A lot of older adults have digestive diseases that can be debilitating. They can also be linked to loneliness and depression, a new study says. “These conditions are very common in ambulatory care,” said gastroenterologist Dr. Shirley Cohen-Mekelburg, who specializes in problems like inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis at University of Michigan Medicine. While there has been a greater emphasis on figuring out why so many Americans are developing digestive diseases, current approaches often fail to consider the impact of psychosocial factors, Cohen-Mekelburg said. “As physicians, it’s important for us to pay attention to psychosocial factors involved in the lives of our patients, but they often go overlooked,” she said in a Michigan Medicine news release. “These factors have the potential to significantly impact gastrointestinal health, and they also play a crucial role in the overall well-being of our patients.” A team of gastroenterologists and hepatologists (specialists in the liver, gallbladder and pancreas) examined rates of loneliness, depression and social isolation in older adults both with and without digestive diseases and “wanted to quantify these numbers with self-reported rates of poor health,” Cohen-Mekelburg said. They used data from 2008 to 2016 from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, which has a representative sample of about 20,000 people ages 50 and up and their spouses. Cohen-Mekelburg noted that loneliness is subjective…  read on >  read on >

For a needed mood boost, skip social media and strike up an in-person conversation with someone instead. Face-to-face socializing boosts mood more than screen time, a new study finds. People often expect that will be the case, but they don’t always follow that instinct, according to the researchers. “These findings suggest that people may use their smartphones because they enable them to escape the unpleasant experience of being alone, or because they do not recognize or prioritize the mood benefits of social interaction,” the study authors wrote in the report published online recently in the Journal of Social Psychology. “We were interested in getting a sense of how people compare their options, both in terms of how they expect to feel and then how they actually feel after doing these things,” lead author Christina Leckfor, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia in Athens, said in a university news release. For the study, the researchers divided participants into four groups. Two groups predicted how they would feel about different actions, and two groups completed the assigned actions. All of the groups then ranked options from most to least enjoyable. They also used a scale to rate how likely they were to experience a positive or negative emotion from a task. When given three options — using a smartphone, sitting alone or talking to a…  read on >  read on >

Using both tobacco and marijuana is tied to significantly higher odds for depression and anxiety, a new study suggests. Among nearly 54,000 U.S. adults, those who used both substances experienced anxiety or depression at nearly twice the rate of nonusers, researchers found. “Smoking weed and tobacco does not help to deal with anxiety and depression, and may exacerbate mental health issues in the long run,” said lead researcher Nhung Nguyen, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. More research addressing the use of tobacco and cannabis is needed to understand effective prevention and treatment efforts for this “emerging public health issue,” Nguyen added. Co-use of marijuana and tobacco is increasing nationwide as more states legalize cannabis, the researchers noted, suggesting this could set the stage for mental health issues. “Coordinating tobacco and cannabis cessation with mental health treatment may be beneficial for people with co-use of tobacco and cannabis,” Nguyen said. “In addition, screening for use of tobacco and cannabis should be implemented in mental health treatment settings.” Why the combination of tobacco and marijuana might cause depression and anxiety isn’t clear. “The interaction between tobacco and cannabis on health in general and on mental health in particular is not fully understood,” Nguyen said. Moreover, this study can’t prove that the combination of tobacco and pot causes depression and anxiety,…  read on >  read on >

A healthy lifestyle — especially getting enough sleep — may offer substantial protection against depression, new research suggests. The study, of more than 287,000 British adults, found that several lifestyle factors seemed to curb the risk of developing depression over the next nine years. Among them were eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, staying socially active, not smoking and — most importantly — regularly having a good night’s sleep. Each healthy habit mattered on its own, the study found. People who exercised had a lower risk of future depression than couch potatoes did, for example. But the more good habits, the better: Study participants who adhered to at least five of seven healthy habits had a 57% lower risk of depression, versus those who followed none or only one. Major depression is a complex disease, with genetic vulnerability playing a key role. And one of the important findings in this study, the researchers said, was that a healthy lifestyle benefitted people, regardless of the genetic cards they’ve been dealt. “Lifestyle has a strong protective role across different levels of genetic risk for depression,” said study author Christelle Langley, a research associate at the University of Cambridge. The findings, published Sept. 11 in the journal Nature Mental Health, are based on data from the UK Biobank. It’s a huge research project collecting health and genetic…  read on >  read on >

Air pollution has long been known to harm the heart and lungs, but new research suggests it might also raise the risk of breast cancer. Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) discovered that the largest increases in breast cancer incidence were among women who, on average, had higher levels of particulate matter pollution (PM2.5) near their home in the years before enrolling in the study. Particulate matter is released through motor vehicle exhaust, burning oil or coal, wood smoke/vegetation burning and industrial emissions. The particles are small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs. “We observed an 8% increase in breast cancer incidence for living in areas with higher PM2.5 exposure. Although this is a relatively modest increase, these findings are significant given that air pollution is a ubiquitous exposure that impacts almost everyone,” study author Alexandra White, head of the Environment and Cancer Epidemiology Group at NIEHS, said in an institute news release. “These findings add to a growing body of literature suggesting that air pollution is related to breast cancer.” For the study, the researchers used data from the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, which enrolled more than 500,000 men and women between 1995 and 1996 in California, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina and Louisiana, as well as in the…  read on >  read on >

