As holidays return to normal, here's how to de-stress

A return to a more normal holiday season may also mean higher stress levels, so an expert offers some coping tips.

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Missing nature during COVID took a mental toll on young adults’

Two new studies link declines in outdoor activities and park use during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to reductions in mental health measures for teens and young adults from middle school through college.

The studies build evidence for the mental health benefits of nature’s medicine—and the potential hazards of restricting access, researchers say.

“This is an opportunity for anyone concerned about the health and well-being of future generations to focus on the power of parks when it comes to mental health promotion, and to figure out what we can do to make sure all segments of the population have access to enjoy the health-related benefits that parks can provide,” says Lincoln Larson, an associate professor of parks, recreation, and tourism management at North Carolina State University.

Larson is the lead author of a study looking at factors linked to emotional distress in college students. Published in the journal Environmental Research, the study involved a survey of 1,280 college students at four large public universities in the United States, including at NC State.

Researchers wanted to understand why and how students’ outdoor recreation and park use changed in March through May of 2020, and how that related to their mental health. They asked students to rate their use of parks and other outdoor spaces and their levels of emotional distress before and during the pandemic.

They found 54% of students said they reduced their park use during the pandemic, and about two-thirds reduced outdoor activities. College students more worried about COVID-19 were more likely to limit outdoor recreation. Students who identified as Asian or Black were more likely to limit their park use than students of other ethnicities or races.

“It is becoming apparent that historically marginalized populations are having an even harder time enjoying the benefits that come from outdoor recreation during the pandemic,” Larson says.

Emotional distress was “widespread,” researchers report. Reducing park use was one of the factors linked with higher levels of emotional distress, along with knowing someone who had COVID-19, and other factors. Students who lived in counties with larger areas of national or state parks per capita were likely to report lower levels of emotional distress.

“Reducing park use was one of the stronger predictors of emotional distress; people who stopped using parks suffered worse mental health impacts in the early stages of the pandemic,” Larson says. “Other studies have shown that any contact with nature, whether or not it’s in a park, can be beneficial.

“For college students, public parks may be particularly important. If parks are available where students live, especially if students are visiting these parks, then they are likely to experience more positive mental health outcomes.”

In a second study published in the journal Sustainability, another team of researchers found that as young people’s outdoor activity participation decreased during the pandemic, their connection to nature decreased as well.

“Connection to nature” is a measure of a person’s comfort and enjoyment of time in nature. They also saw that this plays a role in their mental well-being.

Researchers surveyed 624 youth aged 10 to 18 years from across the United States between April and June of 2020. They asked them how often they participated in outdoor activities like bicycling outside, playing sports, or going for walks or runs, and how often they participated in nature-based outdoor activities like hiking, hunting, and fishing. They also asked youth about their connection to nature, and about their mental well-being.

They found that 55% of young people reported they reduced their nature-based activities during the pandemic, and 64% reported reducing their outdoor activities. Thirty-four percent of teens reported a decline in their connection to nature—which is how much they like or feel comfortable being in nature. Fifty-two percent reported declines in their mental well-being. Teens who lived in rural areas, as well as older adolescents, had higher connection-to-nature scores.

When researchers analyzed factors related to teens’ well-being, they found that strength of their connection to nature was tied to how much of a mental health boost they got from outdoor activities both before and during the pandemic.

“This study highlights the importance of getting outside for adolescents,” says first author S. Brent Jackson, a former graduate student at NC State. “If you get them outside, they can develop that connection to nature, and that could help buffer them from declines in mental health.”

They also found the strength of their connection to nature played a lesser role in their mental well-being during the pandemic, when kids were getting outdoors less overall, and engaging less in outdoor and nature-based activities.

“The advocates of putting kids in nature are saying there’s a lot of research that shows that if you put kids in nature, they’re happier, and they have better mental well-being, but if you’re thinking about this during the pandemic, we find that this treatment is more like a vaccine than a pill,” says study coauthor Nils Peterson, a professor in the NC State Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology program.

