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Cell Calls, Texts Can Distract Even If Unanswered

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Simply hearing your mobile phone ring or feeling it vibrate is enough to significantly distract you, a new study suggests.

And, the level of distraction is similar to that of actually talking or sending text messages on the device, the researchers found.

“The level of how much it affected the task at hand was really shocking,” study co-author Courtney Yehnert, a research coordinator at Florida State University, said in a university news release.

The study was published recently in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

“Although these notifications are generally short in duration, they can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind-wandering, which has been shown to damage task performance,” the researchers wrote.

“Cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupt performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants do not directly interact with a mobile device during the task,” they added.

In the study, participants’ performance on a computer task was assessed when they had no distractions and when they received calls or message alerts on their cellphones. They did much worse — making about three times as many mistakes — on the task when distracted by calls or text alerts on their cellphones, the study found.

Previous studies have shown that using a mobile phone leads to poorer performance when people are trying to do other things. This study is the first of its kind and shows that simply being aware of a missed call or text can have the same effect, the researchers said.

They added that while the study did not involve driving, the results are relevant to the issue of distracted driving.

“Even a slight distraction can have severe, potentially life-threatening effects if that distraction occurs at the wrong time,” lead author Cary Stothart, a psychology doctoral student at Florida State University, said in the news release.

“When driving, it’s impossible to know when ‘the wrong time’ will occur. Our results suggest that it is safest for people to mute or turn off their phones and put them out of sight while driving,” Stothart added.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about distracted driving.

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Meth, Coke Addiction May Affect Brains of Women More Than Men

By Carrie Myers
HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, July 14, 2015 (HealthDay News) — In a new study, brain scans reveal that women formerly addicted to stimulant drugs, such as cocaine and methamphetamine, have a smaller amount of a type of brain tissue known as “gray matter.”

This was true even though the women hadn’t used the drugs for about a year before undergoing the brain scans, the study said.

The research also hints, but cannot prove, that these drugs take a greater toll on addicted women’s brains compared to men who had been dependent on the same drugs. Compared to healthy men, formerly drug-dependent men showed little to no changes in their brain scans, the study authors noted.

“Gray matter is important because it is where signals are generated in the brain that gives us the ability to think, move and behave,” explained study author Dr. Jody Tanabe, a professor of radiology from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colo.

Exactly why these changes are occurring in the brain’s gray matter volume in women still isn’t clear, the study authors noted. “Since the brain consists of numerous cells and the spaces between cells, we do not know if some of the cells die, become smaller, or if the spaces between the cells become smaller,” Tanabe said.

Findings from the study were published online July 14 in the journal Radiology.

For the study, researchers wanted to see how the brains of people previously dependent on stimulants compared to the brains of healthy people, and if they differed by gender.

Scientists reviewed brain MRI exams in 127 men and women. The study included 59 people (28 women and 31 men) who were previously dependent on cocaine, amphetamines and/or methamphetamine. They were dependent on drugs for an average of nearly 16 years, the study said. The study also included 68 healthy (“control” group) participants (28 women and 40 men) who were similar in age to those who had been addicted to drugs.

All of the previously dependent men and women in the study had been abstinent from stimulant-drug use for an average of 13.5 months at the time of the brain scans.

Compared to the women in the control group and the men in the study, the previously dependent women had less gray matter volume, according to the brain scans.

“We are not sure why differences were so pronounced in the women but not the men in this study,” said Tanabe. “In fact, men had overall more drug-related symptoms than women so the results were somewhat surprising. Men and women did not differ in their drug exposure (regarding the various types of drugs they were exposed to), abstinence, or years of drug use. It may be that our findings reflect behavioral and personality differences.”

Vaughan Rees is a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard School of Medicine in Boston. Rees pointed out that whether or not there are differences in the nervous systems of female substance abusers is something researchers have wondered, “but rigorous evidence has rarely been shown. This study rigorously demonstrates that gray matter volume is lower among female former users,” Rees said.

However, the association between brain volume and stimulant-drug use seen in women in the study does not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

Rees added that while the data from this study cannot tell us whether the difference in gray matter volume occurs as a result of stimulant use or pre-exists addiction, evidence from other studies cited by the authors suggests that brain differences might have been present before the women started using drugs.

“These findings may help to shed light on the greater severity of drug-use symptoms experienced by females, including escalation of drug use, larger quantities used and greater difficulty quitting compared with males,” suggested Rees, who was not involved with the study.

