It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, March 07, 2023
Are you chasing your dreams or running from your fears?
A new Edith Cowan University (ECU) study, the first of its kind, has shown that when it comes to pursuing personal goals and protecting your mental wellbeing it pays to understand your underlying motives
A new Edith Cowan University (ECU) study, the first of its kind, has shown that when it comes to pursuing personal goals and protecting your mental wellbeing it pays to understand your underlying motives.
ECU researchers Bridget Robson and Professor Joanne Dickson surveyed 210 participants to investigate the relationship between underlying goal motives, emotion regulation, and anxiety and depression.
The research examined two types of motives that underpin personal goal pursuit - ‘avoidance-oriented’ (to avoid threatening or feared outcomes), and ‘approach-oriented’ (to strive toward desirable and pleasant outcomes.)
It found that those who pursue goals with underlying motives that were fear based (avoidance), were more likely to experience emotion regulation difficulties, which in turn increased symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Awareness is key
Professor Dickson said personal awareness of what drives us to achieve the things that matter is a critical step in protecting mental health.
“It’s also important to understand that an approach-oriented motive may underpin an avoidance goal, and vice versa,” she said.
“For example, an underlying avoidance motive, to avoid social rejection, may stimulate adoption of the approach goal behaviour, to appear sociable and talk to several people at a party.”
“Or, alternatively, an approach goal to do well in an exam may be driven by the motive to avoid feeling a failure or upsetting one’s parents.”
"Having awareness of underlying motives that drive personal goals, potentially gives people an opportunity to reflect and to create choices, such as adapting or reframing personal goals, motives or thinking, if necessary.”
Reframing avoidance motives
Researcher Bridget Robson said while avoidance may be beneficial in the short term, for example, getting out of the way of imminent physical danger – such as a flood, engaging in avoidance more long-term is associated with increased anxiety.
“Avoidance motivation typically increases negative emotions, such as fear and anxiety when the threatening scenario seems imminent,” she said.
“Reframing avoidance motives may be a useful strategy in protecting against difficulties in emotional regulation and anxiety.
“For example, fear of failing an exam, might be reframed as striving towards passing.”
Professor Dickson said this study furthers an understanding of the nature of depression and anxiety from both a motivation and emotion regulation perspective.
“This is the first study to explore underlying approach and avoidance motivations and emotion regulation difficulties in relation to depression and anxiety,” she said.
“Although we found avoidance motives increased emotion regulation difficulties which in turn exacerbated depression and anxiety, approach motives did not lead to emotion regulation difficulties or depression and anxiety, suggesting that approach motives that drive personal goal pursuit seem to play a protective role in maintaining mental wellbeing.”
The findings have implications for self-management and ongoing therapy developments, as well as mental health promotion programs.
Goal motives in depression and anxiety: the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties
HIBISCUS
Hardy health plant a hero ingredient to help manage obesity
Antioxidants in the roselle plant have anti-obesity properties that could help in food alternatives to current weight management medications, according to new research
IMAGE: SCIENTISTS BENU ADHIKARI, THILINI THRIMAWITHANA AND MANISHA SINGH LOOKING AT ROSELLE SAMPLES WHILE SMILING.view more
CREDIT: RMIT UNIVERSITY
Antioxidants in the roselle plant have anti-obesity properties that could help in food alternatives to current weight management medications, according to new research.
The RMIT study, led by PhD candidate Manisha Singh, investigated at how antioxidant compounds (phenolic extracts) and organic acid (hydroxycitric acid) found in the hardy roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) could inhibit the formation of fat cells.
When the body has an excess of fat intake, fat can be deposited in the cell, which turns them into fat cells called adipocytes.
Adipocytes are vital for regulating the body’s energy and sugar levels. However, when energy intake exceeds expenditure, it can cause the fat cells to grow in both size and number, contributing to obesity.
Human stem cells were separately treated with phenolic extracts and hydroxycitric acid before they were turned into fat cells.
