The findings, led by the University of Gothenburg in Sweden researchers, showed that long-term exposure to high job demands played a part only for women. In just over half of the women who had been subjected to high demands, a major increase in weight took place over the 20 years.
This gain in weight was some 20 per cent higher than in women subject to low job demands.
On the other hand, women and men with a low degree of control in their work more frequently gained considerable weight, defined as a weight gain of 10 per cent or more.
"We were able to see that high job demands played a part in women's weight gain, while for men there was no association between high demands and weight gain," said lead author Sofia Klingberg, a researcher at the varsity.
"When it came to the level of demands at work, only the women were affected. We haven't investigated the underlying causes, but it may conceivably be about a combination of job demands and the greater responsibility for the home that women often assume. This may make it difficult to find time to exercise and live a healthy life," Klingberg added.
For the study, published in the journal International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, the team included 3,872 women and men who were investigated on three occasions over a 20-year period with respect to such variables as body weight and demands and control at work.
They were followed either from age 30 to 50 or from 40 to 60.
Efforts to reduce work-related stress would likely achieve a decrease not only in weight gain but also in the incidence of ill health, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes, the researchers noted.
The study showed that vital exhaustion, which can be perceived as an indicator of psychological distress, is a risk factor for future risk of dementia.
Psychological distress is potentially linked to the risk of dementia through neurological and cardiovascular mechanisms.
The findings, led by researchers from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, revealed that for each additional symptom of vital exhaustion, the risk of dementia rose by two per cent.
While participants reporting five to nine symptoms had a 25 per cent higher risk of dementia than those with no symptoms, those reporting 10 to 17 symptoms had a 40 per cent higher risk of dementia compared with not having symptoms.
Importantly, physiological stress response, including cardiovascular changes and excessive production of cortisol over a prolonged period, may also contribute to linking psychological distress with an increased risk of dementia, revealed the study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
"Stress can have severe and harmful consequences not just for our brain health, but our health in general. Cardiovascular risk factors are well-known modifiable risk factors for dementia, and in some countries, a stagnation or even a decreasing incidence of dementia has been observed," said Sabrina Islamoska, postdoctoral student from the varsity.
For the study, the team included 6,807 Danish participants aged 60 years on average.
Psychological distress is an important risk factor that should receive more focus when considering prevention initiatives in relation to later dementia, the team said.
The study, led by medical physiologist Yujiro Yamanaka at Japan's Hokkaido University, the body's central system reacts less strongly to acute psychological stress in the evening than it does in the morning, suggesting possible vulnerability to stressful events in the evening.
"Our study suggests a possible vulnerability to stress in the evening. However, it is important to take into account each individual's unique biological clock and the time of day when assessing the response to stressors and preventing them," Yamanaka commented.
The study, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology Reports, explored a small group of young and healthy volunteers with normal work hours and sleep habits to find out if the "hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal" (HPA) axis responds differently to acute psychological stress according to the time of day.
The HPA axis connects the central nervous and endocrine systems of the body. Cortisol is released for several hours when the HPA axis is activated by a stressful event.
This helps provide the body with energy in the face of a perceived need for fight or flight. Cortisol levels are also regulated by a master circadian clock in the brain and are normally high in the morning and low in the evening.
The team first measured the diurnal rhythm of salivary cortisol levels from the volunteers and then exposed one group to stress test in the morning, and another to the evening.
The researchers found that salivary cortisol levels increased significantly in the volunteers that took the stress test in the morning while no such response was observed in those that took the test in the evening.
"Our body can respond to the morning stress event by activating the HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system, but it needs to respond to evening stress event by activating the sympathetic nervous system only," Yamanaka said.
Several studies suggest that there has been a marked increase in stress levels among millennials owing to various factors involving increased competition at the work place, unstable relationships and sedentary/unhealthy lifestyle, among others. The unmanaged stress further leads to depression.
Dr. Shruthi M. Hegde, Ayurveda Expert at The Himalaya Drug Company, shares a few tips for millennials who lead stressful lives.
* Plan your schedule:
One minute of planning translates into at least 10 minutes saved. Planning is a great tool to enhance efficiency and also brings down stress. When tasks pile up, it is natural to get overwhelmed. This can be prevented by keeping a simple checklist or to-do list. Once you've been doing it for a few weeks, it becomes second nature. Ensure you have a plan for the day with a clear objective; this allows you to focus on your goals and keeps you motivated.
* Listen to instrumental music to relax:
From time immemorial, music has been known to play a positive effect in soothing a person's senses. The tempo, lyrics and volume of the music you listen to have an enormous effect your mood. Slow-tempo, quiet music will help you relax - and soothe your frayed nerves. While you are working, you can listen to calm instrumental music. This clears the mind and helps you unwind. If you're feeling low, play upbeat music. This will lighten up your mood and elate your senses. Sometimes, vocals and lyrics can inspire you and lift your spirits.
* Get enough sleep and rest:
Staying up late in the night is common amongst millennials but can have dangerous effects on mental health. Some people have trouble sleeping early, while others find entertainment or social media preventing them from having an early night. One of the best ways that can help you sleep early is exercising for at least 45 minutes every day. This also helps you sleep better and you'll wake up feeling more refreshed. Getting a minimum of six hours of sleep is necessary to stay fit throughout the day. However, if time constraints prevent a full eight hours of sleep, meditating for 15 minutes can have the same effect on your mind and will leave you feeling rejuvenated and refreshed.
* Incorporate Ashvagandha herb in your diet:
Owing to hectic and sedentary lifestyles, we tend to "unfollow" healthy eating habits. We often skip eating wholesome meals. Most of us may be unaware that certain foods can help in relieving stress and anxiety. Fruits such banana and avocado in addition to carrots and yogurt, help you calm down. A herb like Ashvagandha, according to Ayurvedic texts and modern research, is an adaptogen, which helps relieve stress. The herb is easily available in the form of tablets. One can consume one or two tablets daily, or as directed by the doctor.
These are some of the simplest ways to combat the stress faced by millennials. It's always a good idea to start with simple, natural remedies, as they can be extremely effective.
The researchers, from Boston University in the US, found that the association between higher levels of stress and lower levels of conception could be due to decreased intercourse frequency, increased partner stress discordance and higher levels of menstrual cycle irregularity.
"Although this study does not definitely prove that stress causes infertility, it does provide evidence supporting the integration of mental health care in preconception guidance and care," said Amelia Wesselink, Research Assistant at the varsity.
For the new study, published in American Journal of Epidemiology, the team analysed 4,769 women and 1,272 men who did not have a history of infertility and had not been trying to conceive for more than six menstrual cycles.
The team measured perceived stress using the 10-item version of the stress scale (PSS) to assess how unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overwhelming individuals find their life circumstances.
On average, baseline PSS scores were about 1 point higher among women than men and the average follow-up PSS scores among women remained fairly constant over the 12 months.
The findings revealed that women with PSS scores of at least 25 were 13 per cent less likely to conceive than women with PSS scores under 10.
This association was stronger among women who had been trying to conceive for no more than two menstrual cycles than among women who had been trying for three or more cycles before enrolling. The association was also stronger among women under 35 years.
The researchers did not find an association between men's PSS score and the likelihood of conceiving.
However, couples in the study were about 25 per cent less likely to conceive when the man's PSS score was under 10 and the women's was 20 or higher, said the researchers.
In a study tested on animals, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found that stimulating caudate nucleus -- a brain region linked to emotional decision-making --induced animals to make negative decisions.
The caudate nucleus, has within it regions that are connected with the limbic system, which regulates mood, and sends input to motor areas of the brain as well as dopamine-producing regions.
The study showed that the animals gave far more weight to the anticipated drawback of a situation than its benefit, compared to when the region was not stimulated.
This pessimistic decision-making could continue through the day after the original stimulation.
"We feel we were seeing a proxy for anxiety, or depression, or some mix of the two," said Ann Graybiel, a professor at the MIT.
In the study, which appeared in the journal Neuron, the team wanted to see if they could reproduce an effect that is often seen in people with depression, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The team stimulated the caudate nucleus with a small electrical current as animals were offered a reward (juice) paired with an unpleasant stimulus (a puff of air to the face).
The results showed that the cost-benefit calculation became skewed, and the animals began to avoid combinations that they previously would have accepted.
This continued even after the stimulation ended, and could also be seen the following day, after which point it gradually disappeared.
This result suggests that the animals began to devalue the reward that they previously wanted, and focused more on the cost of the aversive stimulus.
"This state we've mimicked has an overestimation of cost relative to benefit," Graybiel noted.
The researchers also found that brainwave activity in the caudate nucleus was altered when decision-making patterns changed.
"There must be many circuits involved," she said.
"But apparently we are so delicately balanced that just throwing the system off a little bit can rapidly change behaviour."
