Date & Issue

February 2024

Week 1

General Health 👽

Hidden health costs for high achieving ethnic minorities battling adversity

There’s a term coined ‘skin-deep resilience’; it encompasses the hidden costs of ethnic minorities that overcome hardship to ‘beat the odds’. Studies exploring skin-deep resilience have found evidence of a health toll in outwardly resilient young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds, including a higher risk of inflammation, immune cell ageing, metabolic disorders, and chronic disease. This study looks at this concept occurring at an earlier age.

Love is blind, and here’s the evidence

I can, hands down, attribute some of my most obscene decisions in life to being in love. My rational self would strongly disagree with these. However, science shows that changes to the brain force you to make these decisions. This study discusses how oxytocin increases the salience of specific social stimuli, like a romantic partner, particularly in the brain's ventral tegmental area (VTA). Although the VTA lacks oxytocin receptors, it plays a role in attaching salience to socially rewarding cues.

Plastics are bad for health, like $250 billion dollars bad (US)

According to new research, endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plastics pose a serious threat to public health and cost the US an estimated $250 billion in increased healthcare costs in 2018. These chemicals disturb the body's hormone systems and can cause cancer, diabetes, reproductive disorders, neurological impairments of developing fetuses and children, and death. Are you still going to be microwaving your meal in a plastic container?

Mind & Brain 🧠

More siblings mean worse mental health outcomes

Teens from larger families have poorer mental health than those with fewer siblings, according to a large analysis of children in the United States and China. The details of the pattern vary depending on factors such as the spacing of sibling ages and the age of the siblings. Having said that, there are some minor flaws in the study design. Have a read, and let me know your thoughts.

How does calorie restriction actually slow brain ageing?

Restricting calories is known to improve health and increase lifespan, but much of how it does so remains a mystery, especially regarding how it protects the brain. Scientists have now uncovered a role for a gene called OXR1 that is necessary for the lifespan extension seen with dietary restriction and is essential for healthy brain ageing.

Longevity & Ageing ⏳

Skin microbiome diversity linked to reduced ageing

Recent findings have identified a potential new link to signs of skin ageing: the skin microbiome. Firstly, the study found a positive association between skin microbiome diversity and lateral cantonal lines (crow's feet wrinkles), which are generally viewed as one of the key signs of skin ageing. Second, they observed a negative correlation between microbiome diversity and transepidermal water loss, which is the amount of moisture that evaporates through the skin.

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