Changing your diet could add up to a decade to life expectancy
A new model, available as an online calculator, estimates the impact of dietary changes on life expectancy
February 8, 2022
Science Daily/PLOS
A young adult in the U.S. could add more than a decade to their life expectancy by changing their diet from a typical Western diet to an optimized diet that includes more legumes, whole grains and nuts, and less red and processed meat, according to a new study publishing Feb. 8 in PLOS Medicine by Lars Fadnes of the University of Bergen, Norway, and colleagues. For older people, the anticipated gains to life expectancy from such dietary changes would be smaller but still substantial.
Food is fundamental for health and, globally, dietary risk factors are estimated to lead to 11 million deaths and 255 million disability-adjusted life-years annually. In the new study, researchers used existing meta-analyses and data from the Global Burden of Diseases study to build a model that enables the instant estimation of the effect on life expectancy (LE) of a range of dietary changes. The model is also now available as a publicly available online tool called the Food4HealthyLife calculator (https://food4healthylife.org/).
For young adults in the United States, the model estimates that a sustained change from a typical Western diet to the optimal diet beginning at age 20 would increase LE by more than a decade for women (10.7 [uncertainty interval 5.9-14.1] years) and men (13.0 [6.9-17.3] years). The largest gains in years of LE would be made by eating more legumes (females: 2.2 [1.0-3.4]; males: 2.5 [1.1-3.9]), more whole grains (females: 2.0 [0.7-3.3]; males: 2.3 [0.8-3.8]), and more nuts (females: 1.7 [0.8-2.7]; males: 2.0 [1.0-3.0]), less red meat (females: 1.6 [0.7-2.5]; males: 1.9 [0.8-3.0]) and less processed meat (females: 1.6 [0.7-2.5]; males: 1.9 [0.8-3.0]). Changing from a typical diet to the optimized diet at age 60 years could still increase LE by 8.0 (4.8-11.2) years for women and 8.8 (5.2-12.5) years for men, and 80-year-olds could gain 3.4 years (females: 2.1-4.7 and males: 2.1-4.8) from such dietary changes.
"Understanding the relative health potential of different food groups could enable people to make feasible and significant health gains," the authors say. "The Food4HealthyLife calculator could be a useful tool for clinicians, policy makers, and lay-people to understand the health impact of dietary choices."
Fadnes adds, "Research until now have shown health benefits associated with separate food group or specific diet patterns but given limited information on the health impact of other diet changes. Our modeling methodology has bridged this gap."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220208143307.htm
Parental stress is a contributing factor linking maternal depression to child anxiety and depressive symptoms
December 1, 2021
Science Daily/University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
A secondary analysis of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (Fragile Families) found a bi-directional relationship where a mother's mental health symptoms impacted the child's mental health symptoms and vice versa, according to researchers with Cizik School of Nursing at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston).
The analysis, published Dec. 1 in the print edition of the Journal of Affective Disorders, investigated mother and child mental health symptoms over a 10-year period to provide new insights into the development of depression and anxiety among families. The research points to parental stress, or the processes and subsequent reactions that result from attempting to manage the challenges and burdens of parenthood, as the factor that partially links maternal depression and child anxiety and depressive symptoms.
"By focusing on mother-child duos, we identified that maternal depression at an earlier time point predicted child anxiety and depressive symptoms at a later time point. Further, children who experienced anxiety and depressive symptoms at an earlier time point were more likely to have mothers who experienced depression at later time points," said Daphne Hernandez, PhD, associate professor and Lee and Joseph Jamail Distinguished Professor in the School of Nursing and senior author on the study.
Experiences with maternal depression increase feelings of being overwhelmed with the parenting role, contributing to hostility and lack of warmth in the family environment, according to the researchers. The lack of warmth could affect a child's mental health negatively.
The Fragile Families study began at Princeton University and Columbia University between 1998 and 2000 to study the outcomes of familial relationships of unmarried parents on their offspring. The large population-based sample has allowed researchers across the U.S. to provide insights into various family and relationship dynamics.
The researchers' findings have the opportunity to guide suggestions for mental health treatments for families where both mothers and children are experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression.