“If you’ve prepared students, and they’re comfortable in nature, then it works in helping them maintain their well-being.”

The studies are part of a growing body of evidence outlining the role of outdoor activities in the mental health of kids and young adults, researchers say. “The good news is that parks promote mental health, but the bad news is, there are a whole lot of people who stopped or reduced their park use during the pandemic,” Larson says.

“In the wake of COVID-19, how can we communicate the benefits of parks to make sure everyone has the opportunity to enjoy outdoor spaces that fuel active, healthier lifestyles?”

Source: NC State

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COVID-19: Compliance to household mixing restrictions in England decreased with each lockdown

Household mixing significantly decreased in the first lockdown in England and remained relatively low in the second lockdown, but increased during the third lockdown, reports a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors observed that the increase in household mixing by mid-February 2021 during the third lockdown coincided with the wider COVID-19 vaccine rollout across England.

* This article was originally published here

'Active Grandparent': Humans Evolved to Exercise in Old Age

Title: 'Active Grandparent': Humans Evolved to Exercise in Old Age
Category: Health News
Created: 11/23/2021 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 11/23/2021 12:00:00 AM

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An Anti-viral Pill to Treat Covid?

* This article was originally published here

What can you expect from another COVID winter?

The US appears to be on the brink of a winter surge in COVID-19 cases, but experts from Johns Hopkins University offer hope that this winter will be better than the last.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise again in the United States after dipping just three weeks ago. Vaccine effectiveness is waning and without widespread boosters, shots given six months ago remain at least 80-85% effective against serious illness but will only prevent two out of three possible infections for those vaccinated early in the pandemic—all signs pointing to the very real possibility of a winter surge here in the US.

Yet, there is reason for hope that this winter will be better overall than last winter, even if cases continue to rise, thanks to vaccines and new oral antiviral medications that will reduce cases of severe COVID, preventing hospitalization and death, says David Dowdy, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a physician with Baltimore Medical Services.

“It’s worth remembering where we were at this time last year: Many schools were not in-person, many businesses were operating at partial capacity, and many gatherings had strict size limits, yet COVID-19 cases were rising more than twice as fast as they are today,” Dowdy says.

“Now we have extremely safe vaccines with long-lasting effectiveness against serious disease, oral antivirals that could soon make COVID-19 a highly treatable disease, and we’re living our lives much more like in pre-pandemic times. The COVID death rate in the US is still falling and is now only half of what it was two months ago.”

So how do we make sure Dowdy’s optimism gains traction?

Here, Dowdy and Rupali Limaye, a social and behavioral scientist and health communication scholar at the School of Public Health who studies vaccine behavior and decision-making, offer a roadmap, with a caveat that “no one can fully predict the future of this pandemic,” Dowdy says.

Vaccinate everyone—including kids

If this winter is better than the last, it will be thanks in large part to vaccines. The new antivirals are great, but they aren’t a preventative measure like the safe, effective vaccines, Dowdy says.

“While we still are susceptible to getting cases of COVID-19, I think that the amount of serious illness and death is going to be much less, especially because of all the efforts that people have put into to getting vaccinated and getting their families and communities vaccinated as well,” he says. “So even if cases go up this winter, we’re very unlikely to see a return to the overcrowded ICUs and makeshift morgues of a year ago.”

The continued push to vaccinate against COVID-19 includes ensuring newly eligible children get vaccinated as soon as possible, with research indicating that vaccinating 5- to 11-year-olds may prevent 600,000 infections over the next four months alone, Limaye says.

“The COVID-19 vaccine is recommended for children even if they’ve had COVID-19 infection. And that’s simply because the vaccine can better provide longer-lasting protection than natural infection.”

Kids can even get a COVID-19 vaccine dose near or at the same time as other childhood vaccines, like HPV or a flu shot. The benefits of vaccination in children outweigh the risks, especially when we don’t yet know how the long-term effects of COVID-19 infections will affect brain development, Limaye says.

