Tag: brain science

Older dogs who sleep badly may have dementia, study says | CNN

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CNN
 — 

In a veterinary lab in North Carolina, Woofus, a 15-year-old basset hound mix, is allowing researchers to attach an electroencephalogram, or EEG, electrodes to his head before padding off to a dark, cozy room for an afternoon nap.

During his snooze, the study team will analyze Woofus’ brain waves to judge the quality of his sleep. Woofus has canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome, or CCDS, the doggie disorder that’s similar to Alzheimer’s disease in people. The elderly dog’s owners say he is struggling to get enough rest at night.

“Just like humans with Alzheimer’s disease, dogs with CCDS experience sleep disruptions, such as insomnia and sleep fragmentation,” said veterinarian Dr. Natasha Olby, a professor of neurology, neurosurgery and gerontology at North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh.

Woofus isn’t the only sleep-deprived dog in this study. On other days in the clinic, Jake, a 13-year-old pointer, and Coco, a 12-year-old dachshund, among others, might be taking a siesta while researchers peer inside their brains.

“Owners of dogs with CCDS report their dogs suffer from difficulty sleeping at night, increased sleeping during the day or both, as well as pacing and vocalizations at night,” Olby said. “This can be very hard on the dog’s owners — not only are they worried for their pet, their sleep is also significantly disrupted.”

To find out whether sleep problems in dogs indicate early signs of dementia as they do in people, Olby and her team turned to a group of senior dogs enrolled in an ongoing study testing antiaging supplements. The dogs visit twice a year “and do all kinds of really fun cognitive testing,” she said. “They really enjoy it and like the handlers they work with.”

To be considered for the antiaging study, the dog must have lived more than 75% of the expected life span for their breed or mix of breeds. A dog also could not be crippled by arthritis or going blind, as the pet needed to be able to perform tasks designed to test their cognitive capabilities.

A dog might be asked, for example, to find a treat hidden under a cup or a snack inside a cylinder in which one end had been closed by a researcher. By repeating the tasks at the clinic every six months, any decline in the dog’s mental agility or performance can be tracked.

Woofus, 15-year-old basset hound mix, plays

For the new study measuring a dog’s brain waves during sleep, researchers used a form of electroencephalogram called polysomnography, used in sleep clinics to diagnose sleep problems in people.

“It’s the gold standard method to look at what the brain is doing during sleep,” Olby said, adding this is the first canine study to apply the same technology used on humans.

“We glue these electrodes on with a really great conductive glue that’s water soluble. Then we just wash it off afterwards,” she said. “We don’t use anywhere near as many electrodes as you see on people in a sleep lab, because dogs have far less cortex and surface area to cover.”

Already at ease with the staff, it wasn’t too difficult to train 28 senior dogs to wear electrodes and walk around with dangling wires without complaint, she said.

Jake, a 13-year-old pointer, was one of 28 dogs trained to sleep with EEG electrodes.

To make the dogs more comfortable during their siestas, owners bring their dogs’ beds from home, which are placed in a protected room with white noise.

“Staff sit with them while they nap to make sure that they’re not trying to pull out or eat the electrodes or do anything that might hurt them,” Olby said.

When sleeping brain waves were compared with a dog’s cognitive testing, researchers found that dogs with greater dementia spent less time in deep and REM sleep, just as people do. The study was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

“Dogs that did worse on our memory tests had levels of REM sleep which were not as deep as they should be,” Olby said. “We found the same when it came to deep sleep.”

While no one knows the exact mechanism at work — either in people or in dogs — research like this study may help scientists better understand the process and find ways to treat it, Olby said.

“There’s a possibility we might be able to identify an early signature of change on the EEG that can tell us, ‘Hey, things are starting to slide.’ Because with a chronic neurodegenerative process, of course we’d love to be able to intervene sooner rather than later.”

In the meantime, there are medications for anxiety and melatonin for sleep that veterinarians can prescribe as a dog ages, Olby said. And as with people, diet and exercise appears to be a factor.

“There’s been some very nice studies showing diets that are enriched in flavonoids and antioxidants and medium-chain fatty acids could possibly slow the development of dementia in dogs,” she said. “It’s just like people — if you can eat a Mediterranean diet and do your exercise, you’re going to do better.”

Doggie dementia is a worrisome reality for many senior dogs. Research has found that by 11 or 12 years of age, 28% of dogs had mild and 10% had severe cognitive impairment. By the time the dogs reached age 15, the risk had risen to 68% for mild and 35% for severe cognitive impairment. A 2022 study found the odds of canine cognitive dysfunction increased by 52% with each year of age, Olby said.

Pet owners can look for signs that their dog’s mental functions are declining. According to Olby, vets use an acronym called DISHA-AL, which stands for disorientation, interaction changes, sleep/wake cycle alterations, house soiling; activity changes (increased or decreased); and anxiety and learning & memory.

“One of the earliest signs is you’ll start to see a little confusion just like you do with people, they suddenly start to make some mistakes and things you wouldn’t expect them to do. Very similar to us,” Olby said.

“Do you really think there’s enough room for you?” — Delilah, a 10-year-old Siberian husky.
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Lynx (top) and Luna (bottom) are 2-year-old Siberian Forest cats.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”1125″ width=”2000″/>

Dogs and cats who share their human's bed tend to have a

Banshee, a 6-year-old Husky mix, is a rescue who survived heartworms.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”1500″ width=”2000″/>

Mason, a 3-year-old lab mix, loves to sleep next to his dad every night but hates covers.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”1125″ width=”2000″/>

“What? I don’t snore!” — Luna, a 2-year-old Siberian Forest cat.
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Molly (left), a 15-year-old cockapoo mix, likes to sleep in her human’s armpit, while Evie (right) prefers the end of the bed and hates to be woken up early.” class=”image_gallery-image__dam-img image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading” onload=’this.classList.remove(‘image_gallery-image__dam-img–loading’)’ height=”900″ width=”1600″/>

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A dog who sleeps at the end of the bed with their face toward the door might have a more protective personality, Varble said.</p><p>

Is sleeping with your pets good for them?

Dogs may also lose learned behaviors, or forget their house training and begin to have unintentional accidents around the house, she added.

“A classic problem is wandering around and getting lost under the table or something — they just can’t process the information and figure out where they are. Changes in sleep cycle, increased anxiety, all of these things are classic signs of dementia,” she said.

Don’t assume that is what is wrong with your dog, however. Just like in people, other health problems such as metabolic disease, urinary tract infections or even brain tumors can mimic classic signs of dementia.

“High blood pressure can make dogs anxious, for example,” Olby said, “so a vet needs to thoroughly check the dog to rule out disease.”

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How psilocybin, the psychedelic in mushrooms, may rewire the brain to ease depression, anxiety and more | CNN

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CNN
 — 

Shrooms, Alice, tweezes, mushies, hongos, pizza toppings, magic mushrooms — everyday lingo for psychedelic mushrooms seems to grow with each generation. Yet leading mycologist Paul Stamets believes it’s time for fans of psilocybin mushrooms to leave such childish slang behind.

“Let’s be adults about this. These are no longer ‘shrooms.’ These are no longer party drugs for young people,” Stamets told CNN. “Psilocybin mushrooms are nonaddictive, life-changing substances.”

