantly increases the amount of trans fat found in foods. Researchers have repeatedly linked trans fat intake to an increased risk for heart disease. The study looked at “ultra-processed” grain foods, sweet snacks, ready-to-eat meals, desserts, sauces, processed dairy products, savory snacks, processed meat, beverages, and/or artificial sweeteners. Such foods, Chan added, also “often contain additives such as dyes, stabilizers and emulsifiers. Examples include most so-called ‘fast food,’ cookies and chips.” In light of other research indicating that diet influences depression risk, Chan and his colleagues specifically set out to see what impact processed foods might have on depression risk. They looked at nearly… read on > read on >

Brown rats found and analyzed near Atlanta now carry rat lungworm, researchers report. It’s a parasite that can trigger a dangerous brain encephalitis in both people and pets, and which now threatens a wide area of the U.S. Southeast. Researchers in Georgia say the microscopic rat lungworm, known scientifically as Angiostrongylus cantonensis, typically begins its life cycle in native and exotic snails — rats probably contract the parasite after eating snails. A. cantonensis was first identified in Asia and was for many years not endemic to the United States. It first appeared in Hawaii before being spotted in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, “likely introduced by infected rats and gastropods [snails] through trade routes, such as on merchant ships,” explained a team led by Nicole Gottdenker. She’s associate professor of anatomic pathology at the University of Georgia in Athens. Infected rats excrete the parasite in their feces. In rare cases, people who accidentally come into contact with A. cantonensis can also become infected. The worm can trigger a dangerous inflammation of the brain or its surrounding membrane, the meninges — a condition called meningoencephalitis. Concerned that rat lungworm might have continued its spread throughout the Southeast, Gottdenker’s team collected samples of tissues “from 33 wild brown rats found dead during 2019-2022 on the grounds of a zoological facility located in Atlanta,” they reported. About one-fifth… read on > read on >