And the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine extend beyond any individual child: “Vaccinating our children, specifically in that age range, can have immense benefits to reduce infection of others who may be at more risk,” Limaye says. “This includes grandparents that you may see at Thanksgiving, for example, teachers, and other family members as well.”

Build trust among people with vaccine hesitancy

With so much riding on COVID-19 vaccines, convincing people in our lives to get a shot is of paramount importance when we still have a little over 40% of the eligible population—excluding 5- to 11- year-olds—who have not yet gotten the vaccine, Limaye says.

“I think what we are starting to see now is that if you have not gotten the vaccine, there’s essentially two reasons why you will get the vaccine. One is that you will see either a close friend or a family member who ends up getting severe COVID and ends up in the hospital or passing. That has been a nudge that has forced people to think about the vaccine decision,” Limaye says.

“The second is [vaccine] mandates. That is one thing that we know will change vaccine behavior. As we’re starting to see different employers think about mandates, that is changing vaccine coverage in specific populations.”

Unvaccinated people account for the majority of new COVID-19 infections, for severe cases, and for spikes in states like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. “With regards to specific socio-demographics where we’re seeing hesitancy, it tends to be individuals that tend to be white and that might live in more rural areas,” Limaye says, adding that vaccine disparities have narrowed in the last year among the Hispanic and African-American communities.

“I think the goal here is going to be to continue to be empathetic, to be compassionate, and to continue to have one-on-one conversations with these individuals because it’s important to not be dismissive of people’s concerns,” Limaye says. “That’s the only way that we’re going to be able to nudge those individuals into vaccine acceptance.”

Accept that COVID-19 isn’t going away

It’s human nature to want to know exactly when the COVID-19 pandemic will be over, but Limaye and Dowdy say it’s not that simple. In reality, it’s time to shift our thinking from the endgame toward how we’ll live our lives alongside COVID-19 going forward.

“Everyone wants there to be a day that we declare, ‘This pandemic is over,'” Dowdy says. “But nobody asks, ‘When is the end of the flu?’ for example. This is a disease that’s going to be with us for the foreseeable future. It’s going to come and go.” That could mean we get COVID-19 booster shots annually or in tandem with occasional spikes in community transmission, Limaye says.

Limaye agrees that we should think about COVID-19 as we do with any other pathogen like a cold or a flu. “COVID is here to stay,” Limaye says. “What we really need to be messaging around is that people can still get COVID, there can still be breakthrough infections, but the great news is if you have been vaccinated, you are very much less likely to be hospitalized or have severe COVID compared to those that are unvaccinated.”

“The question is, when can we get this to a point where it’s tolerable to us as a society,” Dowdy says. “And I think that we may be closer to that point than we imagine. If we already look at how we’re living our lives today as opposed to how we were living our lives a year ago, we’ve made great strides. So, we’re not at the pandemic end date and we never will be, but we are making real progress. And I think there’s a lot of reason for optimism going forward.”

Source: Johns Hopkins University

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FDA Approves a New Virtual Reality Device to Help Ease Chronic Pain

Experts say a new virtual reality device can help people understand and ease their chronic pain. David Espejo/Getty Images

• It’s estimated that chronic pain affects 50 million U.S. adults.
• Treatments, including medications and cognitive behavioral therapy, are used to ease the pain.
• Federal regulators have now approved a virtual reality device that in a recent clinical study was effective in reducing chronic pain.
• The EaseVRx device works by immersing users into a 3D world.

About 50 million adults in the United States live with chronic pain.

Help, however, may be on the way.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a breakthrough device that could improve the daily lives of people with chronic pain. 

The EaseVRx is a virtual reality (VR) headset that uses techniques like cognitive behavioral therapy to help with pain reduction in adults.

“The inspiration behind the EaseVRx was to create a standardized, standalone, high quality behavioral intervention where people could acquire a critical skills set that has been shown through various different types of treatment modalities to both reduce pain and its impacts. But now they can receive it on demand in the comfort of their own home and in doing so, transcending so many barriers to effective pain care,” said Beth Darnall, PhD, the director of the Stanford Pain Relief Innovations Lab in California as well as the chief science adviser and co-creator of the EaseVRx.