The authors explained that stress can cause major changes in the gut and also in our brain which in turn affects our behaviour.
Foods rich in fibre was found to reduce this adverse effects of stress in mice.
The findings suggested that a gut bacteria produces short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are the main source of nutrition for cells in this region of the body and high levels of fibres stimulate the production of these SCFAs
"There is a growing recognition of the role of gut bacteria and the chemicals they make in the regulation of physiology and behaviour. The role of short-chain fatty acids in this process is poorly understood up until now," said corresponding author John F. Cryan from University College Cork in Ireland.
"It will be crucial that we look at whether short-chain fatty acids can ameliorate symptoms of stress-related disorders in humans," Cryan added.
For the study, published in The Journal of Physiology, the team fed normally produced SCFAs to the mice and then subjected them to stress. They were assessed for anxiety and depressive like behaviour, stress responsiveness, cognition and sociability as well as how easily material passes through the gut.
The results showed that increase levels of SCFAs reduced the levels of stress and anxiety-like behaviour among the mice.
The investigators also explained that stress experienced over a prolonged period of time can affect the bowel by making the barrier between the inside of the gut and the rest of the body less effective and "leaky".
Treating the condition using the SCFAs can also reverse the "leaky" walls inside the gut, said the study.
The research provides new insights into mechanisms related to the impact of the gut bacteria on the brain and behaviour as well as gut health.
"Developing dietary treatments which target these bacteria will be important for treating stress-related disorders," said the researchers.
The study found that these experiences cause faster maturation of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala -- that also play a role in the control of emotions, in adolescence.
"From an evolutionary perspective, it is useful to mature faster if you grow up in a stressful environment. However, it also prevents the brain from adjusting to the current environment in a flexible way," said Anna Tyborowska from the Radboud University in the Netherlands.
In contrast, stress experienced later in life such as low peer esteem at school, is connected to a slower maturation of the brain area hippocampus and another part of the prefrontal cortex in teenage years, the researchers said.
"What makes this interesting is that a stronger effect of stress on the brain also increases the risk of developing antisocial personality traits," Tyborowska said.
For the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers examined a group -- which then comprised 129 one-year-olds and their parents -- in 1998.
Over the past 20 years, researchers studied, inter alia, their play sessions and interactions with parents, friends and classmates. The children were also subjected to MRI scans.
The team investigated two types of stressors -- negative life events and negative influences from the social environment -- in two life stages of their subjects: early childhood (0-5 years) and adolescence (14-17 years).
They related these stress levels to the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus. These brain regions play an important role in functioning in social and emotional situations and are known to be sensitive to stress.
The researchers were surprised to find, however, that social stress later in life seems to lead to slower maturation during adolescence.
"Unfortunately, in this study, we can't say with certainty that stress causes these effects. However, based on animal studies, we can hypothesise that these mechanisms are indeed causal," Tyborowska said.
The findings showed that persons with a greater sense of assurance of spiritual salvation tend to enjoy better sleep quality and tend to have fewer negative sleep consequences due to stressful life events and chronic conditions.
It is because higher religious involvement -- religious attendance, prayer and secure attachment to God -- benefits mental health by reducing stress, promoting social engagement and support from fellow members.
It also provides psychological resources -- hope, optimism, sense of meaning -- and promotes healthier lifestyles -- lower levels of substance abuse, the researchers explained.
"This research is relatively unchartered territory that allows us to better understand the way in which religion and spirituality affect a person's health and overall quality of life," said Christopher Ellison in The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA).
Ellison said much of the benefit of perceived spiritual salvation among the faithful is because these persons have lower levels of psychological distress, i.e., feelings of depressed affect and anxiety.
For the study, published in the journal Sleep Health, the team reviewed several large studies of religious involvement and sleep-related outcomes that included people from different age groups and religions.
Religion could decrease psychological distress, substance abuse and stress exposure, which are all associated with sleep outcomes, Ellison said.
Various studies have suggested that stress-induced brain inflammation are boosting risk of such disorders, in part by impacting mood-influencing neurotransmitters like norepinephrine or dopamine.
Thus in the new study, the researchers showed that immunisation with beneficial bacteria can have long-lasting anti-inflammatory effects on the brain, making it more resilient to the physical and behavioural effects of stress.
"If you look at the field of probiotics generally, they have been shown to have strong effects in the domains of cognitive function, anxiety and fear," said Christopher Lowry, Associate Professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder.
"The study helps make sense of that by suggesting that these beneficial microbes, or signals derived from these microbes, somehow make their way to the hippocampus, inducing an anti-inflammatory state," Lowry added.
For the study, published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, the team injected male rats with the Mycobacterium vaccae (M. vaccae) bacterium three times, one week apart.
Eight days after the final injection, they demonstrated significantly higher levels of the anti-inflammatory protein interleukin-4 in the hippocampus -- a brain region responsible for modulating cognitive function, anxiety and fear.
The immunised rats exhibited less anxious behaviour after stress, indicating that M. vaccae could be administered to people at high risk of PTSD to buffer the effects of stress on the brain and body.
"We found that in rodents this particular bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, actually shifts the environment in the brain toward an anti-inflammatory state," said Matthew Frank, senior research associate at the varsity.
"If you could do that in people, it could have broad implications for a number of neuroinflammatory diseases," he noted.
New York: Consuming dark chocolate can reduce stress and inflammation, as well as improve memory, immunity and mood, results from experimental trials have shown.
This is due to the high concentration of cacao -- a major source of flavonoids.
The flavonoids found in cacao are extremely potent antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents, with known mechanisms beneficial for brain and cardiovascular health, the researchers said.
"For years, we have looked at the influence of dark chocolate on neurological functions from the standpoint of sugar content -- the more sugar, the happier we are," said lead investigator Lee S. Berk, from Loma Linda University in California, US.
"This is the first time that we have looked at the impact of large amounts of cacao in doses as small as a regular-sized chocolate bar in humans over short or long periods of time, and are encouraged by the findings," Berk added.
Further, dark chocolate was also found to affect human gene expression. It regulates cellular immune response, neural signalling, and sensory perception.
Cacao consumption up-regulates multiple intracellular signalling pathways involved in T-cell activation, cellular immune response and genes involved in neural signalling and sensory perception -- the latter potentially associated with the phenomena of brain hyperplasticity.
"These studies show us that higher the concentration of cacao, the more positive the impact on cognition, memory, mood, immunity and other beneficial effects," Berk noted.
The findings were presented at the Experimental Biology 2018 meeting in San Diego, US.
For the trial, the team for the first time examined the impact of large amounts of cacao in doses as small as a regular-sized chocolate bar in humans over short or long periods of time.
The team assessed the electroencephalography (EEG) response to consuming 48 g of dark chocolate (70 per cent cacao) after an acute period of time (30 minutes) and after a chronic period of time (120 minutes), on modulating brain frequencies 0-40Hz, specifically beneficial gamma frequency (25-40Hz).
Berk said the studies require further investigation, specifically to determine the significance of these effects for immune cells and the brain in larger study populations.
According to the researchers, the stress changes the father's sperm which can then alter the brain development of the child. This new research provides a much better understanding of the key role that fathers play in the brain development of their kids, the researchers said.
Previously, the researchers including Tracy Bale at the University of Maryland School, found that adult male mice, experiencing chronic periods of mild stress, have offspring with a reduced response to stress; changes in stress reactivity have been linked to some neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and PTSD.
They isolated the mechanism of the reduced response; they found that the father's sperm showed changes in a genetic material known as microRNA. MicroRNA are important because they play a key role in which genes become functional proteins.
Now, the researchers have unravelled new details about these microRNA changes.
In the male reproductive tract, the caput epididymis, the structure where sperm matures, releases tiny vesicles packed with microRNA that can fuse with sperm to change its cargo delivered to the egg, they said.
The caput epididymis responded to the father's stress by altering the content of these vesicles, the researchers added.
The result of the study, presented at AAAS 2018 annual meeting in Austin, suggests that even mild environmental challenges can have a significant impact on the development and potentially the health of future offspring.
The researchers also noted that by learning more about links between a father's exposure to stress and the risks of disease for his kid, we can better understand, detect, and prevent these disorders.
R.M. Anjana, Managing Director at Dr. Mohan's Diabetes Specialities Centre and Deepali Badoni, Physiotherapist at AktivHealth Clinic, talk about the benefits of cycling:
* Cycling is an aerobic exercise which has several health benefits. It reduces the risk of heart diseases. The activity boosts production of chemicals like serotonin, dopamine and phenylethylamine in the brain that makes you feel happy and keeps depression at bay.
* Static cycling is better for people suffering from knee or joint pain.
