This week’s health news includes two possible surprises and something most folks suspected but could not quantify.
Cyberbullying and disordered eating
Cyberbullying seems to increase the risk of having an eating disorder. And the impact is felt on both sides, the risk increased for both the bullies and the bullied, according to a new study in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.
Researchers from the University of California San Francisco examined data from 10,258 youths who were about 12 years old and in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Each adolescent filled out a questionnaire on whether they were ever cyberbullied or ever bullied others online.
“They also completed the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia, which categorizes child and adolescent mental health concerns, including eating disorder symptoms,” according to a release from the American Psychiatric Association.
Just under 10% of the adolescents had been bullied online, while slightly more than 1% had cyberbullied others. Those on the receiving end of the bullying had about twice the rate of concern related to weight, compared to the non-bullied. They worried about weight gain, linked their self-worth to their weight and tried to control their weight with “inappropriate compensatory behavior like vomiting or overdoing exercise, binge eating and being distressed by binge eating.”
The cyberbullies, however, had even higher rates of those concerns compared to adolescents who had not cyberbullied others. The exception was that cyberbullies and those who were not were about the same when it came to engaging in the inappropriate compensatory behaviors.
“In particular, our study supports the use of strategies to teach early adolescents methods to navigate negative appearance-related online comments,” the study said. “Furthermore, adolescents who have experienced cyberbullying could benefit from eating disorder prevention programs to minimize the risk of eating disorder development.”
Home pickling? Be careful
Pickling vegetables or making salsa at home? If you’re using vinegar to acidify them, in order to avoid spoilage and unsafe pH levels, read the label and make sure you have vinegar with at least 5% acidity.
Some have less, say Virginia Tech food safety pros Melissa Wright and Lester Schonberger, who note that vinegar with less acidity “cannot be used in home food preservation,” as a release from the school published on Newswise reports.
Schonberger, associate extension specialist in the Department of Food Science and Technology, said that vinegar with 4% acidity must not be used for home canning.
The number is on the label — and if it’s not, don’t use it for the task. If the concentration is listed in grains, not percentages, 10 grains equals 1% acidity, so a product needs at least 50 grains to be safe, according to Wright, director of the Food Producer Technical Assistance Network in the department.
Home canners and picklers can use vinegar with more than 5%, but it’s important not to cut the amount to try to make up for the fact it’s more acidic. When a recipe doesn’t specify the acidity, using vinegar with greater than 5% acidity is an acceptable substitute as long as consumers don’t use less vinegar than a recipe calls for, mistakenly thinking it evens out. And it should always be assumed that if a recipe doesn’t specify acidity, it’s 5%, they said.
More wildfires, worse health
Wildfires are increasingly posing dire threats to health. According to a report in JAMA — the Journal of the American Medical Association — Canadian officials deemed fires there this summer the worst in the country’s recorded history, the smoke blanketing sections of the continent. Elsewhere, “cataclysmic flames” have torn through Maui, the Siberian Arctic, Algeria, Chile and Greece.
The Canadian wildfires smothered some American cities with “the planet’s worst air quality,” while U.S. fires were already covering some cities with smoke for 30 days a year. The JAMA article said in the last decade, nearly 9 in 10 U.S. residents saw increases in heavy smoke levels. “A new report in Nature found that in 41 continental U.S. states, wildfire smoke is even stalling or reversing air quality improvement made since the beginning of the century,” the article said.
An assistant professor of atmospheric science at Howard University, Joseph Wilkins, told JAMA that the fire season is beginning to stretch to year-round. The impact can be felt many miles from the fires, though the severity on health varies, hitting especially hard the countries and communities that have limited mitigation resources and strategies.
Per the Environmental Protection Agency, quoted in the article, “When exposed to wildfire smoke, even over a few days, people may develop a cough, phlegm or difficulty breathing.” It’s very bad for folks with health issues, but even those who are healthy may have a temporary decrease in their lung function, as well as inflamed lungs from the particulate matter they breathe.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns of additional health effects of wildfire smoke inhalation, including headaches, chest pain, wheezing, asthma attacks, stinging eyes, a scratchy throat, tiredness, irregular heartbeat, irritated sinuses and more. The impact is likely to be worse for those with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or heart disease. CDC also says pregnant women, children and first responders working on the fires are “especially at risk.”
Particulate matter — the small kind labeled PM2.5 — inhaled from wildfires “may be especially toxic.” And per a study published in August in JAMA Internal Medicine, PM2.5 pollution from agriculture and smoke is “more strongly associated with dementia risk … than pollution from sources such as dust, traffic and coal combustion.”