"A dual intervention, where both mother and child are receiving treatment together, in addition to their separate treatment plans, may be a successful approach for families where mothers and children exhibit symptoms of anxiety and depression," Hernandez said. "Most importantly, implementing strategies to lower parental stress is vital."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/12/211201111944.htm
Even dim light before bedtime may disrupt a preschooler’s sleep
Broad range of intensity can sharply dampen sleep-promoting melatonin
January 27, 2022
Science Daily/University of Colorado at Boulder
Even slight exposure to light can prompt the critical sleep-promoting hormone melatonin to plummet in preschoolers in the hour before bedtime, potentially disrupting slumber long after the light goes out, according to new CU Boulder research.
The study, published this month, is the latest in a series, funded by the National Institutes of Health, examining how the central body clock of young children is unique. It suggests that preschoolers are highly susceptible to the physiological impacts of light at night, and some children may be even more sensitive than others.
"Our previous work showed that one, fairly high intensity of bright light before bedtime dampens melatonin levels by about 90% in young children," said first author Lauren Hartstein, a postdoctoral fellow in the Sleep and Development Lab at CU Boulder. "With this study, we were very surprised to find high melatonin suppression across all intensities of light, even dim ones."
Light: The body's strongest time cue
Light is the body's primary time cue, influencing circadian rhythms that regulate everything from when we feel tired or hungry to what our body temperature is throughout the day.
When light hits the retina, a signal transmits to a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which coordinates rhythms throughout the body, including nightly production of melatonin. If this exposure happens in the evening as melatonin is naturally increasing, it can slow or halt it, delaying the body's ability to transition into biological nighttime.
Because children's eyes have larger pupils and more transparent lenses than adults, light streams into them more freely. (One recent study showed that the transmission of blue light through a 9-year-old's eye is 1.2-times higher than that of an adult).
"Kids are not just little adults," said senior author Monique LeBourgeois, an associate professor of Integrative Physiology and one of the few researchers in the world to study the circadian biology of young children. "This heightened sensitivity to light may make them even more susceptible to dysregulation of sleep and the circadian system."
Research in a "cave"
To quantify how susceptible they are, the researchers collaborated with Colorado School of Mines mathematician Cecilia Diniz Behn for a new study.
They enlisted 36 healthy children, ages 3 to 5 years, for a nine-day protocol in which they wore a wrist monitor that tracked their sleep and light exposure. For seven days, parents kept the children on a stable sleep schedule to normalize their body clocks and settle them into a pattern in which their melatonin levels rose at about the same time each evening.
On the eighth day, researchers transformed the children's home into what they playfully described as a "cave" -- with black plastic on the windows and lights dimmed -- and took saliva samples every half hour starting in the early afternoon until after bedtime. This enabled the scientists to get a baseline of when the children's biological night naturally began and what their melatonin levels were.
On the last day of the study, the young study subjects were asked to play games on a light table in the hour before bedtime, a posture similar to a person looking at a glowing phone or tablet. Light intensity varied between individual children, ranging from 5 lux to 5,000 lux. (One lux is defined as the light from a candle 1 meter, or about 3 feet, away).
When compared to the previous night with minimal light, melatonin was suppressed anywhere from 70% to 99% after light exposure. Surprisingly, the researchers found little-to-no relationship between how bright the light was and how much the key sleep hormone fell. In adults, this intensity-dependent response has been well documented.
Even in response to light measured at 5 to 40 lux, which is much dimmer than typical room light, melatonin fell an average of 78%. And even 50 minutes after the light extinguished, melatonin did not rebound in more than half of children tested.
"Together, our findings indicate that in preschool-aged children, exposure to light before bedtime, even at low intensities, results in robust and sustained melatonin suppression," said Hartstein.
What parents can do
This does not necessarily mean that parents must throw away the nightlight and keep children in absolute darkness before bedtime. But at a time when half of children use screen media before bed, the research serves as a reminder to all parents to shut off the gadgets and keep light to a minimum to foster good sleep habits in their kids. Notably, a tablet at full brightness held 1 foot from the eyes in a dark room measures as much as 100 lux.
For those children who already have sleep problems?
