Bereavement often leads men to turn to drink

As reported by Emily Braeger of the London Daily Express, April 28, 2022:

Men often turn to drink and recreational drugs to numb the heartbreak of bereavement, research has revealed.

They admitted they reached for alcohol 13 times a month on average, according to the Sue Ryder charity.

And nearly a quarter said they used drugs every day after the death of a loved one.

Women were more likely to use prescription drugs to combat depression and anxiety, the poll said.

Sue Ryder, which has launched a Grief Kind campaign to encourage more openness, said support from friends and family would have prevented many from using drugs or drinking.

The charity's Bianca Neumann said: "This suggests men are turning to short-lasting and numbing coping mechanisms. Encourage them to visit their GP!"

Social media may be bad for your health

As reported by University at Buffalo, January 21, 2022:

Social media use has been linked to biological and psychological indicators associated with poor physical health among college students, according to the results of a new study by a University at Buffalo researcher.

Research participants who used social media excessively were found to have higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), a biological marker of chronic inflammation that predicts serious illnesses, such as diabetes, certain cancers and cardiovascular disease. In addition to elevated CRP levels, results suggest higher social media use was also related to somatic symptoms, like headaches, chest and back pains, and more frequent visits to doctors and health centers for the treatment of illness.

“Social media use has become an integral part of many young adults’ daily lives,” said David Lee, PhD, the paper’s first author and assistant professor of communication in the UB College of Arts and Sciences. “It’s critical that we understand how engagement across these platforms contributes to physical health.”

The findings appear in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

For decades, researchers have devoted attention to how social media engagement relates to users’ mental health, but its effects on physical health have not been thoroughly investigated. Recent surveys indicate social media usage is particularly high for people in their late teens and early 20s, a population that spends about six hours a day texting, online or using social media. And though a few studies have found links between social media usage and physical health, that research relied largely on self-reporting or the effects of usage with exclusively one platform.

“Our goal was to extend prior work by examining how social media use across several platforms is associated with physical health outcomes measured with biological, behavioral and self-report measures,” said Lee, an expert on health outcomes related to social interactions.

Researchers recruited a diverse sample of 251 undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 24 for the study. Blood samples were collected through finger sticks, and participants also completed questionnaires on physical health and social media usage on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, the most popular platforms at the time the data were collected in 2017. Those responses were crosschecked with another survey that measured validity by determining the degree to which participants took their role in the study seriously.

“We were able to establish a correlation between the amount of social media use and these physical health indicators,” said Lee. “The more participants used social media, the more somatic symptoms they experienced and visits to the doctor they reported. They also showed higher levels of chronic inflammation.”

Lee says this study is just the beginning of understanding the relationship between social media and physical health.

“By looking at a biological marker in the blood, we were able to find a relatively more objective association between social media usage and physical health, but this correlational finding can’t rule out the possibility that poor health impacts social media usage,” said Lee.

Lee says the aphorism could hold true with social media use and physical health: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. “In our previous research, we found those high in self-esteem benefited from using social media, but people low in self-esteem did not. So, the effect may be more nuanced.”

“There’s still work to be done,” said Lee. “But right now, I wanted to get the word out there that social media use may have a link to important physical health outcomes.”

Lee’s research team for the current study included colleagues from The Ohio State University: Tao Jiang, a graduate student; Jennifer Crocker, PhD, professor of social psychology; and Baldwin Way, PhD, associate professor of psychology.

Click on the link to see the original journal article Social Media Use and Its Link to Physical Health Indicators by David S. Lee, Tao Jiang, Jennifer Crocker, and Baldwin M. Way in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

People who have trouble falling asleep have the most anxiety--or is it the other way around?

Is it the anxiety that's making it difficult for people to fall asleep, or is it the inability to sleep that's causing the anxiety? Only the scientists know for sure, as reported by Mari Rian Hanger and Nancy Bazilchuk in ScienceNorway, October 9, 2019 (bold, link in original):

Sleeplessness, or insomnia, takes different forms. Some patients have trouble falling asleep at night. Others wake up very early in the morning, without being able to fall back asleep again. A third group struggles with constantly waking during the night.

Now, sleep researchers who have looked at these three types of insomnia have found differences in anxiety levels in people with the different types.

"Patients who have trouble falling asleep have significantly higher levels of anxiety than those who struggle with waking during the night or waking early in the morning," said the lead researcher behind the new study, Daniela Bragantini, a biologist at the Department of Mental Health at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

The study was recently published in the journal Sleep Health.

