Millions of people watch YouTube videos depicting teens injuring and cutting themselves, according to a new study. The authors conclude that the videos may serve to legitimize the behaviors as acceptable, even normal.

To assess the scope and accessibility of self-injury videos on the Internet, Stephen Lewis of the University of Guelph, and colleagues searched YouTube for keywords like “self-harm,” and “self-injury.”

They found that the top 100 most frequently viewed videos were watched more than 2.3 million times. Ninety-five percent of the viewers were female. Their average age was 25, although Lewis’ group suspects their actual average age was lower, since some YouTube viewers provide restricted content only to older viewers.

Typically, the videos contained graphic images of cutting, embedding and burning. Many of the videos contained statements of despair or images of sad or crying people. About 42% of the videos neither encouraged nor discouraged self-injury. An additional 26% denounced the behavior, while 23% gave a mixed message and 7% actually encouraged people to perform the depicted behavior.

Most of the videos contained no warnings or viewing restrictions. Viewers tended to rate these videos highly (an average score of 4.61 out of 5). Self-harm videos were identified as “favorites” over 12,000 times.

“Nonsuicidal self-injury videos on YouTube may foster normalization of nonsuicidal self-injury and may reinforce the behavior through regular viewing,” wrote the authors. “This may have triggering-like consequences for those who have enacted nonsuicidal self-injury repetitively and for youth who have just started to self-injure and who may come across these videos.”

Scientists have reported elsewhere that the incidence of nonsuicidal self-injury is between 14-24% among children, teens, and young adults. Six to seven percent of adolescents say they do it regularly. The behavior is thought to be a risk factor for maladaptive socialization and various psychiatric illnesses. Although the behavior isn’t intended to be suicidal, scientists believe that the distress it provokes can trigger suicidal ideation or suicide. And of course, the behavior can lead to accidental suicides as well.

For more information on this topic, please see HelpGuide.org. Lewis’ write-up appears in Pediatrics.

More than 70% of all medical devices that have been recalled by the FDA for safety concerns were not subjected to rigorous clinical testing before the agency approved them, according to a new study.

The study authors were Diana Zuckerman and Paul Brown from the National Research Center for Women and Families, a consumer group, and Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic.

The authors reported that overall, the FDA recalled 113 medical devices between 2005 and 2009. Of these, 21 had been approved on the basis of rigorous clinical trial data. Eighty others had been approved under a less stringent, expedited approval process known as 510K, in which a device maker needs only to show that its new product is substantially similar to one already on the market. An additional 8 devices were exempt from FDA regulations, and 4 more were either counterfeit or classified as “other.”

Devices approved using the 510K approval process included mechanical ventilators, insulin infusion pumps, artificial hips and knees, and external cardiac defibrillators. The more rigorous process is typically reserved for life-supporting devices like implanted cardiac defibrillators. In the latter process, device makers must sponsor trials designed to prove their products are safe and effective.

Last summer, the FDA announced it was implementing some steps to “strengthen” the 510K process, but it deferred on a complete overhau pending the release of a report on the matter by the Institute of Medicine. The report is due later this year.
 In an interview, Zuckerman said her group’s findings suggest that the FDA’s actions to date on 510K aren’t adequate. Device manufacturers have managed to expand the concept of “similar” well beyond the FDA’s original intent when the 510K law went live in 1976, Zuckerman explained. “The law has gotten looser and looser over time.”

The FDA blew-off Zuckerman’s findings as old news. According to a statement by the agency, the data had been presented by Zuckerman last year at a public meeting sponsored by the IOM.

For its part, the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a device industry trade group, said the study was misleading. It wasn’t surprising that 510K-approved devices accounted for most of the recalls, the group said, because most FDA-approved devices have gone through the 510K process.

Stephen Ubl, the Association’s CEO added that the study was “fundamentally flawed” since it focused “on the total number of recalls and ignored the fact that there are over 50,000 devices on the market.”