"They may be more sensitive to light than other children," said LeBourgeois, noting that genes -- along with daytime light exposure -- can influence light sensitivity. "In that case, it's even more important for parents to pay attention to their child's evening light exposure."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220127104208.htm
Study reveals fourfold range in rates of mental health problems among US children based on relational and social risks
January 25, 2022
Science Daily/Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
The analysis, based on 2016-2019 data survey responses covering nearly 132,000 children ages 3 to 17, examined the complex interplay between common mental health problems among children, social and relational health risks, and protective factors.
A large multi-year study based on 2016-2019 data found that children facing relational and social risks are more likely to have mental, emotional, or behavioral health problems, but the negative impact of these problems on child resilience, self-regulation and school engagement can be offset by protective factors such as strong caretaker-child connection and family resilience.
The study, led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, also found that children who were facing relational risks only, such as substance abuse among family members, were more likely to have mental, emotional, or behavioral concerns than those who were only facing social risks, such as economic hardship.
The findings are published as the U.S. and other countries face a crisis in children's mental health exacerbated by the pandemic. The study appears online in the January 2022 issue of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America.
The study found that, overall, 21.8 percent of U.S. children ages 3 to 17 have one or more of the common mental, emotional, and behavioral health conditions assessed. The prevalence of mental health problems across U.S. children ranged from about 15 to 60 percent, increasing with the type (social, relational, or both) and number of these risks that children had been exposed to.
The analysis, based on survey responses covering nearly 132,000 children ages 3 to 17, examined the complex interplay between common mental health problems among children, social and relational health risks, and protective factors.
"If we treat children with mental, emotional, and behavioral problems without individually and collectively addressing social and relational health risks, or even assessing them, which is often the case, we are missing some of the biggest factors driving the mental and emotional suffering of our children," says study leader Christina Bethell, PhD, MPH, MBA, professor in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health and director of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative at the Bloomberg School.
Research suggests that both social and relational health risks contribute to mental, emotional, and behavioral health problems in children. Much prior research has focused on individual social and relational health risks. The new study investigated both the individual and combined effects of these factors on U.S. children.
For their analysis, Bethell and her colleagues gathered data from the National Survey of Children's Health, an annual survey led by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration's Maternal and Child Health Bureau in collaboration with the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The survey, administered to thousands of parents and caregivers each year, provides data on multiple, intersecting aspects of children's lives -- including physical and mental health, access to quality health care, and the child's family, neighborhood, school, and social context.
The study found that over two-thirds of children with mental health conditions experienced at least one of the eight evidence-based social or relational health risk factors examined in the analysis compared to about half of children without mental health conditions.
Factors examined included economic hardship, food insecurity, unsafe neighborhood, racial discrimination, multiple Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) like substance abuse or domestic violence, poor caregiver mental health, and low levels of caregiver coping or high aggravation with their child.
Relational -- versus social health risks -- were both more prevalent among children with mental health problems and had a stronger association with these conditions. Nearly one-third of children with mental health problems experienced both types of risks.
A key focus of the study was on identifying opportunities to promote positive outcomes among children with mental, emotional, and behavioral conditions who also experience social and relational health risks, with a focus on their engagement in school and building their own resilience, assessed as the ability to regulate emotions and behavior when facing challenges.
Researchers found that the chances a child was engaged in school were 77 percent less if they lacked self-regulation. Offering hope, the chances a child with mental health problems demonstrated good self-regulation -- a key component of resilience -- were 5.73 times greater when children also experienced stronger parent-child connection. These odds were over 2.25 times greater when their family reported staying hopeful and could identify strengths to draw on during difficult times. Findings were consistent across all levels of social and relational health risks.
Bethell notes that both parent-child connection and family resilience are learned behaviors that can be strengthened through supports to families and skills building. Bethell notes that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend promoting these factors during routine well-child check-ups, through schools, in mental health treatment, and in the community at large.
"There is a mental, emotional, and behavioral health crisis for children in our country, but most children with these conditions have risk factors that we can identify and do something about," says study co-author Tamar Mendelson, PhD, MA, a Bloomberg Professor of American Health in the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health. "Ultimately, we need to address the structural and systemic issues that threaten young people's well-being; at the same time, there is a lot we can be doing to decrease risk factors for families."