Small clinical trials have shown that one or two doses of psilocybin, given in a therapeutic setting, can make dramatic and long-lasting changes in people suffering from treatment-resistant major depressive disorder, which typically does not respond to traditional antidepressants.

Based on this research, the US Food and Drug Administration has described psilocybin as a breakthrough medicine, “which is phenomenal,” Stamets said.

Psilocybin, which the intestines convert into psilocin, a chemical with psychoactive properties, is also showing promise in combating cluster headaches, anxiety, anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and various forms of substance abuse.

“The data are strong from depression to PTSD to cluster headaches, which is one of the most painful conditions I’m aware of,” said neurologist Richard Isaacson, director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic in the Center for Brain Health at Florida Atlantic University.

“I’m excited about the future of psychedelics because of the relatively good safety profile and because these agents can now be studied in rigorous double-blinded clinical trials,” Isaacson said. “Then we can move from anecdotal reports of ‘I tripped on this and felt better’ to ‘Try this and you will be statistically, significantly better.’ “

Classic psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD enter the brain via the same receptors as serotonin, the body’s “feel good” hormone. Serotonin helps control body functions such as sleep, sexual desire and psychological states such as satisfaction, happiness and optimism.

People with depression or anxiety often have low levels of serotonin, as do people with post-traumatic stress disorder, cluster headaches, anorexia, smoking addiction and substance abuse. Treatment typically involves selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, which boost levels of serotonin available to brain cells. Yet it can take weeks for improvement to occur, experts say, if the drugs even work at all.

With psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD, however, scientists can see changes in brain neuron connectivity in the lab “within 30 minutes,” said pharmacologist Brian Roth, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“One of the most interesting things we’ve learned about the classic psychedelics is that they have a dramatic effect on the way brain systems synchronize, or move and groove together,” said Matthew Johnson, a professor in psychedelics and consciousness at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“When someone’s on psilocybin, we see an overall increase in connectivity between areas of the brain that don’t normally communicate well,” Johnson said. “You also see the opposite of that – local networks in the brain that normally interact with each other quite a bit suddenly communicate less.”

It creates a “very, very disorganized brain,” ultimately breaking down normal boundaries between the auditory, visual, executive and sense-of-self sections of the mind – thus creating a state of “altered consciousness,” said David Nutt, director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London.

And it’s that disorganization that is ultimately therapeutic, according to Nutt: “Depressed people are continually self-critical, and they keep ruminating, going over and over the same negative, anxious or fearful thoughts.

“Psychedelics disrupt that, which is why people can suddenly see a way out of their depression during the trip,” he added. “Critical thoughts are easier to control, and thinking is more flexible. That’s why the drug is an effective treatment for depression.”

There’s more. Researchers say psychedelic drugs help neurons in the brain sprout new dendrites, which look like branches on a tree, to increase communication between cells.

“These drugs can increase neuronal outgrowth, they can increase this branching of neurons, they can increase synapses. That’s called neuroplasticity,” Nutt said.

That’s different from neurogenesis, which is the development of brand-new brain cells, typically from stem cells in the body. The growth of dendrites helps build and then solidify new circuits in the brain, allowing us to, for example, lay down more positive pathways as we practice gratitude.

“Now our current thinking is this neuronal outgrowth probably doesn’t contribute to the increased connectivity in the brain, but it almost certainly helps people who have insights into their depression while on psilocybin maintain those insights,” Nutt said.

“You shake up the brain, you see things in a more positive way, and then you lay down those positive circuits with the neuroplasticity,” he added. “It’s a double whammy.”

Interestingly, SSRIs also increase neuroplasticity, a fact that science has known for some time. But in a 2022 double-blind phase 2 randomized controlled trial comparing psilocybin to escitalopram, a traditional SSRI, Nutt found the latter didn’t spark the same magic.

“The SSRI did not increase brain connectivity, and it actually did not improve well-being as much as psilocybin,” Nutt said. “Now for the first time you’ve got the brain science lining up with what patients say after a trip: ‘I feel more connected. I can think more freely. I can escape from negative thoughts, and I don’t get trapped in them.’ “

Taking a psychedelic doesn’t work for everyone, Johnson stressed, “but when it works really well it’s like, ‘Oh my god, it’s a cure for PTSD or for depression.’ If people really have changed the way their brain is automatically hardwired to respond to triggers for anxiety, depression, smoking — that’s a real thing.”

How long do results last? In studies where patients were given just one dose of a psychedelic “a couple of people were better eight years later, but for the majority of those with chronic depression it creeps back after four or five months,” Nutt said.

“What we do with those people is unknown,” he added. “One possibility is to give another dose of the psychedelic — we don’t know if that would work or not, but it might. Or we could put them on an SSRI as soon as they’ve got their mood improved and see if that can hold the depression at bay.

“There are all sorts of ways we could try to address that question,” Nutt said, “but we just don’t know the answer yet.”

The mycelium, or rootlike structure, of Lion's mane mushroom is part of the

Stamets, who over the last 40 years has discovered four new species of psychedelic mushrooms and written seven books on the topic, said he believes microdosing is a solution. That’s the practice of taking tiny amounts of a psilocybin mushroom several times a week to maintain brain health and a creative perspective on life.

A typical microdose is 0.1 to 0.3 grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms, as compared with the 25-milligram pill of psilocybin that creates the full-blown psychedelic experience.

Stamets practices microdosing and has focused on a process called “stacking” in which a microdose of mushrooms is taken with additional substances believed to boost the fungi’s benefits. His famous “Stamets Stack” includes niacin, or vitamin B3, and the mycelium, or rootlike structure, of an unusual mushroom called Lion’s mane.

Surveys of microdosers obtained on his website have shown significantly positive benefits from the practice of taking small doses.

“These are self-reported citizen scientists’ projects, and we have now around 14,000 people in our app where you register yourself and report your microdose,” Stamets told an audience at the 2022 Life Itself conference, a health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.

“I’m going to say something provocative, but I believe it to my core: Psilocybin makes nicer people,” Stamets told the audience. “Psilocybin will make us more intelligent and better citizens.”

Scientific studies so far have failed to find any benefits from microdosing, leaving many researchers skeptical. “People like being on it, but that doesn’t validate the claims of microdosing,” Johnson said. “People like being on a little bit of cocaine, too.”

Experimental psychologist Harriet de Wit, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the University of Chicago, was excited to study microdosing because it solves a key problem of scientific research in the field – it’s hard to blind people to what they are taking if they begin to trip. Microdosing solves that problem because people don’t feel an effect from the tiny dose.

De Wit specializes in determining whether a drug’s impact is due to the drug or what scientists call the “placebo effect,” a positive expectation that can cause improvement without the drug.

She published a study in 2022 that mimicked real-world microdosing of LSD, except neither the participants nor researchers knew what was in the pills the subjects took.

“We measured all kinds of different behavioral and psychological responses, and the only thing we saw is that LSD at very low doses produced some stimulant-like effects at first, which then faded,” de Wit said.

The placebo effect is powerful, she added, which might explain why the few additional studies done on it have also failed to find any positive results.

