How Your Smartphone Is Ruining Your Relationship

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Nothing kills romance faster than pulling out a smartphone, and now, research confirms it. Being attached to your phone seems to sabotage your attachment with your loved one.

Plenty of research has been done on how cell phones affect relationships. Some suggests that they’re a positive influence—that being in easy, intimate touch with a partner through calling and texting makes people happier and more secure in their relationships. Other research reveals the dark side of cell phones. Real-life interactions are dulled when a person feels the urge to check their phone, and the distraction a phone affords one partner doesn’t make the other person feel good.

But smartphones are far more invasive and demanding of our time, connecting us to the world in vastly more ways than the flip phones of yore. A team of researchers thought that smartphones might be making relationships worse, so they wrangled 170 college kids who were in committed relationships to see what role their phones were playing.

In the study, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, the college lovebirds were asked to report on their own smartphone use: how dependent they felt on their device, and how much it would bother them to go without it for a day. They then answered similar questions about their own partner’s smartphone dependency.

It didn’t matter much how much a person used their device, but how much a person needed their device did. People who were more dependent on their smartphones reported being less certain about their partnerships. People who felt that their partners were overly dependent on their devices said they were less satisfied in their relationship.

In other words, people get jealous of their partner’s smartphone. “I’m more likely to think my relationship is doomed the more I believe my partner needs that thing,” explains Matthew Lapierre, assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Arizona, who authored the study with his former undergraduate student Meleah Lewis. “It’s not use; it’s the psychological relationship to that device.”

The researchers are now doing a followup experiment to try to understand the causal mechanisms behind their findings and to see whether or not smartphone dependency affects other areas of life, like academic performance, and whether factors like self-esteem predict a person’s smartphone obsession.

“Smartphones are fundamentally different from previous technologies, so their effect is much more powerful,” Lapierre says. “I don’t want to say it’s uniformly negative, but it definitely hints in that direction.”

This article originally appeared on Time.com.

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Chrissy Teigen Shares Honest Makeup-Free Selfie

Chrissy Teigen’s pregnancy has made her even more relatable than she was before (yeah, we didn’t know it was possible either). During her pregnancy, she’s been super honest about both the good and the bad—and Chrissy took to her Snapchat yesterday to share a photo a makeup-free selfie captioned, “Goodbye pregnancy glow. Hi itchy red spots”.

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Photo: Snapchat

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Chrissy, the super relatable friend you wish you had, gave birth to daughter Luna this month and has been sharing her maternal insights on social media. While we’re all aware of the perks of the pregnancy glow, Chrissy shares a realistic photo of some of the less glamorous aspects of skin care. Haven’t we all been there?

This article originally appeared on InStyle.com/MIMI.

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To Avoid Food Poisoning, There’s an App for That

FRIDAY, April 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) — There are apps for maps, restaurants and calorie-counting. Now, there’s even one from the U.S. government for reducing your risk of foodborne illness.

The FoodKeeper app — free from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — is available for Apple and Android devices. It enables users to set up automatic notifications when foods and beverages are nearing the end of their recommended storage dates.

Showing how foods and beverages should be stored in the refrigerator, freezer and pantry, the app helps people select storage methods that extend the life of more than 400 items. These include baby food, dairy products, eggs, meat, poultry, seafood and produce, according to the USDA.

“Cooking advice is also offered to ensure users prepare products in ways that eliminate foodborne bacteria,” the agency said in a news release.

Each year in the United States, 133 billion pounds of available food — worth about $161 billion — goes uneaten, often because of safety concerns, according to the USDA.

Did you know that your refrigerator plays a crucial role in preventing foodborne illness? Keeping the fridge below 40 degrees Fahrenheit reduces the growth of illness-causing organisms, the USDA said.

Also, storing too much in your fridge can interfere with air circulation. This means some sections may not chill quickly enough or evenly enough. Plus, it causes the refrigerator motor to run constantly, leading to higher utility bills, the agency noted.

The USDA suggests leaving at least an inch on all sides of items in the refrigerator for cold air to circulate around them, without blocking air vents.