Ubl added that the percentage of products recalled for serious health problems or deaths was substantially below 1%. He added that an overly strict regulatory process would hinder innovation and prompt device manufacturers to move product development to other countries where regulatory scrutiny isn’t as intense.

Zuckerman’s write-up appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Scientists have proven that dietary fiber lowers the risk of coronary artery disease, diabetes and certain cancers. Surprisingly however, they had yet to show that fiber could impact overall mortality. Now apparently, they have done just that. 

A research team led by Yikyung Park of the National Cancer Institute has published a study showing that high fiber intake is indeed associated with longer survival.

To reach these conclusions, Park’s group looked at data from nearly 400,000 men and women between the ages of 50 and 71 using the AARP Diet and Health Study. They assessed dietary fiber intake with a questionnaire that had been administered at the beginning of the 9-year study. They excluded people with diabetes, heart disease and most cancers, as well as those who reported extremely high daily fiber intake.

After controlling for smoking, exercise and body weight, the researchers showed that dietary fiber intake was associated with a reduced risk of death in both sexes.

Specifically, people in the highest quintile for fiber consumption (29.4 grams per day for men and 25.8 grams for women) were 22% less likely to die from all causes than those in the lowest quintile (12.6 grams per day for men and 10.8 for women). Women were 34-59%, and men were 24-56%  less likely to die from heart, respiratory and infectious diseases, in particular. Fiber consumption was associated with a lower risk of dying from cancer in men (who are prone to get cancers thought to be reduced by dietary fiber intake) but not in women.

Interestingly, the type of fiber consumed made a huge difference in this study. Participants who consumed fiber from grains, like oatmeal, brown rice and cornmeal experienced all the benefits. In this study at least, fiber derived from vegetables, fruits and beans did not reduce mortality.

“Whole grains are rich sources of fiber, but also good sources of vitamins, minerals, and other phytochemicals that may provide health benefits,” Park explained in an interview. It’s also true that grains have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, which could have been decisive. (It’s important to add that many prior studies have shown that diets rich in fiber from fruits and vegetables can reduce cardiovascular risk.)

The mechanisms by which fiber cuts mortality risk remain unclear. In addition to its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, fiber reduces LDL (bad) cholesterol and normalizes blood glucose levels. It may also bind to cancer-causing agents in the gut, thereby preventing them from being absorbed into the body.

Note: The federal government’s new Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest that women consume 25 grams of fiber per day, and that men consume 38 grams per day. The average American consumes about 15 grams per day. Given what appears to be differential effects of fiber from different sources, it’s wise to get your fiber from as wide a variety of sources as possible, including fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes.

The study appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Bullying and other forms of social aggression affect nearly 30% of US students per school year. According to some estimates, up to 160,000 students skip school each day to avoid being bullied. Those who are victimized by bullies are at risk for mental health problems including anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. Their academic performance often suffers as well.

What explains the offensive behavior of bullys?

Six years after “Mean Girls” hit the movieplex, sociologists have provided evidence that the flick got it exactly right on bullying. Their data simultaneously disproves traditional thinking on the matter, which had posited that home-related issues, social incompetence and psychological difficulties caused aggressive behavior in teens.

The study, by Robert Faris and colleagues at UC Davis, found that the more central a teen is in his or her school’s social network, the more aggressively the teen behaves toward peers…unless the teen happens to sit at the very top of the social totem pole, in which case they’re not aggressive at all.

To reach these conclusions, Faris’ group surveyed 3,722 boys and girls from 19 middle- and high schools in North Carolina during the fall of 2004 and again the following spring. The survey asked students to name their top 5 friends, up to 5 students they had picked on (verbal harassment, physical attacks, spreading rumors, simple ostracism and so forth) during the previous 3 months, and up to 5 students that had picked on them. There were also questions covering dating patterns, participation on sports teams, race and socioeconomic status.

Faris’ team used the data to create “social maps“  that outlined positive and negative relations between students as reported in the survey. These maps showed that students’ tendency to harass other students increased with their social status, as measured by their friend counts. Overall, each student was aggressive toward 0.63 peers, but so-called “socially-central athletes,” harassed as many as 9 other students, each. 