“I suspect microdosing may have an effect on mood, and over time it might build up resilience or improve well-being,” Nutt said. “But I don’t think it will rapidly fragment depression like macrodosing and going on a trip.”

Obviously, not all hallucinogenic experiences are positive, so nearly every study on psychedelic drugs has included therapists trained to intercede if a trip turns bad and to maximize the outcome if the trip is good.

“This is about allowing someone access into deeper access into their own mental processes, with hopefully greater insight,” Johnson said. “While others might disagree, it does seem very clear that you need therapy to maximize the benefits.”

There are also side effects from psychedelics that go beyond a bad trip. LSD, mescaline and DMT, which is the active ingredient in ayahuasca tea, can increase blood pressure, heart rate, and body temperature, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Ayahuasca tea can also induce vomiting. LSD can cause tremors, numbness and weakness, while the use of mescaline can lead to uncoordinated movements. People hunting for psychedelic mushrooms can easily mistake a toxic species for one with psilocybin, “leading to unintentional, fatal poisoning.”

Another issue: Not everyone is a candidate for psychedelic treatment. It won’t work on people currently on SSRIs — the receptors in their brains are already flooded with serotonin. People diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, or who have a family history of psychosis are always screened out of clinical trials, said Frederick Barrett, associate director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins.

“If you have a vulnerability to psychosis, it could be that exposing you to a psychedelic could unmask that psychosis or could lead to a psychotic event,” Barnes said.

Then there are the thousands of people with mental health concerns who will never agree to undergo a psychedelic trip. For those people, scientists such as Roth are attempting to find an alternative approach. He and his team recently identified the mechanisms by which psychedelics bond to the brain’s serotonin receptors and are using the knowledge to identify new compounds.

“Our hope is that we can use this information to ultimately make drugs that mimic the benefits of psychedelic drugs without the psychedelic experience,” Roth said.

“What if we could give people who are depressed or suffer from PTSD or anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder a medication, and they could wake up the next day and be fine without any side effects? That would be transformative.”

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#psilocybin #psychedelic #mushrooms #rewire #brain #ease #depression #anxiety #CNN

How confusion about textured hairstyles can prevent some patients from getting necessary medical imaging | CNN

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KFF Health News
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Sadé Lewis of Queens, New York, has suffered migraines since she was a kid, and as she started college, they got worse. A recent change in her insurance left the 27-year-old looking for a new neurologist. That’s when she found West 14 Street MedicalArts in New York.

MedicalArts recommended that she get an electroencephalogram (EEG) and an MRI to make sure her brain was functioning properly.

An EEG is a test to measure the electrical activity of the brain. It can find changes in brain activity that can help in diagnosing conditions including epilepsy, sleep disorders, and brain tumors. During the procedure, electrodes consisting of small metal discs with attached wires are pasted onto the scalp using adhesive, or attached to an electrode cap that you wear on your head.

A little over a week before her EEG, Lewis was given instructions that she didn’t remember getting before a previous EEG appointment.

To Lewis’ surprise, patients were told to remove all hair extensions, braids, cornrows, wigs, etc. Also, she was to wash her hair with a mild shampoo the night before the appointment and not use any conditioners, hair creams, sprays, oils, or styling gels.

“The first thing I literally did was text it to my best friend, and I was, like, this is kind of anti-Black,” Lewis said. “I just feel like it creates a bunch of confusion, and it alienates patients who obviously need these procedures done.”

The restrictions could discourage people with thick, curly, and textured hair from going forward with their care. People with more permanent styles like locs — a hairstyle in which hair strands are coiled, braided, twisted, or palm-rolled to create a rope-like appearance — might be barred from getting the test done.

Kinky or curly hair textures are typically more delicate and susceptible to damage. As a result, people with curlier hair textures often wear protective hairstyles, such as weaves, braids, and twists, which help maintain hair length and health by keeping the ends of the hair tucked away and minimizing manipulation.

After receiving the instructions, Lewis scoured the internet and social media channels to see if she could find more information on best practices. But she noticed that for people with thick and textured hair, there were few tips on best hairstyles for an EEG.

Lewis has thick, curly hair and believed that explicitly following the instructions on the preparation worksheet would make it harder, not easier, for the technician to reach her scalp. Lewis decided that her mini-twists — a protective style in which the hair is parted into small sections and twisted — would be the best way for her to show up to the appointment with clean and product-free hair that still allowed for easy access to her scalp.

Lewis felt comfortable with her plan and did not think about it again until she received a reminder email the day before her EEG and MRI appointment that restated the restrictive instructions and added a warning: Failure to comply would result in the appointment being rescheduled and a $50 same-day cancellation fee.

To avoid the penalty, Lewis emailed the facility with her concerns and attached photos.

“I got kind of worried, and I sent them pictures of my hair thinking that it would go well, and they would be, like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s fine. We see what you see,’” said Lewis.

Soon after, she received a call from the facility and was told she would not be able to get the procedure done with her hair in the twists. After the call, Lewis posted a TikTok video detailing the conversation. She expressed her frustration and felt that the person on the phone was “close-minded.”

“As a Black woman, that is so exclusionary for coarse and thick hair. To literally have no product in your hair and show up with it loose, you’re not even reaching my scalp with that,” Lewis said in her video.

The comments section on Lewis’ TikTok video is full of people sharing in her frustration and confusion or recounting similar experiences with EEG scheduling.

West 14 Street MedicalArts declined to comment for this article.

The New York medical center is not the only facility with similar EEG prep instructions. The Neurology Center, which has several locations in the Washington, D.C., area, provides EEG pretest instructions for patients reading, “Please remove any hair extensions or additions. Do not use hair treatment products such as hair spray, conditioners, or hair dressing, nor should you fix your hair in tight braids or corn rows.”

Marc Hanna, the neurophysiology supervisor at the center’s White Oak location in Silver Spring, Maryland, has more than 30 years of experience performing EEGs. He oversees 10-12 EEG technicians at the facility.

Hanna said the hair rules are meant to help a technician get an accurate reading from the test. “The electrodes need to sit flat on the scalp, and they need to be in precise spots on the scalp that are equally apart from each other,” Hanna said.

For people with thick and curly hair, this can be a challenge.

A 2020 article from Science News detailed a study that measured how much coarse, curly hair could interfere with measuring brain signals. A good EEG signal is considered to have less than 50 kilo-Ohms of impedance, but the researchers found unbraided, curly hair with standard electrodes yielded 615 kilo-Ohms.

Researchers are working to better capture brain waves of people with naturally thick and curly hair. Joy Jackson, a biomedical engineering major at the University of Miami, developed a clip-like device that can help electrodes better adhere to the scalp.

Experimentation with different braiding patterns and flexible electrode clips shaped like dragonfly wings, designed to push under the braids, has had promising results. A study, published by bioRxiv, found this method resulted in a reading well within the range for a reliable EEG measurement.

But more research has to be done before products like these are widely used by medical facilities.

Hanna said the facility where he works does not automatically ask patients to remove their protective styles because sometimes the technician can complete the test without them doing so.