* People suffering from diabetes should make sure that they are well-hydrated while cycling. Type-1 diabetics should carry some carbohydrate based snacks if they are cycling for more than an hour.
Diabetics can track their blood sugar before, during, and after exercise using a finger-stick style blood glucose meter or a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). A prescription for a CGM is required if you are cycling regularly, especially over long distances or in races.
* Cycling has all sorts of health benefits. It is easy on the hip and knee joints and still engages your legs to provide a sense of freedom. As compared to running, biking is far lower impact and engages the muscles in the legs without as much force coming down on the knees.
You will gradually begin to see an improvement in the muscle tone of your legs, thighs, rear end and hips.
* Cycling reduces the blood cholesterol levels improving your heart and lungs function thus reducing your risks for cardio-vascular diseases.
The survey showed that over 52 per cent teenagers believed that smoking helps increase concentration levels.
While nearly 90 per cent of teenagers said they would continue smoking if there is no resistance from their parents, over 80 per cent teenagers noted that it is okay to experiment with smoking at least once.
"Smoking is plaguing the society and we are moving into an era where it is acceptable for younger age groups to begin smoking and engage in other risky behaviour," Samir Parikh, Director (Department of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences) at Fortis Healthcare said in a statement on Monday.
Further, 87 per cent teenagers reported that watching actors smoke in movies promotes smoking, while 78 per cent teenagers said that celebrity figures featuring in anti-smoking campaigns would help them quit.
Over 60 per cent teenagers also believed that disclaimers showing harmful consequences of smoking can help in prevention.
The survey highlights the need to change the youth's perception about smoking as it can lead to the early onset of lifestyle related diseases.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), smoking claims the lives of over seven million people each year. A study published in the journal The Lancet showed that over 11 percent of 6.4 million deaths worldwide were caused by smoking in 2015 and 52.2 per cent of them took place in China, India, Russia, and the US.
Smoking causes almost 90 per cent of deaths from lung cancer, around 80 per cent of deaths from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and around 17 per cent of deaths from heart disease.
For the survey, the team engaged and interacted with 1900 teenagers from six states, Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Kolkata and Chennai to assess the prevalent attitudes towards tobacco smoking.
Making decisions in this type of situation, known as a cost-benefit conflict, is dramatically affected by chronic stress.
The study, published in the journal Cell, states that impairments of a specific brain circuit underlie this abnormal decision making and could further restore normal behaviour by manipulating this circuit.
If a method for tuning this circuit in humans were developed, it could help patients with disorders such as depression, addiction, and anxiety, which often feature poor decision-making, the researchers noted.
"We found a microcircuit of neurons in the striatum that we could manipulate to reverse the effects of stress on this type of decision making," said Ann Graybiel, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, the US.
The researchers believe that this circuit integrates information about the good and bad aspects of possible choices, helping the brain to produce a decision.
The team conducted a mice study, whereby rodents were allowed to choose between highly concentrated chocolate milk, which they like, under the presence of a bright light, which they don't, and an option with dimmer light but weaker chocolate milk.
Before experiencing stress, normal rats and mice chose to run towards the dimmer light and weaker chocolate milk about half the time. As the researchers gradually increased the concentration of chocolate milk in the dimmer side, the animals began choosing that side more frequently.
The results found that stressed animals were far likelier to choose high-risk, high-payoff options.
Psychosocial stress or the 'said stress' is a kind of short-term stress (acute stress) that occurs during social or interpersonal relationships, for example while arguing with a friend or when someone pressures you to finish a certain task as soon as possible.
Psychosocial stress produces physiological responses or the physical response to a stimulus that can be measured by means of bio-signals, mentioned in the research led by Francisco Pelayo, professor at the University of Granada, Spain.
The researchers asked the volunteers to be under high stress for the study and then evaluated them over a relaxation session within a multisensory stimulation room.
The participants were divided in two groups, the first group lied down under blue light and the second group lied down under white light.
Diverse bio-signals, such as heart rate and brain activity, were measured throughout the whole session by means of an electrocardiogram and an electroencephalogram respectively.
The research, published in the journal Plos One, stated that any form of stress was very common and negatively affected people's health and quality of life.
The results found that participants who lied down under blue light relaxed more quickly than those who were under white light.
"We sometimes think of stress as a purely psychological phenomenon, but it causes distinct physical changes," said Laura Bridgewater, Professor at Brigham Young University in Utah, US.
The study, published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, found that when female mice were exposed to stress, their gut microbiota -- the microorganisms vital to digestive and metabolic health -- changed to look like the mice that had been eating a high-fat diet.
Bridgewater and her collaborators at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China took a large group of eight-week-old mice and exposed half of the males and half of the females to a high-fat diet.
After 16 weeks, all of the mice were exposed to mild stress over the course of 18 days.
Researchers then extracted microbial DNA from the mice fecal pellets before and after the stress to test how the gut microbiota was affected.
They also measured mouse anxiety based on how much and where the mice travelled in an open field arena.
The researchers found fascinating differences between genders: Male mice on the high-fat diet exhibited more anxiety than females on the high-fat diet, and high-fat males also showed decreased activity in response to stress.
However, it was only in female mice that stress caused the gut microbiota composition to shift as if the animals were on a high-fat diet.
While the study was only carried out on animals, the researchers believe there could be significant implications for humans.
"In society, women tend to have higher rates of depression and anxiety, which are linked to stress" said Bridgewater.
"This study suggests that a possible source of the gender discrepancy may be the different ways gut microbiota responds to stress in males vs. females," Bridgewater added.
The research indicated that stress reduces physiological response to the new threat cue.
The researchers applied a computational learning model to further understand how stress affects flexibility in decision-making. This analysis revealed a learning deficit for the subject put under the stress condition that participants used to update the cue associations. In short, this resulted in a slower rate of learning.
"Our study shows that when we are under stress, we pay less attention to changes in the environment, potentially putting us at an increased risk for ignoring new sources of threat," said lead author Candace Raio, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University.
The researchers conducted a series of experiments to test the ability to learn to flexibly update threat responses under stressful conditions.
Here, the participants viewed images on a computer screen.
The appearance of some images were coupled with a mild, electric wrist-shock.
Half of the participants underwent a laboratory procedure a day later designed to induce stress. This "stress group" placed their arm in an ice-water bath for a few minutes, which elevated the two stress hormones -- alpha-amylase and cortisol.
Later, all the participants repeated the threat-conditioning procedure. However, this time the cue outcomes switched. The earlier threatening cue no longer predict shock, but the formerly safe cue did.
While the participants viewed the images, the researchers collected physiological arousal responses in order to measure how individuals anticipated the outcome of each cue.
On the second day, the "stress group" was less likely to change their responses to threats than the control group.
The research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that participants did not fully switch their association with this cue from safe to threatening.
Expressing your feelings on a sheet of paper can cool your brain and help you perform the stress-inducing task more efficiently, finds a study.
According to researchers, worrying takes up cognitive resources. Due to the worrying, you are constantly multi-tasking because you are doing one task and trying to monitor and suppress your worries at the same time
"Our findings show that if you get these worries out of your head through expressive writing, those cognitive resources are freed up to work toward the task you're completing and you become more efficient," said lead author Hans Schroder, doctoral student at Michigan State University (MSU).
Previous research has shown that expressive writing can help individuals process past traumas or stressful events.
"Expressive writing makes the mind work less hard on upcoming stressful tasks, which is what worriers often get 'burned out' over, their worried minds working harder and hotter," added Jason Moser, Associate Professor at MSU.
"This technique takes the edge off their brains so they can perform the task with a 'cooler head'," Moser explained.
For the study, published in the journal Psychophysiology, college students identified as chronically anxious through a validated screening measure completed a computer-based "flanker task" that measured their response accuracy and reaction times.
Before the task, about half of the participants wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings about the upcoming task for eight minutes; the other half, in the control condition, wrote about what they did the day before.
While the two groups performed at about the same level for speed and accuracy, the expressive-writing group performed the flanker task more efficiently, meaning they used fewer brain resources.
Migraine is a serious and debilitating neurological disease affecting one billion people worldwide.
The findings showed that the genetics of circadian rhythms has an effect on migraine and that people with the CLOCK gene variant have more migraines under financial stress.
The CLOCK gene has an important role in regulating many rhythmic patterns of the body, including body temperature or level of cortisol -- the primary stress hormone.
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Though the researchers did not find a significant direct connection between the gene and migraine when they factored in financial stress, they found that the investigated gene variants increased the odds of having migraine type headaches in those subjects who suffered from financial hardship by around 20 per cent.
"The study does not show what causes migraine but it does show that both stress and genetics have an effect. We were able to show that stress -- represented by financial hardship -- led to an increase in migraine in those who have a particular gene variant," said Daniel Baksa from the Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary.
