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Allergies and mental health: What is the link?

Allergies and mental health: What is the link?

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New research examines the impact of having an allergy on a person’s mental health. Tommaso Tuzj/Stocksy
  • A survey study conducted by Allergy UK, a non-profit organization in the United Kingdom, found that negative perceptions impacted the mental health of people with allergies and their caretakers.
  • Over one-third of respondents reported that people with allergies exaggerated their severity and lied about allergies to avoid foods.
  • People with allergies reported minimizing their condition, fearing judgment, avoiding social interactions, and impaired work performance.
  • Survey results highlighted the need for increased awareness of the mental health effects of misperceptions on people with allergies, Get Auto Repair.

Allergies commonly affect people worldwide and are caused by an overactive immune response to substances like food, mold, pollen, or dust.

While most people may experience mild to moderate allergic symptoms, some can have severe and life threatening reactions, such as swelling of the throat, known as anaphylaxis.

In addition to the physical symptoms, some studies have shown that allergies may also impact one’s emotional well-being.

 

A survey study conducted in the United States linked seasonal allergies with a 28{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} increased risk of mood disorder, 43{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} increased risk of anxiety disorders, and 38{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} increased risk of eating disorders (after adjusting for demographics and tobacco use).

Another study in Taiwan found that allergic disease correlated with a 66{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} increased risk of psychiatric disorders.

Similarly, a study in the U.K. found that allergic disease had strong associations with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and neuroticism and weaker associations with asthma, atopic dermatitis, and hayfever. However, the study did not find that allergies caused these conditions, Get Auto Repair.

To better understand the attitudes toward people with allergies and their psychological impact, Allergy UK, an advocacy group for people with allergies, conducted an online survey in June 2021.

The study findings have not been published yet but are on the Allergy UK Website.

The survey included 2,937 people with allergies and 1,085 people without allergies in the U.K. Researchers found that 60{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of respondents reported having allergies, and 79{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} knew someone with an allergy.

The top five most common allergies reported were hay fever (37{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}), asthma (17{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}), eczema (13{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}), drug allergy (8{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}), and food allergy (8{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}).

 

 

Over one-third of respondents had negative perceptions about people with allergies, 37{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of respondents reported that “people exaggerate the severity of their allergy,” and 35{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} felt “people fake their allergy to avoid certain foods.”

People with allergies reported various adverse effects on their mental health and quality of life, including:

  • the need to minimize their allergies for fear of judgment by friends, family, or employers (52{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809})
  • avoidance of social interactions (53{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809})
  • impaired work performance (44{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809})

Parents of children with allergies also reported adverse psychological effects on their children, with 40{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} experiencing feelings of isolation due to teasing and bullying by others. In addition, 54{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of parents reported feeling “very or extremely anxious” about their child experiencing an allergic reaction when dining out.

Carla Jones, CEO at Allergy UK, comments on the findings: “For many, the perception is that an allergy, like hay fever, is a minor and seasonal problem. However, this research […] has highlighted the impact that negative perceptions and misunderstandings have on our allergic community, Get Auto Repair.”

Helping people living with allergies and their families adjust to the emotional stress psychologically is essential.

Dr. Jeanne Herzog, a lifespan psychologist, in the webinar, Managing the Emotional Impact of Living with a Food Allergy, states, “It’s easy for anxiety to go from a little bit to too much. After all, there are so many uncertainties when you’re living with food allergies, and some of the factors are difficult to control, and for parents, the responsibility of keeping their children safe can be quite heavy. [This] can fuel anxiety.”

She discusses the importance of developing an emotional safety plan to help avoid or mitigate the impact of stress.

Dr. Herzog states, “One study found that kids saw more danger in the fact that other people don’t care than in the allergen itself. They believe they can protect themselves from the allergen, but they’re not so sure they can protect themselves from others who don’t care about food allergies.”

Bringing awareness through education may also help change attitudes surrounding allergies, resulting in better care standards and improving the quality of life for people with allergies.

Dr. Herzog states, “We need a knowledgeable and caring village, and we’re working on that.”

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The impact on physical and mental health

The impact on physical and mental health

People’s physical and mental health is influenced by a large and diverse array of factors. But how can the attitudes of other people affect individuals’ well-being? In this Special Feature, we examine the impact that microaggressions have on health.

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Microaggressions are an insidious form of discrimination. How do they impact health? Photo editing by Steve Kelly; image credit: kkgas/Stocksy.

Prof. Derald Wing Sue — a leading psychologist at Columbia University — and his collaborators give the definition of microaggressions as “the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.”