“Each one of those cases are an individual case,” Hanna said. “So, at our facility, we don’t ask the patient to take all their braids out. We just ask them to come in. Sometimes, if one of the technicians are available when the patient is scheduling, they’ll just look at the hair and say, ‘OK, we can do it’ or ‘We don’t think we can do it.’ And we even might say, ‘We don’t think we can do it but come in and we’ll try.’”

In practice, Hanna said, it’s not common for hair to be an issue. But for patients whose hairstyle might make the test inaccurate, he said, it becomes a conversation between the doctor and the patient.

When Lewis arrived the following day for her MRI and EEG appointment, she was told her EEG had been canceled.

“It was just kind of baffling a little bit because, literally, as soon as I walk in, I saw about four different Black women who all had either twists, locs, braids, or something,” she said. “And on the call, the woman was saying if you come in and my hair is not loose, we’re going to charge you. And she did recommend to cancel my appointment. But I never approved that.”

After Lewis explained what happened during the phone call, she said, the receptionist was very apologetic and said the information Lewis was given was not true. Lewis said she spoke with one of the EEG technicians at the facility to confirm that her mini-twists would work for the test — and felt a sigh of relief when she saw the technician was also a Black woman.

“The technician, I think overall, they just made me feel safe,” Lewis said. “Because I felt like they could identify with me just from a cultural standpoint, a racial standpoint. So, it did make me feel a little bit more valid in my feelings.”

Lewis later returned to the facility to get the procedure done while still wearing mini-twists. This time, the process was seamless.

Her advice for other patients? “When you feel something, definitely speak out, ask questions.”

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#confusion #textured #hairstyles #prevent #patients #medical #imaging #CNN

Up to 60% of stroke survivors may develop cognitive decline within a year | CNN

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CNN
 — 

Up to 60% of all stroke survivors develop memory and thinking problems within a year, and one-third go on to develop dementia within five years, according to a new American Stroke Association scientific statement.

“The numbers are staggering, right?” said Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of cardiovascular prevention and wellness at National Jewish Health in Denver.

“This is a call to action to up our game and focus on prevention,” said Freeman, who was not part of the scientific committee who prepared the statement.

An estimated 9.4 million American adults — about 3.6% of the US adult population — report having had a stroke, according to 2023 statistics from the American Heart Association.

“Cognitive impairment is an often under-reported and under-diagnosed but yet very common condition stroke survivors frequently deal with,” said Dr. Nada El Husseini, an associate professor of neurology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, in a statement.

About 40% of the survivors of stroke have mild cognitive impairment that does not meet the diagnostic criteria for dementia. Mild or not, the mental difficulties can seriously affect quality of life, said El Husseini, who chaired the writing committee for the statement.

“Cognitive impairment after stroke ranges from mild impairment to dementia and may affect many aspects of life, such as remembering, thinking, planning, language and attention, as well as a person’s ability to work, drive or live independently,” El Husseini said.

Cognitive impairment is most common within the first two weeks after a stroke, the statement said. Mental decline may go hand in hand with other conditions associated with a stroke such as behavioral and personality changes, depression, physical disability and disruption in sleep, all of which can contribute to a lower quality of life.

The American Stroke Association’s statement did offer some good news: About 20% of people who experience mild cognitive impairment after a stroke fully recover their cognitive function, typically within the first six months.

People are at higher risk for strokes if they have atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat that sufferers often describe as a quiver, flutter or flip-flop of the heart in the chest. Those with uncontrolled high cholesterol or high blood pressure are also at high risk, as are people who smoke or use drugs or alcohol. Being diabetic or obese can be risk factors, too.

Ischemic strokes, caused by a clot in the blood vessels that feed blood to the brain, account for 87% of all strokes, according to the statement. Brain bleeds caused by a rupture of a weak vessel in the brain, called hemorrhagic strokes, are much less common, accounting for some 13% of all strokes.

The following are signs of a stroke, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke:

  • Sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body.
  • Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or difficulty understanding speech.
  • Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes.
  • Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or lack of coordination.
  • Sudden severe headache with no known cause.

Other, less commons symptoms include dizziness, disorientation, nausea, memory loss or vomiting.

Any of the warning signs may last only a few moments and then disappear, which could mean the person is having a minor stroke or a transient ischemic attack, or TIA. Any symptom should not be ignored, experts say, as it can signal a more serious stroke to come.

“One might call a TIA a ‘lucky stroke’ because it’s less serious, but it really is a sentinel event,” Freeman said.

It’s never too late for prevention, but serious effort is needed after even mild stroke to “extinguish the fire if you will, with aggressive change and aggressive medication therapy when appropriate,” Freeman added.

“It should push people to make very drastic lifestyle changes: Eat better, exercise more, go on the appropriate statins or aspirins or whatever their doctor suggests are appropriate so that their risk is as low as possible,” he said.

Damage to the brain occurs when some cells stop getting oxygen and die, while other brain cells may die due to bleeding in the brain. As a result, permanent brain damage can occur within minutes to hours, according to the institute. “Some brain cells die quickly but many linger in a compromised or weakened state for several hours,” it said.

Immediate medical attention is key to lessening the impact of a stroke. Learning the symptoms of a stroke using the acronym FAST can help identify the signs quickly, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • F — Face: Ask the person to smile. Does one side of the face droop?
  • A — Arms: Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?
  • S — Speech: Ask the person to repeat a simple phrase. Is the speech slurred or strange?
  • T — Time: If you see any of these signs, call 911 right away.

Be sure to capture the time when any symptom first appears, the CDC advises, to help medical personnel determine the best course of treatment.

Additional strokes only worsen potential cognitive decline, the scientific statement said, so prevention is key. Stroke risk factors, such as hypertension, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes, should be treated, as should atrial fibrillation.

Keeping high blood pressure under control has been linked to a reduction in risk for additional strokes as well as mild cognitive impairment, the statement said.

“Stroke survivors should be systematically evaluated for cognitive impairment so that treatment may begin as soon as possible after signs appear,” El Husseini said.

“Perhaps the most pressing need, however, is the development of effective and culturally relevant treatments for post-stroke cognitive impairment,” she said. “We hope to see big enough clinical trials that assess various techniques, medications and lifestyle changes in diverse groups of patients that may help improve cognitive function.”

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Doctors watching for more cases after mysterious cluster of brain infections strikes kids in southern Nevada | CNN

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CNN
 — 

Disease detectives with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating a cluster of rare and serious brain abscesses in kids in and around Las Vegas, Nevada, and doctors from other parts of the country say they may be seeing a rise in cases, too.

In 2022, the number of brain abscesses in kids tripled in Nevada, rising from an average of four to five a year to 18.

“In my 20 years’ experience, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Dr. Taryn Bragg, an associate professor at the University of Utah who treated the cases.

Pediatric neurosurgeons like Bragg are rare. She is the only one for the entire state of Nevada, and because she treated all the cases, she was the first to notice the pattern and to alert local public health officials.

“After March of 2022, there was just a huge increase,” in brain abscesses, Bragg said. “I was seeing large numbers of cases and that’s unusual.”

“And the similarities in terms of the presentation of cases was striking,” Bragg said.

In almost every case, kids would get a common childhood complaint, such as an earache or a sinus infection, with a headache and fever, but within about a week, Bragg says, it would become clear that something more serious was going on.