For the study, presented at the 30th ECNP Congress in Paris, the team of researchers from Hungary and the UK checked 999 patients from Budapest and 1,350 from Manchester, for two variants (single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs) of the CLOCK gene, and how these are associated with migraine.
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The gene variants was found in nearly one-third of the population, so they are common variants with small effect size, the researchers said.
"Our results shed light on one specific mechanism that may contribute to migraine. What it does mean is that for many people, the stress caused by financial worries can physically affect you," Baksa said.
"What we need to do now is to see if other circadian gene variants in association with different stress factors cause the same effect."
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Bone density gets lower as people age; however, for women, the menopause constitutes a significant risk factor.
Other risk factors of osteoporosis include low levels of physical activity, light body composition, smoking, low intake of calcium and vitamin D, as well as some drugs and medical conditions.
For instance, long-term stress associated with depression can have detrimental effects on metabolism and, in consequence, on bone health.
Subjective well-being is an extensive indicator of mental health and depression in particular, and in the new study, life satisfaction was used to measure subjective well-being.
Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland wanted to find out whether life satisfaction is associated with bone health.
The data was obtained from the Kuopio Osteoporosis Risk Factor and Prevention (OSTPRE) Study, which has been investigating the effects of various risk and protective factors on bone density and bone fractures since 1989.
The study participants responded to mail surveys and took part in bone density measurements. The present sub-study included 2,167 women who underwent bone density measurements in 1999, and out of these women, 1,147 took part in follow-up measurements ten years later, in 2009.
Life satisfaction was assessed by four questions relating to the study participants' interest in and easiness of life, happiness, and loneliness.
Based on the answers, the study participants were divided into three groups: the satisfied, the middle group, and the unsatisfied. The study focused on the possible effects of depression and other factors on bone health.
During the 10-year follow-up, the bone density of all study participants weakened by an average of 4 per cent; however, the difference between the satisfied and the unsatisfied was as much as 52 per cent.
Changes in life satisfaction during the 10-year follow-up also affected bone density. In persons whose life satisfaction deteriorated, the bone density weakened by 85 per cent in comparison to persons whose life satisfaction improved.
The study researchers said that promoting good life satisfaction and good spirits in the elderly is as important as promoting healthy lifestyle choices.
The findings were published in Psychosomatic Medicine.
A little extra stress makes hyper dogs crack under pressure but gives mellow dogs an edge. A little stress can be a good thing, but only up to a certain point, as the Yerkes-Dodson law spells out in psychology.
The relationship between stress and performance follows a Goldilocks model: Both function best when the level of stress is not too much, nor too little, but just right.
"When you're taking a test, for example, it helps to be a little bit anxious so you don't just blow it off," said co-author Emily Bray, professor, University of Pennsylvania.
"But if you're too nervous, even if you study and know the material really well, you aren't going to perform at your best," Bray said in Animal Cognition.
The team wanted to find out if the conditions that enable certain animals to do their best also depend on the animal's underlying temperament.
They challenged dogs to retrieve a meat jerky treat from a person standing behind a clear plastic barrier.
To get it right, the dogs had to resist the impulse to try to take the shortest path to reach the treat and instead walk around the barrier to one of the open sides.
"The service dogs were generally more cool in the face of stress or distraction, whereas the pet dogs tended to be more excitable and high-strung," Bray said.
For the dogs that were naturally calm and laid-back -- measured by how quickly they tended to wag their tails -- increasing the level of excitement and urgency boosted their ability to stay on task and get the treat.
"Adding more excitement pushed the pet dogs over the edge and impaired their ability to perform at their peak," Bray added.
Interestingly, the study that appeared online in the journal Social Science & Medicine found that neither childhood nor adult stress was associated with weight gain for men.
"These findings add to our understanding of how childhood stress is a more important driver of long term weight gain than adult stress, and how such processes differ for men and women," said one of the researchers Hui Liu, associate professor of sociology at Michigan State University in the US.
The researchers analysed data from a survey of 3,617 people (2,259 women and 1,358 men) who were interviewed four times in a 15-year period.
Childhood stress was measured on a range of family-related stressors that occurred at age 16 or younger such as economic hardship, divorce, at least one parent with mental health problem and never knowing one's father.
Adult stress included such factors as job loss, death of a significant other and parental and care-provider stress. The researchers found that women who experienced higher levels of childhood stress gained weight more rapidly than women who experienced less childhood stress.
"Change in body mass is a process that unfolds throughout life and childhood may be a critical period for establishing patterns that have a long term impact on women's weight over time," Liu said.
"Men and women respond to stress differently. It may be possible that women eat more to cope with stress, whereas men are more likely to engage in less weight-related strategies such as withdrawing or drinking alcohol," Liu added.
If a person remembering a terrifying event has a high stress hormone level, the memory of that specific event will be strongly reconsolidated after each retrieval.
"The results may explain why certain undesirable memories don't fade, for example in anxiety and PTSD sufferers," said Oliver Wolf from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
Studies have shown that the stress hormone cortisol has a strengthening impact on the consolidation of memories.
The researchers from Bochum have demonstrated that cortisol effects memories in humans also during the so-called reconsolidation, that is, the consolidation of memories occurring after memory retrieval.
The stress hormone can enhance this process.
They suggest that the results might explain the persistence of strong emotional memories occurring in anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Strong memories of stressful experiences occur frequently, but they usually fade away over time. People suffering from anxiety or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, however, are affected by terrifying memories that haunt them again and again.
In the study, the subjects on the first day learned an association between specific geometric shapes and an unpleasant electric shock.
On the second day, some of the participants were given a cortisol pill, others a placebo.
Subsequently, they were shown one of the geometric shapes associated with the electric shock. On the third day, the memory for the geometric shapes was tested.
Participants who had taken cortisol remembered the fear-associated shape particularly well, the study found.
This was evident in a heightened skin conductance, which is an established measure for emotional arousal.
The study appeared in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
The study from University of Edinburgh's Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences provides further evidence for the important links between mind and body.
"Psychological stress can have a damaging effect on physical wellbeing. While we are not able to confirm direct cause and effect, this study does provide evidence that requires further consideration in future studies," said lead researcher Tom Russ.
For the study, the team investigated responses to a questionnaire capturing psychological distress in more than 165,000 people.
They then tracked participants' progress over a 10-year period, examining who died and the causes of death.
Individuals who scored highly for symptoms of psychological distress were more likely to later die from liver disease than those with lower scores.
The study took into account factors such as alcohol consumption, obesity, diabetes and socio-economic status.
"Reasons for this are unclear as the biological links between psychological distress and liver disease are not well understood so far," the researchers said.
Previous research suggests mental distress can put people at increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
At the same time, risk factors for cardiovascular disease such as obesity and raised blood pressure have been linked to a common form of liver disease, known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
"In a similar way, suffering from anxiety and depression may be indirectly linked to an increased risk of death from liver disease," the authors wrote.
The study appeared in the journal Gastroenterology.
It is known that people with stress-related illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have abnormalities in the brain, including differences in the amount of gray matter versus white matter.
Gray matter consists mostly of cells - neurons, which store and process information, and support cells called glia - while white matter is composed of axons, which create a network of fibres that interconnect neurons.
White matter gets its name from the white, fatty myelin sheath that surrounds the axons and speeds the flow of electrical signals from cell to cell.
Daniela Kaufer, from the University of California Berkeley, and her colleagues, including graduate students Sundari Chetty and Aaron Freidman, discovered that chronic stress generates more myelin-producing cells and fewer neurons than normal.
This results in an excess of myelin - and thus, white matter - in some areas of the brain, which disrupts the delicate balance and timing of communication within the brain.
"We studied only one part of the brain, the hippocampus, but our findings could provide insight into how white matter is changing in conditions such as schizophrenia, autism, depression, suicide, ADHD and PTSD," she said.
Kaufer's lab, which conducts research on the molecular and cellular effects of acute and chronic stress, focused in this study on neural stem cells in the hippocampus of the brains of adult rats.
These stem cells were previously thought to mature only into neurons or a type of glial cell called an astrocyte.
The researchers found, however, that chronic stress also made stem cells in the hippocampus mature into another type of glial cell called an oligodendrocyte, which produces the myelin that sheaths nerve cells.
The finding, which they demonstrated in rats and cultured rat brain cells, suggests a key role for oligodendrocytes in long-term and perhaps permanent changes in the brain that could set the stage for later mental problems.
The study found that those who meditated more regularly scored higher on total emotional quotient and had lower perceived stress, also known as psychological stress -- the most common occupational health problems affecting workers worldwide.
They also showed improvements in general mood, stress management, adaptability, intrapersonal awareness and reality testing.
This indicates that emotional intelligence has a moderating effect on psychological well-being and mental health, the researchers said.