The origin of the term “microaggression” dates back to the 1970s, and was coined by African American Harvard University psychiatrist Chester Pierce, specifically in relation to race.

Since then it has expanded to include other marginalized groups including women, LGBTQIA+ people, religious minorities, people with disabilities, and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

As conceptualized by Prof. Sue and his colleagues, microaggressions can pertain to three distinct categories:

  • microassaults – the most overt form of microaggressions, which come in the form of slights and insults that can be verbal or behavioral
  • microinsults — which assert prejudiced stereotypes through insensitive comments that make presumptions about an individual’s intelligence, morality, or belonging to an in-group
  • microinvalidations — comments that have the effect of devaluing or denying the lived experience of marginalized people.

Microaggressions may be a result of conscious bias, but they can also reveal unconscious prejudices. Oftentimes a person may deliver a microaggression without consciously admitting that the attitude expressed by their words or actions is discriminatory.

Emerging research suggests that, like more explicit forms of discrimination, this covert type of discrimination has concrete negative impacts on the health of those at the receiving end.

Chronic exposure to microaggressions can have both a direct impact on health, and an indirect impact when it occurs within a system of healthcare.

When a person experiences stress, it can lead to physiological responses, including elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, and the secretion of certain hormones, such as cortisol. Discrimination is a social stressor and it acts on the body in the same way.

One impact of this increased stress response was revealed in a study on racial differences in sleep. African American participants who reported experiencing more discrimination achieved less deep slow-wave sleep — the deep state of sleep associated with rest.

Sleep is critical for the healthy physiological functioning of the body, including the immune system, hormone systems, and mental function.

Two separate 2009 analyses of existing research — one from the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, the other from the Psychological Bulletin — examined the link between perceived discrimination and a multitude of physical conditions.

They both concluded that discrimination was a stressor with a negative impact on health and morbidity, particularly hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

Although there is a growing body of scientific literature on the relationships between discrimination and physical health outcomes, more research is needed to show the true impact of different forms of discrimination and discriminatory aggression.

Discrimination is associated with an increased incidence of mental illness, violence, poverty, and inequities in quality of treatment and access to healthcare, all of which have their own impacts on health. Isolating the direct physical impact of microaggressions is challenging when there are so many co-factors at play.

This is compounded by data suggesting that discrimination increases the likelihood of individuals engaging in unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, drinking, or overeating, which may serve as an immediate stress-reducing strategy but are high-risk factors for disease in the long term.

Among the better-understood impacts of microaggressions are those on mental health.

A 2015 investigation into the relationship between microaggressions and suicidal thoughts focused on 405 students from racial and ethnic minorities at a large midwestern university. Participants scored the frequency with which they encountered different types of microaggressions alongside answering questions on their mental well-being.

The trend in the data showed that the more often the students experienced microaggressions, the higher the incidence of suicidal ideation for four out of their six categories of microaggressions.

This corroborated the findings of a study from the previous year across a dataset of 506 adults from various racial groups, which found that higher frequencies of racial microaggressions were a significant predictor of negative mental health amongst the participants, in particular depressive symptoms, anxiety, negative view of the world, and lack of behavioral control.

Microaggressions may often be unconscious, but they reveal underlying biases that can impact the treatment of individuals.

A successful relationship between patient and healthcare provider requires trust. When biases are revealed, that trust may be damaged, and the patient may develop a negative association with seeking medical care.

A 2015 study into the healthcare of American Indian patients with diabetes found that more than one in three of the study’s 218 participants had experienced racial microaggressions from their healthcare professionals.

Alongside this, they scored the patients’ depressive symptoms, the incidence of heart attacks, and hospitalizations in the past year. A significant positive correlation emerged between the number of microaggressions experienced and each of the study’s three measures of health and well-being.

For LGBTQIA+ people, one of the most common forms of microaggressions in healthcare is the assumption that people are heterosexual and cisgender.

It is well documented that these communities are at significantly higher risk of tobacco, alcohol and drug misuse, sexually transmitted diseases, psychological distress, and suicide as a result of a higher prevalence of discrimination, rejection, and violence.

If healthcare professionals make assumptions as to patients’ sexuality and gender, this may block the patients’ access to the appropriate health services. Patients may also seek medical attention less readily as a result.

The same trend occurs in mental healthcare settings, too. According to a 2014 study, over half of counseling clients from marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds reported that they had been subject to microaggressions from their therapists.

The perception of microaggressions negatively correlated to their satisfaction with their counseling and their relationship with their therapists.