While cells treated with hydroxycitric acid showed no change in the fat content of the adipocytes, cells treated with phenolic extracts had 95% less fat as compared to control cells.
Singh’s research is the first of its kind to use human fat cells to test the impacts of phenolic extracts and hydroxycitric acid from roselle.
Singh’s PhD supervisor Professor Benu Adhikari, from RMIT’s Food Research and Innovation Centre, said the results of the study could impact how we approach obesity management.
Current methods of obesity management focus on lifestyle changes and medication.
While medication is effective, they can also have negative side effects such as high blood pressure or impact the kidney and liver.
“The phenolic extracts from the roselle could help create a health food product that is effective in interfering with the formation of fat cells, but also bypass the bad side effects of some medications,” Adhikari said.
A natural enzyme blocker
Senior Lecturer Dr Thilini Thrimawithana, from the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, said there is a growing interest in researching how antioxidant-rich compounds, called polyphenols, could one day help manage diseases like obesity to avoid side effects of medications such as Orlistat and Liraglutide.
Polyphenols are found in food sources such as vegetables and fruits. When consumed, antioxidants remove the oxidation that forms in our bodies, which can help slow down aging and prevent diseases.
Singh’s research also found polyphenols in the roselle had similar digestive enzyme-inhibiting properties as some obesity management medications.
The polyphenols inhibit the digestive enzyme called lipase. This enzyme helps break down fats into small fractions so they are absorbed by the body through the intestine. The excess fats are turned into fat cells.
By inhibiting the lipase enzyme, the fat cannot be absorbed so it is passed through the colon as waste.
“Because these polyphenolic compounds are plant-derived and can be consumed, there should be fewer or no side effects,” Singh said.
Next steps
Adhikari, a leading food researcher whose interest began as a farmer back in Nepal, predicts the roselle will play a bigger role in Australia's health food industry.
“Australia has the perfect climate for farming the roselle. The plant is hardy, disease resistant and it doesn’t need a lot of space or water to grow,” he said.
The team plans to encapsulate the phenolic extracts for use in health food products. They say the extracts could be turned into little beads and used to make a refreshing drink.
"Phenolic extracts oxidise easily, so not only does encapsulation extend its shelf life, but it lets us control how they are released and absorbed by the body,” Adhikari said.
“If we don’t encapsulate the extract, it could break down in the stomach before we can reap its benefits.”
Manisha Singh, Thilini Thrimawithana, Ravi Shukla, Charles Stephen Brennan and Benu Adhikari are co-authors.
A chart showing the fat droplets between a control adipocyte and an adipocyte that has been treated with phenolic extracts. The one that has been treated shows much less fat droplets.
CREDIT
Manisha Singh
Roselle extracts have been encapsulated into little beads. They are in a petri dish, which is being held by a blue gloved hand.
Three petri dishes, each filled with roselle beads, freeze dried roselle flowers and roselle powder.
Freeze-dried roselle flowers in a petri dish. The dish is being held in blue gloved hands.
Freeze dried roselle flowers crushed into a powder. The powder is in a petri dish with a metal spoon scooping up some of the powder.
Scientists Manisha Singh, Thilini Thrimawithana and Benu Adhikari in a science lab wearing hair nets, goggles, lab coats and blue gloves.
CREDIT
RMIT University
JOURNAL
International Journal of Food Science & Technology
Astrophysicists in Australia have shed new light on the state of the universe 13 billion years ago by measuring the density of carbon in the gases surrounding ancient galaxies.
The study adds another piece to the puzzle of the history of the universe.
“We found that the fraction of carbon in warm gas increased rapidly about 13 billion years ago, which may be linked to large-scale heating of gas associated with the phenomenon known as the ‘Epoch of Reionisation’,” says Dr Rebecca Davies, ASTRO 3D Postdoctoral Research Associate at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia and lead author of the paper describing the discovery.
The study shows the amount of warm carbon suddenly increased by a factor of five over a period of only 300 million years – the blink of an eye in astronomical timescales.