After a presentation on the Nevada cases the Epidemic Intelligence Service Conference on Thursday, doctors from other parts of the country said they are seeing similar increases in brain abscesses in kids.

“We’re just impressed by the number of these that we’re seeing right now,” said Dr. Sunil Sood, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Northwell Health, a health system in New York. He estimates they are seeing at least twice as many as usual, though they haven’t done a formal count. He urged the CDC to continue investigating and work to get the word out.

Brain abscesses are not, by themselves, reportable conditions, meaning doctors aren’t required to alert public health departments when they have these cases.

They typically only come to the attention of public health officials when doctors notice increases and reach out.

Brain abscesses are pus-filled pockets of infection that spread to the brain. They can cause seizures, visual disturbances, or changes in vision, speech, coordination or balance. The earliest symptoms are headaches and a fever that comes and goes. Abscesses often require several surgeries to treat, and kids may spend weeks or even months in the hospital recovering after they have one.

In the Clark County cluster, roughly three-quarters of the cases were in boys, and most were around age 12.

Dr. Jessica Penney is the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, or “disease detective,” assigned to Southern Nevada Health District, the health department that investigated the cases. She presented her investigation of the Clark County cluster at the CDC’s annual Epidemic Intelligence Service conference on Thursday.

Penney says as they tried to figure out what was driving the increase, they looked at a slew of factors – travel, a history of Covid-19 infection, underlying health, any common activities or exposures – and they didn’t find anything that linked the cases.

Then, she says they decided to look back in time, looking for brain abscess cases in children under 18 all the way back to 2015.

“I felt like that helped us get a better sense of what might be contributing to it,” Penney said in an interview with CNN.

From 2015 to 2020, Penney says the number of cases of brain abscesses in Clark County was pretty stable at around four a year. In 2020, the number of brain abscesses in kids dipped, probably because of measures like social distancing, school closures, and masking – things that shut down the spread of all kinds of respiratory infections, not just Covid-19. In 2021, as restrictions began to lift, the number of these events returned back to normal levels, and then in 2022, a big spike.

“So the thoughts are, you know, maybe in that period where kids didn’t have these exposures, you’re not building the immunity that you would typically get previously, you know with these viral infections,” Penney said. “And so maybe on the other end when we you had these exposures without that immunity from the years prior, we saw a higher number of infections.”

This is a theory called the immunity debt. Doctors have recently seen unusual increases in a number of serious childhood infections, such as invasive group A strep. Some think that during the years of the pandemic, because children weren’t exposed to the number of viruses and bacteria they might normally encounter, it left their immune systems less able to fight off infections.

Sood said he’s not sold on the theory that there’s some kind of immunity debt at work. Instead, he thinks Covid-19 temporarily displaced other infections for a while, essentially crowding others out. Now, as Covid-19 cases have fallen, he thinks other childhood infections are roaring back – he points to unprecedented surge in RSV cases last fall and winter as an example.

Sood says brain abscesses normally follow a very small percentage of sinus infections and inner ear infections in kids. Because they are seeing more of those infections now, the number of brain abscesses has increased proportionally, too.

If immunity debt or a higher burden of infections were to blame, it stands to reason that brain abscesses might have increased in other places, too.

Last year, the CDC worked with the Children’s Hospital Association to find and count brain abscesses in kids, to see if there was any sort of national spike. Data collected through May 2022 did not detect any kind of widespread increase, according to a study published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report last fall.

But Bragg thinks the data cutoff for the study may have been too early. She says spring 2022 was when she saw cases in her area really take off. She says the CDC is continuing to collect information on brain abscesses and evaluate local and national trends.

About a third of the brain abscesses in the Clark County cluster were caused by a type of bacteria called Streptococcus intermedius that normally hangs out harmlessly in the nose and mouth, where our immune system keeps it in check. But when it gets into places it shouldn’t be, like the blood or brain, it can cause problems.

That can happen after dental work, for example, or when someone has an underlying health condition that weakens their immunity, like diabetes.

That wasn’t the case with the kids in the Clark County cluster, however.

“These are healthy children. With no prior significant medical history that would make them more prone…there wasn’t any known immunosuppression or anything like that,” Bragg says.

Like the cases in Clark County, Sood says most of the kids they are seeing are older, in grade school and middle school. He says until kids reach this age, their sinus cavities are underdeveloped, and haven’t yet grown to their full size. This may make them particularly vulnerable to infection. He thinks these small spaces may become filled with pus and burst. When that happens over the eyebrow, or behind the ear, where the barrier between the brain and sinuses is thinner, the infection can travel to the brain.

Sood says the signs of a sinus infection in kids can be subtle and parents don’t always know what to watch for. If a child gets a cold or stuffy nose and then the next day wakes up with a red and swollen eye, or an eye that’s swollen shut, it’s a good idea to seek medical attention. They may also complain of a headache and point to the spot above their eyebrow as the location of the pain.

Bragg says so far, in 2023, she’s treated two more kids with brain abscesses, but the pace of new cases seems to be slowing down – at least she hopes that’s the case.

Some of the children she treated needed multiple brain and head and neck surgeries to clear their infections.

Sood says in his hospital, doctors have a patient who has been there for two to three months and had five surgeries, although he says she was an extreme case.

Penney says the CDC continues to watch the situation closely.

“We’re going to continue to monitor throughout the year working very closely with our community partners to see you know what, what happens down in Southern Nevada,” she said.

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‘It just didn’t enter my mind to initiate sex;’ Low sex drive in men linked to chemical imbalance | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.



CNN
 — 

While hanging out with his college roommates, Peter (not his real name) realized he felt differently about sex than other heterosexual men.

“I’ve never been somebody who was interested in pornography, but I’d laugh along with their jokes,” said Peter, now 44, who is British. “Of course I never mentioned that … as a man, you’d be kicked out of the herd.”

As he developed “proper, serious relationships” with women, Peter discovered he didn’t have the sexual drive many of his partners did.

“I would make excuses around getting tired or feeling stressed, that kind of thing,” he said. “It wasn’t an issue with attraction to my partner. It just didn’t enter my mind to initiate sex.”

In 2021, Peter saw an ad recruiting male volunteers for a new study on hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD. Researchers planned to inject the study’s participants with kisspeptin —a naturally occurring sexual hormone — to see if it increased their sex drive. Kisspeptin plays a key role in reproduction; without adequate levels of the hormone children do not go through puberty, for example.

In a long-term, committed relationship with a woman he says has a higher sexual appetite, Peter signed up, intrigued by the thought that a biological imbalance might help explain his behavior.

In the week after the final session, Peter said, something amazing occurred.

“All of a sudden, I wanted to initiate intimacy. I can only presume it was driven not by my mind remembering something, but my body wanting something,” he said. “I did initiate sex more and it improved things with my partner incredibly.”

Experts believe HSDD affects at least 10% of women and up to 8% of men, although those numbers may be low, said Stanley Althof, a professor emeritus of psychology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio and executive director of the Center for Marital and Sexual Health of South Florida.

“Men are embarrassed to go to the doctor to begin with, and you’re supposed to be a macho guy,” said Althof, who was not involved in the kisspeptin study.

“So it’s difficult for men to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a problem with my sex drive.’ That’s why the majority of male patients I see with HSDD are sent in by their partners.”