Certain combinations of bacteria found in dust in children’s day care settings may have an impact on their young lungs. Researchers are trying to understand whether attending day care can affect children’s lung health. Their aim is to lower the risk of asthma. “We find mixtures of different bacteria and other microbes living everywhere — outside, inside our homes, on our skin and even inside our bodies. These communities of bacteria, known as microbiota, can have beneficial or harmful effects on our health,” said Dr. Annabelle Bédard, a researcher at Inserm (the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) in Paris, France. “Young children will come into contact with the bacteria living in day care centers via their skin and mouths and by breathing them in. So we might expect this exposure to have an impact on children’s developing lungs via the different microbiota that arise in children’s airway, gut or skin,” Bédard said in a news release from the European Respiratory Society. The findings are scheduled for presentation at the society’s annual meeting this week in Milan, Italy. In the United States, 6 million children — about 1 in 12 — have asthma, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is a serious disease causing wheezing, difficulty breathing and coughing. For this study, researchers used an adapted vacuum cleaner…  read on >  read on >

Seniors, pick up those knitting needles, some paintbrushes or that favorite novel, because new research suggests that having a hobby is linked to having lower depression in older people. Hobbies might include anything from gardening to playing games, arts and crafts, volunteering, reading or being part of a club, according to the study, which spanned numerous countries and included more than 93,000 people ages 65 and older. “Our study shows the potential of hobbies to protect older people from age-related decline in mental health and well-being. This potential is consistent across many countries and cultural settings,” said lead author Karen Mak, of University College London’s Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care. Data came from people who had enrolled in five studies in the United States, Japan, China, England and 12 other European countries. Researchers analyzed data spanning four to eight years, finding that having a hobby was linked to decreases in depressive symptoms and increases in happiness and life satisfaction. Although this observational study couldn’t prove cause-and-effect, it nevertheless suggests there might be an association between hobbies and happiness, according to the study. The results remained even after adjusting for other factors such as partnership status, employment and household income. “Of the four outcomes, life satisfaction was most strongly linked to hobby engagement. Hobbies may contribute to life satisfaction in our later years through many…  read on >  read on >

When you have COVID-19, when are you most infectious? Researchers are getting closer to an answer, with a new study finding that folks exhale the highest amounts of virus during the first eight days of their illness. Scientists found that patients exhale quite a bit of virus during the first several days — as many as 1,000 copies of airborne virus per minute. Those levels drop steeply by day eight, however, when a person exhales only about two copies per minute. “This information speaks directly to when someone with COVID-19 should isolate; when they are more likely to infect other people by breathing out virus into the air around them; and when they become much less likely to spread the infection,” lead study author Gregory Lane, a senior research project manager at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, said in a university news release. The study’s aim was to figure out “how much virus a patient is exhaling into the environment over the course of their infection and for how long,” study co-author Christina Zelano added in the news release. She’s an assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern. The study authors invented and utilized a portable, non-invasive device to collect breath samples. “The vast majority of research on viral loads over the course of a COVID-19 infection has been based on nasal or…  read on >  read on >

Young people who vape are more likely to experience chronic stress, though it isn’t clear whether it was the stress that brought on the vaping or the vaping that caused the stress, investigators say. “Research is starting to show how vaping affects young people’s physical and mental health,” said Dr. Teresa To, a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto. “Our previous research has shown that those who vape are more likely to suffer an asthma attack. In this study we were particularly interested in the relationship between vaping, mental health and quality of life among young people,” To said in a news release from the European Respiratory Society. For the new research, investigators used the data from the Canadian Health Measures Surveys, a national survey that included 905 people between 15 and 30 years of age. About 13% said they had used e-cigarettes. Researchers found that young people who vape were more likely to be physically active but were also more likely to report experiencing extreme chronic stress in their lives. “Chronic stress can lead to mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. It’s important for young people experiencing chronic stress to be given support early on to help them avoid resorting to unhealthy coping mechanisms like vaping or smoking,” To said. “Vaping is not an effective way to…  read on >  read on >

As this summer has shown, the massive smoke plumes generated by wildfires can dirty the air of regions many miles away. Now a new study is raising the question of whether that pollution is contributing to suicides in rural America. Researchers found a correlation between air pollution from “drifting” wildfire smoke and a rise in U.S. counties’ suicide rates. The connection was not seen everywhere, however: It was concentrated in rural counties, and among certain groups with a relatively heightened suicide rate to begin with: white, working-age men without a college education. For every 10% increase in wildfire air pollutants, the study found, a rural county’s monthly suicide rate rose by 1.5%, on average. The study was published Sept. 11 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It cannot prove that dirty air is to blame. And experts said it’s unclear exactly what is going on. But the findings add to evidence tying air pollution — and more broadly, climate change — to mental health consequences. Recent studies have linked exposure to heavy air pollution to aggression and increased risks of depression, anxiety and even dementia. And there is some understanding for why “junk in the air” might harm not only physical health, but mental health, too, according to David Molitor, the lead researcher on the new study. Tiny particles in air pollution, including…  read on >  read on >