First Washington News - We Do Spectacular General & News

December 16, 2022

Low carb, high fat diet may help manage weight, A1c

A cup of blueberries, two fried eggs in a plate and a cucumber salad placed on a wooden table counter. — Research suggests that a low carb, high fat diet is more beneficial for people with type 2 diabetes to help manage weight and glucose. Joscha Malburg/EyeEm/Getty Images

More than 462 million adults around the world have type 2 diabetes.
Although type 2 diabetes is not curable, the condition is sometimes reversible through medications and lifestyle changes, such as diet.
Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark say low carb, high fat diet can help people with type 2 diabetes lose weight and control glucose levels.

More than 462 million adults globally are currently living with type 2 diabetes. And over one million people die each year from diabetes.

While there is no cure for type 2 diabetes, the condition is sometimes reversible through a combination of medications and lifestyle changes, including diet.

Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark, found new evidence suggesting a low-carbohydrate, high fat, calorie-unrestricted diet helps people with type 2 diabetes lose weight and keep glucose levels under control better than a high-carbohydrate, low fat diet.

The study appears in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Of the two types of diabetes, type 2 diabetes is the most common — more than 95{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when a person’s body becomes insulin resistant and no longer responds to insulin correctly. The hormone insulin regulates the amount of glucose allowed into the body’s cells, giving them energy.

Unlike type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes happens through a combination of genetics and certain lifestyle factors, including obesity, age, sedentary lifestyle, and family history.

In the United States, research shows certain ethnic groups, including African American, Latinx, American Indian, and Alaska Native, are at a higher risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

Treatment for type 2 diabetes may include medications and lifestyle changes, including weight loss, exercise, and dietary changes.

For this study, researchers conducted a study with 165 people with type 2 diabetes. Participants were randomly assigned to follow either a low-carbohydrate, high fat diet or a high-carbohydrate, low fat diet for six months. Researchers also asked the participants to eat the same number of calories equal to the energy they burned each day.

Upon conclusion of the study, researchers found people on the low-carbohydrate, high fat diet lowered their hemoglobin A1c levels by 0.59{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} compared to those on the high-carbohydrate, low fat diet. And those on the low carb diet also lost more body fat and reduced their waist circumference compared to the high carb group.

“Diet is very important in the management of type 2 diabetes,” said Camilla Dalby Hansen, an MD and Ph.D. student at the Department of Clinical Research at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark, and the Department of Medical Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Odense University Hospital. Hansen is also the first author of this study.

“The patients have the possibility to control the diet themselves. This gives them a feeling of control and the feeling that they can do something themselves in the management of their disease,” Hansen told Medical News Today.

“We were very surprised to see that participants on the (low-carbohydrate, high-fat) diet improved their glycemic control by 9.5mmol/mol (0.88{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}) and lost 5.5 kg even though they were eating the same amount of calories as they were used to.

This will hopefully mean that long-term compliance will be more successful because patients will be full and do not have to starve.”

– Camilla Dalby Hansen

“We were very surprised to see that participants on the (low-carbohydrate, high-fat) diet improved their glycemic control by 9.5mmol/mol (0.88{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}) and lost 5.5 kg even though they were eating the same amount of calories as they were used to,” she told Medical News Today. “This will hopefully mean that long-term compliance will be more successful because patients will be full and do not have to starve.”

At the conclusion of the study, the researchers also found participants did not sustain the changes they experienced during the study once they went back to their typical eating patterns.

“This shows us that this diet approach needs to be considered as a long-term lifestyle choice and not only sustained for a short period of time,” Hansen said.

Lauren Pelehach Sepe, a clinical nutritionist at the Kellman Wellness Center in New York, agreed:

“It is important for people who are dealing with diabetes to implement lifelong diet and lifestyle changes. There is a significant amount of research out there to show that diet and lifestyle can often allow [people with type 2 diabetes] to control their blood sugar, even without medications. However, these changes need to be sustained.