To be diagnosed with the disorder, a person must have no other issues that might cause a change in libido, such as erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation.

“Losing interest due to performance issues is common, but HSDD is its own thing,” Althof said. “It’s an absence of erotic thoughts and a lack of desire for sex that has to be present for six months. It also cannot be better explained by another disorder or other stressors: It can’t be due to depression. It can’t be due to a bad relationship. It can’t be due to taking an antidepressant.”

One more key point: A man or woman must have clinically significant distress to have HSDD, said clinical psychologist Dr. Sheryl Kingsberg, a professor in reproductive biology and psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University, who was also not involved in the kisspeptin study.

“Some people aren’t bothered by their lack of interest in sex, so we wouldn’t treat them for HSDD,” said Kingsberg, who is also chief of behavioral medicine at MacDonald Women’s Hospital and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.

“The women coming into my office are deeply distressed,” she said. “They tell me ‘I used to have desire but it’s gone. I could be on a desert island with no pressures, but I just don’t have the appetite. I want it back.’ Those women have HSDD.”

Dr. Waljit Dhillo, a professor in endocrinology and metabolism at Imperial College London, has been studying the relationship between low sexual desire and the hormone kisspeptin for years, first in animals, then in people.

Prior studies by Dhillo of healthy men with no libido problems found giving them kisspeptin boosted levels of testosterone and luteinizing hormone, which is important for gonad function.

His newest study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open in February, enrolled 32 men with verified HSDD. Peter was one of them.

“So many people say to themselves, ‘It’s just me. I’ve got a problem.’ But actually, HSDD may be how your brain is wired,” said Dhillo, who is a dean at the United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Care Research Academy in Newcastle upon Tyne.

“The biology is telling us there’s increased activation of inhibitory areas in the brain — the same areas that tell us it’s not OK to walk around in public naked — and those areas are switching off sexual desire. How can we tackle that? We give a hormone that would naturally give you increased sexual desire, essentially hijacking the normal system.”

The men participating in the new study visited Dhillo’s lab twice. On each occasion, they were fitted with a device to objectively measure arousal, given an injection and asked to watch pornography while their brains were scanned via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Neither the subjects or the researchers knew if that day’s injection was kisspeptin or a placebo.

“It was extraordinarily surreal, lying there with something resembling a hangman’s noose around your bits and watching a mixture of ’70s to modern-day pornographic images and videos,” Peter said. “You’d get about five or six seconds of one type of image or video, rate your arousal for the researchers, and then move on to the next.”

Brain scans showed a significant dual effect after the kisspeptin injection, Dhillo said. Activity in the areas of the brain that inhibit behavior slowed, while areas of the brain connected to sexual interest lit up.

“As a group, the men had a 56% higher sexual response to sexual images after the kisspeptin than the placebo,” Dhillo said. “And we found no side effects at the very, very small dose that we are using.”

Peter noticed a difference immediately after finishing the treatments. His sex life was so robust, in fact, that it wasn’t long before his partner was pregnant with their first child.

As published, the study did not follow the men long-term to see if the effects of kisspeptin lasted. For Peter, however, its impact has been life-changing.

“I have found there’s been a lasting effect for me,” he said. “I do find I have a much better sexual appetite even now some years after the treatment.”

Even the arrival of a baby boy didn’t deter his new interest in sex.

“The cliche is when you have kids, your sex life takes a bit of a hit,” he told CNN. “But that hasn’t been the case for us. In fact, we’re pregnant with our second child, due in July.”

While Peter had a positive long-term result, it’s too soon to say kisspeptin injections were the reason, Althof said.

“When you hear dramatic results like Peter’s, I would be cautious in saying that is the typical outcome. While it’s wonderful that it happened for him, these fMRI studies are difficult to interpret and not conclusive,” he said.

“Sexual desire is very complicated — I say it’s a combination of brain function, hormones and love, wine and roses,” Althof added. “This study is promising, but it needs replication in larger groups.”

And even if future research does confirm kisspeptin’s benefits, medical treatment is not a substitution for healthy communication about sex between partners and with health care providers, Dhillo said.

“These are society’s taboos, but actually, the more we talk about real (sexual) issues that affect real people, the more we find it’s actually quite common,” he said.”If you’re not troubled by low libido, it’s not an issue at all, but if you are troubled by it, this can lead to marital breakdown, unhappiness and reduced quality of life.”

Study: Climate change is killing our sex drive

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Dementia risk rises if you live with chronic pain, study says | CNN

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CNN
 — 

Chronic pain, such as arthritis, cancer or back pain, lasting for over three months, raises the risk of cognitive decline and dementia, a new study found.

The hippocampus, a brain structure highly associated with learning and memory, aged by about a year in a 60-year-old person who had one site of chronic pain compared with people with no pain.

When pain was felt in two places in the body, the hippocampus shrank even more — the equivalent of just over two years of aging, according to estimates in the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS.

“In other words, the hippocampal (grey matter volume) in a 60-y-old individual with (chronic pain) at two body sites was similar to the volume of (pain free) controls aged 62-y-old,” wrote corresponding author Tu Yiheng and his colleagues. Tu is a professor of psychology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

The risk rose as the number of pain sites in the body increased, the study found. Hippocampal volume was nearly four times smaller in people with pain in five or more body sites compared with those with only two — the equivalent of up to eight years of aging.

“Asking people about any chronic pain conditions, and advocating for their care by a pain specialist, may be a modifiable risk factor against cognitive decline that we can proactively address,” said Alzheimer’s disease researcher Dr. Richard Isaacson, a preventive neurologist at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases of Florida. He was not involved in the new study.

The study analyzed data from over 19,000 people who had undergone brain scans as part of the UK Biobank, a long-term government study of over 500,000 UK participants between the ages of 40 and 69.

People with multiple sites of body pain performed worse than people with no pain on seven of 11 cognitive tasks, the study found. In contrast, people with only one pain site performed worse on only one cognitive task — the ability to remember to perform a task in the future.

The study controlled for a variety of contributing conditions — age, alcohol use, body mass, ethnicity, genetics, history of cancer, diabetes, vascular or heart problems, medications, psychiatric symptoms and smoking status, to name a few. However, the study did not control for levels of exercise, Isaacson said.

“Exercise is the #1 most powerful tool in the fight against cognitive decline and dementia,” he said via email. “People affected by multisite chronic pain may be less able to adhere to regular physical activity as one potential mechanism for increased dementia risk.”

Equally important is a link between chronic pain and inflammation, Isaacson said. A 2019 review of studies found pain triggers immune cells called microglia to create neuroinflammation that may lead to changes in brain connectivity and function.

People with higher levels of pain were also more likely to have reduced gray matter in other brain areas that impact cognition, such as the prefrontal cortex and frontal lobe — the same areas attacked by Alzhemier’s disease. In fact, over 45% of Alzheimer’s patients live with chronic pain, according to a 2016 study cited by the review.

The study was also not able to determine sleep deficits — chronic pain often makes getting a good night’s sleep difficult. A 2021 study found sleeping less than six hours a night in midlife raises the risk of dementia by 30%.