To learn more about how these biases arise, Medical News Today spoke to Dr. Elinor Cleghorn, a scholar of medical humanities and author of the book Unwell Women, which chronicles the history of gender bias in healthcare from Ancient Greece through to present times.

“We have a tendency to think about medicine within the framework of science, which annexes it out to this place of impartiality and objectivity,” said Dr. Cleghorn. “In actual fact, the roots of medicine are embedded in society and culture, and because medicine is dealing with the most foundational matters of life and death it has, throughout its history, absorbed and reflected society’s ideas about who we are as people.”

“[Medicine] has really only become the science we understand it to be — an evidence-based science — over the last century […] [before that] we had centuries where practitioners of medicine had to rely on assumptions of who people were, what their bodies did and what they were for,” she explained.

Yet much of this status quo persists to this day, giving rise to systematic discrimination in healthcare settings.

“It made sense to Ancient Greeks that women existed [only] to procreate […] that was ‘science’ to them, it was irrefutable. You begin to create a medical discourse around women’s bodies centered around these presumed facts […] that everything in their health pivoted around their reproductive life,” noted Dr. Cleghorn.

“This has been reiterated and reiterated across the centuries because medicine has always been dominated by male practitioners who have tended, in the most part, to uphold these gender divisions,” she pointed out.

She went on to describe how this historic context may manifest in microaggressions in a healthcare setting in the present day:

“[Microaggressions] can take so many forms, and they’re very intersectional. The microaggressions that [one] might experience as an educated white woman may derive from a historical precedent that those women who worry about their pains must be ‘hysterical’ […] whereas for a woman of color, the perception of her pain carries the burden of [a] different historical context, insofar as she might experience racialized microaggressions emerging through.”

“The majority of doctors, if called out on this, would say ‘of course I don’t believe that Black women are invulnerable to pain,’ but those attitudes have shaped [medical] culture. It’s there because it’s gone unchecked, because the mold in which the science has been forged has not been looked at and remade,” she emphasized.

The Institute of Medicine agrees that implicit bias and stereotyping may play a role in the health inequities observed among marginalized groups, and suggests that one strategy to reduce their impact is the recruitment of more healthcare professionals from underrepresented communities.

As with any form of unconscious bias, tackling microaggressions requires critical self-reflection. Training, which increases awareness of one’s own biases, and promotes inter-group contact can be an effective tool in improving patient care.

Providing such training also increases the likelihood of workers feeling able to be open about their own sexuality and gender identity amongst their colleagues, further increasing the opportunity for inter-group contact.

Asked what she felt would help, Dr. Cleghorn cited the value of research:

“One step is using testimonies, voices and experiences of women and other marginalized people in a meaningful research context […] In terms of this issue being studied from a sociological perspective, it’s really new. What we’ve had since the early 2000s are these groundbreaking studies like The Girl Who Cried Pain, which showed that statistically women are much more likely to be prescribed a sedative or an antidepressant when they report chronic pain, whereas men are more likely to be prescribed an analgesic, that women are much more likely to have the cause of pain diagnosed as psychological or emotional, whereas men, [as] physical.”

“Studies [like this] exposed how deep-rooted the issue is, but they also showed how it can be studied! Quite often when we talk about things like microaggressions […] it feels amorphous. To know there are mechanisms by which we can look at these issues critically is really important,” she pointed out.

“That study [The Girl Who Cried Pain] was a combination of patient testimonies, but also things like admission records. It was a real qualitative and quantitative exploration. The more we look at this issue as something that can be studied objectively the more we can move towards undoing it,” concluded Dr. Cleghorn.

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‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens

‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens

How the reporter Matt Richtel spoke to adolescents and dad and mom for this sequence

In mid-April, I was talking to the mother of a suicidal teen whose struggles I’ve been carefully adhering to. I requested how her daughter was doing.

Not perfectly, the mother mentioned: “If we cannot come across something drastic to aid this kid, this kid will not be listed here extensive-time period.” She started off to cry. “It’s out of our palms, it’s out of our manage,” she reported. “We’re making an attempt all the things.”

She additional: “It’s like waiting around for the stop.”

Above nearly 18 months of reporting, I obtained to know a lot of adolescents and their people and interviewed dozens of health professionals, therapists and experts in the science of adolescence. I read wrenching tales of suffering and uncertainty. From the outset, my editors and I talked over how best to handle the identities of people today in crisis.

The Moments sets a substantial bar for granting sources anonymity our stylebook phone calls it “a very last resort” for cases where by important information cannot be revealed any other way. Normally, the resources could face a menace to their profession or even their security, regardless of whether from a vindictive manager or a hostile governing administration.