Managing our health is a lifelong process — there are no short-term fixes.”

Upon reviewing this study, Sepe commented she was not surprised by the results as people with diabetes are often recommended a diet focused on low carbohydrate intake, as well as increased protein.

“When we consume carbohydrates, our body breaks them down and converts them into sugar molecules or glucose,” she explained. “This results in an increase in blood sugar, which stimulates the body to release insulin to facilitate the storage of glucose into the cells, where they can be used as a source of energy, as needed.”

“For diabetics, this process is not functioning properly, meaning they continue to maintain high circulating levels of blood sugar despite the release of insulin,” Sepe continued. “Therefore, lowering the intake of carbohydrates naturally helps to control blood sugar levels.”

In regards to the high fat portion of the low-carbohydrate, high fat diet some study participants were on, Sepe mentioned conventional research has only recently opened up to the idea of a higher fat intake is beneficial, particularly for diabetics.

December 16, 2022

California lowers solar energy incentives for homeowners

Help you save A Large amount Photo voltaic contractors put in LG Electronics solar panels on a household in Hayward, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Photos

The California General public Utilities Fee on Thursday handed a proposal that will cut down compensation provided to households for the surplus energy their rooftop solar panels lead to the electric grid.

Utilities and shopper groups have argued the incentive payments have unfairly favored wealthier buyers and harmed lousy and small-income homes. But solar organizations and renewable advocates have mentioned that lowering the compensation would gradual solar installations and hinder the state’s objectives to tackle local weather improve.

The proposal, which California utility regulators unveiled last thirty day period, will alter a web metering coverage by spending solar house owners for added electrical power at a decrease price, which is decided by the expense the utility would have to have to devote to purchase clean electricity from an alternative resource. The photo voltaic sector has reported the system would sum to a 75{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} cut in ordinary payment fees to consumers.

Present-day unanimous vote by the 5-member fee was monitored across the place, since California is broadly considered as a chief in the renewable energy buildout. The effects of today’s conclusion will probably extend beyond the condition and have implications for the solar sector nationwide, specially providers in the residential solar space like Sunrun, SunPower, Sunnova, and Tesla.

Additional than 1.5 million homes, corporations and other utility clients in California have rooftop solar panels. The utilities fee estimates that these installations can collectively produce 12 gigawatts of electric power.

The proposal would have no effects on existing rooftop photo voltaic shoppers and would preserve their present-day compensation rates, and would also persuade buyers to put in batteries with their solar panels, the fee mentioned.

Economical Thoroughly clean Energy For All, a nonprofit funded by California’s utilities, has argued that the rooftop solar system is out-of-date and that utilities have to go together the expenses of subsidies, producing greater bills for hundreds of thousands of prospects who will not put in solar, like these the very least in a position to fork out for energy fees.

However, photo voltaic businesses have argued that the present web metering program is required to spur men and women to select rooftop photo voltaic.

The variations to the state’s photo voltaic incentive plan could slash California’s solar market in half by 2024, in accordance to a report produced previously this calendar year from strength investigation firm Wood Mackenzie.

“This misguided choice, which undervalues solar’s a lot of positive aspects for all Californians, will dim the lights on the development of photo voltaic in the Golden Condition,” explained Laura Deehan, condition director for Setting California, following the vote.

Roger Lin, an attorney at the Heart for Organic Diversity’s electricity justice program, stated in a assertion that the commission “has taken a step backward by widening the divide between all those who can pay for solar and individuals who can not.”

“It really is an affront to lower-profits communities who are hit by the weather crisis initially and worst, and we are going to do every little thing we can to influence the commission to correct the deep flaws in its proposal,” Lin said.

California, which is grappling with wildfires and drought fueled by local climate modify, has a objective to changeover to 100{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} renewable strength by 2045.