Also important: keeping the front grill of your fridge clear of dust and lint so there is free airflow to the condenser.

The only way to kill foodborne illness-causing bacteria and other organisms is to cook food to a safe internal temperature. USDA-recommended temperatures are: 145 degrees F for whole cuts of beef, pork, lamb and veal (allow meat to rest for three minutes before carving and consuming); 160 degrees F for ground beef, pork, lamb and veal; and 165 degrees F for poultry.

More information

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has more about the FoodKeeper app and food safety.

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Zika Virus Was in Haiti Long Before Brazil Outbreak: Study

FRIDAY, April 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) — New research suggests the Zika virus was circulating in Haiti months before Brazil’s first cases were reported last spring.

“We know that the virus was present in Haiti in December of 2014,” said Dr. Glenn Morris, director of University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute. “And, based on molecular studies, it may have been present in Haiti even before that date.”

What remains unclear is exactly why there was such a widespread outbreak in Brazil, the study authors said, and more research is needed to reveal why the same did not happen in Haiti.

In Brazil, Zika infections have been linked to more than 5,000 cases of a birth defect known as microcephaly, in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and brains.

To uncover Zika’s presence in Haiti, the team of researchers analyzed three “mystery” infections reported in that country in 2014.

The cases involved school-aged children in Haiti’s Gressier/Leogane region who developed a fever. The students were taken to a free clinic where samples of their blood were screened for dengue, chikungunya and malaria.

The blood tests ruled out these three well-known viruses but little thought was given to the Zika virus, which was not known to be present in the region at the time.

Using an advanced testing method, the University of Florida researchers went back and analyzed the children’s blood samples. They found the samples tested positive for the Zika virus.

Their findings, published April 26 in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, suggest the virus was circulating in the Americas long before it swept through Brazil.

The earliest known outbreak of the Zika virus occurred in 2007 in a small group of islands in French Polynesia, known as the Yap Islands. That outbreak affected an estimated 73 percent of people aged 3 and older, the researchers said.

After comparing the viruses, the researchers found the genetic sequences of the slightly older Haitian strains of the virus were more similar to the French Polynesian strains than many of the Brazilian strains.

“There is a possibility that this virus had been moving around the Caribbean before it hit the right combination of conditions in Brazil and took off,” Morris said in a university news release.

“By using the sophisticated culturing and sequencing capabilities that we have here at the Emerging Pathogens Institute, we were able to begin to fill in some of the unknown areas in the history of the Zika virus, leading us toward a better understanding of what caused this outbreak to suddenly occur at the magnitude that it did in Brazil,” Morris said.

As of April 27, there were 1,025 confirmed cases of Zika in U.S. states and territories, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly all of these infections were acquired by people who had traveled outside the United States.

As mosquito season approaches, U.S. health experts expect to see more infections in Gulf Coast states such as Florida and Texas, as well as Hawaii.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides more information on the Zika virus.

To see the CDC list of sites where Zika virus is active and may pose a threat to pregnant women, click here.

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E-Cigarettes ‘In’ at Some Schools

FRIDAY, April 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Teens are more likely to give electronic cigarettes a try if they attend schools where use of the devices is common, a new study suggests.

The researchers found that differences in e-cigarette use between schools increased over time. This finding suggests that certain schools play a larger role in increasing teen use of e-cigarettes than other schools do. The researchers believe that there’s something in the culture of those schools that encourages the use of these devices.

“Our results indicate that there are certain types of schools that facilitate higher rates of e-cigarette use among students,” said study leader Adam Lippert, an assistant professor of sociology at University of Colorado Denver.

Data for the study was collected from U.S. middle and high schools between 2011 and 2013 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings showed that e-cigarette use didn’t seem to be affected by whether students smoked regular cigarettes or knew someone who did.

In schools with high rates of e-cigarette use, there may be a widespread belief that the devices are less harmful than regular cigarettes, the researchers said. Educators need to take such beliefs, along with the number of students using e-cigarettes, into account when trying to reduce e-cigarette use, Lippert said in a university news release.