Population-level study

The researchers had access to information from one of the largest health studies ever performed, called HUNT, the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study. This study of residents of the former county of Nord-Trøndelag includes a database with information on nearly 120,000 individuals. In this case, the researchers relied on data collected from 4317 people between 2006-2008 who had reported at least one symptom of insomnia to the HUNT researchers.

A total of 3616 controls, or people who did not have insomnia, were also included in the sleep study.

Participants had completed a questionnaire in which they answered questions about insomnia and also questions about anxiety.

“We compared their responses and saw that people with insomnia generally had a higher level of anxiety than those who slept well at night,” Bragantini says.

People with insomnia are known to suffer from more anxiety and depression than average. But few researchers have studied the differences between different types of sleep problems.

Trouble falling asleep associated with anxiety

People who had trouble falling asleep, whether combined with other types of sleep problems or alone, had the highest anxiety score.

Those who suffered from waking early in the morning, or waking multiple times at night, had lower levels of anxiety.

“It's interesting that having problems falling asleep is more closely related to anxiety than other insomnia symptoms,” says Bragantini.

She said that the anxiety levels in question were not very high and that not everyone needs professional help. But the differences between people with different symptoms were significant.

It seems that people who have trouble falling asleep struggle to turn off their brains.

“Their brains continue to think, even if it really supposed to be time to sleep. It is difficult to say which comes first, anxiety or insomnia — often the two disorders can sustain each other, so that it becomes a circle of stress. Sometimes it may also be that the anxiety comes first, but that the sleep problems become an independent disorder, which does not necessarily disappear even if the anxiety is treated,” she says.

Other research has shown that a patient’s mental disorders often get better when they are treated for insomnia.

Sleep anxiety can cause insomnia

Concerns over how important sleep is can also cause people to feel anxious, Bragantini said.

“It can be easy to think that it is bad for your health if you don’t get your eight hours of sleep. This type of information can be taken out of context and can feel daunting. It can cause people to develop even more anxiety about their lack of sleep, which makes it even more difficult to sleep at night,” she said.

Bragantini and her co-researchers believe a diagnosis of insomnia actually consists of several different subtypes, based on the symptoms the patients have.

“There may be different reasons for different types of insomnia. I am looking into the different biological causes behind these different types of insomnia,” she says.

Consequently, she thinks different types of insomnia may also require different treatment.

“A person who struggles with falling asleep may need treatment for anxiety, while those who wake up very early in the morning may benefit from other types of treatment. We want to continue this line of inquiry,” says Bragantini.

Most often, anxiety comes first

Ståle Pallesen, who is a professor at the Department of Psychosocial Science at the University of Bergen, says it’s not surprising that people who struggle to fall asleep have the most anxiety.

“If you have a lot of worries, and struggle with anxiety, it is not surprising that it can be difficult to turn off your cognitive activity in the evening when you are trying to sleep. Anxiety patients can also have physical symptoms that make it hard for them to fall asleep,” says Pallesen.

He believes that in some cases, having trouble falling asleep can also lead to anxiety.

“Not being able to sleep at night gives you more time to lie there and worry,” he says.

Still, he believes that in most cases, anxiety comes first, and leads to sleep problems in these patients.

Reference:

Daniela Bragantini et al.: Differences in anxiety levels among symptoms of insomnia. The HUNT study. Sleep Health, August 2019

Addictions expert says that legalization of marijuana could lead to greater use

As reported by Kieran Leavitt of StarMetro Edmonton, June 3, 2018:

EDMONTON—With cannabis legalization on the horizon, Alberta Health Services is trying to grapple with how and where people can use the substance — but also how they can help people quit if they want to stop using it.

“It does worry me,” said AHS executive director for addiction and mental health, Mark Snaterse.

“When we look at some parts of the world that have done this (legalization), they have found that in many instances, recreational users of marijuana will often become daily or regular users of marijuana.”

He’s a veteran in the world of addictions, having been involved for 26 years and in his current role as director for nine. He has reason to be concerned, while most people who come to use his department’s services are addicted to myriad substances, many are addicted to marijuana.

“When we look at everybody coming into our services for all different kinds of substance use, the top two are alcohol and marijuana,” he said.

