Warning: Birthdays can be bad for your health

New study finds more than double hospital admissions for alcohol-related events around birthdays

2014-07-24

(Press-News.org) New research has found that birthday-related drinking is associated with upsurges in hospital admissions among young people. This study of drinking behaviour in Ontario, Canada is published online today in the scientific journal Addiction.

Researchers, led by University of Northern British Columbia Associate Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Russ Callaghan, analysed records from all hospital admissions in Ontario over a five-year period (2002-07) involving people aged 12 to 30 years. They discovered that during the week in which Ontarians turned 19 – the legal drinking age – they produced an increase in hospital admissions of 114% for men and 164% for women. In other words, young Ontarians had more than double the alcohol-related hospital admissions in the week of their 19th birthday as they did the rest of the year.

Callaghan says this type of research can help policy makers develop event-specific strategies to reduce hazardous drinking.

"This study shows a clear need for efforts to prevent alcohol misuse at one's own birthday celebrations – not just when turning 19 but both before and after that milestone year," he said.

The study revealed similar but less extreme birthday-week spikes at other ages, starting as early as 16 years for boys and 14 years for girls. The largest spikes occurred on the weeks of people's 19th, 20th, 21st, 22cd and 30th birthdays.

INFORMATION:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Experiments prove 'stemness' of individual immune memory cells

2014-07-24

The immune system has evolved to recognize and respond to threats to health, and to provide life-long memory that prevents recurrent disease. A detailed understanding of the mechanism underlying immunologic memory, however, has remained elusive. Since 2001, various lines of research have converged to support the hypothesis that the persistence of immune memory arises from a reservoir of immune cells with stem-cell-like potential. Until now, there was no conclusive evidence, largely because experiments could only be carried out on populations of cells. This first strict ...

Newly discovered gut virus lives in half the world's population

2014-07-24

Odds are, there’s a virus living inside your gut that has gone undetected by scientists for decades. A new study led by researchers at San Diego State University has found that more than half the world’s population is host to a newly described virus, named crAssphage, which infects one of the most common types of gut bacteria, Bacteroidetes. This phylum of bacteria is thought to be connected with obesity, diabetes and other gut-related diseases. The research appears today in Nature Communications. Robert A. Edwards, a bioinformatics professor at SDSU, and his colleagues ...

Using media as a stress reducer can lead to feelings of guilt and failure

2014-07-24

Washington, DC (July 21, 2014) – It seems common practice. After a long day at work, sometimes you just want to turn on the TV or play a video game to relax, decompress. This is supposed to make you feel better. But, a recent study published in the Journal of Communication, by researchers at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, and VU University Amsterdam, found that people who had high stress levels after work and engaged in television viewing or video game play didn't feel relaxed or recovered, but had high levels of guilt and feelings of failure. Leonard ...

Stronger early reading skills predict higher intelligence later

2014-07-24

A new study of identical twins has found that early reading skill might positively affect later intellectual abilities. The study, in the journal Child Development, was conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh and King's College London. "Since reading is an ability that can be improved, our findings have implications for reading instruction," according to Stuart J. Ritchie, research fellow in psychology at the University of Edinburgh, who led the study. "Early remediation of reading problems might aid not only the growth of literacy, but also more general ...

Community service programs that include reflection found to be more beneficial to youth

2014-07-24

Adolescents in some countries and U.S. states are required to perform community service, and many national and nongovernmental agencies promote such service. A new study has found that while community service has broad benefits for adolescents, it is particularly effective when the activities are accompanied by reflection and discussion. The study, by researchers at Utrecht University and Rutgers University, appears in the journal Child Development. Researchers used meta-analysis to assess findings from 49 studies from around the world that were conducted from 1980 ...

Stress tied to change in children's gene expression related to emotion regulation, physical health

2014-07-24

Children who have been abused or neglected early in life are at risk for developing both emotional and physical health problems. In a new study, scientists have found that maltreatment affects the way genes are activated, which has implications for children's long-term development. Previous studies focused on how a particular child's individual characteristics and genetics interacted with that child's experiences in an effort to understand how health problems emerge. In the new study, researchers were able to measure the degree to which genes were turned "on" or "off" through ...

Study links autistic behaviors to enzyme

2014-07-23

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is a genetic disorder that causes obsessive-compulsive and repetitive behaviors, and other behaviors on the autistic spectrum, as well as cognitive deficits. It is the most common inherited cause of mental impairment and the most common cause of autism. Now biomedical scientists at the University of California, Riverside have published a study that sheds light on the cause of autistic behaviors in FXS. Appearing online today (July 23) in the Journal of Neuroscience, and highlighted also on the cover in this week's print issue ...

New York law offers nurses more recognition, responsibility

2014-07-23

(NEW YORK, NY, July 24, 2014) – If past experience is anything to go by, nurse practitioners in New York State are about to get a lot more recognition for their contributions to primary care. In Massachusetts, laws already on the books allowing NPs to provide primary care offer nurses more recognition of their contributions to patient care and better relationships with physicians and administrators, compared with colleagues in New York, according to a study from Columbia University School of Nursing, published in Health Care Management Review. "This suggests that the ...

Smarter than a first-grader?

2014-07-23

In Aesop's fable about the crow and the pitcher, a thirsty bird happens upon a vessel of water, but when he tries to drink from it, he finds the water level out of his reach. Not strong enough to knock over the pitcher, the bird drops pebbles into it — one at a time — until the water level rises enough for him to drink his fill. Highlighting the value of ingenuity, the fable demonstrates that cognitive ability can often be more effective than brute force. It also characterizes crows as pretty resourceful problem solvers. New research conducted by UC Santa Barbara's Corina ...

How honey bees stay cool

2014-07-23

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. – Honey bees, especially the young, are highly sensitive to temperature and to protect developing bees, adults work together to maintain temperatures within a narrow range. Recently published research led by Philip T. Starks, a biologist at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences, is the first to show that worker bees dissipate excess heat within a hive in process similar to how humans and other mammals cool themselves through their blood vessels and skin. "This study shows how workers effectively dissipate the heat absorbed via heat-shielding, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

University of Phoenix College of Social and Behavioral Sciences leadership publishes white paper on trauma-informed education

Identifying the best high-biomass sorghum hybrids based on biomass yield potential and feedstock quality affected by nitrogen fertility management under various environments