E-cigarette use by American teens has risen dramatically since 2011. In 2015, the devices were used by more than 3 million middle and high school students, according to the CDC.

The study results were published recently in the journal Health and Place.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse has more about e-cigarettes.

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Smog May Boost Risk for Several Cancers

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, April 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Long-term exposure to fine particles of air pollution — from cars, trucks, power plants and manufacturing facilities — is tied to an increased risk of dying from several kinds of cancer, a new study suggests.

“Air pollution remains a clear, modifiable public health concern,” said researcher G. Neil Thomas, a reader in epidemiology at the University of Birmingham in England.

“Put simply, the more of these particulates there are in the air, the greater the risk of getting these cancers,” Thomas said, although the study did not prove the particles actually cause cancer.

The study, involving more than 66,000 older residents of Hong Kong, found an increased risk of dying from cancer for even small increases in exposure to these tiny particles of air pollution, which are measured in micrograms per cubic meter (mcg/m3). For example, the overall risk of dying from cancer increased 22 percent with every additional 10 mcg/m3 of exposure, the researchers said.

The raised risk seemed higher for some cancers than others: The additional air pollution was linked to a 42 percent rise in the risk of dying from cancer in the upper digestive tract, and a 35 percent increased risk of dying from liver, bile duct, gall bladder and pancreatic cancer, the researchers said.

Among women, the increased exposure was tied to an 80 percent heightened risk of dying from breast cancer. Among men, the higher pollution levels carried a 36 percent increased risk of dying of lung cancer, the study authors said.

“This study, combined with existing research, suggests that other urban populations may carry the same risks,” Thomas said. “The implications for other similar cities around the world are that pollution must be reduced as much and as fast as possible.”

Although the role of air pollution in cancer is not fully understood, it could include defects in DNA repair, alterations in the immune response or inflammation that triggers the growth of new blood vessels that allow cancer to spread, Thomas said. In cancer of the digestive organs, heavy metal pollution could also affect gut bacteria and promote development of cancer, he suggested.

In the study, it was not known whether any of the people had cancer before the study began. Researchers followed the residents until 2011. Causes of deaths were provided by Hong Kong death registries.

To gauge the exposure to tiny particles of air pollution, the researchers relied on estimates from satellite data and air quality monitors. The researchers also adjusted their findings for smoking, and excluded deaths that happened up to three years after people were enrolled in the study.

The study findings show how pervasive the harms of air pollution are, two experts said.

“This study adds to a growing body of evidence that air pollution may be associated with cancers other than lung cancer,” said Susan Gapstur, vice president for epidemiology at the American Cancer Society.

Ted Brasky, a cancer control researcher at Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the effect of fine particle air pollution on cancer deaths is probably larger than this study was able to show.

“These data imply that if we were to have less environmental pollution, you would have lower risks of dying from cancer,” Brasky said. “Air pollution doesn’t just increase the risk for asthma, lung cancer and heart disease, but might also increase the risk of dying from cancer.”

Thomas said the solution is simple.

“We should therefore be aiming to limit our exposure, for instance, through legislation to force machine manufacturers, particularly for cars and trucks, into maximizing engine efficiencies that will minimize such particulates in exhaust gases and switching to non-fossil fueled engines,” he said.

The study findings were published online April 29 in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

The risk of death from cancer is not the only harm that air pollution has been tied to recently.

A study published April 27 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that being exposed to just a small amount of air pollution during pregnancy may raise the risk of a complication that can cause premature birth and long-term health problems in children.

More information

For more on pollution and cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.

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Heat Beats Cold for Treating Jellyfish Stings

FRIDAY, April 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) — If you’re unlucky enough to suffer a jellyfish sting, new research says that heat is better than cold for easing the pain.

The team at the University of Hawaii at Manoa noted that jellyfish stings are a growing health problem worldwide. But, there has been disagreement over how best to treat and manage the painful stings.

“People think ice will help because jelly stings burn and ice is cold,” study author Christie Wilcox, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii’s School of Medicine, said in a university news release.

“And if you Google it, many sites — even those considered reputable — will tell you to put ice on a sting to dull the pain. But research to date has shown that all marine venoms are highly heat sensitive, thus hot water or hot packs should be more effective than cold packs or ice,” she explained.