In this case, the need to have for anonymity had a different vital: to shield the privateness of youthful, vulnerable adolescents. They have self-harmed and tried suicide, and some have threatened to try out yet again. In recounting their stories, we experienced to be conscious that our to start with duty was to their security.

If The Moments posted the names of these adolescents, they could be conveniently determined several years later on. Would that harm their work alternatives? Would a teenager — a lawful minor — later regret obtaining exposed his or her id during a time period of discomfort and battle? Would observing the story revealed amplify ongoing crises?

As a consequence, some young adults are identified by initially preliminary only some of their mothers and fathers are discovered by initially name or original. Above months, I obtained to know M, J and C, and in Kentucky, I came to know battling adolescents I recognized only by their ages, 12, 13 and 15. In some stories, we did not publish exactly exactly where the families lived.

Every person I interviewed gave their personal consent, and mom and dad had been ordinarily current for the interviews with their adolescents. On a couple of situations, a mother or father provided to leave the space, or an adolescent requested for privacy and the mother or father agreed.

In these content, I listened to grief, confusion and a desperate lookup for solutions. The voices of adolescents and their dad and mom, whilst shielded by anonymity, deepen an comprehending of this mental wellbeing crisis.

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Exercise may protect brain health by keeping insulin, BMI levels low

Exercise may protect brain health by keeping insulin, BMI levels low

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How does exercise protect brain health? New research sheds light. Suhaimi Abdullah/NurPhoto via Getty Images
  • Existing studies show that exercise helps protect brain cells through mechanisms that researchers do not yet fully understand.
  • Researchers know that exercise increases brain glucose metabolism, which correlates with improved brain function.
  • Studies show that exercise affects insulin resistance and has a complex relationship with body mass index (BMI) levels.
  • A new study suggests that exercise plays a role in maintaining insulin and BMI levels, which may help stave off dementia by protecting gray matter volume in the brain.

A new study investigates the mechanisms involved in the relationship between exercise and brain health.

Previous research had shown that larger gray matter volume can help protect against dementia by improving brain function.

The new study shows that insulin resistance and BMI mediate the relationship between larger and smaller brain gray matter volumes (the part of the brain involved in processing information).

The research is published in the April 2022 online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The corresponding author of the study was Dr. Geraldine Poisnel, of the Inserm Regional Research Center, in Caen, Normandy, France.

The study involved 134 people with an average age of 69 who had no memory problems. The participants filled out a physical activity survey covering the past 12 months. They also had brain scans to measure glucose metabolism and brain volume.

The metabolism of glucose in the brain provides fuel for the brain by generating adenosine 5′-triphosphate (ATP) — a key molecule for maintaining the health of neurons and other cells. ATP is also key for generating neurotransmitters. Reduced glucose metabolism in the brain can be seen in people with dementia.

Gray matter development peaks at age 2–3 years. It begins to decrease afterward in some areas of the brain, but the density of the gray matter increases. From an evolutionary perspective, the higher processing ability of the human brain and its development are due to this increase in density.

In some studies, larger total brain volume, estimated by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), has a weak correlation with higher intelligence in men and a very weak correlation in women with the ability to do well in intelligence tests.

In contrast, brain tissue deterioration and loss of volume is a significant contributor to lower cognitive ability later in life.

In the new study, researchers included 134 people with an average age of 69 who had no memory problems. The participants filled out a physical activity survey covering the past 12 months. They also had brain scans to measure glucose metabolism and brain volume.

In the new study, researchers gathered formation on cardiovascular risk factors including BMI and insulin levels, as well as cholesterol, blood pressure, and other factors.

The researchers examined the relationship between insulin and cardiovascular disease. The metabolic abnormalities that insulin causes raise the risk of cardiovascular complications, which in turn affect brain function.

Researchers found that insulin and BMI levels did not affect the metabolism of glucose in the brain.

The research demonstrated that the amount of amyloid plaque in the brain that contributes to Alzheimer’s Disease was not affected by exercise.

Medical News Today contacted Dr. Raeanne Moore, associate adjunct professor of psychiatry at UCSD in La Jolla, CA.

Dr. Moore, who was not involved in the study, was asked about the study results. She shared with MNT:

“This study adds to the growing body of research on the positive benefits of staying active on brain health, especially as we age.”

“[T]here is an urgent need to identify markers of cognitive decline,” added Dr. Moore. “Decreasing insulin levels and losing weight are modifiable factors that can be improved with a healthy diet and exercise.”