According to data Snaterse provided from all of Alberta in 2016-2017, only one per cent of people who accessed addiction services came solely using marijuana.

However, of people taking multiple substances, 52 per cent of them included marijuana in their list of substances they were taking. Of those people, 25 per cent identified that marijuana was a problem they wanted to be treated for.

Therefore, of the approximately 13,500 people that accessed addiction services and listed marijuana as a substance they used in 2016 and 2017, around 3,300 acknowledged marijuana was a problem for them.

Snaterse also said mental illness is commonly exacerbated by marijuana use.

“A lot of the people we care for have a persistent and chronic mental illness,” he said. “There certainly is a strong link between people’s ability to remain well and their use of substances such as marijuana.”

His department offers addictions counselling and one-on-one support for people dealing with dependency to marijuana. The treatment style is very individualistic, Snaterse said.

Some will be in residential treatment, where they spend a certain amount of time. Some just need to have conversations with counsellors and others might have to be outpatients dealing with things more independently.

Snaterse said they deal with marijuana withdrawal as well, saying people can experience high anxiety or other emotional symptoms.

No substitute exists for people wanting to ween themselves off cannabis, he said.

May 31 marks World No Tobacco Day and folks all over the globe gathered in protest to tobacco products.

In Edmonton, Chris Sikora, medical officer for health with Alberta Health Services, spoke to the cessation of smoking but also said they’re also grappling with legalization of cannabis and what it means for them.

At the Kaye Edmonton Clinic Thursday, AHS promoted their resources for quitting smoking available to those struggling, but have updated their policy to include quitting the use of cannabis.

People dealing with substance abuse can access addiction counselling, outpatient support, residential support or peer support through AHS. Typically people will go for a consultation to see what the best course of treatment is. This applies to tobacco, e-cigarette and cannabis use as well.

AHS also updated their policies to ban cannabis use on all of their properties, with Sikora saying although cannabis will be legal to consume, it shouldn’t mean creating an unsafe environment where people are cared for.

“What isn’t right… is exposing others to those substances in an unnecessary manner that increases risk the risk of harm to other individuals,” said Sikora.

AHS has a free help line people can call if they want assistance in dealing with addiction, available by dialling 1-866-332-2322.

Drinking young leads to dying young

Now that scientists have discovered that drinking alcohol at an early age can lead to an early death, don't be surprised if they announce similar discoveries about the early practice of smoking, drug use, or other bad habits. The following article abounds in euphemisms: "alcohol abuse disorder;" "alcohol use disorder;" "abuse sufferers;" "alcohol addiction." I'm surprised "alcohol dependency" and "alcohol-dependent" weren't included. The term "drunkenness" is mentioned, which is far more honest. The Bible never uses such euphemisms, or even terms such as "alcoholism" or "alcoholic"--terms popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous in an effort to relabel a sin as a disease--but uses such terms as "drunkenness," and says that "drunkards" will not inherit the Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:10). I'm not going to mention the innumerate use of the word "DOUBLES" in the original Daily Mail headline.

As reported by Alexandra Thompson in the London Daily Mail, June 9, 2017 (bold in original):

Getting drunk before your 15th birthday nearly doubles your risk of an early death, new research reveals.

Those who get inebriated at a young age are 47 percent more likely to die prematurely, a study found.

Researchers believe early drinking may increase a person's risk of suffering a life-threatening alcohol abuse disorder in later life.

Lead author Dr Hui Hu from the University of Florida, said: 'Early onset of drinking and drunkenness are associated with alcohol use disorders and therefore may play a role in elevated alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates.'

Other experts add excessive alcohol-consumption at a young age can increase a person's 'risk-taking behavior' and lead to mental health issues.

How the study was carried out

Researchers from the University of Florida analyzed the drinking habits and death records of almost 15,000 adults, who were followed for three decades.

The researchers examined data from the early 1980s that asked the participants if they had ever been drunk and how old they were when it first occurred.

At the time of the interviews, most participants were aged between 18 and 44-years-old.

Key findings

Compared to study participants who said they never got drunk, those who did so at least once before they turned 15 were 47 percent more likely to die during the study period.

Getting drunk at 15 or older increased the risk of death during the study by 20 percent.

Some 61 percent of the study's participants said they had been drunk at some point, with around 13 percent of first-time cases occurring before they turned 15.

Of those who got drunk young, around 37 percent were suffering from an alcohol abuse disorder at the time of the interviews, compared to 11 percent of abuse sufferers who did not get intoxicated until they were older.