“Individuals turn on the headset and they’re in an immersive 3D world where they can see a new environment around them and be directed to interact within the context of that environment to learn various information such as the role of pain in the brain, how pain exists in the central nervous system, and what can be done to soothe or calm one’s nervous system within the context of pain,” Darnall told Healthline.

Success in a study

The VR device takes users through a treatment program of 56 sessions done daily over an 8-week period.

The FDA reported that in a clinical study of the device, 66 percent of those who used EaseVRx reported a higher than 30 percent reduction in their pain, compared with 41 percent of other participants who didn’t use the device.

About 46 percent of those who used the device reported a greater than 50 percent reduction in their pain.

“It’s really exciting. It is a breakthrough device, it’s also a breakthrough in terms of how we’re conceptualizing pain and pain treatment,” Darnall said.

“It’s not to say it will obviate the need for medication or other interventions, but it can nicely work alongside any other medical treatment that a physician or clinician will determine to be appropriate for any patient,” she added.

How the device could help

Lora L. Black, PhD, MPH, a licensed psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Kansas Health System, said the device could be useful in improving access to treatments.

“This appears to be a good use of technology to enhance self-regulatory techniques that have been shown to be helpful for chronic pain in multiple studies,” she told Healthline.

“There is also research showing that VR technology can increase adherence to other treatments, such as exercise, so use of similar technology may be useful in increasing adherence to the self-regulatory techniques as well,” she added.

“A device like this may help to reduce access barriers many patients experience when trying to find psychologists trained in pain-focused psychotherapy,” Black noted. “Such a device may also serve as a helpful supplement to those already engaged in psychological treatment for chronic pain.”

Utilizing behavioral therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psychological treatment that can be used in a variety of conditions to improve daily function and quality of life.

CBT works by helping you change patterns of thinking and develop effective ways to cope.

It can be used in the treatment of pain to change how people feel and experience pain.

“The medical definition of pain is that it’s both a physical and an emotional response, so the brain responsibility in that is on both sides. The brain processes the physical aspects of pain and brings them to our attention, and it’s also the center for the emotional aspects of pain. CBT is a method of using the brain’s ability to influence those things to change the pain experience,” Dr. Matthew Smuck, chief of physical medicine & rehabilitation at Stanford Health Care, told Healthline.

Dr. Gene Tekmyster, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at Keck Medicine of USC, said that pain can change the way people think.

“Pain is multifactorial. There is an incredibly large psychological component. There are so many things involved in people feeling pain and how much they feel pain,” Tekmyster told Healthline.

“Because pain changes your psychology, your stress levels, and actually changes your behaviors, not only do you have to change how people perceive the pain but also how it affects them and how they perceive it affects them,” he said.

“It’s how we deal with pain that CBT helps to control, not really controlling pain in and of itself,” he added.

Some alternatives

Darnall said the VR device is one more addition to the treatment options available to treat chronic pain. Other options include physical therapy, exercise, yoga, and acupuncture.

Medications may also be used, but Smuck said they’re often not useful for the long-term management of chronic pain.

“Studies have shown they can be useful most often in the short term, but very few studies show that medications are useful for managing chronic pain in the long term and that’s particularly true for medications that have more risk, like opioids,” he said.

“The amount of benefit that is derived from opioids is small. It’s really not any better than what you can get from CBT. Those benefits tend to be short lived because of the way the body responds to opioids. There’s a substantial amount of risk to taking opioids, including addiction, overdose, and death,” he added.

Darnall is hopeful the VR device will make lower risk treatment options such as CBT more easily accessible to the public.

“Some people of course definitely need pain medication and we never want there to be barriers to a particular treatment that a person may need,” she said. “However, it is well appreciated and has been stated for chronic low back pain but also chronic pain generally, we want to apply lowest risk treatments first.”

“In this case, we are giving people that option, access to home-based, on-demand pain care,” she said.

* This article was originally published here