She added, “It was not surprising that higher physical activity was not associated with how much amyloid plaque people had in their brains. There is growing evidence that vascular risk factors on cognitive function are mediated by the amount of tau pathology in the brain and not an amyloid burden.”

MNT also spoke with Dr. Sheldon Zablow, assistant professor of medicine at University of California San Diego Medical School in La Jolla, CA. Dr. Zablow shared his comments about this study:

“Exercise has often been called food for the brain with many studies showing the benefit of exercise for improving brain health and reducing the risk of dementia.”

“This current research study states that physical activity improves cognitive brain function by reducing BMI and improving insulin metabolism. Improvement in weight control can limit the rate of brain volume loss, a known risk factor for dementia.”

“This study will help physicians reinforce the importance of regular exercise in reducing BMI as a low-cost means of limiting cognitive decline.”

– Dr. Zablow

Dr. Moore’s final remarks were, “The literature clearly demonstrates that cardiovascular risk factors are associated with cognitive decline and risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.”

“Studies investigating subtle brain changes prior to the development of dementia are critical to optimizing brain health and staving off cognitive decline.”

“Strengths of this study include a sample of cognitively normal older adults and the use of multimodal imaging methods to explore the role of CVD risk factors in the association between physical activity and neuroimaging biomarkers,” said Dr. Moore.

“[T]his methodology can move the field forward by helping to identify important markers of risk for cognitive decline.”

“A limitation to the study was the use of a self-report of physical activity […] which the authors acknowledged as a limitation. Self-report of physical activity is prone to retrospective recall bias, and objective tools to measure physical activity, such as fitness trackers, are more accurate.”

“These findings that insulin and BMI fully mediated the relationship between physical activity and whole-brain gray matter volume — and specifically hippocampal gray matter volume — provide further evidence that targeting these modifiable CVD risk factors could improve brain health.”

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Climate change: The impact on health

Climate change: The impact on health

The consensus among scientists is that we are in an era of global heating and extreme weather events, primarily due to the devastating effects of human action on the environment. Why are researchers concerned, and what are the implications for health?

The Lancet Countdown team is a group of over 120 leading experts on climate, public health, economy, and political science — among others — who have committed to monitoring climate change, particularly its impact on global health.

Since 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement, the experts affiliated with the Lancet Countdown commission have published yearly reports assessing this situation and keeping signatory governments and decision-makers accountable for the commitments they have taken on following the Agreement.

The latest report, which appeared in The Lancet in October 2021, records “deepening inequities” across all regions as global heating remains a concern. The report discusses the impact of climate change in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it emphasizes the concern caused by extreme heat events and related natural disasters that have occurred over the past 2 years.

Among the issues outlined in the Lancet Countdown report 2021, there is the impact of climate change on the livelihood of communities around the world, its direct and indirect effect on mental and physical health, and the way in which it contributes to the spread of infectious diseases.

These findings largely coincide with those outlined by another set of landmark reports on climate change — those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

According to the IPCC 2022 reports, at present, extreme weather events caused by human action are surpassing the resilience of some ecological and human systems, sometimes with irreversible effects.

The reports show that weather extremes related to climate change have affected the productivity of various food sectors — including agricultural, forestry, and fishery sectors — around the world, thus exacerbating food insecurity.

They also emphasize the impact of climate change on mental health, and the ways in which it contributes to the spread of vector-borne communicable diseases.

In our latest installment of the In Conversation podcast, we discuss these aspects at length with two key experts. One of them is Prof. David Pencheon, honorary professor of health and sustainable development at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and founder of the Sustainable Development Unit for National Health Services England and Public Health England.

Our other interviewee is Dr. Marina Romanello, a research fellow at the University College London Institute for Global Health, research director of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, and one of the co-authors of the latest Lancet Countdown reports.

You can listen to our podcast in full below, or on your preferred streaming platform.

According to the Lancet Countdown report 2021, “[t]he world is now 1.2 [degrees Celsius] warmer than in the pre-industrial period (1850–1900),” with the past few years recorded as the hottest yet — 2016 has seen the highest levels of heat around the world.

The IPCC reports 2022 record the current global heat level as even higher, placing it at 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter compared with the pre-industrial period.

According to data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), most of the global heating has occurred abruptly over the past 40 years as a result of human activity that has led to an increase in greenhouse gas levels.

“[G]reenhouse gases that have been accumulating in the atmosphere due to human activity are gases like carbon dioxide [and] methane. And what these gases do is [that they] basically absorb the heat, and they don’t allow heat that comes from the Sun into the Earth [to] be reflected back into space,” Dr. Romanello explained.