By the end of the study, 26 percent of those who got drunk young had died, compared to 23 percent of those who got drunk later and 19 percent who had never been inebriated.

Why early drinking is risky

Excessive drinking at a young age is thought to be linked to alcohol abuse in later life.

Dr Hu said: 'Early onset of drinking and drunkenness are associated with alcohol use disorders and therefore may play a role in elevated alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates.'

Yet alcohol addiction may not be the only factor contributing to young drinkers' early death risk.

Dr Hu said: 'We found that an estimated 21 percent of the total effects of early drunkenness were mediated through alcohol use disorders, suggesting that many other factors in addition to alcohol use disorders may play important roles.'

Dr Michael Criqui, a public health researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, said: 'We know that alcohol abuse leads to earlier mortality, but it is also possible that earlier abuse reflects other genetic or environmental characteristics that lead to earlier mortality.'

Early drunkenness may point to other factors such as risk-taking behavior, mental health issues or a lack of social or economic support that influences health and longevity, noted Dr. Gregory Marcus, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

How to interpret the results

Dr Marcus said: 'No one should interpret these data to mean that their fate is sealed.

'On the contrary, these findings are useful exactly because they may help us identify those at risk so we can prevent these adverse outcomes.'

Yet Mr Joy Bohyun Jang of the institute for social research at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study, added that the study demonstrates an early mortality risk exists even among people without alcohol addiction, which all drinkers should be aware of.

He said: 'Those with alcohol use disorders may receive attention to their alcohol use behaviors by practitioners or they themselves may be cautious about their alcohol use.

'But what this study tells us is that those without alcohol use disorder may need the same level of attention if they experience drunkenness early in their life.'

Pregnant women waddle

I wonder why that is; could it have something to do with carrying inside their bodies? Here in Edmonton, women are able to waddle without being pregnant; they're just plain fat.

As reported by Unity Blott (!) of the London Daily Mail, July 3, 2016:

Women really do 'waddle' like penguins when they are pregnant, according to new research.

The unique way that mums-to-be walk has been measured for the first time thanks to a sophisticated 3D motion capture system that is used in Lord of the Rings and other CGI blockbusters.

It has allowed scientists to study how women are forced to adjust their everyday movements, from getting up from a chair to changing direction while walking.

After filming mums-to-be at various stages of pregnancy, they found that baby bumps can change a woman's gait as early as in the first trimester.

The researchers also found that accidental falls cause up to a quarter of all trauma injuries during pregnancy, and that expectant mothers have the same level of risk as a 70-year-old woman.

Hiroshima University's Professor Koichi Shinkoda, who conducted the research, said: 'Biomechanics studies like ours, (looking at) how humans move, are valuable for many things like making our built environments safer or designing mobility skills.'

The study is the first of its kind; previous body scan analysis has almost exclusively focused on men of European descent.

One study in 1996 looked at pregnant women in Canada; however, the imaging technology available at the time means the data is now considered outdated.

Yasuyo Sunaga, a doctoral student in Professor Shinkoda's lab, explained: 'Prior to our study, there were almost no theory-supported models of the movement of pregnant women.

'This model is just the start of our goal of contributing to a safe and comfortable life before and after childbirth for pregnant women.'

3D motion capture is use to bring movies like Avatar to life, and now it has shed light on the precise movements of pregnant women such as standing up, turning, walking and even carrying a light load. Special flooring was also used to measure the force of their steps.

The team brought eight women into the lab at three different times during their pregnancy, as well as seven non-pregnant women, and used infrared cameras to record their movements.

After computer analysis, the researchers created virtual models to represent the average pregnant woman.

The model confirms scientists' current understanding of why pregnant women walk differently; even during the first trimester, their centre of mass is further forward, they lean backwards while standing, and they bend their hips less while walking.

This combination can cause them to trip over their toes and more easily lose their balance.

Computer models like this allow researchers to study the limits of what type of movements are safe without putting any real participants in dangerous situations.

Yasuyo Sunaga added: 'We want to find the ideal way for new mothers to carry their baby, what exercises are most effective to return to non pregnant fitness, and what physical postures are best for work in the home or office.

'Now that we have the appropriate data, we hope to apply our model and make it possible to problem-solve these concerns of daily life.'

The study has been published online in the journal Applied Ergonomics.