In an attempt to resolve the ongoing debate about how best to deal with jellyfish stings, the researchers reviewed all published studies to date that examined the use of heat or cold.

Mild jellyfish stings can hurt for hours to days and leave lasting scars. Some jellyfish stings can even be deadly, the researchers said.

Most of the evidence the researchers found supported the use of immersion in water that was about 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

“I was shocked that the science was so clear, given that there is so much debate over the use of hot water,” Wilcox said.

“It’s simple, really: if you’re stung, use hot water or hot packs rather than ice or cold packs,” she concluded.

Results from the study were published recently in the journal Toxins.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more on jellyfish stings.

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Kids of Older Moms May Have a Leg Up on Their Peers

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, April 29, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Although older women may face more potential pregnancy complications, their children seem to fare better in some ways over the long run, a new study suggests.

Using data on over 1.5 million Swedish adults, researchers found that people born to mothers who were in their late-30s or 40s tended to be taller, fitter and more educated than those born to younger moms.

But, that doesn’t guarantee that being born to an older mother means a person will be fitter, taller or more likely to aspire to a higher education. This study can only show an association between those factors.

People are choosing to give birth at later ages, the study authors said. For example, in Germany and the United Kingdom, the average age at first birth is 30 years old. And in Sweden in 2013, more than one-quarter of babies were born to women 35 and older, the report noted.

A woman who gives birth in her 40s rather than her 20s faces higher risks of pregnancy complications and problems for her baby — including Down syndrome and autism, according to background information in the study.

But, her child is also born 20 years later in time, said researcher Mikko Myrskyla, director of the laboratory for population research at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, in Rostock, Germany.

“Over a period of 20 years, most developed countries have seen strong expansion of education, improvements in health and increases in height,” Myrskyla explained.

The potential disadvantages of being born to an older mom, he said, may be more than offset by the advantages of being born in a later time period.

The study results are based on data from Swedish adults born between 1960 and 1991. In general, the investigators found, people who’d been born to older mothers tended to have higher grades in high school and were more likely to go to college, versus those born to moms younger than 30.

But the pattern seemed to be entirely explained by the time period in which a person was born, according to Myrskyla.

Even within families, people born to older mothers were more educated than their older siblings: The sibling who was born when mom was 45 or older, on average, had more than 1.5 years more education, versus the sibling who was born when mom was in her teens, the study said.

There was a similar pattern when the researchers looked at adulthood height and fitness levels — which, they say, are “good proxies” for overall health. Based on data from the Swedish military draft, young men born to mothers in their late 30s or early 40s tended to be slightly taller and more fit. But again, that was likely related to being born in a later time period, the study authors explained.

An expert who wasn’t involved in the study agreed that being born during “certain times in history” can give people certain advantages — such as a greater likelihood of going to college.

But that shouldn’t drive any woman’s family-planning decisions, stressed Brenda Volling, director of the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor.

A woman in her 40s is far less likely to have a baby at all, compared with a woman in her 20s, Volling pointed out.

“We know that fertility rates decline significantly once women turn 35,” she said. “There are no positive benefits to be had if there is no child to be born.”

Volling said the women in this study who were able to give birth in their 40s were “probably a very select group.”

These women were likely very healthy and gave birth to “robust” babies, Volling said. “When these two things are in place, then children may have a chance to experience some positive outcomes if the societal resources are in place,” she added.

Myrskyla agreed that no one should use this study in their family planning. “We are not making any recommendations on when to have children, or whether to have them at all,” he stressed.

Instead, he said, the findings suggest that when older women do have a healthy baby, that child may enjoy certain advantages from being born later.

Findings from the study were published recently in the journal Population and Development Review.

More information

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has more on having a baby after age 35.

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Many Manly Men Avoid Needed Health Care

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, April 28, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Macho men are less likely than women to visit a doctor, and more likely to request male physicians when they do make an appointment, researchers say.

But these “tough guys” tend to downplay their symptoms in front of male doctors because of a perceived need to keep up a strong front when interacting with men, according to three recent studies.