Tanabe added that the new “study adds to the growing body of evidence that gender plays a significant role in studies looking at brain structure and function in addictions. Future studies need to focus on mechanisms of these differences and how they impact behavior.”

More information

For more on drug addiction, visit the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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Formaldehyde in Embalming Fluid May Raise ALS Risk for Funeral Directors

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, July 13, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Male funeral directors who routinely work with embalming fluid might be at increased risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a new study finds.

Those whose jobs involved continual exposure to the formaldehyde in embalming fluid were three times more likely to develop the neurological disease, compared to people never exposed to the chemical, researchers reported in the July 13 issue of the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

The study found that the jobs of funeral directors involve the sort of frequent and intense formaldehyde exposure that could lead to ALS, often called Lou Gehrig’s disease for the famous baseball player who died of it.

“Of the approximately 500 men exposed to very high levels of formaldehyde, they were all funeral directors,” said study author Andrea Roberts, a research associate at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston.

Funeral directors are aware of this potential occupational hazard, and “take these studies very seriously,” according to a statement from the National Funeral Directors Association.

The association urges its members to take precautions and minimize their exposure to formaldehyde, mainly by ventilating rooms where embalming occurs as they prepare bodies for burial.

“Adequate preparation room ventilation is the most effective way of reducing formaldehyde exposure,” the statement says.

Previous animal studies have linked the chemical to the development of ALS, researchers wrote in background notes.

ALS is a progressive and ultimately fatal neurological disease that attacks the nerve cells responsible for controlling muscles, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). Most people with ALS die from respiratory failure within three to five years of diagnosis, when their diaphragm and chest muscles fail and they lose the ability to breathe.

More than 12,000 people in the United States have ALS, and the condition is thought to affect as many as 450,000 people worldwide. There is no cure, and nine out of 10 times people develop ALS for no apparent reason, according to the NIH.

Researchers decided to explore a possible link between ALS and occupational exposure to formaldehyde, using U.S. Census data gathered on almost 1.5 million adults. When they were 25 or older, participants in this survey were asked about their current or most recent job.

The research team estimated people’s on-the-job exposure to formaldehyde using criteria developed by the U.S. National Cancer Institute. They then used death records to track deaths caused by ALS.

They found that men with a high probability of formaldehyde exposure were about three times as likely to die of ALS as those who had never been exposed to the chemical.

That risk increased even more among men who likely were exposed to large quantities of formaldehyde very often.

“We found that, in those jobs in which their likelihood for exposure to formaldehyde was high and the amount of formaldehyde they were exposed to was also high, those people were at four times greater risk of dying of ALS than people with no job related to formaldehyde exposure,” Roberts said.

Women with a high probability of exposure did not have an increased risk of ALS. Perhaps too few had jobs that exposed them to high levels of formaldehyde, making it difficult to calculate risk level, the researchers said.

No female funeral directors died of ALS, possibly because they are more often involved in dealing with bereaved relatives than in embalming, which would limit their exposure to formaldehyde, Roberts suggested.

The authors warned that this study does not show a cause-and-effect link between formaldehyde exposure and ALS risk, noting that funeral directors might have a higher risk because of other embalming chemicals or even bacteria or toxins carried on the bodies they prepare.

Lucie Bruijn, chief scientist of the ALS Association, agreed with those reservations.

“The field has seen mixed reports on this, and although the data has been carefully analyzed, further study would need to be done to confirm any association, especially in light of the many other exposures funeral directors are subjected to,” Bruijn said. “In addition, jobs involving high intensity of formaldehyde are relatively rare, hence the difficulty in confirming such an association.”

More information

For more on ALS, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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The Very Important Reason Carrie Underwood Broke Into Her Own Car

Photo: Getty Images

It’s a fear most mothers have: accidentally locking their child in the car. And this weekend, it happened to country singer and new mom Carrie Underwood.

On Saturday, the mother of 4-month-old Isaiah tweeted:

When your dogs manage to lock themselves, all your stuff & the baby in the car & you have to break a window to get in. #WhatAreTheChances

— Carrie Underwood (@carrieunderwood) July 11, 2015

Later in the day she tweeted a clarification, saying that it was her brother-in-law who came through with the window-breaking:

I should clarify. My bro-in-law was actually the window breaker in the "dogs-locked-the-car-door" incident today! But all is good now!