“So what happens [as a result] is that, as heat from the Sun reaches the Earth, they act like a blanket, they trap the heat inside the Earth’s atmosphere, and that makes the temperatures go up. And that is part of what climate change is, because that generates cascading effects in terms of increasing [the] temperatures of the water. That alters hydrological cycles and generates other impacts on the climate [and] on our environment that add to the whole combo that we call ‘climate change’.”

– Dr. Marina Romanello

But what does this mean for health? For one, climate change puts in motion a complex “domino effect” that ultimately impacts people’s livelihoods, their access to food security, and to clean water, all of which are crucial to human health.

One example is that of melting glaciers. Research published in Nature in 2021 confirms that glaciers, melting due to the steady rise in global temperatures, have driven approximately 21{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the rise in sea levels over the previous 20 years.

Global heating also leads to marine heatwaves, which in conjunction with the rise in sea levels impact marine ecosystems. Such effects can alter fishing practices and reduce the availability of marine resources for coastal communities.

Moreover, rising sea levels also increase the risk of catastrophic floods that endanger the lives of those residing in coastal areas.

The IPCC reports 2022 also emphasize the ways in which global heating has impacted agricultural productivity over the past 50 years, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, which were already struggling with food insecurity. According to IPCC data:

“Crop yields are compromised by surface ozone. Methane emissions have negatively impacted crop yields by increasing temperatures and surface ozone concentrations. Warming is negatively affecting crop and grassland quality and harvest stability. Warmer and drier conditions have increased tree mortality and forest disturbances in many temperate and boreal biomes, negatively impacting provisioning services.”

Dr. Marinello also stressed the impact of climate change on water and food security, noting that the people who are likely to be most affected are those who are already facing these issues in the first place.

“I think that one of the things that we get more worried about when we think about climate change is precisely food and water insecurity, especially because the most vulnerable in the world are at such increased level of risk from climate change that [it] adds on top of their already pretty frail food and water systems,” she told us.

“We’re seeing, on the one hand, changed precipitation patterns with increased floodings, increased droughts in different areas, we see extreme weather events that also lead to crop failure, […] all of that undermining not only crop productivity, but also crop supply chains and food supply chains,” she noted.

“And on the other hand, with the extreme heat exposure, we’re already seeing that that starts undermining crop productivity directly as well by changing the maturation times of different crops. So that also is posing limits on […] food productivity,” stressed Dr. Romanello.

But climate change, particularly extreme heat and extreme weather events, can have a more direct impact on the human body, sometimes in surprising ways.

A recent study from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed that more and more people are getting hospitalized with hyponatremia — abnormally low sodium levels — due to high outdoor temperatures.

“Oversimplified, hyponatremia can be the result of sodium deficiency (low intake or high losses) or excess water,” study co-author Dr. Jakob Skov told Medical News Today.

“[T]here are two plausible explanations for heat-related hyponatremia — salt loss from sweating resulting in a sodium deficit or excessive hydration due to an exaggerated fear of dehydration,” he explained.

There is also some evidence that temperature variations might influence the way in which the immune system reacts to pathogens, such as viruses. For example, a study that appeared in PNAS in 2019 looked at how efficiently the immune systems of mice reacted to influenza viruses under different temperature conditions.

The researchers found that mice that they had exposed to high ambient temperatures — of 36 degrees Celsius (96.8 degrees Fahrenheit) — had a dampened immune response to the influenza virus.

Moreover, as Prof. Pencheon and Dr. Romanello told us, heating and sudden temperature variations are also linked to other health risks. One unexpected effect might be on digestive health, as Dr. Romanello observed.

“[E]xtreme heat exposure [increases] the permeability of the digestive barriers, and therefore […] the susceptibility […] [to] infections through the digestive system,” she told us.

She also noted that “there’s a link between heat exposure and kidney disease, particularly in outdoor workers, in people working in the fields.”

“And there’s also some evidence of neurological disease being exacerbated by extreme heat exposure, like for example, [in] people that have seizures or other neurological problems,” she added.

One systematic review from August 2021 indeed showed that there was a link between increasing ambient temperatures and a worsening of symptoms of neurological conditions, from Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s to epilepsy and migraine.

The review analyzed no fewer than 84 studies looking at climate change and neurological health, and it concluded that global heating may indeed contribute to worsening symptoms, a higher number of hospitalizations, and a higher risk of death related to these conditions.

Another particularly concerning issue in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is the effect that climate change has on the spread of infectious diseases.