Click on the link for the abstract to the original article, Biomechanics of rising from a chair and walking in pregnant women by Yasuyo Sunaga, Masaya Anan, Koichi Shinkoda, Applied Ergonomics, Volume 44, Issue 5, September 2013, pp. 792-798.

"Real" men don't like to go to the doctor...

...which is why we die younger than women, as reported by Agence France-Presse/Relaxnews, March 24, 2016:

A newly published American psychological study has set out to investigate whether male life expectancy -- which is shorter than female life expectancy by an average of five years -- could be affected by social and psychological factors like choice of doctor and honesty.

"Why do men die earlier than women?" That's the question Diana Sanchez, associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University in the USA and doctoral student Mary Himmelstein, set out to answer in a recent study published in the Preventive Medicine journal and the Journal of Health Psychology.

They found that men who had traditional beliefs about masculinity -- such as showing bravery, courage and emotional restraint -- were more likely to ignore their health problems or delay acting on them.

The pair studied a group of 250 men, who were given a questionnaire designed to gauge their ideas about manhood and their preferences when choosing a doctor.

The results showed that participants with the highest scores on the masculinity scale were more likely to choose a male doctor, assuming them to be more competent that their female counterparts.

The scientists then recruited 250 university students and gave them a similar questionnaire. Each participant was also interviewed about their health by male and female medical or nursing students.

Paradoxically, the higher they scored on the masculinity scale, the less likely they were to talk openly about their symptoms and current health problems with male doctors. "That's because they don't want to show weakness or dependence to another man, including a male doctor," explains Diana Sanchez.

Ironically, this same group of volunteers was found to be more honest about their medical symptoms with female doctors, the authors found.

The pair published similar findings in 2014 in the Journal of Health Psychology. The study showed that men with strong, traditional ideas about masculinity were less likely to seek medical help, and were more likely to downplay their symptoms and suffer worse health outcomes than women or men who did not share those values.

"Men can expect to die five years earlier than women, and physiological differences don't explain that difference," said Diana Sanchez.

Click on the links to see the abstracts of the original journal articles by Mary Himmelstein and Diana Sanchez:

Masculinity impediments: Internalized masculinity contributes to healthcare avoidance in men and women, Journal of Health Psychology, October 7, 2014

Masculinity in the doctor's office: Masculinity, gendered doctor preference and doctor–patient communication, Preventive Medicine, Volume 84, March 2016, Pages 34–40

Not getting enough sleep may hurt your performance in school (zzz...)

It's tough to do well in school when you're falling asleep in class because you didn't get enough sleep last night--but of course, we're not smart enough to figure this out without a study to tell us so. As reported by Dr. Veronica Hackethal of Reuters, August 16, 2013:

Children who have trouble sleeping tend to do worse in school than their peers who get a good night's sleep, a new study suggests.

Researchers in Brazil looked at children age seven to 10 who attended Sao Paulo public schools. They found kids with symptoms of sleep disorders or sleep breathing disorders earned lower grades than those without problems sleeping, on average...

...Poor sleep among children has been tied to obesity, which over the long term increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes. And poor school performance has been linked to early dropout rates - so the new findings may have implications beyond getting a good night's sleep, researchers said...

...However, the new study can't say definitively that sleep problems were to blame for poor grades, researchers said.

"This study doesn't prove that a sleep disturbance causes decreased academic performance," Bazil said, "but it shows an association. Basically every category of sleep disturbance the authors looked at correlated with decreased academic performance."

The researchers relied on parents' reports of their children's sleep, rather than bringing kids into a sleep lab overnight, for example...

Go here to see an abstract of the original study.

Children can get fat watching TV in their bedrooms

I am shocked--shocked!--to find that children who have TV sets in their bedrooms are more likely to watch television than those who don't. As reported by QMI Agency, December 11, 2012:

Children with TVs in their bedrooms are more likely to be at risk of obesity, a new study has found.

Researchers looked at 369 children aged 5 to 18 in Baton Rouge, La., noting their waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol, fat mass and stomach fat. The data showed that not only were those with TVs in their bedrooms more likely to watch more TV, they also had more fat mass and a higher waist circumference compared to those without a bedroom TV.

Study participants with a TV in the bedroom and those who watched more than two hours of television a day had up to 2.5 times the odds of having the highest levels of fat mass.