The tendency to display aggressive behavior reached a zenith for students at the 98th percentile for popularity, suggesting they were using aggressive behavior to improve their social status. Importantly however, the students who ranked in the top 2% of the hierarchy tended not to harass their peers. They had little to gain by aggressive behavior, and too much to lose, the authors hypothesized.

The findings suggest that anti-bullying programs in schools should focus on social hierarchies, according to UCLA psychologist Jaana Juvonen. “It’s really critical for bystanders to speak up,” she added. “If there’s an aggressive kid everyone bows down to, it sends a signal to the bully that what they’re doing is working.”

The write-up appears in the American Sociological Review.

Aerobic exercise reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes…and it may improve memory in elderly adults as well, a new study has found.

The study was carried out by Arthur Kramer of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and colleagues.

The scientists knew that as people age, a part of the brain known as the hippocampus shrinks by 1-2% per year. They also knew that this phenomenon is associated with impaired memory and an increased risk for dementia. In addition, they were aware of previous studies which had shown that (1)the hippocampus is larger in physically fit adults, (2)aerobic exercise increases blood flow to the hippocampus, and that (3)in animals, aerobic exercise reduces the loss of hippocampal volume and preserves memory.

It remained for Kramer’s group to determine whether aerobic exercise could reverse age-related shrinkage of the hippocampus in humans.

To study the matter, the scientists randomized 120 men and women in their mid-60s to either a program involving walking 3 times-a-week for a year, or to a stretching (non-aerobic) program. The first group walked around a track for 40 minutes per session.  All participants gave blood samples and underwent spatial memory tests and MRI scans at study onset, halfway through the study, and at the end of the study.

The scientists found that the aerobic exercisers had a 2% increase in hippocampal volume, whereas the control (stretching) group lost 1.4% of their hippocampal volume. In addition, the aerobic exercisers performed better on spatial memory exercises at the end of the study. They also had increased blood levels of BDNF, a chemical that is synthesized in the brain and is involved with memory and learning.

The findings “clearly indicate that aerobic exercise is neuroprotective and that starting an exercise regimen later in life is not futile for either enhancing cognition or augmenting brain volume,” the researchers wrote.

“Loss of hippocampal volume in late adulthood is not inevitable and can be reversed with moderate-intensity exercise.”

The write-up appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Among fans who attend live sporting events, drinking alcohol is nearly as commonplace as root, root rooting for the home team. And while virtually no one has a problem with a fan who pushes back a beer or two during the game, flat-out drunk fans can ruin the experience for those sitting nearby. Worse yet, these people frequently get behind the wheel of a car after the game is over.

Recently, Darin Erickson and colleagues at the University of Minnesota decided to find out just how many fans go overboard at games, and their findings are worrisome, indeed. Using standard blood alcohol testing on 362 adult volunteers who were leaving 13 professional baseball and 3 professional football games, the scientists found that 40% had measurable levels of alcohol in their blood and a stunning 8% were legally drunk (as defined by a blood alcohol level of .08 or greater). The highest alcohol level recorded by the scientists was .22.

Erickson’s group also observed that Monday Night Football attendees were more likely than other fans to have been drinking. In addition, fans who were 35 years old or younger were 8 times more likely to leave the game drunk, and those who attended tailgating parties before the game were 14 times more likely to leave the game drunk.

The latter finding is consistent with a study from the University of Toledo, in which scientists gave breathalyzer tests to tailgaters at a college football game. The scientists found that an astounding 90% of the participants consumed alcohol during tailgate festivities, and among them, the average blood-alcohol concentration was 0.06, well on the way to being legally drunk.

Maybe these people should save the money they spent on tickets and go to a bar. Erickson’s study was published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Most people know that the US is struggling to contain a surging epidemic of obesity, and that the problem is most acute among African-Americans. Whereas about 27% of all adult Americans are obese (defined as having a body mass index of 30 or more), fully 37% of African-American adults are obese, and that number jumps to an appalling 42% among African-American women.