While previous studies have suggested a rise in warm carbon, much larger samples – the basis of the new study – were needed to provide statistics to accurately measure the rate of this growth.
“That's what we've done here. And so, we present two potential interpretations of this rapid evolution,” says Dr Davies.
The first is that there is an initial increase in carbon around galaxies simply because there is more carbon in the universe.
“During the period when the first stars and galaxies are forming, a lot of heavy elements are forming because we never had carbon before we had stars,” Dr Davies says. “And so one possible reason for this rapid rise is just that we're seeing the products of the first generations of stars.”
However, the study also found evidence that the amount of cool carbon decreased over the same period. This suggests that there might be two different phases in the evolution of the carbon – a rapid rise while reionisation occurs, followed by a flattening out.
The research was a collaboration between: Swinburne University of Technology; the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D); INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste; IFPU-Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, Trieste; Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa; Max-Planck - Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany; the University of California, Riverside; Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP); MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Gemini Observatory and NSF’s NOIRLab, Hawai’i; and the University of Cambridge.
The Epoch of Reionisation, which took place when the universe was “only” one billion years old, was when the lights came back on after the cosmic Dark Ages following the Big Bang.
Before this the universe was a dark, dense fog of gas. But as the first massive stars formed, their light began to shine through space and reionise the cosmos. This light may have led to rapid heating of the surrounding gas, causing the rise in warm carbon observed in this study.
Studies of reionisation are vital to understand when and how the first stars formed and began producing the elements that exist today. But measurements have been notoriously difficult.
“The research led by Dr Davies was built on an exceptional sample of data obtained during 250 hours of observations on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory in Chile,” says Dr Valentina D’Odorico from the Italian Institute for Astrophysics, the Principal Investigator of the observational programme. “This is the largest amount of observing time assigned to a single project carried out with the X-shooter spectrograph.
“Thanks to the 8m VLT we could observe some of the most distant quasars, which act as flashlights, illuminating galaxies along the path from the early Universe to the Earth."
As the quasar light passes through galaxies in its 13-billion-year journey across the universe some photons are absorbed, creating distinctive barcode-like patterns in the light, which can be analysed to determine the chemical composition and temperature of gas in the galaxies.
This gives an historical picture of the development of the universe.
“These ‘barcodes’ are captured by detectors at the VLT’s X-Shooter spectrograph,” Dr Davies explains.
“This instrument splits the galaxy light into different wavelengths, like putting light through a prism, allowing us to read the barcodes and measure the properties of each galaxy.”
The study led by Dr Davies captured more barcodes of ancient galaxies than ever before.
“We increased from 12 to 42 the number of quasars for which we had high quality data, finally allowing a detailed and accurate measurement of the evolution of the carbon density,” says Dr D’Odorico.
This major advance was enabled by the ESO VLT, one of the most advanced telescopes on Earth, and a strategic partner of Australia.
“The study provides a legacy data set which will not be significantly improved until 30m-class telescopes comes online towards the end of this decade,” says Professor Emma Ryan-Weber, a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) and second author of the study.
“High quality data from even earlier in the Universe will require access to telescopes like the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) now under construction in Chile."
Astronomers are using many different types of data to build a history of the universe.
“Our results are consistent with recent studies showing that the amount of neutral hydrogen in intergalactic space decreases rapidly around the same time,” says Dr Davies.
“This research also paves the way for future investigations with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which aims to directly detect emission from neutral hydrogen during this key phase of the universe's history.”
Professor Ryan-Weber says the research goes to the heart of ASTRO 3D’s mission to understand the evolution of elements, from the Big Bang to present day.
“It addresses this key goal: how did the building blocks of life – in this case carbon – proliferate across the universe?
“As humans we strive to understand ‘where did we come from?’ It’s incredible to think that the barcode of those 13-billion-year-old carbon atoms were imprinted on photons at a time when the Earth didn’t even exist. Those photons travelled across the universe, into the VLT, and then were used to develop a picture of the evolution of the universe.”