This study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220125112533.htm
Living environment affects child’s weight development from birth to school age
January 24, 2022
Science Daily/University of Turku
A new study shows that living in a neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage is a risk factor for adverse weight development in children under school age. Researchers studied the connection between neighbourhoods' socioeconomic status and children's weight development from data covering over 11,000 Finnish children.
A new study conducted at the University of Turku, Finland, examined the association between the neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage and the development of children's body mass index and the risk of overweight from birth to school age. The children's growth data was acquired from a national register of well-baby clinics.
Information on the socioeconomic status of the neighbourhood was linked to the participants with address coordinates using the national grid database of Statistics Finland. The database contains information that is based on all Finnish residents on social and economic characteristics at the level of 250 m x 250 m grids.
- The socioeconomic status of the neighbourhood was measured with education level, household income, and unemployment rate. The results were independent of the education level, economic situation, marital status and health of the children's parents, says lead author, Docent Hanna Lagström from the Department of Public Health of the University of Turku.
Living in a less prosperous neighbourhood posed a major risk for children to develop overweight by school age in the population-based data, even when the researchers considered factors that can increase the risk of overweight in childhood. These included e.g. mother's type 2 diabetes, mother's smoking, and child's high birth weight. In neighbourhoods with a higher socioeconomic status, children weighted more at birth, but their weight development stabilised already by the age of four.
- This could implicate that neighbourhoods can offer very different types of development environments for children, and that the risk of overweight grows before school age in neighbourhoods with lower socio-economic status. The results of our research are an important factor to take into consideration in e.g. city planning to ensure that inequality is stopped right from the childhood, says Lagström.
The study is based on 2008-2010 data from the Southwest Finland Birth Cohort (SFBC). The Birth Cohort consists of all children born in the Hospital District of Southwest Finland during those three years. In this study, the participants consisted of the first children born to the mothers during this this time.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220124103906.htm
Students with attention problems more likely to cheat
Many don’t get ADHD diagnosis that could lead to help
January 18, 2022
Science Daily/Ohio State University
High school students who have trouble paying attention in class are more likely to admit to cheating, a new study shows.
Researchers found that inattention led to hyperactivity in the students, and both together contributed to higher levels of cheating.
The issue is important because many students with attention problems don't get an official diagnosis, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, said Eric Anderman, lead author of the study and professor of educational psychology at The Ohio State University.
"Students diagnosed with ADHD get a lot of support and help in school, but many other kids with attention problems fall through the cracks," Anderman said.
"They don't get the help they need that could help them do better in school and avoid cheating."
Anderman conducted the study with Richard Gilman of Terrace Metrics and Xingfeiyue Liu, a doctoral student, and Seung Yon Ha, a postdoctoral scholar, both in education at Ohio State. Their results were published recently in the journal Psychology in the Schools.
The researchers studied 855 adolescents from three midwestern public schools, two suburban and one rural. Data was collected twice from the students, about one year apart.
The students completed a standardized measure of inattention that asked them to rate how much they felt they had trouble paying attention to their teacher, how forgetful they were, whether they had a short attention span, and similar questions.
Students' hyperactivity was rated by their responses to questions like whether they had trouble sitting still and whether they talked over other people.
To evaluate cheating, students rated how true it would be to say they used cheat sheets when they took tests, copied answers from other students, and similar statements.
The results showed that students with higher levels of inattention reported higher levels of hyperactivity, and students who were more hyperactive reported a higher rate of cheating.
Hyperactivity by itself was not linked to more cheating.
"Inattention is the driver here, the issue that leads to problems in the classroom," Anderman said.
"The student is not paying attention, so he gets out of his seat and goofs around, and when you put both together, that is a perfect setup for more cheating."
The study took into account a wide variety of other factors that have been linked to cheating, including depression, learning disabilities, gender, ethnicity, grade point average and whether students qualified for special education services -- and inattention still was related to cheating.
In addition, the researchers also examined how disruptive students were in class, based on reports from their peers. That didn't influence cheating.