Over the years, public health officials have provided evidence that socioeconomic and cultural factors drive this racial disparity. Now, a new study suggests there is another reason as well: obese African-Americans receive less obesity-related counseling than their white counterparts, and it matters not whether the physicians they see are African-American or white.

To reach these conclusions, Sara Bleich and colleagues from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health used clinical encounter data from the 2005–2007 National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys (NAMCS). The sample included 2,231 visits involving African-American and white obese people who were at least 20 years old and who visited family practitioners and internists that were either African-American or white. Asian and Hispanic patients and physicians were excluded from the study because their numbers were too small to permit hypothesis testing.

For each encounter in the study, the scientists determined whether the patient received guidance on weight reduction, diet and nutrition, or exercise from his or her physician.

It turned out that African-American patients received weight-loss counseling about half as often as white patients did, regardless of whether the physician was African-American or white. Worse yet, African-Americans were only about one-third as likely as their white counterparts to receive advice about exercise from their physicians—once again, regardless of the physicians’ race.

Bleich’s group presented 3 hypotheses to explain their findings. First, physicians may tend not to believe that African-Americans will heed their advice. Second, African-American physicians may curtail such counseling in attempt to be “culturally sensitive” to their African-American patients. Third physicians may not have the resources or proper training to counsel patients about these issues, no matter what their race might be.

“Future work,” the scientists wrote, “should examine similarities and differences in the contribution of patient, clinician, and health system factors to low levels of weight-related counseling among patients of different ethnic groups.”

The write-up appears in the journal Obesity.

In recent years, scientists discovered that blueberries were loaded with anthocyanins, resveratrol, flavonoids and other chemicals that slowed aging and cut cancer risk in mice.

Blueberries have never been shown to have these effects in humans, but the discoveries have nevertheless triggered quite a renaissance for the tasty fruit. In fact nowadays, you can find blueberries in nearly every aisle at the grocery store. You can buy blueberry bagels, blueberry ice cream and blueberry salad dressing for example, in addition their old-time hang-outs in muffins and cereal…and that’s not even counting the fresh, natural berries themselves.

But consumers need to exercise caution when purchasing these products. While many feature enticing pictures of blueberries on their labels, some don’t contain real blueberries at all, according to a recent report by the Consumer Wellness Center.

Take Blueberry Muffin-flavored Frosted Mini Wheats, for example. This Kellogg’s product contains not a whit of blueberries. Instead, it contains “blueberry flavored crunchlets” which are made from sugar, soybean oil, red #40 and blue #2.

Worse yet is the General Mills product, Total Blueberry Pomegranate Cereal. It contains neither blueberries nor pomegranates.

Many other products contain a trivial amount of blueberries, it’s true, but their recipes contain a host of of artificial colors, hydrogenated oils, liquid sugars and other ingredients that make their products look like they contain a lot more blueberries than they really do.

For example, Target brand blueberry bagels claims to contain “blueberry bits.”  Now, to be fair, the ingredients list does include actual blueberries, but those blueberry bits aren’t made from the real thing. Instead, they’re made from sugar, corn cereal, modified food starch, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, artificial flavor, cellulose gum, salt and artificial colors like Blue #2, Red #40, Green #3 and Blue #1.

This appears to be false and deceptive advertising. Most consumers are under the impression that when they buy blueberry bagels, cereals and so on, they’re buying real blueberries. But real blueberries are expensive. These other ingredients are dirt cheap and have longer shelf-lives.

We’re confident that the FDA will eventually take action on the matter. Until then, consumers need to read the labels on these products. Tip-offs to the deception would be those artificial dyes, red #40 and Blue #2. Chances are that if you see them, you’re buying less blueberries than you think, and maybe no blueberries at all.

It’s well-known that the offspring of obese parents tend to become obese themselves. Both environmental and genetic factors govern this association. Recently, a pair of studies has shed considerable light on those genetic factors, and in particular the role that a father’s diet has on his kids.