ABOUT ASTRO 3D
The ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) is a $40m Research Centre of Excellence funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and nine collaborating Australian universities – The Australian National University, The University of Sydney, The University of Melbourne, Swinburne University of Technology, The University of Western Australia, Curtin University, Macquarie University, The University of New South Wales, and Monash University.
Examining the Decline in the C IV Content of the universe over 4.3 ≲ z ≲ 6.3 using the E-XQR-30 Sample
Rebecca L. Davies1,2⋆, E. Ryan-Weber1,2, V. D’Odorico3,4,5, S. E. I. Bosman6, R. A. Meyer6,
G. D. Becker7, G. Cupani3, L. C. Keating8, M. Bischetti3, F. B. Davies6, A.-C. Eilers9„,
E. P. Farina10, M. G. Haehnelt11,12, A. Pallottini5, Y. Zhu7 1Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia 2ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), Australia 3INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Via Tiepolo 11, I-34143 Trieste, Italy 4IFPU-Institute for Fundamental Physics of the universe, via Beirut 2, I-34151 Trieste, Italy 5Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, I-56126 Pisa, Italy 6Max-Planck-Institut fu ̈r Astronomie, Ko ̈nigstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany 7Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA 8Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, D-14482 Potsdam, Germany 9MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 10Gemini Observatory, NSF’s NOIRLab, 670 N A’ohoku Place, Hilo, Hawai’i 96720, USA 11Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK 12Kavli Institute for Cosmology, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK „NASA Hubble Fellow
A new University of Chicago study examining Medicare claims found older adults living near fracking sites in Pennsylvania were more likely to be hospitalized for cardiovascular diseases than those who lived in nearby New York state, where fracking is banned. The research was published March 6 in The Lancet Planetary Health.
Prachi Sanghavi, PhD, Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences at UChicago and senior author on the paper, said she first became interested in studying the potential health impacts of fracking in the early 2010s. This was during the peak of the unconventional natural gas development (UNGD) boom, colloquially known as “fracking.”
“There was a lot of buzz about the environmental effects of UNGD, and several documentaries were produced on the subject,” she said. “I do a lot of work with Medicare claims data, and I realized that we could use that approach to determine if there was a measurable effect on population health based on what the stories were suggesting.”
Her team collected Medicare claims data for tens of thousands of patients generated between 2002 and 2015 in both northern Pennsylvania, which experienced a fracking boom, and next-door New York state, where UNGD was banned. They found an association between the development of new fracking sites and increased rates of hospitalization for health conditions such as acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and ischemic heart disease.
“Although we can’t point to one specific part of fracking operations as the culprit, folks living near fracking sites could be affected by exposure to things like air or water pollution that often come with fracking activity,” said Kevin Trickey, first author on the study and a former research analyst in the Sanghavi lab. “Our study connects nearby fracking activity to real, serious human health outcomes, suggesting it’s not just a matter of economics or environmental sustainability — but that policymakers and residents alike should start prioritizing the health of citizens, whether drilling new wells or plugging old ones.”
Researchers have previously found elevated levels of airborne hydrocarbons and other pollutants near fracking sites, but a clear relationship between those pollutants and negative health outcomes has not yet been established. While prior studies have indicated a likelihood of this connection, this study applies statistical analysis to economics data for causal inference analysis to more directly connect UNGD to specific negative health outcomes in older adults.
In the current study, the team determined there were an additional 11.8, 21.6 and 20.4 hospitalizations for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and ischemic heart disease, respectively, per 1,000 Medicare users than would be expected if there were no fracking in the area.
“We don’t find strong associations easily in the world,” Sanghavi said. “We’ve heard a lot of anecdotes, seen the documentaries, but it’s usually very difficult to find the connection, even when it exists. Even in cases where an individual might have an experience that seems to have a direct relationship to something like fracking, that doesn’t necessarily translate to a population health effect, and here we find that — yes, there is a measurable association with people’s health.”