— Carrie Underwood (@carrieunderwood) July 12, 2015

Followed by:

Minus the broken window, of course! 😁

— Carrie Underwood (@carrieunderwood) July 12, 2015

While it all turned out fine for Underwood and her son (and dogs), her weekend scare is a reminder of how harmful this kind of situation can be, and why it’s important to know how to act if it happens to you.

“I cannot emphasize enough how very dangerous it is for babies to be left in a locked car,” Minu George, MD, an interim chief in the general division of pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New York told Health.

“Even on relatively mild days, the car can overheat in a matter of minutes,” Dr. George says. In fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “When outside temperatures are in the low 80’s, the temperature inside a vehicle can reach deadly levels in only 10 minutes, even with a window rolled down two inches.”

RELATED: How Safe Is Your Car?

And children are especially susceptible to the heat. “A child’s body can overheat three to five times faster than adults, putting them at much higher risk than adults for hyperthermia and heat stroke,” Dr. George says.

In 2014, 30 lives were lost and one death has already occurred this year as a result of children being left in vehicles, according to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report released in May of this year.

The organization also notes that there are also too many “close calls” that do not result in tragic deaths, but can cause serious injury, including permanent brain injury, blindness, and the loss of hearing, among others.

RELATED: Your Emergency Car Kit

You may feel like you’d never forget a child in the car, but no one’s perfect—we all have frazzled days, and mistakes do happen—so it’s important to do everything possible to help yourself remember that your baby is in the back seat when you exit the automobile.

Dr. George suggests strapping your baby’s favorite teddy bear or diaper bag in the passenger seat or putting your purse or cell phone in the back seat next to your baby. “Anything that reminds you that the baby is in the back seat can be life-saving,” Dr. George says.

Finally, if the baby gets accidentally locked in the car and you cannot get to the keys, call 911 right away, Dr. George advises. Authorities should respond within minutes to unlock your car. But if you need to break a window, do it. Just be sure to choose the window farthest from your child.

“Every minute counts,” she adds.

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Surgery May Beat Drugs for Ulcerative Colitis: Study

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, July 13, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Surgery may extend the lives of older adults with the inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis, new research suggests.

A study of thousands of adults with the condition compared results of surgery to those of long-term drug treatment. It found that surgery’s survival benefit was greatest for those 50 and older who had advanced disease.

“Surgery has always been an option,” said study leader Dr. Meenakshi Bewtra, but many experts look at it as a last resort.

Bewtra, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, used data from Medicare and Medicaid for the study. She and her colleagues followed 830 patients who had elective surgery — known as colectomy — and more than 7,500 who took medicine to manage the condition.

Surgery involves removal of the colon, sometimes followed by additional surgery to reconnect the small intestine to the rectum, Bewtra said. If that follow-up surgery is not done, the patient has an ostomy bag to collect wastes, she said.

Over five years, surgery was linked with a 33 percent reduced risk of death compared to medication, Bewtra’s team found. The operations were performed between 2000 and 2011.

“We always thought those older [patients] had an increased risk of death due to complications from the surgery,” she said. “This is not the case.”

The study was published July 13 in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Ulcerative colitis affects up to 700,000 Americans, according to the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America. Inflammation causes irritation in the lining of the colon and large intestine. This can result in diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and rectal bleeding.

As symptoms worsen, patients may need more medicines, including corticosteroids, which are linked with an increased risk of infection and death. Medication is also associated with a high relapse rate, the researchers said.

Bottom line? The study suggests that surgery should be considered earlier in the course of the disease, Bewtra said, not viewed as a last resort.

“If you have ulcerative colitis and especially if you have failed medical [drug] therapies in the past, have long-standing disease, have been hospitalized, been on corticosteroids — talk to your physician about elective surgery,” Bewtra said. The surgery is typically covered by Medicare and other health plans, she added.

The decision to opt for surgery is individual, said Dr. David B. Sachar, a gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

“Wonderful new medicines often postpone, sometimes completely obviate the need for surgery,” said Sachar, author of an editorial accompanying the study.

“But too often we, as gastroenterologists, think that the yardstick, the touchstone, the criterion of success in treating patients is keeping them away from the surgeon,” he added.

If medicines are doing the job, that’s great, Sachar said. “But often the swiftest, safest, surest treatment for ulcerative colitis is an operation. The name of the game is not saving colons, but saving lives, and that includes quality of life,” he said.

Patients and doctors must decide on a case-by-case basis, he said.

More information

To learn more about ulcerative colitis, visit American College of Gastroenterology.