In the first study, Sheau-Fang Ng and colleagues at the University of New South Wales randomized a cohort of male rats to receive either a high-calorie diet or a healthy diet, and then had them mate with normal, healthy female rats.

The scientists found that as the daughters of the obese dads grew to become adults, they exhibited impaired glucose tolerance and elevated insulin levels that were not seen in the daughters of normal-weight dads. This turned out to be true even though both sets of offspring had similar amounts of fat and muscle mass, and similar blood triglyceride and leptin levels.

The scientists performed genetic studies on the 2 groups to better understand the cause of these differences. These studies revealed that 642 genes were expressed differently in the 2 groups, and all of them were involved with glucose metabolism and insulin production. The anatomic site where the changes had their impact was localized to pancreatic B-cells which are known to produce insulin.

In their write-up, Sheau-Fang’s group claimed that theirs was “the first direct demonstration in any species that a paternal environmental exposure can induce intergenerational transmission of impaired glucose-insulin homeostasis in their female offspring.”

In the second study, Benjamin Carone, Oliver Rando and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts randomized male mice to receive a normal diet or a low-protein diet. As with the first study, the males were then invited to mate with females that had been fed a normal diet. The scientists found that the progeny of protein-deprived dads had several hundred genetic modifications that weren’t present in those fathered by the dads that had received the normal diet.

In this case, the modified genes governed fat and cholesterol synthesis. “It’s consistent with the idea that when parents go hungry, it’s best for offspring to hoard calories,” Rando said in a press release organized by Cell, the scientific journal in which the second study was published.

Although these studies featured rats and mice, similar epigenetic phenomena probably occur in humans as well. For example, a study by Swedish scientists has shown that the grandchildren of men who were adolescents during periods of widespread famine had a much higher prevalence of diabetes and weight problems.

Dead Heads have experienced it while listening to Jerry Garcia transition from Not Fade Away into Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad on the 1971 album, Skull and Roses. Jazz aficionados have as well, during any one of several McCoy Tyner solos on John Coltrane’s classic, A Love Supreme. And so have connoisseurs of classical music, who marvel at Jascha Heifetz’ stunning interpretations of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major (below).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFaq9kTlcaY

In fact, just about everyone has enjoyed a sensation of pure euphoria as “that riff” plays out during a favorite piece of music. 

Recently, Robert Zatorre and Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University decided to study the neurobehavioral underpinnings of the phenomenon. Perhaps not surprisingly, they found that regardless of the type of music or the age or sophistication of the listener, that euphoric feeling can indeed be measured, and its neurochemical roots are quite similar from person to person.

In fact, the scientists showed that musical epiphanies feature increased heart and breathing rates, and the release of dopamine in certain areas of the brain. Dopamine is the same neurotransmitter that’s released when humans experience similarly intense sensations of pleasure associated with tangible rewards like a good meal, sexual gratification, or the ingestion of certain addictive drugs.

To reach these conclusions, the scientists recruited 8 volunteers and asked them to listen to, in order, a favorite musical passage of their choosing and then a decidedly uninspiring selection that was chosen for them.

The volunteers selected a broad range of music, including jazz, punk and classical. The scientists hooked-up the subjects to all sorts of monitoring devices and also observed their brain activity using positron emission tomography (PET) scans and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tests.

The volunteers were instructed to press a button when they began experiencing a strong, positive reaction to the music.

The imaging tests of the brain showed a pulse of dopamine in the caudate nucleus beginning 15 or so seconds before the moment volunteers pressed the button, and a separate dopamine pulse in the nearby nucleus accumbens when their favorite riff finally arrived.

That made sense to the authors, who explained that the former area is known to be “involved with making predictions and responding to the environment, while the area reacting to the peak moment itself is linked to the brain’s limbic system, which is involved in emotion.”

Incidentally, other scientists have showed that viewing art stimulates the same neural circuitry in the brain. It’s pretty cool to think that, in addition to physical needs like food and sex, abstract stimuli like music and art can prompt feelings of euphoria.

The write-up appears in Nature Neuroscience.