The effects were not just limited to the initial phases of UNGD. The study found that the risk continued even after drilling ended, indicating that the health impacts could be connected to the byproducts of the regular functioning and production of the well.
The researchers say these results should be a call to action for communities and policy makers affected by fracking development. “This study provides additional evidence for those who think they may be experiencing exacerbated health issues as a result of fracking in their communities,” Sanghavi said. “I hope that these results can help communities and governments — who have an interest in protecting people’s health — by equipping them with more information for making an informed decision about UNGD.
“Natural gas is an important source of energy in our current infrastructure,” she continued. “One could do a cost/benefit analysis and determine that the benefits of gas extraction outweigh the health effects on local populations. But who is bearing the cost of those decisions? The communities that are most affected by this should have all of the information and be a part of the conversation.”
The study, “Hospitalizations for cardiovascular and respiratory disease among older adults living near unconventional natural gas development,” was supported by the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratories. Zihan Chen of the University of Chicago is also an author on the paper. The authors declare no conflicting interests.
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About the University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences
The University of Chicago Medicine, with a history dating back to 1927, is one of the nation’s leading academic health systems. It unites the missions of the University of Chicago Medical Center, Pritzker School of Medicine and the Biological Sciences Division. Twelve Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine have been affiliated with the University of Chicago Medicine. Its main Hyde Park campus is home to the Center for Care and Discovery, Bernard Mitchell Hospital, Comer Children’s Hospital and the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine. It also has ambulatory facilities in Orland Park, South Loop, Homewood and River East as well as affiliations and partnerships that create a regional network of care. UChicago Medicine offers a full range of specialty-care services for adults and children through more than 40 institutes and centers including an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. Together with Harvey-based Ingalls Memorial, UChicago Medicine has 1,296 licensed beds, nearly 1,300 attending physicians, over 2,800 nurses and about 970 residents and fellows.
In a world first study of daily ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) across the globe, a Monash University study has found that only 0.18% of the global land area and 0.001% of the global population are exposed to levels of PM2.5 - the world’s leading environmental health risk factor – below levels of safety recommended by Word Health Organization (WHO). Importantly while daily levels have reduced in Europe and North America in the two decades to 2019, levels have increased Southern Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America and the Caribbean, with more than 70% of days globally seeing levels above what is safe.
A lack of pollution monitoring stations globally for air pollution, has meant a lack of data on local, national, regional and global PM2.5 exposure. Now this study, led by Professor Yuming Guo, from the Monash University School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine in Melbourne, Australia, and published in the prestigious journal, Lancet Planetary Health, has provided a map of how PM2.5 has changed across the globe in the past decades
The research team utilised traditional air quality monitoring observations, satellite-based meteorological and air pollution detectors, statistical and machine learning methods to more accurately assess PM2.5 concentrations globally, according to Professor Guo. “In this study, we used an innovative machine learning approach to integrate multiple meteorological and geological information to estimate the global surface-level daily PM2.5 concentrations at a high spatial resolution of approximately 10km ×10km for global grid cells in 2000-2019, focusing on areas above 15 μg/m³ which is considered the safe limit by WHO (The threshold is still arguable),” he said.
The study reveals that annual PM2.5 concentration and high PM2.5 exposed days in Europe and northern America decreased over the two decades of the study - whereas exposures increased in southern Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
In addition, the study found that:
Despite a slight decrease in high PM2.5 exposed days globally, by 2019 more than 70% of days still had PM2.5 concentrations higher than 15 μg/m³.
In southern Asia and eastern Asia, more than 90% of days had daily PM2.5 concentrations higher than 15 μg/m³.
Australia and New Zealand had a marked increase in the number of days with high PM2.5 concentrations in 2019.
Globally, the annual average PM2.5 from 2000 to 2019 was 32.8 µg/m3.
The highest PM2.5 concentrations were distributed in the regions of Eastern Asia (50.0 µg/m3) and Southern Asia (37.2 µg/m3), followed by northern Africa (30.1 µg/m3).