"A bedroom TV may create additional disruptions to healthy habits, above and beyond regular TV viewing," study co-author Amanda Staiano said.

The study was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Go here to see the abstract of the original article.

Kids who watch a lot of TV tend to eat a lot of junk food

As reported by Genevra Pittman of Reuters, May 10, 2012:

Children and teens who watch a lot of television are less likely to get their fruits and vegetables and more likely to snack on candy or drink soda every day, according to a survey of close to 13,000 U.S. students.

The link to poor eating habits remained even after the researchers, whose findings appeared in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, took into account how much exercise kids typically got as well as how often they snacked while in front of the television.

Though the findings weren't particularly surprising, researchers couldn't tell which came first, the extra TV or poor eating habits. Thus, the study alone can't prove that watching too much TV causes children to make poor diet choices.

But it does jibe with past research showing that when children have their TV time cut back, they tend to eat less and may lose weight, the researchers aid.

"It certainly is consistent with the idea that TV is maybe adversely affecting dietary intake and food choices," said Leah Lipsky, who worked on the new study at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver national Institute of Child Health and Human Development, along with colleague Ronald Iannotti.

Previous studies have also suggested that young people who spend more time in front of the television are more likely to be overweight or obese. One explanation is that advertisements promoting fast food and sweets during kids' programming may be driving youth towards unhealthy foods, experts have said.

The survey looked at a nationally-representative group of 12,642 private and public school students who watched an average of two and a half hours of TV each day.

The researchers found that for every extra hour of daily TV watching reported by children from roughly age 10 to 16, they were five percent less likely to eat vegetables every day and eight percent less likely to get daily fruit.

Each extra average hour of TV also meant kids were 18 percent more likely to say they ate candy each day, 24 percent more likely to drink soda at least daily and 14 percent more likely to go to fast food restaurants once a week or more.

That was after taking into account survey participants' age, gender, race and how well-off their families were.

"The effect of television is extending beyond just when they're snacking and watching television," Iannotti told Reuters health. That means it's important both for parents to limit TV time - and thus exposure to food-related commercials - and to make sure healthy snacks are available when children are watching TV or otherwise engaged in "screen time" in front of a computer, he added.

Pet owners trust pets more than people

Anyone who's had a pet will wonder why this is reported as a news item:

Canadian pet owners would rather deal with their furry friends than other people, according to a recent study by Harris/Decima.

The study revealed 53 per cent of Canadians who own pets find them more reliable than people. Ninety per cent of Canadians talk to their pets and one-third have confided their deepest, darkest secrets to Fido or Milo or Hero.

There are several obvious reasons for this, such as: pets don't lie to you; they aren't mean to you; they're glad to see you; and best of all, they don't talk back.

Teenage boys eat a lot

This study from the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development won't surprise anyone who's ever known or been a teenage boy. I just wish I still had the metabolism I had then.

As reported by Reuters, June 15, 2010:

NEW YORK - Parents of teenage boys often believe they are being eaten out of house and home. A new study suggests they’re right.

In a lunch-buffet experiment involving 200 kids ages 8 to 17, researchers found that boys routinely ate more compared with girls their own age. But boys in their mid-teens were the most ravenous of all — downing an average of nearly 2,000 lunchtime calories.

The pattern makes sense, given that boys usually hit their growth spurt — putting on height and muscle mass — in late puberty, according to senior researcher Dr. Jack A. Yanovski, of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Yet, while teenage boys have a storied reputation for packing it away, there had actually been little objective evidence that this is the norm.

“There’s a lot of folk wisdom that says boys can eat prodigious amounts, but we haven’t had much data,” Yanovski told Reuters Health.

To fill the gap, he and his colleagues had 204 8- to 17-year-old boys and girls come to a lunch buffet on two separate days. On one day, the kids were instructed to eat as much as they normally would during lunch; on the other day, they were told to eat as much as they wanted.

Overall, the researchers found, boys ate more than girls did at each stage of puberty. Prepubescent boys — generally between the ages of 8 and 10 — averaged nearly 1,300 lunchtime calories, versus 900 among prepubescent girls.

Girls showed the biggest increase in appetite during early- to mid-puberty, roughly between the ages of 10 and 13. Girls that age averaged almost 1,300 lunchtime calories, and that figure was only slightly higher among girls who were in late puberty.

That pattern is in line with girls’ development, Yanovski said, as they tend to have their most significant growth spurts in early- to mid-puberty.