"Once you account for inattentiveness and hyperactivity, we found that disruptiveness wasn't related to cheating. That is not what is driving cheating behaviors," Anderman said.
Generally accepted rates of ADHD are between 7-9% of students aged 17 and younger. Studies suggest, however, that up to three times as many students have problems with attention or hyperactivity, but either don't meet the criteria for the ADHD diagnosis or have never been evaluated.
That doesn't mean they don't need help, Anderman said.
"There are so many evidence-based programs that can help these students who have problems with attention learn to self-regulate, to learn how to be a learner," Anderman said.
"If they had access to these programs, they could learn in class and they wouldn't have to cheat. And these students are not learning partially because of attention issues they can't help."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220118145949.htm
How much do students learn when they double the speed of their class videos?
More than you might think, new psychology study finds
January 11, 2022
Science Daily/University of California - Los Angeles
Recorded lectures have become a routine part of course instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, and college students often try to pack more learning into a shorter span by watching these recordings at double their normal speed or even faster. But does comprehension suffer as a result?
Surprisingly, no -- up to a point. A new UCLA study shows that students retain information quite well when watching lectures at up to twice their actual speed. But once they exceed that limit, things begin to get a little blurry, said Alan Castel, the study's senior author and a UCLA professor of psychology.
With 85% of UCLA students surveyed as part of the study reporting they "speed-watched" lecture videos, the researchers engaged students in a series of experiments to test how faster speeds affected learning and knowledge retention.
Building Rome in less than 15 minutes
In one experiment, the researchers divided 231 UCLA undergraduates into four groups and had them watch two 13-to-15-minute lecture videos -- one on the Roman Empire and another on real estate appraisals. One group watched at normal speed, one at 1.5 times normal speed, another at double speed and the final group at 2.5 times normal speed. They were instructed not to pause the videos or take notes.
Immediately after the viewings, they were given comprehension tests on the individual videos, each comprising 20 multiple-choice and true-or-false questions. The normal-speed group averaged 26 correct answers out of 40, while the double-time group scored 25 (about the same as the 1.5-speed group). The 2.5-speed group didn't do as well, answering only about 22 questions correctly.
A week later, the same groups were given different tests related to the two videos to assess what they'd retained. The normal-speed group averaged 24 out of 40, the 1.5-speed and double-speed group averaged 21, and 2.5-speed students averaged 20.
"Surprisingly, video speed had little effect on both immediate and delayed comprehension until learners exceeded twice the normal speed," said lead author Dillon Murphy, a doctoral student in psychology at UCLA.
In other experiments, the researchers tested various combinations of speed-watching and normal-speed viewing of the two videos. Among the results:
Twice at double speed vs. once at normal speed
One group of students watched the videos at double speed twice in succession and another watched them just once at normal speed. Both groups answered an average of 25 of the 40 questions correctly immediately following their viewings.
In a related experiment, one group watched the videos once at normal speed while another viewed them initially at double speed, then a week later at double speed again. When tested a week after the first group watched the videos (and shortly after the second group viewed the videos a second time), the speed-watchers performed better, averaging 24 out of 40, versus 22 for the one-time, normal-speed group.
Switching speeds
A group that watched the videos at normal speed, then at double speed, scored slightly better immediately after their viewings than a group that watched at double speed, then normal speed -- 26 vs. 24, a difference Murphy said was not statistically significant. When two other testing groups followed the same viewing procedure and were quizzed a week after watching, they both scored 25.
People generally speak at a rate of about 150 words per minute, and previous research has shown that comprehension begins to decline as speech approaches double speed -- about 275 words per minute, Castel noted.
He and Murphy said they were surprised and impressed that students could learn, and retain knowledge, at some of the faster speeds.
"College students can save time and learn more efficiently by watching pre-recorded lectures at faster speeds if they use the time saved for additional studying, but they shouldn't exceed double the normal playback speed," Murphy said. "While our study didn't reveal significant drawbacks to watching lecture videos at up to double the normal speed, we caution against using this strategy to simply save time. Students can enhance learning if they spend the time saved on activities such as reviewing flashcards or taking practice tests."