Solar stock surge after California lessens its subsidy rollback

December 16, 2022

WARNER MUSIC GROUP ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH, AND INVESTMENT IN LEADING DIGITAL FASHION COMPANY, DRESSX

Collaboration Will Enable Admirers to Wear Electronic Style Traces Designed by WMG’s Roster of Artists

NEW YORK, Dec. 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Warner Tunes Group (Nasdaq: WMG) today declared a partnership with and expense in DRESSX, a electronic trend retailer and the greatest digital closet with a deep determination to sustainable manner. The initial-of-its-variety partnership will give a system for select WMG artists to style their have virtual fashion lines.

In the arrangement, artists will collaborate directly with DRESSX to structure and start 3D and AR digital garments that followers can collect and get pleasure from across Instagram, Snapchat, and other system partners. The deal will enable artists to unlock new profits streams, although building further retailers for followers to showcase their fandom across many digital worlds.

Oana Ruxandra, Chief Digital Officer & EVP, Enterprise Improvement, WMG claimed, “The illustration of our upcoming electronic selves will be as essential and, if you are measuring by sheer quantity of interactions, maybe extra important than how we stand for ourselves bodily. As our digital identities become exponentially a lot more robust and impactful, we are targeted on setting up partnerships that will allow WMG and our artists. With its leadership in wearables and sustainability, DRESSX is exactly the style of associate we need to have sprinting along with us as we construct for the upcoming.”

“We are very very pleased to associate with Warner Audio Group and their incredible artists to carry on constructing and scaling the DRESSX meta-closet vision for the foreseeable future. Digital style is a visual language for speaking and making bonds on the net, and at DRESSX we use technology to present the utility for electronic wearables making use of augmented actuality, equipment mastering, and blockchain. Electronic merch and swag from musicians will absolutely be a element of the digital wardrobes of supporters, and it is really terrific to see that extra and much more stakeholders feel in this new domain that is previously modifying the fashion field at a scale. Just about every day, we are receiving nearer to our purpose of giving a meta-closet to every human being in the world, creating fashion obtainable to everybody by way of innovation and tech,” commented Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modenova, co-founders of DRESSX.

Due to the fact the DRESSX launch in August 2020, the business has develop into the most significant system for electronic-only style, with extra than 3,000 digital products out there in the DRESSX library, and released the major AR style app on the industry. DRESSX has partnered with many primary tech, fashion, and way of living corporations, which include Meta, Roblox, Snapchat, Google, Coca-Cola, FARFETCH, and a lot more. The company’s experience in the electronic manner area cements its position amid WMG’s expanding amount of Internet3 collaborations.

DRESSX is fully commited to sustainable style, endorsing the electronic garment market place to give buyers with alternatives to showcase their model digitally. DRESSX fulfills its determination to sustainability by investing in science-based mostly analysis of the carbon footprint of its digital fashions. The corporation has pioneered the advancement of a carbon calculation methodology for electronic vogue and proposing patent, validated by The Carbon Accounting Business. Considering the fact that June 2021, DRESSX has been partnering with Stream Carbon to offset the carbon emission from all of its operational things to do, building the enterprise carbon neutral owing to offsets. To find out a lot more about DRESSX’s technique to sustainability and carbon footprint methodology click in this article.

Access accompanying photographs right here.

About Warner New music Team

With a legacy extending again above 200 many years, Warner Songs Group (WMG) currently delivers collectively artists, songwriters, and business people that are transferring leisure culture across the world. Operating in far more than 70 countries by a community of affiliates and licensees, WMG’s Recorded Music division includes renowned labels these kinds of as 300 Leisure, Asylum, Atlantic, Big Defeat, Canvasback, Elektra, Erato, Initially Night, Fueled by Ramen, Nonesuch, Parlophone, Reprise, Rhino, Roadrunner, Sire, Spinnin’, Warner Data, Warner Classics, and Warner Audio Nashville. WMG’s songs publishing arm, Warner Chappell Songs, has a catalog of more than 1 million copyrights spanning each and every musical genre, from the requirements of the Great American Songbook to the most significant hits of the 21st century. Warner Music Group is also property to ADA, the unbiased artist and label services organization – as properly as up coming gen artist products and services division WMX, which includes customer brand names these as Songkick, the live new music application EMP, the merchandise e-tailer UPROXX, the youth lifestyle desired destination and HipHopDX, the hip-hop audio news web page. In addition, WMG counts storytelling powerhouse Warner Music Enjoyment and social media content material creator IMGN between its quite a few brand names. Follow WMG on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