Boys, on the other hand, tend to develop later. And their calorie needs appear to shoot up significantly in late puberty, or between the ages of 14 and 17.

While boys in this study showed little change in calorie intake between pre- and mid-puberty, their average lunchtime calorie intake reached nearly 2,000 calories in late puberty. Even for active children, those 2,000 calories would be most of their daily energy needs.

“They really can eat,” Yanovski noted.

For parents, he said, the findings offer an idea of what they can reasonably expect as far as their children’s calorie needs, and the family grocery bills, as kids get older.

Big fat slobs don't get jobs...

...except maybe as "Before" models in weight-loss ads. This survey was done by a weight-loss organization in Britain; I suspect the results might be less dramatic in the U.S.A. and Canada, where the number of fat people has ballooned in recent years. Perhaps it might be a good idea to get the promotion first, then earn the "BFS" degree.

Overweight face a ‘catalogue of discrimination" in the workplace, shows survey

Overweight people are missing out on jobs because employers assume they are ‘lazy’, ‘lack self control’ and are ‘not hard workers’, according to a survey by Slimming World and YouGov.

When people who are very overweight do get a job they are twice as likely to earn a low salary, four times more likely to suffer bullying about their weight and six times more likely to feel their appearance has caused them to be overlooked for promotion, the survey of 2,000 people revealed.

In addition, while one in three people who are obese admit they feel like ‘second class citizens’, data from the survey’s 227 bosses shows that they’re right to fear discrimination – particularly from male employers. One in four male bosses say they would turn down a potential candidate based purely on their weight and one in 10 admit they have already done so.

Sand is softer than wood

Another study done by scientists who apparently have never been children, or don't have any:

Children who fall off playground equipment and land on sand may be less likely to break an arm than if they land on wood chips, Canadian researchers say...

...How badly a child is hurt depends not only on how far they fall, but also the type of surface they land on, researchers at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto found after some school playgrounds in the city were resurfaced.

Late-night snacks could pack on the pounds...

...although the study doesn't mention that they might give you weird dreams, too.

Midnight raids on the refrigerator may have worse consequences than indigestion -- a study in mice boosts the theory that when you eat affects whether the calories go to your hips or get burned off.

Mice fed during the daytime -- when they normally would be sleeping -- gained more weight than mice fed at night, Fred Turek of Northwestern University in Illinois and colleagues found.

Apparently these "scientists" have never met either children or dogs outside a laboratory

To anyone who knows anything about kids or dogs, this isn't unclear at all. So many social scientists are so retarded, I wonder how they ever got their degrees.

Dog Bite Risk for Kids Greatest in Summer

SUNDAY, March 8 (HealthDay News) -- Young children are at the greatest risk for dog bites in the summer and are especially vulnerable to severe bites in the head and neck areas, say researchers who analyzed 84 cases of dog bites in children.

It's not clear why children are more likely to suffer dog bite injuries in the summer, but it may be because children spend more time outdoors playing with dogs in warmer months, the researchers suggested. Or it may be that dogs are generally more irritable in hot weather.

Fat kids don't feel good about themselves...

...while kids who do well on exams do feel good about themselves.

According to this study from the University of Alberta:

Kids who scored well on provincial exams tended to have high self-esteem, the researchers said, although children with low self-worth still managed to perform well. Children dealing with obesity, meanwhile, weren't feeling good about themselves.
"Body weight affected self-esteem negatively, and ... school performance affected self-esteem positively," the study says.

For another article on the same study, go here.

Mother knows best

Children may groan, but Mom was right, scientists find
Modern research affirms traditional wisdom of motherly dictums
Tom Spears, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, January 06, 2009

The more scientists study us, the more they confirm that your mother was right. You should eat your veggies, wash your hands and play with friends outdoors.

There's a generation gap in fitness clubs

'Geezers get out'
New research finds that if the old folks like it, the kids will stay away
Sarah Schmidt , Canwest News Service

Young customers don't want old people around when they're eating out at restaurants and will avoid patronizing health clubs and other service industries related to physical activity if senior citizens are present, a new study suggests...

I prefer rude doctors, myself

Patients prefer polite physicians, says U.S. report
Wed May 7, 2008 6:27pm EDT
By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) - Doctors should try a new type of prescription -- being a little more polite -- if they want to connect with their patients, a U.S. psychiatrist suggested on Wednesday...