"This study demonstrates the benefits of meditation in the workplace," said Laurent Valosek, Executive Director, Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education -- a US-based non-profit organisation.
"And with a growing body of research on the value of emotional intelligence and the harmful effects of psychological stress, organisations are looking to give their employees tools for reducing stress and developing competencies like centeredness, self-awareness, and empathy," he added.
The study, published in the journal The Permanente Journal, included nearly 100 central office staffs.
The team found that during a four-month period, those practicing the transcendental meditation -- a form of silent mantra meditation -- experienced significant improvements in emotional intelligence and perceived stress, as compared with controls.
The research highlighted the role of emotional intelligence and perceived stress as important factors associated with mental and physical health and organisational effectiveness.
According to the World Health Organization, psychological stress adversely affects organisational commitment, work engagement, and productivity, as well as contributes to poor mental and physical health.
Emotional intelligence has garnered considerable attention in the workplace because of its positive association with mental and physical health and its connection to leadership capacity and performance.
In 2017, before the current pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) labelled India the world's "most depressing country". It was estimated that one in seven Indians suffer from some form of mental illness. This number has undoubtedly grown as the second coronavirus wave sweeps through the country and an overwhelmed health care system struggles to provide even basic care and assistance.
Stress, anxiety, and depression are endemic, as individuals and families attempt to preserve their health and safety. As one student recently confessed, "I feel like I am thrown back to April 2020 without my consent! It feels like history is repeating itself even before we could really metabolise the existing one."
Social separation and isolation can be especially problematic, evoking fear, anger, irritation, melancholy, boredom, and resentment. Moreover, there has been an upsurge in abusive behaviour due, at least in part, to the close sheltering in place that many families must maintain. Indeed, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women recently declared violence against women an ongoing shadow pandemic.
The WHO recommends at least three mental health professionals per 1,00,000 people. In India, today, the estimate for psychologists-social scientists that study human mental processes and behaviour-is approximately 0.07 per 1,00,000. This dearth of psychological professionals and mental health care is of enormous concern and will only grow as the incidence of covid-related mental distress continues to rise. As such, there is great demand for young people to study psychology in higher education, gaining the knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to understand mental wellbeing and provide aid and treatment to those suffering from mental illness in all its myriad forms.
In August 2021, the Jindal School of Psychology & Counselling (JSPC) at O.P. Jindal Global University will welcome its inaugural batch of students. The three-year B.A. (Hons.) Psychology programme is open to grade 12 students from any stream. JSPC graduates will have the opportunity to pursue a variety of career paths, including, but not limited to: Counselling and Clinical Psychology, Neuropsychology, Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology, Forensic and Criminal Psychology, and Educational Psychology.
Despite current challenges, the unprecedented nature of the covid pandemic offers the opportunity to grow support for the discipline and break new ground. Psychology graduates will be ideally positioned to extend our understanding of the human mind and move the field forward in the development of new treatment options for mental anguish and illness. Such knowledge and assistance will benefit India in normal times and, critically, will also better prepare the country for the next mental health crisis.
The study, published in International Journal of Environmental Health Research, intended to validate previous findings on the impact of a park visit on emotional well-being, and evaluate the contribution of choosing to participate in physical activity in the park in relation to emotional well-being after the park visit.
The team from the University of Alabama found that spending 20 minutes in a park could make people happier regardless of whether they are engaging in exercise or not during the visit.
Park visitors reported an improvement in emotional well-being. However, the levels of physical activity was not found to be related to the improved emotional well-being.
This means that potentially all people can benefit from time in a park, said Gavin R. Jenkins from the varsity.
"If you cannot be physically active due to ageing, a disability or any other limitations, the study implies a person can still gain health benefits just from a visit to a local park," he added.
A visit to park also led to improvement in life satisfaction by 64 per cent, the researchers said.
"There is increasing pressure on green space within urban settings. Planners and developers look to replace green space with residential and commercial property. The challenge facing cities is that there is an increasing evidence about the value of city parks but we continue to see the demise of theses spaces," Jenkins noted.
For the study, the team included nearly 100 adult visitors to a local park in urban areas.
Night shift workers reported a significantly higher rate of overactive bladder, and a poorer quality of life when compared with day shift workers, suggests the study presented at the European Association of Urology Congress in Barcelona.
They also need to pee more, said researchers, including Cosimo De Nunzio of Sant´Andrea Hospital, Rome.
"We know that long-term night work is stressful, and is associated with increased levels of health problems. This work shows that constant night workers may have a higher urinary frequency as well as a decline in their own quality of life," said De Nunzio.
"One of the most concerning things about this work is everyone in our sample was under 50. We normally expect bladder problems with older people, but here we have younger people expressing a deteriorating quality of life," the author added.
For the study, the researchers surveyed 68 men and 68 women between March and October 2018. All were workers in the Italian National Health System, with 66 of the volunteers working night shifts, on average, 11 hours per night shift.
The 70 day workers worked an average of 9.1 hours per day.
Using the generally accepted Overactive Bladder Questionnaire, the team found that those on night shift reported an average total score of 31, as against a score of 19 for those working day shifts.
The team also found that night workers scored a significantly worse quality of life, with scores of 41 against 31 with day shift workers.
Cancer patients often suffer negative emotions such as anxiety, despair and fear, which are risk factors facilitating tumour growth as well as promoting cancer progression. However, the specific mechanisms of how chronic stress affects cancer development remains unknown yet.
Researchers from the Dalian Medical University in China found that chronic stress might increase epinephrine levels, which enhances lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHA) and promotes breast cancer stem-like cells, Xinhua reported.
Using a drug screen that targeted LDHA, they found that Vitamin C reversed the chronic stress-induced cancer stem-like phenotype.
The study demonstrates the critical importance of psychological factors in promoting stem-like properties in breast cancer cells and provides a promising therapeutic approach for breast cancer, according to Liu Qiang, lead researcher at the varsity.
"The LDHA-lowering agent Vitamin C can be a potential approach for combating stress-associated breast cancer," Qiang said, in the paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
His team has been engaged in the dynamic regulation of cancer stem cells research as well as the mechanism of psychosocial behaviour affecting tumour development.
Qiang noted that patients with breast cancer, ovarian cancer and stomach cancer often have negative emotions, which in turn accelerates the development of their own tumours.
"It is necessary to monitor their chronic stress comprehensively by taking psychological assessments as well as conducting blood tests which include epinephrine levels," Qiang said.
The findings, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, suggest that people with such an unhealthy lifestyle had a four to five times higher likelihood of early death and increased chances of a second heart attack.
"Our research shows that the two eating behaviours are independently linked with poorer outcomes after a heart attack but having a cluster of bad habits will only make things worse," said co-author Marcos Minicucci, from Sao Paolo State University in Brazil.
"We also think that the inflammatory response, oxidative stress, and endothelial function could be involved in the association between unhealthy eating behaviours and cardiovascular outcomes," he added.
For the study, the team involved 113 patients with a mean age of 60, of which 73 per cent were men. The study enrolled patients with a particularly serious form of heart attack called ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI).
According to the team, this was the first study to evaluate these unhealthy behaviours in patients with acute coronary syndromes. Skipping breakfast was observed in 58 per cent patients, having late night dinner in 51 per cent, and both behaviours in 41 per cent.
To improve eating habits, researchers recommended a minimum two hour interval between dinner and bedtime.
"A good breakfast is usually composed of dairy products (fat-free or low fat milk, yogurt and cheese), a carbohydrate (whole wheat bread, bagels, cereals), and whole fruits," the team said
The research, published in the European Journal of Nutrition, suggests that students have difficulties eating healthy food and find themselves adopting bad eating habits, leading to stress.
"Stress has long been implicated in a poor diet. People tend to report overeating and comfort eating foods high in fat, sugar and calories in times of stress.
"Our findings looking at the eating habits of students during exam periods confirm this stress-induced dietary deterioration hypothesis," said Nathalie Michels, lead researcher from Ghent University in Belgium.
The results are based on an anonymous online survey of 232 students (aged 19-22 years) recruited from Ghent University and other universities in Belgium.
The researchers investigated the relationship between exam stress and change in dietary quality, and whether these associations were modified by psychosocial factors such as eating behaviour, food choice motive, taste preference, reward/punishment sensitivity, impulsivity, coping strategies, sedentary behaviour and social support.
During the month-long exam period, participants found it harder to stick to a healthy diet, and only a quarter fulfilled the WHO recommended 400g of fruit and vegetables a day.
"To fight against stress-induced eating, prevention strategies should integrate psychological and lifestyle aspects including stress management (like emotion regulation training, mindfulness, yoga), nutritional education with techniques for self-effectiveness, awareness of eating-without-hunger, and creating an environment that stimulates a healthy diet and physical activity", Michels elaborated.