About DRESSX

DRESSX is a Metacloset of electronic-only outfits, NFT manner objects, and AR looks. A 12 months immediately after its launch, DRESSX turned the world’s greatest electronic vogue shop focusing on Gen Z and Millennials who demand from customers a new purchasing alternative – digital, sustainable, and economical. DRESSX electronic style was highlighted in Vogue Singapore, Vogue Small business, WWD, HighSnobiety, Forbes, Economic Situations and far more superior-profile media, with the addresses for L’Officiel Usa, L’Officiel Paris, L’Officiel Italy, Vogue Czechoslovakia,Vogue Singapore, Haute Dwelling, and a lot more. DRESSX has partnered with several main tech, manner, and life style businesses, which includes Meta, Roblox, Snapchat, Google, Coca-Cola, FARFETCH, and much more. The business was named one particular of the finalists of LVMH Innovation Award 2022 in the category 3D/Digital Merchandise Expertise & Metaverse. DRESSX is a feminine-led, female started metafashion organization. DRESSX major merchandise incorporate: internet site, NFT marketplace, and the DRESSX app. Abide by DRESSX on Instagram, Twitter, and be part of their Discord.

Media Contacts

For WMG
Steph Briffa
[email protected]

For DRESSX
Anastasiia Mala
[email protected]

Resource Warner New music Team Corp.

December 15, 2022

Fear-dampening mechanism may point to better treatments

person covering their eyes with their hands — Scientists are investigating irrespective of whether blocking serotonin in the mind could assist handle PTSD and anxiety ailments. Impression credit: Producciones Visualix/Stocksy.

Folks with write-up-traumatic anxiety problem (PTSD) stay with terrifying reminiscences of traumatic functions.
Psychotherapy is the key type of treatment supplied to folks with PTSD and other acute fears. Medicines may perhaps dietary supplement these treatment plans.
A new analyze in mice indicates that blocking serotonin receptors may possibly assist individuals unlearn fears.

A new analyze in mice performed by scientists at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany may perhaps supply a novel insight into how anxiety can be neutralized.

The review identifies a neurological pathway that could, in the future, aid people today with publish-traumatic tension problem (PTSD) and other fears unlearn the terror they associate with a past traumatic knowledge.

PTSD affects about 6 out of 100 people, and it is a response to a traumatizing experience of their very own, or one that they witnessed.

The new exploration zeroes in on serotonin, a neurotransmitter and hormone that sends messages through the entire body and amongst nerve cells in the mind.

Psychological and physiological conditions have been joined to abnormally substantial or reduced degrees of serotonin, and research suggests it is implicated in PTSD and anxiety issues.

The outcomes of the recent review look in Translational Psychiatry.

PTSD’s debilitating indications typically look in 3 months of a traumatic experience, but can be brought on a long time immediately after the occasion.

Individuals with PTSD may perhaps come across on their own reliving a trauma when they are actually harmless. They could also be frequented by terrifying feelings and desires. At the exact time, they might have issues remembering the information of their traumatic expertise.

As a result, a host of behavioral improvements are common with PTSD, which includes feeling on edge, staying simply startled, experiencing bursts of anger, and getting issue sleeping.

PTSD may perhaps result in emotions of negativity or guilt. Men and women with PTSD could unfairly blame other people for perceived failings, and eliminate fascination in pursuits they have previously relished.