The strategy of speeding up videos may not be effective with especially complex or difficult course material, the researchers noted.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220111153637.htm
Teens not getting enough sleep may consume 4.5 extra pounds of sugar during a school year
January 7, 2022
Science Daily/Brigham Young University
Sleep is vital for all people but is particularly important for teenagers as their bodies undergo significant development during their formative years. Unfortunately, most teens aren't getting enough sleep. Data from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that 73% of high school students are getting less than the recommended eight to ten hours of sleep each night.
Prior research has linked lack of sleep to increased risk for poor mental health, poor academic performance, and behavioral problems. But new research from BYU conducted at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center says insufficient sleep also increases the risk of weight gain and other cardiometabolic diseases among teenagers because teens have worse dietary habits when they sleep less.
"Shortened sleep increases the risk for teens to eat more carbs and added sugars and drink more sugar-sweetened beverages than when they are getting a healthy amount of sleep," said Dr. Kara Duraccio, BYU clinical and developmental psychology professor and lead author of the study.
This research, which was recently published in the medical journal SLEEP, analyzed the sleeping and eating patterns of 93 teenagers during two sleep conditions: spending six and a half hours each night in bed for one week (short sleep) and spending nine and a half hours each night in bed for another week (healthy sleep). Researchers measured the caloric intake, macronutrient content, food types, and the glycemic load of foods eaten by teens.
The results found that teenagers undergoing short sleep consumed more foods that were likely to spike blood sugar fast -- things like foods high in carbs and added sugar, or sugary drinks, compared to when they were in healthy sleep. These changes largely occurred in the late evening (after 9:00 pm). Teens getting short sleep also ate fewer fruits and vegetables across the entire day, compared to healthy sleep.
"What's interesting is that getting less sleep didn't cause teens to eat more than their peers getting healthy sleep; both groups consumed roughly the same amounts of calories of food. But getting less sleep caused teens to eat more junk," said Duraccio. "We suspect that tired teens are looking for quick bursts of energy to keep them going until they can go to bed, so they're seeking out foods that are high in carbs and added sugars."
The research found that teens in short sleep consumed 12 extra grams of sugar each day. With most teenagers not getting sufficient sleep during the 180 nights of a school year, an extra 12 grams of added sugar each day could result in over 4.5 pounds of extra sugar each year.
"We know that pediatric obesity is an epidemic, and we've focused on a lot of interventions to try and address it, but sleep is not one of the things that researchers tend to focus on," said Duraccio. "If we are really trying to discover preventative strategies or interventions to increase optimal weight in teens, getting enough and well-timed sleep should be at the forefront of our efforts."
Duraccio admits that it's difficult for teenagers to maintain a healthy sleeping schedule; teens are busy with rigorous academic schedules and a slew of extracurricular activities. Compound this with early start times for school and the result is short and ill-timed sleeping patterns that become a habit.
"It's human nature to think that when we have a long to-do list, sleep should be the first thing to go or the easiest thing to cut out," she said. "We don't recognize that getting enough sleep helps you accomplish your to-do list better. Sleep health should be incorporated into all prevention and intervention modules for child obesity."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220107084431.htm
School closures led to more sleep and better quality of life for adolescents
January 5, 2022
Science Daily/University of Zurich
The school closures in spring 2020 had a negative effect on the health and well-being of many young people. But homeschooling also had a positive flipside: Thanks to sleeping longer in the morning, many teenagers reported improved health and health-related quality of life. The study authors from the University of Zurich therefore believe school days should begin later in the morning.
The first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic led to the closure of all schools nationwide from 13 March to 6 June 2020. According to multiple studies, symptoms of depression and anxiety among young people increased during this time, while satisfaction and quality of life decreased. The schoolchildren were also less physically active and spent more time sitting in front of screens.
Now, a study by the University of Zurich (UZH) has shown that the homeschooling phase also had a positive effect on the health and well-being of many teenagers. "The students got about 75 minutes more sleep per day during the lockdown. At the same time, their health-related quality of life improved significantly and their consumption of alcohol and caffeine went down," says the study's co-leader Oskar Jenni, UZH professor of developmental pediatrics. Because they no longer had to travel to school, they were able to get up later.