The Lancet Countdown 2021 report emphasizes that “the changing environmental conditions are also increasing the suitability for the transmission of many water-borne, air-borne, food-borne, and vector-borne pathogens,” undermining the efforts of medical scientists and public health organizations to mitigate this threat.

According to the Lancet Countdown report, some of the diseases whose transmissibility has increased due to climate change-related factors include malaria and diseases caused by arboviruses like dengue, Zika, and chikungunya. All these are vector-borne diseases.

Research has shown that climate change affects the environment where pathogen-carrying vectors — such as insects, particularly mosquitoes — live, impacting their migration and life cycle patterns. This can lead to the vectors carrying pathogens to different regions than the ones they initially inhabited, for example.

Climate change can also influence how long pathogen-carrying vectors survive, and it can impact the incubation period of certain viruses through temperature fluctuations.

“One of the most cited examples of how infectious diseases are changing [is] in so-called arthropod-borne diseases. These are diseases that are spread by insects [like] mosquitoes […], and of course, a lot of these insects are exquisitely sensitive to which ecosystems they can survive in,” Prof. Pencheon told us.

Because of this, he explained, malaria and other transmissible disease are spreading faster and farther around the world.

There are fears that, even as we are still navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, more epidemics — or even other pandemics — may soon arise, and climate change will, at least in part, be to blame.

In November 2021, Australian Academy of Science Fellow Prof. Edward Holmes expressed his worry that climate change will be responsible for the next pandemic:

“[Pandemics are] going to happen more and a key driver of this is climate change. As climates change animals will change their distribution; they’ll probably group together more allowing viruses to jump more easily between them. With more humans living closer to wildlife, this opens the gate for potentially deadly viruses to then jump to human hosts.”

It is increasingly clear that human health and the health of our global environments are crucially interconnected, and that we cannot have one without the other.

Yet, the Lancet Commission 2021 report found governments and decision-makers lacking in their efforts to stop climate change and mitigate its negative impacts.

“Governments with the fiscal capacity have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with massive spending packages, to cushion the impacts of the crisis and start to bring about economic recovery. But […] the response to climate change, and commensurate investment, remains inadequate,” it concludes.

“With government leaders more engaged with the health dimensions of climate change than ever before, countries across the globe should pursue low-carbon economic recovery pathways, implementing policies that reduce inequities and improve human health,” its authors advise.

And there are also smaller-scale steps that organizations and health services can take to pull their weight in terms of becoming more eco-friendly, according to Prof. Pencheon and Dr. Romanello.

“One of the things [health systems should do] is to realize that health systems are big medical-industrial complexes, and they are themselves part of the problem. Health services are essentially rescue services, […] really. So we’ve got to get our own house in order,” said Prof. Pencheon.

According to him, health services could help set the tone in terms of how we address the climate crisis, and how we understand its effect on public health.

“[I] f we treat climate change as a health issue, and not just as an environmental issue, it makes it much more immediate to everybody.”

– Prof. David Pencheon

Dr. Romanello agreed. “It is fundamentally a health crisis that we have [on] our hands,” she emphasized, explaining that “much of what we talk about when we talk about climate change action [and] climate change mitigation has to do with healthier lifestyles, with reducing the burden of disease through more physical activity, through healthier, more plant-based diets, through reduced exposure to air pollution and other environmental determinants that damage our health.”

“[B]y increasing communication from the health system, by promoting healthier lifestyles, we on the one hand promote behavior shifts that determine low-carbon transitions and facilitate those low-carbon transitions. And on the other hand, we reduce the burden of disease, we reduce the pressure on the NHS, we reduce the carbon footprint that comes from the health systems which we saw during the [COVID-19] pandemic […] [It] is fundamental that we do shift our attention towards what we need to be doing to protect our health, to deliver those healthcare benefits, and to deliver healthier futures as well.”

– Dr. Marina Romanello

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Atopic dermatitis and mental health: Is there a link?

Atopic dermatitis and mental health: Is there a link?

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A the latest critique seems to be at links concerning eczema and mental well being. María Soledad Kubat/Stocksy,Picture, Stocksy
  • A evaluation of evidence to date indicates that eczema is involved with a 63{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} enhanced threat of despair or stress and anxiety.
  • Attainable explanations for the improved pitfalls involve social isolation and disrupted slumber as a outcome of itching.
  • There may possibly also be physiological hyperlinks amongst the 3 ailments, by means of disruptions in hormones, the immune technique, and anxious procedure.
  • Treatment plans can support to relieve each eczema and its involved mental overall health problems.