"This study supports a wider body of literature which suggests that depression may develop from an interesting yet complex interaction between biological and psychological processes," said study lead author Emma Robinson, Professor at the University of Bristol in Britain.
"As we start to understand these better we hope that the knowledge we generate can be used to better guide current and future treatments," Robinson said.
Using a rodent model of early life adversity, the study showed that offspring are much more sensitive to negative biases in their cognition when treated with the stress hormone, corticosterone.
Published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the research showed a dose of corticosterone had no effect on normal rats but caused a negative bias in the early life adversity animals.
The study also found that the early life adversity rats were less likely to anticipate positive events and failed to properly learn about reward value.
These impairments in reward-related cognition are particularly interesting as one of the main features of depression is a loss of interest in previously enjoyable activities.
The researchers suggest that these neuropsychological effects might explain why early life adversity can make people more likely to develop depression.
Though mental illness, as such, cannot be directly treated through yoga, stress, which one of the major causes, said mental health expert Prakriti Poddar in a telephonic interview.
"Stress is one of the major factors that leads to depression and you can deal with stress through yoga. You can learn to calm your responses by extending your reaction time, thereby giving you better control on your emotional reactivity," she said.
She said that Yoga asanas like Surya Namaskar, Warrior Pose, Tad Asana, Trikonasana and Pranayam could help a person cope with depression and stress.
"Depression is one of the major diseases of the developed world and it is triggered off by one's inability to cope with stress - emotional and physical. Yoga helps you to calm your nerves, increase your mental strength and help you deal with situations," she explained.
Poddar said that migration of work force from rural to urban areas also triggered depression. She said that there are studies on stress due to different kind of struggles one has to face due to the migration. This includes financial, emotional and physical stress.
"Often situational stress assists it, as people move from a robust support system to a limited one. Loneliness steps in as the sense of belonging depletes," she stated.
She further said that most companies are now incorporating a well-being programme to provide a holistic approach towards the well being of employees.
"Yoga has become a part of corporate wellness programs and has huge benefits for the employees as it lowers stress levels, relaxes the mind, makes the body flexible and invites an overall feeling of well-being. This improves the performance of the employee and promotes a sense of friendship," she said.
Children can also be taught yoga form a young age to help them cope with pressures, personal and professional, when they attain adulthood.
According to various studies, around 14 per cent of the global burden of disease is attributed to neuropsychiatric disorders.
Mental health literacy among adolescents is very low and only 29 per cent could identify depression while others remained unaware of the problem.
Parental disharmony, peer pressure and examination stress can trigger off depression in children.
"Many Americans now feel stressed about being stressed and anxious about being anxious. Unfortunately, by the time someone reaches out to a professional for help, stress and anxiety have already built to unhealthy levels," said study researcher Lisa Damour, private-practice psychologist from the US.
Stress usually occurs when people operate at the edge of their abilities -- when they push themselves or are forced by circumstances to stretch beyond their familiar zones.
It's also important to understand that stress can result from both bad and good events. For instance, being fired is stressful but so is bringing a baby home for the first time.
Anxiety, too, gets an unnecessarily bad rap, said the study.
"As all psychologists know, anxiety is an internal alarm system, likely handed down by evolution, that alerts us to threats both external -- such as a driver swerving in a nearby lane -- and internal -- such as when we have procrastinated too long and it's time to get started on our work," Damour said.
"Similarly, if a client shares that she's worried about an upcoming test for which she has yet to study, I am quick to reassure her that she is having the right reaction and that she will feel better as soon as she hits the books," she added.
According to the researchers, stress causes harm when it exceeds any level that a person can reasonably absorb or use to build psychological strength, likewise, anxiety becomes unhealthy when its alarm makes no sense.
"Untreated stress and anxiety can cause persistent misery but can also contribute to a host of additional psychological and medical symptoms, such as depression or an increased risk of cardiovascular disease", Damour added.
Our internal clock is controlled by some very distinct hereditary genes, known as clock genes. These genes are particularly active in the so-called suprachiasmatic nucleus area of the brain.
However, these areas of the brain are not directly linked by neurons, and this made researchers at the University of Copenhagen curious.
Using lab tests, the team demonstrated that the circadian rhythm is controlled by the stress hormone, corticosterone.
"In humans, the hormone is known as cortisol, and although the sleep rhythm in rats is the opposite of ours, we basically have the same hormonal system," said Associate Professor Martin Fredensborg Rath from the Department of Neuroscience.
In the study with the stress hormone corticosterone, the researchers removed the suprachiasmatic nucleus in a number of rats.
As expected, this removed the circadian rhythm of the animals.
However, the circadian rhythm of the cerebellum was restored when the rats were subsequently implanted with a special programmable micropump.
In this case, however, the researchers used the pump to emit doses of corticosterone at different times of the day and night, similar to the animals' natural rhythm.
"Nobody has used these pumps for anything like this before. So technically, we were onto something completely new," said Rath.
With the artificial corticosterone supplement, researchers were again able to read a rhythmic activity of clock genes in the animals.
"This is interesting from a scientific point of view, because it means that we have two systems - the nervous system and the hormonal system - that communicate perfectly and influence one another, all in the course of a reasonably tight 24-hour programme," Rath elaborated.
The researchers now plans to study other rhythmic hormones in a similar manner, including hormones from the thyroid gland.
The findings are based on a review focused on 11 studies of the relationship between yoga practice and brain health.
Five of the studies engaged individuals with no background in yoga practice in one or more yoga sessions per week over a period of 10-24 weeks, comparing brain health at the beginning and end of the intervention.
The other studies measured brain differences between individuals who regularly practice yoga and those who don't.
Each of the studies used brain-imaging techniques such as MRI and all involved Hatha yoga, which includes body movements, meditation and breathing exercises, said the team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"From these 11 studies, we identified some brain regions that consistently come up, and they are surprisingly not very different from what we see with exercise research," said Gothe, University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Neha who led the research with Wayne State University psychology professor Jessica Damoiseaux.
"For example, we see increases in the volume of the hippocampus with yoga practice," she added.
Many studies looking at the brain effects of aerobic exercise have shown a similar increase in hippocampus size over time.
The hippocampus is involved in memory processing and is known to shrink with age.
"It is also the structure that is first affected in dementia and Alzheimer's disease," said Gothe in a paper published in the journal Brain Plasticity.
Though many of the studies are exploratory and not conclusive, the research points to other important brain changes associated with regular yoga practice, Damoiseaux said.
The amygdala, a brain structure that contributes to emotional regulation, tends to be larger in yoga practitioners than in their peers who do not practice yoga.
The prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex and brain networks such as the default mode network also tend to be larger or more efficient in those who regularly practice yoga.
"The prefrontal cortex, a brain region just behind the forehead, is essential to planning, decision-making, multitasking, thinking about your options and picking the right option," Damoiseaux noted.
"The default mode network is a set of brain regions involved in thinking about the self, planning and memory".
The studies also find that the brain changes seen in individuals practicing yoga are associated with better performance on cognitive tests or measures of emotional regulation.
The discovery that yoga may have similar effects on the brain to aerobic exercise is intriguing and warrants more study, said researchers.
"Yoga is not aerobic in nature, so there must be other mechanisms leading to these brain changes," she said. "So far, we don't have the evidence to identify what those mechanisms are."
Enhancing emotional regulation is a key to yoga's positive effects on the brain.
"In one of my previous studies, we were looking at how yoga changes the cortisol stress response," Gothe said.
"We found that those who had done yoga for eight weeks had an attenuated cortisol response to stress that was associated with better performance on tests of decision-making, task-switching and attention."
Yoga helps people with or without anxiety disorders manage their stress.
"The practice of yoga helps improve emotional regulation to reduce stress, anxiety and depression," she said.
(IANS)
For the study, published in the journal HortTechnology, the research team explored the practical use of indoor plants to boost mental health among employees typically removed from exposure to healthy green environments.
"At present, not so many people fully understand and utilise the benefit of stress recovery brought by plants in the workplace, said study researcher Masahiro Toyoda from the University of Hyogo in Japan.
"To ameliorate such situations, we decided it essential to verify and provide scientific evidence for the stress restorative effect by nearby plants in a real office setting," Toyoda said.
For the findings, the research team investigated changes in psychological and physiological stress before and after placing a plant on the workers' desks. Sixty-three office workers in Japan were the participants of this study.
The participants were directed to take a 3-minute rest while sitting at their desks when they felt fatigue.
There were two phases of the study: a control period without plants and an intervention period when the participants were able to see and care for a small plant.
The researchers measured psychological stress in the participants using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.
The ratio of the participants whose pulse rate lowered significantly after a 3-minute rest with interaction with their desk plant proved definitive.