Globally, low back pain is a leading cause of years lived with disability, with neck pain coming in at No. 4, according to the 2016 Global Burden of Disease Study. Arthritis, nerve damage, pain from cancer and injuries are other leading causes.

Researchers estimate over 30% of people worldwide suffer with chronic pain: “Pain is the most common reason people seek health care and the leading cause of disability in the world,” according to articles published in the journal The Lancet in 2021.

In the United States alone, at least 1 in 5 people, or some 50 million Americans, live with long-lasting pain, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nearly 11 million Americans suffer from high-impact chronic pain, defined as pain lasting over three months that’s “accompanied by at least one major activity restriction, such as being unable to work outside the home, go to school, or do household chores,” according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

Chronic pain has been linked to anxiety, depression, restrictions in mobility and daily activities, dependence on opioids, increased health care costs, and poor quality of life. A 2019 study estimated about 5 million to 8 million Americans were using opioids to manage chronic pain.

Pain management programs typically involve a number of specialists to find the best relief for symptoms while providing support for the emotional and mental burden of pain, according to John Hopkins Medicine.

Medical treatment can include over-the-counter and prescription medications to stop the pain cycle and ease inflammation. Injections of steroids may also help. Antidepressants increase the amount of serotonin, which controls part of the pain pathway in the brain. Applying brief bursts of electricity to the muscles and nerve endings is another treatment.

Therapies such as massage and whirlpool immersion and exercises may be suggested by occupational and physical therapists. Hot and cold treatments and acupuncture may help as well.

Psychologists who specialize in rehabilitation may recommend cognitive and relaxation techniques such as meditation, tai chi and yoga that can take the mind off fixating on pain. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a key psychological treatment for pain.

Going on an anti-inflammatory diet may be suggested, such as cutting back on trans fats, sugars and other processed foods. Weight loss may be helpful as well, especially for back and knee pain, according to Johns Hopkins.

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Myths and facts about treating a hangover | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.



CNN
 — 

Are you celebrating the first day of 2023 with a hangover?

If so, you might be looking for a method to ease your misery. There are certainly a lot of so-called hangover cures, some dating back centuries.

“The ancient Greeks believed that eating cabbage could cure a hangover, and the Romans thought that a meal of fried canaries would do the trick,” said Dr. John Brick, former chief of research at the Center of Alcohol Studies, Education and Training Division at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who authored “The Doctor’s Hangover Handbook.”

“Today, some Germans believe that a hearty breakfast of red meat and bananas cures hangovers. You might find some French drinking strong coffee with salt, or some Chinese drinking spinach tea,” he said. “Some of the more unusual hangover cures are used by some people in Puerto Rico, who rub half a lemon under their drinking arm.”

In truth, the only cure for a hangover is time, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

“A person must wait for the body to finish clearing the toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism, to rehydrate, to heal irritated tissue, and to restore immune and brain activity to normal,” according to the institute. That recovery process can take up to 24 hours.

Are there things you can do to ease your transition? Possibly, experts say, but many common hangover “cures” may make your hangover worse. Here’s how to separate fact from fiction.

Having another drink, or the “hair of the dog that bit you,” is a well-known cure for a hangover, right? Not really, experts say.

The reason some people believe it works is because once the calming effects of alcohol pass, the brain on a hangover is overstimulated. (It’s also the reason you wake up in the middle of the night once your body has metabolized alcohol.)

“You’ve got this hyperexcitability in the brain after the alcohol is gone,” said Dr. Robert Swift, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

“If you look at the brain of somebody with a hangover, even though the person might feel tired, their brain is actually overexcited,” he said.

Consuming more alcohol normalizes the brain again, “because you’re adding a sedative to your excited brain,” Swift said. “You feel better until the alcohol goes away and the cycle repeats in a way.”

The answer is yes, depending on hangover symptoms, Brick said. If you’re a coffee drinker, skipping your morning cup of joe may lead to caffeine withdrawal on top of your hangover.

But coffee can irritate the stomach lining, which is already inflamed by alcohol, Brick said. So if you are queasy and nauseous, coffee may only make matters worse.

“If you have a hangover, have a quarter of a cup of coffee,” Brick suggested. “See if you feel better — it takes about 20 minutes for the caffeine to start to have some noticeable effect.

“If coffee doesn’t make you feel better, don’t drink anymore. Obviously, that’s not the cure for your hangover.”

Forget eating a greasy breakfast in the wee hours after a night of drinking — you’re adding insult to injury, Swift said: “Greasy food is harder to digest, so it’s probably good to avoid it.”

Eating greasy food also doesn’t make much sense. The alcohol we drink, called ethyl alcohol or ethanol, is the byproduct of fermenting carbohydrates and starches, usually some sort of grain, grape or berry. While it may create some tasty beverages, ethanol is also a solvent, Brick said.

“It cuts through grease in your stomach much the same way it cleans grease off oily car parts,” he said.

Instead, experts suggest using food to prevent hangovers, by eating before you have that first drink.

“Eating food loaded with protein and carbohydrates can significantly slow down the absorption of alcohol,” Brick said. “The slower the alcohol gets to your brain, the less rapid the ‘shock’ to your brain.”

Alcohol dehydrates, so a headache and other hangover symptoms may be partly due to constricted blood vessels and a loss of electrolytes, essential minerals such as sodium, calcium and potassium that your body needs.

If you’ve vomited, you’ve lost even more electrolytes, and all of this can lead to fatigue, confusion, irregular heart rate, digestive problems and more.

Replacing lost fluids with water or a type of sports drink with extra electrolytes can help boost recovery from a hangover, Swift said.

Taking over-the-counter pain meds can be dangerous, especially if you take too many while intoxicated, experts say. Taking an acetaminophen, such as Tylenol, can further damage your overtaxed liver, while aspirin and ibuprofen can irritate your stomach lining.

“You should never, never take alcohol with acetaminophen or Tylenol,” Swift said. “You can actually cause liver damage from an overdose of Tylenol.”

But aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen are “theoretically” OK, he added.

“Even though they tend to be anti-inflammatory in the body, they can cause inflammation in the stomach,” Swift said. “Don’t take them on an empty stomach; always take anti-inflammatories with food.”

While most alcohol is handled by the liver, a small amount leaves the body unchanged through sweat, urine and breathing.

Get up, do some light stretching and walking, and drink plenty of water to encourage urination, Brick said.

“Before you go to sleep and when you wake up, drink as much water as you comfortably can handle,” he said. You can also take a multivitamin “before you hit the shower in the morning (to) replenish lost vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.”

If you would rather have something warm and soothing, Brick suggested broth or other homemade soups.

“These will also help to replace lost salts, including potassium and other substances,” he said, “but will not make you sober up faster or improve impairment due to intoxication or hangover.”

Store shelves are packed with so-called hangover cures. Unfortunately, there’s no proof they work. In 2020, researchers published what they called the “world’s largest randomised double-blind placebo-controlled” trial of supplements containing vitamins, minerals, plant extracts and antioxidants and found no real improvement in hangover symptoms.

Even if one solution works, it likely won’t fix all your symptoms, experts say.

“The effects of alcohol and alcoholic beverages are so complicated, so complex,” Swift said, “that any solution might address one or two of the symptoms but won’t address them all.”

