Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Mental health services must urgently increase investment in lifestyle interventions to improve care and help close the 15-year life expectancy gap faced by people with mental illness, a Lancet Psychiatry Commission report warns. Lifestyle interventions targeting physical activity, nutrition, sleep and smoking are key to mental health care, not optional extras,…
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain An international team, led by scientists from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, has studied around 3,000 people affected by the heart disease dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM)—a driver of heart failure and sudden cardiac arrest. They discovered those who had a mutation in a particular gene called TTN were 21 times more…
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Do you have a meditation app on your smartphone, computer or wearable device? Well, you’re not alone. There are now thousands of meditation apps available worldwide, the top 10 of which have been collectively downloaded more than 300 million times. What’s more, early work on these digital meditation platforms shows that…
A) Visualization of dementia risk score factors denoted as nonmodifiable (red) and modifiable (green). B) Distribution plot of dementia risk scores across the cohort. C) Frequency plot depicting the percentage of spatial overlap of participants’ sensorimotor cortex and prefrontal cortex spectroscopy voxels in standard space. D) Group mean spectroscopy data (green) with overlaid model fits…
Two years’ involvement in programs focused on healthy eating, regular exercise and “brain training” exercises appears to have helped a wide range of older adults—even those at heightened risk of Alzheimer’s—avoid cognitive decline, a new study finds. The findings, presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Toronto, “encourage us to look at the potential…
Incentivizing daily walking through a mHealth app affects users’ step counts. Credit: Haruka Kato, Osaka Metropolitan University Walking is well known to have significant health benefits, but few people achieve the daily recommended steps. Fortunately, mobile health (mHealth) applications have emerged as promising tools to promote physical activity. These apps track user activities on mobile…
Credit: JAMA (2025). DOI: 10.1001/jama.2025.12923 The Alzheimer’s Association U.S. Study to Protect Brain Health Through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk (U.S. POINTER) found that certain lifestyle interventions improved cognition in older adults at risk of cognitive decline. U.S. POINTER is a two-year, multi-site clinical trial, one of which is the Baylor College of Medicine’s Alzheimer’s…
Adherence to a combination of healthy lifestyle factors is associated with a lower risk for overactive bladder (OAB), according to a study published online June 30 in Frontiers in Nutrition. Tianjie Li, from The First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University in China, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study using data from 20,195 nonpregnant adults…
Researchers reveal that a decline in oral health may increase the risk of developing lifestyle-related diseases. Credit: U.S Pacific Fleet via Openverse repository. openverse.org/image/c8aff06c-ab24-42bf-ba0f-5006df5681cc?q=Japanese+dentists&p=16 The term “oral health” refers to the health of the mouth, teeth, gums, and other related structures, and it is closely linked with our well-being and quality of life. Recently, there…
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Studies suggest mindfulness meditation can improve cognition, but few researchers have examined whether virtual mindfulness meditation apps are effective. In a new eNeuro paper, researcher Andy Kim and colleagues from the University of Southern California have assessed attention control in adults following about a month of mindfulness meditation guided by a…