The results can be dangerous.

“These studies highlight one theory about why masculinity is, generally, linked to poor health outcomes for men,” said Mary Himmelstein. She is co-author of three recent studies on gender and medicine and a doctoral candidate in the department of psychology at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J.

“Men who really buy into this cultural script that they need to be tough and brave — that if they don’t act in a certain way they could lose their masculinity (or) ‘man-card’ (or) status — are less likely to seek preventative care, and delay care in the face of illness and injury,” Himmelstein added.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, men born in 2009 will live five years less than women born the same year, a spread not fully explained by physical differences, the researchers noted.

To see whether the male psyche drives some men to undermine their own health, Himmelstein and co-author Diana Sanchez asked roughly 250 men to complete an online survey on gender perceptions and doctor preferences. The answers revealed that those with more masculine leanings were more likely to choose a male doctor.

Another 250 men — all undergraduate students — participated in a staged medical exam conducted by male and female pre-med and nursing students. The upshot: The more macho the patients, the less honest they were with their male caregiver.

Those two trials were reported recently in the journal Preventive Medicine.

A prior study conducted by Himmelstein and Sanchez — published in the Journal of Health Psychology — involved gender-role interviews with nearly 500 males and females. It found that guys with traditional masculine ideals were less likely to seek health care, more likely to downplay symptoms, and had worse overall health compared with women and less masculine men.

The research team also found that women who viewed themselves as “brave” or “self-reliant” were also less likely to seek care or be honest about their health status with doctors than women who didn’t strongly embrace such characteristics.

But Himmelstein said she wouldn’t expect women to behave exactly the same as tough men across the board because “women don’t lose status or respect by displaying vulnerability or weakness.”

Timothy Smith, a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, said these findings reflect long-standing social forces.

“Cultural beliefs, such as toughness, develop for a reason,” he said. “Decades ago, when our economy depended predominantly on manual labor, the ability to continue working despite (problematic) physical conditions benefited families dependent on that labor.”

Today, however, with effective health care much more accessible, equating toughness with denial of health conditions has dangerous consequences, he noted.

“The belief that disclosing physical illness indicates emotional weakness is absolutely false,” added Smith.

If you suspect a loved one or family member is avoiding medical treatment for fear of appearing weak, Smith suggested sharing these findings with him. “It is better to confront denial than delay treatment. When people fear to share their illness with a physician, they deny themselves and their family and friends the benefits of recovery,” Smith said.

Himmelstein added, “Just encouraging a tough guy to have a regular physical or see the doctor when sick would help.”

Also, she added, finding a doctor and an office setting in which patients feel at ease is “incredibly important.”

More information

There’s more on men’s health at the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.

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Building Muscle Could Boost the Body’s Most Important Muscle

THURSDAY, April 28, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Having more muscle and less fat reduces the risk of early death in people with heart disease, a new study suggests.

Doctors should encourage patients to do resistance exercises as part of a healthy lifestyle, rather than emphasizing and monitoring weight loss, the study authors advised.

For the study, Dr. Preethi Srikanthan of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues analyzed data gathered from more than 6,400 Americans with heart disease.

The investigators found that people with higher amounts of muscle and lower levels of body fat were less likely to die of heart problems or any other causes than those in three other groups based on body composition. The groups were: low muscle/high fat; low muscle/low fat; or high muscle/high fat.

Because people with more muscle were more likely to have a high body mass index (BMI, a measurement based on height and weight), the findings could explain what’s called the “obesity paradox,” where people with a higher BMI have lower death rates, the researchers suggested.

The study results show the importance of maintaining muscle mass in order to reduce the risk of premature death, even in people with a higher heart risk, the study authors said in a university news release.

According to the American College of Sports Medicine, resistance training — also called strength training — can be done with common household products, for example, milk jugs filled with sand. Or, people can use traditional free weights and dumbbells, weight machines, elastic tubing or medicine balls. But consult your doctor before starting any exercise program, the experts say.

The findings were published this month in the American Journal of Cardiology.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more on heart failure.

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