What does work for a hangover? Time. It will take time for your body to release all the toxins causing your misery, experts say. And the only way to prevent a hangover is to abstain.

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Pandemic fueled alcohol abuse, especially among women, but there are treatment options | CNN

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Editor’s Note: In the final two episodes of “This Is Life With Lisa Ling,” the series explores alcoholism in America (at 9 p.m. ET Sunday) and interracial marriages (at 10 p.m. ET Sunday).



CNN
 — 

Brook was 34 years old when her use of alcohol escalated, a way of coping with a breast cancer diagnosis.

“I just decided I’m not gonna go through this straight,” she told Lisa Lang in an episode of “This Is Life With Lisa Ling,” airing at 9 p.m. ET Sunday on CNN.

“I would drink before I went to my chemo sessions. It became more and more of a coping mechanism,” said Brook, who did not want to use her last name.

Brook survived the bout with cancer but says she became dependent on alcohol — and the pandemic only made it worse.

“When Covid started and I was home, I started drinking more and more and more,” said Brook, now 42. “I started not being able to eat, I started throwing up more often, and then I started throwing up blood.”

She recently ended up in the hospital, diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and a bad bleed from ulcers, which doctors said could take her life if not quickly treated.

“When they were talking to me afterwards, they said, ‘If you keep going like this, you’ll be dead in a year,’ ” Brook told Ling.

Alcohol use disorder is defined as compulsively using alcohol despite negative consequences on relationships and one’s ability to function at work, school or in the community. Over time, excessive alcohol use may even rewire the brain, making booze as desirable as natural rewards such as food or sex, experts say.

Researchers at University of California, Los Angeles showed pictures of alcoholic drinks to people who are and are not addicted while scanning their brains. Regions of the brain associated with craving, pleasure and reward lit up significantly more in those with an alcohol use disorder.

“It’s much more of a medical and brain disease than we initially thought,” Lara Ray, a clinical psychologist who runs the UCLA Addictions Lab, told Ling.

In addition, just one pint of beer or average glass of wine a day may begin to shrink the overall volume of the brain. The brains of nondrinkers who began consuming an average of one alcohol unit a day showed the equivalent of half a year of aging, according to a study published in March.

The damage worsens as the number of daily drinks rises, the study found — drinking four alcohol units a day aged a person’s brain by more than 10 years.

Alcohol use disorder is a growing problem in the United States, which experts say has been enhanced by the pandemic, especially among women.

“Last year, I took care of two women who were in their early 20s who had cirrhosis and needed liver transplants, and I’ve never seen that before in my entire career,” Dr. James Burton, medical director of liver transplantation at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, told Ling.

A recent study found a significant increase in alcohol-associated liver disease and a 15% higher rate of waiting lists and subsequent liver transplants between 2020 and 2021 — the greatest increase occurred in young adults.

Since the pandemic’s onset, statistics show an overall 14% increase in the number of drinking days per month, but a “41% increase in heavy drinking days among women,” Dr. Sarah Wakeman, medical director of the Substance Use Disorders Initiative at Massachusetts General Hospital, told CNN in January.

Why? Pre-pandemic mom wine culture, which “normalized and even glorified” drinking, is partly to blame, said Dr. Leena Mittal, chief of the women’s mental health division in the department of psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

In addition, “studies have shown the complexities of balancing home, work and caregiving responsibilities during the pandemic have fallen disproportionately on women,” Mittal said earlier.

Women are especially sensitive to the effects of alcohol, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol-related problems appear sooner and at lower drinking levels than in men, said the institute, part of the US National Institutes of Health.

Women are more susceptible to alcohol-related brain damage and heart disease than men, and studies show women who have one drink a day increase their risk of breast cancer by 5% to 9% compared with those who abstain.

Pandemic lockdowns also forced many people to live and work from home — sometimes alone. A July study found drinking alone during adolescence and young adulthood can strongly increase the risk for alcohol abuse later in life, especially if you are a woman.

Victoria, who also did not want to use her last name, told Ling she began drinking as a teenager. Now 55, she still “can’t control it. It’s like a tension that builds up. And so then when I do drink, it’s like, ‘Ah! I’m drinking,’ you know, so it’s way too much, way too fast.”

Victoria says she continues to crave alcohol but goes regularly to support meetings for addiction recovery after moving in with her mother during the pandemic.

Binge drinking — defined as more than four drinks for women and five for men within a few hours — is on the rise. According to a study published in June, even older people who consider themselves moderate users of alcohol are downing multiple drinks in one sitting.

People who binged were about five times more likely to experience numerous alcohol problems, including injuries, emotional or psychological issues, and alcohol dependence at work or school or while caring for children, the study found.

“What this means is that an individual whose total consumption is seven drinks on Saturday night presents a greater risk profile than someone whose total consumption is a daily drink with dinner, even though their average drinking level is the same,” study coauthor Charles Holahan, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, told CNN previously.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved only three drugs designed to reduce alcohol use since 1951: disulfiram, which causes headaches, nausea and vomiting when mixed with alcohol; acamprosate, which works on the reward centers of the brain to reduce alcohol cravings; and naltrexone, which reduces cravings and appears to help with heavy drinking.

There is help. Find it here

  • The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has a tool called the NIAA Alcohol Treatment Navigator that “helps adults find alcohol treatment for themselves or an adult loved one.” For teens, the institute recommends these resources.
  • The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has a free, confidential National Helpline active 24/7/ 365 days a year to provide information and treatment referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups and community-based organizations: 800-662-HELP (4357) and 800-487-4889 (TTY option).

    • All three have significant side effects that can deter people from using them consistently.

    Researchers continue to experiment with various drugs to see if they can help cure cravings without major side effects. While not FDA-approved, the anticonvulsant drug topiramate has shown promise in some clinical trials but may affect cognition and memory. Other anticonvulsant drugs, such as zonisamide and gabapentin, and a smoking cessation drug called varenicline have shown mixed results.

    At Ray’s lab at UCLA, small clinical trials have found promising results from the neuromodulator ibudilast, which hindered cravings and reduced the odds of heavy drinking for some people by 45%.

    For Billy Flores, 45, the change happened quickly.

    “In the first two days, I was upset in the stomach, but by the third day I was on it, I was off of alcohol, which is pretty amazing I thought,” he told Ling about using ibudilast.

    Bill has struggled with alcohol but says he has found hope with a clinical trial.

    Additional studies are needed to see if the benefits hold true for larger populations.

    In the meantime, there are gold standard treatments for alcohol use disorder that don’t involve medications. Those include Alcoholics Anonymous and Self-Management and Recovery Training 12-step programs, cognitive behavioral treatments and mindfulness-based approaches.

    A large 2006 clinical trial found behavioral interventions can be as effective as drugs — in fact, most of the medication clinical trials done to date have also included some form of social or behavioral treatment in combination with drugs.

    Having support is critical to keeping a positive mindset that will ultimately win the battle with alcohol, experts say.

    Brook agrees.

    “When I was doing my therapy intake for rehab, one of the questions was, ‘What made you decide to do this?’ And I said, ‘I’m better than this,’ ” she told Ling.

    “I still like to think that even with the relapses, I’m gonna still be that person who gets right back up and tries again.”

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