Australia and New Zealand (8.5 μg/m³), other regions in Oceania (12.6 μg/m³), and southern America (15.6 μg/m³) had the lowest annual PM2.5 concentrations.
Based on the new 2021 WHO guideline limit, only 0.18% of the global land area and 0.001% of the global population were exposed to an annual exposure lower than this guideline limit (annual average of 5 μg/m³) in 2019.
According to Professor Guo, the unsafe PM2.5 concentrations also show different seasonal patterns “included Northeast China and North India during their winter months (December, January, and February), whereas eastern areas in northern America had high PM2.5 in its summer months (June, July, and August),” he said.
“We also recorded relatively high PM2.5 air pollution in August and September in South America and from June to September in sub-Saharan Africa.”
He added that the study is important because “It provides a deep understanding of the current state of outdoor air pollution and its impacts on human health. With this information, policymakers, public health officials, and researchers can better assess the short-term and long-term health effects of air pollution and develop air pollution mitigation strategies.”
Global estimates of daily ambient fine particulate matter concentrations and unequal spatiotemporal distribution of population exposure: a machine learning modelling study
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
6-Mar-2023
Frequent socialising linked to longer lifespan of older people
Social activity nearly every day seems to be most beneficial, Chinese study suggests
Frequent socialising may extend the lifespan of older people, suggests a study of more than 28,000 Chinese people, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
Socialising nearly every day seems to be the most beneficial for a long life, the findings suggest.
In 2017, 962 million people around the globe were over 60, and their number is projected to double by 2050. Consequently, considerable attention has focused on the concept of ‘active’ or ‘successful’ ageing, an important component of which seems to be an active social life, note the researchers.
But most of the evidence for the health benefits of socialising is based on people in Western countries, with little published data on people in Asia.
To try and plug this knowledge gap, the researchers wanted to explore whether the frequency of socialising might be linked to overall survival in a relatively large group of older people living in China.
They drew on participants of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS), an ongoing, prospective nationally representative study of older people living independently, which began in 1998.
Information on the frequency of socialising only started being collected in 2002, and the current study focuses on 5 separate waves of data collection up to 2018-19, involving a total of 28,563 participants with an average age of 89.
Participants were asked how often they engaged in social activities: almost every day; at least once a week; at least once a month; occasionally; and never. Information on potentially influential factors was also collected, including sex, education, marital status; household income; fruit and vegetable intake; lifestyle; and poor health.
Survival was tracked for an average of 5 years or until death.
Over the first 5 years 25,406 people said they didn’t engage in any social activities; 1379 reported doing so sometimes; 693 at least once a month; 553 at least once a week; and 532 almost daily.
During the entire monitoring period, 21,161 (74%) participants died, 15,728 of whom died within the first 5 years.
Overall, more frequent social activity was associated with significantly longer survival. The greater the frequency, the greater the likelihood of living longer.
Up to 5 years from the start of the monitoring period standardised death rates were 18.4 per 100 people monitored for a year among those who never socialised; 8.8 among those who did so occasionally; 8.3 among those who did so at least monthly; 7.5 among those who socialised at least once a week; and 7.3 among those who did so nearly every day.
Time to death was delayed by 42% in those who socialised occasionally, by 48% in those who did at least monthly, by 110% in those who did so at least weekly, and by 87% in those who did so nearly every day, compared with those who said they never socialised.
After 5 years, the survivors included 8420 people who said they never socialised, 688 who did so occasionally, 350 who did so at least monthly, 295 who did so at least weekly, and 272 who did so nearly every day.
Standardised death rates were 6.2 per 100 people monitored for a year among those who never socialised; 4.8 among those who did so occasionally; 5 among those socialising at least once a month; 5.4 among those doing so at least once a week; and 3.6 among those who did so nearly every day.
A threshold effect was evident: only socialising nearly every day was associated with significantly longer survival in this group among whom time to death was delayed by 204%.
Factors associated with being more socially active were male sex, younger age, a higher level of education, marriage, living in a town/city and/or with relatives, and actual/self-rated good health.