Whilst PTSD stems from a one traumatic party, individuals who have knowledgeable recurring or prolonged trauma may have intricate PTSD.

In the analyze, researchers worked with knockout mice specifically bred to absence serotonin 2C receptors (5-HT2CRs) that are distributed commonly via the mind. Ordinary mice served as a manage team.

Just before trials commenced, mice gained injections with tracing dyes to allow for the authors of the review to detect brain spots of neurological activity soon after trials.

Scientists gave mice a 1-2nd electrical shock accompanied by an auditory tone frequently more than the system of a working day. By the upcoming working day, the mice demonstrated that they experienced learned to affiliate the tone with a shock, straight away freezing in anxiety upon hearing it even without the need of the tone.

Following repeated playings of the tone without a shock, the mice at some point acquired not to freeze when listening to the seem.

The mice without the 2C receptors unlearned their dread of the tone far more quickly than the command group. This suggested that the absence of serotonin receptors permitted them to a lot more very easily split the connection amongst the tone and their fear.

Healthcare News Nowadays spoke with Dr. Joseph Dunsmoor, assistant professor in the Section of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the College of Texas at Austin’s Dell Health care School about the worth of these experiments involving mice.

Dr. Dunsmoor was not associated in the analyze, and he cautioned that his feedback were being on PTSD procedure and investigate, in normal, somewhat than this examine in certain.

He explained to us that “[o]f all the products for any psychiatric ailment, I would say the animal styles of PTSD are some of the better ones since PTSD depends on getting some variety of occasion that occurs.”

“Obviously, when you get into humans, you are going to commence working with points like subjective emotions, outcomes on declarative memory, effects on our social cognition, items that animal designs have a harder time knowing. But when it comes to the pressure and dread aspect of it, they are really great styles,” he described.

After the second working day of trials, the researchers deeply anesthetized the mice, euthanized them, and froze and sliced their brains into cross-sections for evaluation.

Co-writer Dr. Sandra Süβ notes that two brain locations unexpectedly showed dye evidence of increased activity:

“In the knock-out mice, we initial located an amplified basal exercise in sure serotonin-making cells of the dorsal raphe nucleus. In a subsequent move, we showed that the absence of the receptor also alters neuronal activity in two subnuclei of the BNST [bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, part of the amygdala] which supports extinction learning.”

Whether or not the outcome lasts is an open up problem.

“What tends to occur is that offered some sort of upcoming stress, or plenty of time passes, the initial response tends to appear again, which Pavlov mentioned 100 decades in the past. That is called ‘spontaneous recovery’ or ‘fear renewal’,” Dr. Dunsmoor mentioned.

Amid the medication utilised in the therapy of PTSD along with psychotherapy there are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.

The analyze notes that extended-term use of SSRIs is affiliated with 2CR desensitization, suggesting an possibility for the outcome noticed in knockout mice to carry around into individuals.

“The discussion,” stated Dr. Dunsmoor, “is whether or not [SSRIs] must be a initial-line treatment or extra of a next-line therapy. Meta-analyses of what common SSRSs — like Zoloft or Paxil or Prozac — on their have with PTSD implies that they are not [first-line treatments].”

Drug-based therapies “on their own never appear to be to be greatly productive,” he reported, although no just one is familiar with particularly why. The study’s findings suggest that SSRIs might aid secondary understanding for people today with PTSD in conjunction with psychotherapy.

The first line of these types of cure, Dr. Dunsmoor spelled out, is exposure treatment, “the gold standard.” Continue to, reliving a traumatic function is challenging — even for a therapeutic goal — and not everyone tolerates it.

“It is efficient,” stated Dr. Dunsmoor, “but that does not signify it’s powerful for every person, and that does not signify it’s productive endlessly. It can get the job done for some men and women, but that’s an place of, you know, ‘how can we make it superior,’ like all sorts of mental wellness therapies.”