The objective of this study was to verify the stress-reducing effect of gazing intentionally at a plant in a real office setting when a worker felt fatigue during office hours.
Each plant used in the study was chosen and cared for by the worker. Both passive and active involvement with plants in the workplace were considered for their contribution to the mitigation of stress and fatigue.
Participants were provided routine visual access to plants by having their choice of plant situated conveniently on their desks (a passive involvement with plants).
They also had the opportunity to care for their plant (an active involvement with plants).
Furthermore, the researchers considered that intentionally gazing at the plant was, though not involving physical movement, active interaction with plants that office workers could do quickly and easily at their desks.
Participants were offered a choice of six different types of plants to keep on their desks: air plants, bonsai plants, san pedro cactus, foliage plants, kokedama, or echeveria.
Each participant chose one of the six types of small indoor plants and placed it near the PC monitor on their desk.
The calming effects calculated during the study showed that anxiety decreased significantly from pre- to post-intervention.
The study suggests that placing small plants within close sight contributed to psychological stress reduction across the board.
The researchers suggest for business owners that small indoor plants could be economical and helpful in efforts improve office conditions for employees.
(IANS)
Early life stress is common in youth from disadvantaged backgrounds who also often live in areas with greater exposure to air pollution, according to the study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
"Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a neurotoxicant common in air pollution, seems to magnify or sustain the effects of early life social and economic stress on mental health in children," said study first author David Pagliaccio from Columbia University in the US.
"Air pollutants are common in our environment, particularly in cities, and given socioeconomic inequities and environmental injustice, children growing up in disadvantaged circumstances are more likely to experience both life stress and exposure to neurotoxic chemicals," said senior author Amy Margolis.
Air pollution has negative effects on physical health, and recent work has begun to also show the effects on mental health. Life stress, particularly in early life, is one of the best-known contributors to mental health problems.
This new study examined the combined effects of air pollution and early life stress on school-age children.
According to the researchers data were collected from the CCCEH Mothers and Newborns longitudinal birth cohort study in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx, which includes many participants who self-identify as African American or Dominican.
Mothers wore an air monitoring backpack during the third trimester of pregnancy to measure exposure to air pollutants in their daily lives.
When their children were 5 years old, mothers reported on stress in their lives, including neighbourhood quality, material hardship, intimate partner violence, perceived stress, lack of social support, and general distress levels.
Mothers then reported on their child's psychiatric symptoms at ages 5, 7, 9 and 11.
The combined effect of air pollution and early life stress was seen across several measures of thought and attention problems/ADHD at the age 11.
The effects were also linked to PAH-DNA adducts--a dose-sensitive marker of air pollution exposure.
The researchers said that PAH and early life stress may serve as a "double hit" on shared biological pathways connected to attention and thought problems.
Stress likely leads to wide-ranging changes in, for example, epigenetic expression, cortisol, inflammation, and brain structure and function.
The mechanism underlying the effects of PAH is still being interrogated; however, alterations in brain structure and function represent possible shared mechanistic pathways, the study said.
(IANS)
Early life stress is common in youth from disadvantaged backgrounds who also often live in areas with greater exposure to air pollution, according to the study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
"Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a neurotoxicant common in air pollution, seems to magnify or sustain the effects of early life social and economic stress on mental health in children," said study first author David Pagliaccio from Columbia University in the US.
"Air pollutants are common in our environment, particularly in cities, and given socioeconomic inequities and environmental injustice, children growing up in disadvantaged circumstances are more likely to experience both life stress and exposure to neurotoxic chemicals," said senior author Amy Margolis.
Air pollution has negative effects on physical health, and recent work has begun to also show the effects on mental health. Life stress, particularly in early life, is one of the best-known contributors to mental health problems.
This new study examined the combined effects of air pollution and early life stress on school-age children.
According to the researchers' data were collected from the CCCEH Mothers and Newborns longitudinal birth cohort study in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx, which includes many participants who self-identify as African American or Dominican.
Mothers wore an air monitoring backpack during the third trimester of pregnancy to measure exposure to air pollutants in their daily lives.
When their children were 5 years old, mothers reported on stress in their lives, including neighbourhood quality, material hardship, intimate partner violence, perceived stress, lack of social support, and general distress levels.
Mothers then reported on their child's psychiatric symptoms at ages 5, 7, 9 and 11.
The combined effect of air pollution and early life stress was seen across several measures of thought and attention problems/ADHD at the age of 11.
The effects were also linked to PAH-DNA adducts--a dose-sensitive marker of air pollution exposure.
The researchers said that PAH and early life stress may serve as a "double hit" on shared biological pathways connected to attention and thought problems.
Stress likely leads to wide-ranging changes in, for example, epigenetic expression, cortisol, inflammation, and brain structure and function.
The mechanism underlying the effects of PAH is still being interrogated; however, alterations in brain structure and function represent possible shared mechanistic pathways, the study said.
(IANS)
The study, published in the journal BMJ Open, was based on data collected from men and women aged 25 to 74 in the Finnish National FINRISK Study 1987-2007 through questionnaires and measurements. The rate of mortality was followed until the end of 2014.
For the findings, the researchers calculated the effects of multiple risk factors, including lifestyle-related ones, to the life expectancy of men and women.
"Before, life expectancy has usually been assessed based on only a few sociodemographic background factor groups, such as age, sex, and education. In this study, we wanted to assess the impact of several different factors to a person's life expectancy, so we could compare their effects," said study researcher Tommi Harkanen from National Institute for Health and Welfare in Finland.
The researchers calculated the life expectancies by changing the values of each risk factor at a time and keeping the values of other factors constant.
Also Read: Desk Plants Can Reduce Stress At Work
Only the BMI, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels were allowed to be changed when the values related to lifestyle factors were changed.
They found that the biggest causes for shortened life expectancy for 30-year-old men are smoking and diabetes. Smoking takes 6.6 years and diabetes 6.5 years out of their life expectancy.
Being under heavy stress shortens their life expectancy by 2.8 years, the study said.
The research also revealed that a lack of exercise strongly reduced the life expectancy of 30-year-old men -- by 2.4 years.
On the other hand, things such as the consumption of plenty of fruits and vegetables could increase life expectancy: eating fruit by 1.4 years and eating vegetables by 0.9 years.
The same factors impacted the life expectancy of both men and women.
For 30-year-old women, e.g. smoking shortened the life expectancy by 5.5 years, diabetes by 5.3 years, and heavy stress by 2.3 years. The effects to the life expectancy of older people were similar but smaller than in younger age groups.
Differences between the life expectancies of men and women largely due to risk factors that can be changed, according to the researchers.
Also Read: How Stress Makes Your Hair Go Grey
"What was interesting about the study was how small the difference in the life expectancy of 30-year men and women was based on the same risk factor values -- only 1.6 years," said study researcher Seppo Koskinen.
The lifestyle choices that increase mortality, such as smoking, heavy alcohol use, unhealthy diet, and lack of exercise, are most common in the population groups whose social position is the weakest, the study said.
(IANS)
The findings, published in the Journal of Public Health, showed how a range of life inequalities and hardships are linked to physical and mental health inequalities in later life.
According to the researchers, from being raised by an emotionally cold mother to experiencing violence, war and bereavement, difficult life events have a profound effect on our physical and mental wellbeing.
"We looked at the life history of each participant and compared it to their quality of life and how well they can perform activities like dressing themselves, bathing, preparing hot meals, doing gardening and money management," said study lead researcher Oby Enwo from University of East Anglia in the UK
"We found that people who had suffered many difficult life events were significantly less likely to experience a good quality of life than those who had lived easier lives," Enwo said.
"They were three-times more likely to suffer psychiatric problems, twice as likely to be detached from social networks, and twice as likely to have long-standing illness," she added.
Also Read: People With Serious Mental Disorders Die Prematurely
For the findings, the research team studied data taken from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) - a longitudinal study of adults over 50 living in England.
Participants were invited to answer a life history questionnaire. The research team took into account responses from 7,555 participants to questions that represented broad topics in life history.
The researchers grouped the participants to four main groups - those who reported few life events, those with an emotionally cold mother, those who had experienced violence in combat and those who had experienced a number of difficult life events.
Some of these questions were around their upbringing - such as whether a parent had been emotionally cold and the estimated number of books in their home at 10 years old.
Other questions focused on events in adult life - such as whether they had fought in a war or lost an unborn child.
The researchers analysed the responses to identify patterns of life events, and also took into account factors such as age, ethnicity, sex and socioeconomic status.
The research team found that people who experienced the greatest levels of hardship, stress and personal loss were five times more likely to experience a lower quality of life, with significantly more health and physical difficulties in later life.
