InvitoHealth: Health News Headlines
By Rick Naurert PhD
March 21st, 2023
New research suggests a machine-learning algorithm can detect signs of anxiety and depression in the speech patterns of young children. The technique could be a faster and easier way of detecting difficult to spot disorders in young people. Early detection of emotional issues is important to ensure timely care. Investigators explain that around one in five children suffer from anxiety and depression, collectively known as “internalizing disorders.” However, the signs of the disorder are difficult to recognize as children under the age of eight cannot reliably articulate their emotional suffering, making the condition difficult to spot. The need to make [More]
By Rick Naurert PhD
March 21st, 2023
A new study from Spain provides rather sobering recommendations for Twitter users who desire to increase their popularity. Investigators found that the imbalanced structure of Twitter, where some users have many followers and the vast majority barely have a few dozen followers, means that messages from the more influential have much more impact. Researchers from the Technical University of Madrid found that less popular users can compensate for this by increasing their activity and their tweets, but the outcome is costly and inefficient. In the study, researchers sought to answer this question: What can Twitter users do to increase their [More]
By Rick Naurert PhD
March 20th, 2023
Gambling has become a serious problem on college campuses with more than 1.6 million college-aged adults meeting the criteria for problem gambling. Experts say the gambling habit can lead to difficulties at work, school or home, and with relationships, personal finances, and mental and physical health. While individual counseling for problem gamblers is often effective, the intervention can be expensive and time consuming. A new study suggest a new treatment option for college-aged adults as University of Missouri researchers showed that personalized feedback from computers significantly changed the behavior of problem gamblers. “We don’t want to replace the one-on-one counseling [More]
By Rick Naurert PhD
March 20th, 2023
New research documents the risk female teenagers face when they publicly meet people they have met on the Internet and whose identity had not been fully confirmed prior to the meeting. Experts say the risk is accentuated for teen girls who have been victims of abuse or neglect. The study, published in the eFirst pages of the journal Pediatrics, shows that 30 percent of teenagers reported having offline meetings with people they have met on the Internet. “These meetings may have been benign, but for an adolescent girl to do it is dangerous,” said Jennie Noll, Ph.D., a psychologist at [More]
By Rick Naurert PhD
March 20th, 2023
A new study investigates sleep paralysis, a time of transition to and from sleep when hallucinations may be present. Sleep paralysis is defined as “a discrete period of time during which voluntary muscle movement is inhibited, yet ocular and respiratory movements are intact.” Psychologists at Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania say that less than 8 percent of the general population experiences sleep paralysis although two groups experience a greater prevalence — students and psychiatric patients. The disorder is recognized as influencing fictional and historic events. Alien abductions and incubi and succubi, as well as other demons that attack [More]
By Rick Naurert PhD
March 20th, 2023
Regular meditation appears to help people find pain less unpleasant. Scientists from the University of Manchester believe meditation causes an individual’s brain to anticipate pain less. Researchers recruited individuals into the study who had a diverse range of experience with meditation, spanning anything from months to decades. It was only the more advanced meditators whose anticipation and experience of pain differed from non-meditators. The type of meditation practiced also varied across individuals, but all included ‘mindfulness meditation’ practices, such as those that form the basis of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), recommended for recurrent depression by the National Institute for Health [More]
By Traci Pedersen
March 20th, 2023
Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) came across a strange and surprising finding regarding men and diabetes: Men in an unhappy marriage — as opposed to a happy one — had a reduced risk of developing diabetes and an increased chance of successful treatment after diagnosis. While the reasons for this are unclear, it could be that wives are often watching and regulating their husband’s health behaviors, especially if he is in poor health or diabetic, say the researchers. And while this may be seen as nagging, the situation may ultimately improve the husband’s physical health. For the study, lead [More]
By Rick Naurert PhD
March 20th, 2023
Researchers have discovered that men diagnosed as children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were twice as likely to be obese adults. Investigators from the Child Study Center at New York University’s Langone Medical Center report the results of the 33-year follow-up study online in the journal Pediatrics. “Few studies have focused on long-term outcomes for patients diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. In this study, we wanted to assess the health outcomes of children diagnosed with ADHD, focusing on obesity rates and body mass index,” said lead author Francisco Xavier Castellanos, M.D. “Our results found that even when you control for other [More]
By Traci Pedersen
March 19th, 2023
Regular tea drinkers have better organized brain regions compared to non-tea drinkers, according to a new study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS). In particular, participants who consumed either green tea, oolong tea, or black tea at least four times a week for about 25 years had brain regions that were interconnected in a more efficient way. “Our results offer the first evidence of positive contribution of tea drinking to brain structure, and suggest that drinking tea regularly has a protective effect against age-related decline in brain organisation,” said team leader Assistant Professor Feng Lei, who [More]
By Traci Pedersen
March 19th, 2023
Although minorities are commonly overrepresented in special education in the U.S., a new study from the University of Kansas (KU) has found a stark exception: minorities with autism are widely underrepresented, particularly those from African-American and Hispanic backgrounds. The new findings reveal that students of all backgrounds are not being identified accurately, resulting in the fact that many children, particularly minorities, are not receiving services vital to their education. For the study, the researchers analyzed autism identification rates for each state. They compared the percentage of minorities with autism in each state to the percentage of white students with autism. [More]