More sleep on school days improves young people's health-related quality of life
The researchers conducted an online survey with 3,664 high school students in the Canton of Zurich during the lockdown, asking about their sleep patterns and quality of life. They then compared the answers with a survey from 2017 with 5,308 young participants. The results showed that during the three months in which the schools were closed, the adolescents got up around 90 minutes later on school days, but went to bed only 15 minutes later on average -- meaning their total amount of sleep increased by about 75 minutes a day. On weekends, there was little difference in the sleep times of the two groups.
The students in the lockdown group rated their health-related quality of life higher, and the amount of alcohol and caffeine they reported consuming was less than the pre-pandemic group. "Although the lockdown clearly led to worse health and well-being for many young people, our findings reveal an upside of the school closures which has received little attention until now," says Jenni.
Unique opportunity to investigate the effect of later school starting times
Sleep deficits in adolescents can lead to general tiredness, anxiety and physical ailments. These in turn have a detrimental effect on cognitive functions such as concentration, memory and attention, making it significantly harder to function in everyday life. The early start of the school day in Switzerland conflicts with the natural, biologically determined sleeping habits of teenagers. Because they have to get up early for school, many young people therefore suffer from chronic lack of sleep. The topic has recently made its way onto the political agenda in several cantons across the country.
"Our findings clearly indicate the benefit of starting school later in the morning so that youngsters can get more sleep," says Jenni. He speculates that the positive effects on health and health-related quality of life would have been even greater had there not also been the negative effects of the pandemic on mental health.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220105111355.htm
Parental depression is associated with worse childhood mental health, educational attainment
Parental depression is a bigger risk factor if it occurs during a child's lifetime
November 17, 2021
Science Daily/PLOS
Children who live with a parent who has depression are more likely to develop depression and to not achieve educational milestones, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sinead Brophy of Swansea University, UK, and colleagues.
Maternal depression is a known risk factor for depression in children and is associated with a range of adverse child health and educational outcomes including poorer academic attainment. To date, however, risk factors associated with paternal depression have been less well examined. Understanding the effects of timing of both maternal and paternal depression of offspring outcomes has implications for prevention and early intervention.
In the new study, Brophy and colleagues used data from the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) databank assembled as part of the Born in Wales Study funded by the Welsh Government. Information on children born in Wales from 1987 to 2018, as well as their mothers and fathers -- or stable, adult male figure in the same household -- was used in the study. Both parental and child diagnosis of depression was attained from general practitioner records in the SAIL databank.
Overall, 34.5% of mothers and 18% of fathers/stable men had a diagnosis of depression. In offspring, 4.34% of all children, 2.85% of boys, and 5.89% of girls were diagnosed with depression. Children were more likely to develop depression if their mother had depression before their birth (HR 1.32, 95% CI 1.21-1.43), after their birth (HR 2.00, 95% CI 1.96-2.05), or both before and after their birth (HR 2.25, 95% CI 2.15-2.35). The risk of depression was also increased when their father/stable man had depression before their birth (HR 1.44, 95% CI 1.18-1.74), after their birth (HR 1.66, 95% CI 1.58-1.74), or both before and after their birth (HR 1.47, 95% CI 1.25-1.73). In addition, the odds of achieving milestones at the end of primary school were significantly decreased if either parent had depression -- for instance, the odds of passing Key Stage 3 (KS3) tests was 0.57 (95% CI 0.55-0.60) if a child's mother had depression both before and after their birth and 0.56 (0.49-0.63) if their father/stable man had depression both before and after their birth. Other risk factors for children's depression identified in the study included being female, their mother taking antidepressants and having no stable man in the household. The authors conclude that the impact of paternal depression requires more attention than has previously been given, and suggest that holistic approaches to whole family wellbeing and depression will help ensure positive outcomes for children.
The authors add: "Children who live with a parent (mum or dad) who has depression are more likely to also develop depression and not achieve as well in school, compared to children who live with a parent with treated depression. Working with families and treating parental depression (in dads as well as mums) is likely to have long-term benefits for children's mental health and educational attainment. This has never been more important than after lockdown and COVID, as depression is contagious too."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211117161521.htm