“But I would say, in conditions of other psychological wellbeing disorders, PTSD is certainly a person of the a lot more treatable ones.”

December 15, 2022

The Fed lifts rates by half a point, acknowledging that inflation is easing

Washington, DC
CNN
—

The Federal Reserve permitted a half-level desire charge hike on Wednesday, a smaller maximize than in latest months and an acknowledgment that inflation is last but not least easing.

The boost marks a change for the central bank immediately after an unparalleled calendar year that incorporates 7-straight amount hikes as portion of an intense marketing campaign to try and convey down the best inflation because the early 1980s.

Even though decrease than the 4 consecutive a few-quarter-level hikes authorized at the Fed’s preceding conferences, Wednesday’s fee hike is however 2 times the measurement of the central bank’s customary quarter-position boost and will very likely deepen the financial suffering for millions of American companies and homes by pushing up the cost of borrowing even additional.

Fed officers will enhance the fee that banking institutions cost each individual other for overnight borrowing to a range of 4.25-4.5{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}, the best since 2007.

The Fed also introduced its very predicted Summary of Economic Projections, which contains what is colloquially identified as the dot plot. Buyers spend shut consideration to these forecasts, which exhibit in which every single of its 19 leaders hope curiosity rates to go in the future, for clues about the route of fee hikes in the new year and further than.

The December projections showed a additional intense monetary coverage tightening path, with the median “dot” mounting to a new peak in federal fund prices of 5-5.25{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} up from 4.5-4.75{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} in September. That would signify Fed officers count on to raise premiums by half a per cent much more than they did 3 months back, when the plot was previous produced.

Policymakers also projected that PCE inflation, the Fed’s favored price tag gauge, would continue to be earlier mentioned its 2{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} goal right until at minimum 2025. Additional projections showed souring anticipations for the overall health of the US economic climate, with Fed officers now predicting that unemployment will rise to 4.6{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} by the conclude of 2023 and remain at that stage by way of 2024. Which is .2 share details better than the 4.4{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} fee they were being expecting in September and considerably bigger than the recent 3.7{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} fee.

GDP, a evaluate of economic output, is also projected to drop to .5{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} subsequent 12 months, down from 1.2{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} in September.

The forecast will probably stoke investors’ and economists’ dread that the US overall economy will endure a recession next yr. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stated very last thirty day period that there is even now a probability the financial state can prevent recession but claimed the odds are trim.

“To the extent we have to have to retain charges larger lengthier, which is heading to slim the route to a gentle landing,” he stated at an economic discussion board very last thirty day period.

Nonetheless, the overall economy has so much withstood the hikes. The occupation sector is healthy, wages are developing, People are expending and GDP is solid. Enterprise is also excellent: Corporations are mostly beating earnings expectations and reporting positive earnings success.

Fed Chair Powell is agenda to maintain a write-up-meeting push meeting at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday.

December 15, 2022

Edmunds Experts Forecast 14.8 Million New Vehicles Will Be Sold in New Year

Edmunds analysts highlight the top three trends they predict will shape the year ahead for the automotive industry

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Dec. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The car shopping experts at Edmunds expect pent-up consumer demand and rising inventory levels to support new vehicle sales, forecasting that 14.8 million new cars will be sold in 2023. The forecast, drawn from Edmunds data, represents a 7{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} increase from their estimate of 13.8 million new vehicle sales in 2022.

“2022 was a mixed bag for the entire automotive industry. Sales were severely dampened by limited inventory, but automakers and dealers were able to rely on a dichotomy of affluent car shoppers and individuals making necessity-based purchases to keep things afloat — and the vehicles that they could sell commanded some hefty price tags,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ executive director of insights. “Although inventory levels have been slowly picking up toward the end of the year and should help meet pent-up consumer demand through 2023, a number of headwinds such as rising interest rates, inflation and economic uncertainty are likely to hinder a speedy recovery.”