Eczema is an inflammatory skin affliction that leads to patches of dry, scaly, itchy pores and skin that can crack. It is the most typical sort of atopic dermatitis.

According to the Countrywide Eczema Affiliation, 31.6 million men and women in the United States have some sort of eczema, which is about 10{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of the population.

They observe that the prevalence of atopic dermatitis amid small children in the U.S. has improved from 8{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} in 1997 to close to 12{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809}.

Lots of experiments have observed that eczema will increase the danger of panic and depression, but estimates of the size of the threat have a tendency to range extensively.

A critique of the ideal accessible proof has now located that eczema is associated with a 63{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} amplified likelihood of developing either depression or panic.

When the scientists analyzed these two mental well being ailments independently, they discovered that eczema was connected with a 64{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} elevated possibility of depression, and a 68{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} improved possibility of anxiety.

To make their estimates, they pooled information from 20 studies that provided a total of 141,910 men and women with eczema and 4,736,222 controls who did not have the problem.

The researchers, from the Sixth Affiliated Healthcare facility of Kunming Healthcare College in Yuxi, Yunnan, China, have printed their outcomes in PLOS One particular.

The authors speculate that itching, disruptions to slumber, and social isolation may raise an individual’s’ hazard of despair or stress.

“Social isolation and stigmatization can surely manifest as lots of clients practical experience their dermatitis on spots of their bodies that are public such as the confront, neck, and arms,” mentioned Beth Goldstein, a skin doctor at Central Dermatology Centre, and co-founder of Get Mr., who was not involved in the new analysis.

“Intimate relationships can also be very difficult to navigate,” she explained to Health-related News Now.

“It is exceptionally important to handle the mental health element of eczema since the pressure can trigger flare-ups or worsen present symptoms,” stated Vivian Shi, MD, a dermatologist at the University of Arkansas for Professional medical Sciences in Tiny Rock, AR, who serves on the pro panel of the National Eczema Association.

“Treating the psychological wellness element of eczema together with the bodily indications is critical to increase remedy advantages,” she included.

The authors of the new evaluation emphasize that the physiological mechanisms that url eczema and mental wellness remain unclear.

But they take note some fascinating reports that suggest there may perhaps be shared physiological leads to, this sort of as oxidative stress and irritation.

They also cite research in a mouse product of eczema, which uncovered that the animals displayed stress and depression-like behaviors. The researchers at the rear of this review confirmed that the behaviors have been associated with changes in parts of their brains concerned in processing reward.

One more examine identified that the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) minimized signs or symptoms of atopic dermatitis in mice and relieved their nervousness-like indications at the same time.

Fluoxetine appeared to suppress both of those psychological tension and inflammatory responses.

In human beings, scientific trials demonstrated that a drug termed dupilumab, which inhibits immune signaling molecules, not only enhances eczema but also cuts down stress and anxiety or melancholy.

There may possibly be a cycle of psychological strain, elevated swelling, and pores and skin flare-ups in individuals with eczema.

The Countrywide Eczema Association claims hormonal disruptions affiliated with atopic dermatitis can have an affect on the nervous and immune methods, and pores and skin cells on their own. This improves swelling and disrupts the skin’s barrier functionality.

At the exact same time, psychological anxiety can inhibit pores and skin repair service.

The organization claims folks with atopic dermatitis, particularly young children and young people, can confront stigmatization by their friends.

Pressure and stress and anxiety can improve the manufacturing of inflammatory molecules this sort of as histamines, which in switch brings about itching. Scratching may perhaps then damage the pores and skin and exacerbate irritation.

In a survey by the Countrywide Eczema Society in the United Kingdom, 74{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of people noted that eczema experienced a destructive effects on their psychological health, and 66{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} mentioned it led to emotions of loneliness and social isolation.

Less than half of these folks explained they had been offered expert psychological aid to assistance manage these troubles.

Young children with eczema are specially vulnerable to stigmatization, social isolation, and problems with self-esteem.

“It’s critical that you talk to men and women about your skin if you are in fact not emotion also terrific, if you are not in the best temper,” mentioned Daniel, a teenager with eczema.

“It’s definitely significant that you converse to men and women mainly because they need to have to know that you’re not emotion wonderful,” he claimed in a movie about eczema and mental health and fitness from the National Health Company (NHS) in the U.K.

“If you encompass your self with good individuals then you are under no circumstances heading to listen to a undesirable comment, you are normally going to have individuals searching out for you,” he reported.

In addition to asking many others for help, the Nationwide Eczema Association recommends trying to keep a journal and stress-relief tactics such as strolling, mindfulness, and yoga.