When the data were further stratified by age, social activity seemed to be even more strongly associated with extended survival within the first 5 years for the oldest old, suggesting that strategies to promote the maintenance of an active social life in very old people, should be encouraged, say the researchers.
This is an observational study, so can’t establish cause. And the researchers acknowledge they weren’t able to include possible changes in socialising or health behaviours over time.
Nor is it clear exactly why socialising in older age might extend survival. The explanations mooted include enhancing healthy behaviours, such as more physical activity and a better diet. Socialising may also mitigate the impact of chronic stressors, say the researchers.
“In our study, although the association between social activity frequency and overall survival attenuated after adjusting for sociodemographic factors, socioeconomic status, healthy behaviours and several morbidities, it still remained statistically significant, which indicated that social activity participation per se was an independent predictor for overall survival in older people,” they conclude.
Association between social activity frequency and overall survival in older people: results from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS)
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
6-Mar-2023
Sexual minority families fare as well as, and in some ways better than, ‘traditional’ ones
Parents’ sexual orientation not important determinant of children’s development
Sexual minority families—where parental sexual orientation or gender identity is considered outside cultural, societal, or physiological norms—fare as well as, or better than, ‘traditional’ families with parents of the opposite sex, finds a pooled data analysis of the available evidence, published in the open access journal BMJ Global Health.
Parental sexual orientation isn’t an important determinant of children’s development, the analysis shows.
The number of children in families with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer parents has risen in recent years. But despite a shift in public attitudes, sexual minority parenting still provokes controversy, and whether parental sexual orientation affects family outcomes continues to be a matter of debate, say the researchers.
To strengthen the evidence, and find out if there were differences in outcomes between sexual minority and different sex (straight) parent families, they systematically reviewed 34 relevant studies published between January 1989 and April 2022, and carried out in countries where same sex relationships were legally recognised.
The studies were categorised into 11 main themes: children’s psychological adjustment, physical health, gender role behaviour, gender identity/sexual orientation and educational attainment; parents’ mental health and parenting stress; and parent–child relationships, couple relationship satisfaction, family functioning, social support.
A pooled data analysis of the results of 16 of the 34 studies showed that most family outcomes were similar between these two family types. And in some domains, such as child psychological adjustment—pre-schoolers, in particular—and child-parent relationships, these were actually better in sexual minority families.
“Growing up with sexual minority parents may confer some advantages to children. They have been described as more tolerant of diversity and more nurturing towards younger children than children of heterosexual parents,” explain the researchers.
But the analysis indicated that sexual minority parents didn’t outperform different parental sex families on couple relationship satisfaction, mental health, parenting stress, or family functioning.
Risk factors for poor family outcomes for sexual minority families included experiencing stigma and discrimination, inadequate social support and co-habiting rather than married parents.
“Legal marriage confers a host of protections and advantages to the couples who marry and to their children,” note the researchers.
The results of the narrative synthesis (18 studies), showed that children who lived in sexual minority parent families were less likely to expect to identify as straight when they grew up than were children who lived in ‘traditional’ set-up families.
“There may be less gender stereotyping in minority parent families, and this effect may be positive,” suggest the researchers. “Exploration of gender identity and sexuality may actually enhance children’s ability to succeed and thrive in a range of contexts.”
They acknowledge various limitations to their findings, including that the included studies were limited to regions where same-sex relationships were legalised, and where the social climate for these families is generally favourable.
Most of the study participants were also from gay and lesbian households and it wasn’t possible to account for potentially influential demographic factors.
But the researchers conclude that children from sexual minority families are not at a disadvantage compared with children from different sex parent families.
“One contribution of this review is the recognition that parents’ sexual orientation is not, in and of itself, an important determinant of children’s development,” they write. “Another…is that there are significant risk factors often associated with the sexual minority experience and family functioning, such as stigma, poor social support and parenting styles.”
They add: “Policy-makers, practitioners, and the public must work together to improve family outcomes, regardless of sexual orientation.”