Those brought up by an emotionally cold mother were also significantly less likely to experience a good quality of life and more likely to experience problems in later life such as anxiety, psychiatric problems and social detachment.
The study also revealed that people raised by an emotionally cold mother were also significantly less likely to experience a good quality of life, and were more likely to report psychiatric problems and be detached from social networks, compared to people who had experienced few difficult life events.
(With Agency Inputs)
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Experts have known that viral illnesses such as COVID-19 can cause respiratory infections that may lead to lung damage and even death in severe cases. Less is known about the effects on the cardiovascular system.
"It is likely that even in the absence of previous heart disease, the heart muscle can be affected by coronavirus disease.
Overall, injury to the heart muscle can happen in any patient with or without heart disease, but the risk is higher in those who already have heart disease," said study lead author Mohammad Madjid from McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in the US.
According to the study, published in the journal JAMA Cardiology, the researchers explained that findings from previous coronavirus and influenza epidemics suggest that viral infections can cause acute coronary syndromes, arrhythmias, and the development of, or exacerbation of, heart failure.
Read: How To Reduce Heart Disease Risks?
In a clinical bulletin issued by the American College of Cardiology, it was revealed that the case fatality rate of COVID-19 for patients with cardiovascular disease was 10.5 per cent.
Data also points to a greater likelihood that individuals over the age of 65 with coronary heart disease or hypertension can contract the illness, as well experience more severe symptoms that will require critical care, the researchers said.
According to the researchers, critical cases are those that reported respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multiple organ dysfunction or failure that resulted in death.
"It is reasonable to expect that significant cardiovascular complications linked to COVID-19 will occur in severely symptomatic patients because of the high inflammatory response associated with this illness," said Madjid.
The novel virus that causes COVID-19 was first identified in January 2020. This novel virus originated in Wuhan, China, and on March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global pandemic.
The three most common symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Other less common symptoms are muscle pain, sore throat, nasal congestion, and headache.
Previously identified coronaviruses known to cause severe illness in humans include Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV).
Data suggests that SARS-CoV may have resulted in cardiovascular complications, such as acute coronary syndrome and myocardial infarction, the researchers said.
(With Agency Inputs)
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According to the study, parents of children with autism report higher levels of stress on average than parents of typically developing kids.
"Some kids with autism have specific sensitivities, so a big, loud dog that is highly active might cause sensory overload for a particular child, while a quiet cat may be a better fit," said study researcher Gretchen Carlisle from the University of Missouri in the US.
"My goal is to provide parents with evidence-based information so they can make informed choices for their families," Carlisle added.
For the results, the research team surveyed more than 700 families from the 'Interactive Autism Network' on the benefits and burdens of having a dog or cat in the family.
They found that despite the responsibility of pet care, both children with autism and their parents reported strong bonds with their pets. Pet ownership was not related to parent stress, and parents with multiple pets reported more benefits.
"Given that the characteristics of autism spectrum disorder are so broad, it can be difficult to identify interventions that are widely beneficial," Carlisle said.
Some of the core challenges that children with autism face include anxiety and difficulty communicating.
"As pets can help increase social interaction and decrease anxiety, we found that they are not only helpful in providing comfort and support to children with autism, but to their parents as well," she said.
For parents considering adding a pet into their family, Carlisle recommends including the child in the decision and making sure the pet's activity level is a good match with the child's.
(IANS)
Measures to reduce suicide risk in young people should focus on the whole population, not just those who are most distressed, depressed or anxious, said Cambridge University researchers during Mental Health Awareness week.
"It appears that self-harm and suicidal thinking among young people dramatically increases well within the normal or non-clinical range of mental distress," said study senior author Peter Jones from Cambridge University in the UK.
The findings, published in the BMJ Open, show that public policy strategies to reduce suicide should support better mental health for all young people, not only those who are most unwell.
Previous studies have suggested that a broad range of mental health problems like depression anxiety, and low self-esteem can be measured together as levels of common mental distress (CMD).
In the current study, the research team used a series of questionnaires to analyse common mental distress in two large groups of young people between the ages of 14 and 24.
They also collected self-reported data on suicidal thinking and non-suicidal self-injury, both predictive markers for increased risk of suicide.
CMD scores increase in three significant increments above the population average: mild mental distress, followed by moderate, and finally severe distress and beyond - which often manifests as a diagnosable mental health disorder.
The findings showed that those with severe mental distress came out highest for risk of suicide.
However, the majority of all participants experiencing suicidal thoughts or self-harming - 78 per cent and 76 per cent respectively in the first sample, 66 per cent and 71 per cent in the second-ranked as having either mild or moderate levels of mental distress.
"It is well known that for many physical conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, small improvements in the risks of the overall population translate into more lives saved, rather than focusing only on those at extremely high risk," said Jones.
"This is called the 'prevention paradox', and we believe our study is the first evidence that mental health could be viewed in the same way. We need both public health and a clinical approach to suicide risk," the researchers noted.
Meanwhile, a recent study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed that COVID-19 pandemic may cause serious physical and mental health problems.
(IANS)
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The 12-week study, to determine the effects of YMLI on depression severity, showed that if an individual has genetic depression then yoga can prove to be beneficial.
Speaking to IANS, Rima Dada, Professor at Department of Anatomy at AIIMS, said: "To combat stress anxiety and depression, yoga could play a key role. Yoga, especially pranayama, decreases expression of pro-inflammatory genes and increases expression of anti-inflammatory genes and may also play an important immune-modulatory role in a cytokine storm."
She added depression can be initially managed by yoga, and only in severe cases medicines are required.
According to researchers, coronavirus can set off a cytokine storm and calming down this storm is key for survival. Cytokines are molecules which regulate the activity of the immune system.
The study concluded that YMLI can be considered as a therapeutic intervention in major depressive disorder (MDD) management.
"Short term yoga- and meditation-based lifestyle intervention in MDD decreased clinical severity in association with an increase in neuroplasticity, by significantly improving brain physiology, mind-body communication (MBC), and cellular health," concluded the study.
The study also suggests that increased neuroplasticity may be part of underlying biological mechanisms to decrease clinical severity in MDD.
"Moreover, it may prevent complications that are related to drug therapy, reduce relapses and provide long-lasting clinical remission.
"It may also increase cognitive reserve to decrease the risk of dementia and increase functional reserves to decrease the risk for age-related chronic medical conditions. Thus it can be considered as a significant component of integrative health strategy in the prevention and management of MDD and increase both healthspan and lifespan," said the study.
The study found that YMLI may not only help to decrease severity in major depressive disorder but also offer hope for complete remission from it that result from heterogeneous biological mechanisms.
The sample size in the study was small and included adult groups only, limiting its generalize-ability to other age groups. "Our work is on depression but in all our studies we found yoga decreases expression of various inflammatory genes," added Dada.
(IANS)
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The acute and long-term mental health impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic are largely unknown, the study, published in the journal PLOS ONE reported.
"Research into previous pandemics has shown higher rates of illness fears, psychological distress, insomnia and other mental health problems in people with pre-existing mental illness, front-line health care workers, and survivors of the disease," said study authors from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.
In the new study, the research team used an online survey to examine mental health responses to the pandemic among 5,070 Australian adults. The online questionnaire asked participants about their fears, behavioural responses to Covid-19, psychological distress, alcohol use, and physical activity.
The population included in the survey was not representative of the overall population; 70 per cent had pre-existing mental health diagnoses, 86 per cent were female, and 75 per cent were Caucasian.
Although few participants had contracted Covid-19, more than one-quarter (25.9 per cent) were very or extremely worried about contracting the virus and more than half (52.7 per cent) were very or extremely worried about their family and friends.
While the questionnaires could not be used to make any diagnoses, most participants reported that their mental health had worsened during the outbreak, with 55 per cent saying it had worsened a little and 23 per cent saying it had worsened a lot.
Around half of all participants reported moderate to extreme loneliness and worry about their financial situation. Between 20.3 and 24.1 per cent of people surveyed had been experiencing severe or extremely severe levels of depression, anxiety and stress over the week preceding their survey, and another 18 to 22 per cent had moderate symptoms.
"We wanted to provide a snapshot of the mental health of the general community during the Covid-19 outbreak and look into the impact of the enforcement of social distancing laws, in Australia," the study authors wrote.
"We don't know what the long-term impacts of the pandemic will be, but these figures certainly show a negative impact on mental health in the short-term," they noted.
Another study, published this week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, revealed that college students were more anxious and depressed during the initial phase of Covid-19 compared with a similar period in previous academic years.
Last month, a study published in the journal CMAJ, also showed that children and young people were experiencing indirect adverse effects of the pandemic on their mental and physical health.
(IANS)
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COVID-19 Triggering Panic Attacks, Depression And Suicides, Say Experts