Trend: Despite concerns, large US employers deploy apps, AI chatbots, other digital tools to boost workplace mental health
Employers Are Offering a New Worker Benefit: Wellness Chatbots (The Wall Street Journal):
More workers feeling anxious, stressed or blue have a new place to go for mental-health help: a digital app.
Chatbots that hold therapist-like conversations and wellness apps that deliver depression and other diagnoses or identify people at risk of self-harm are snowballing across employers’ healthcare benefits.
“The demand for counselors is huge, but the supply of mental-health providers is shrinking,” said J. Marshall Dye, chief executive officer of PayrollPlans, a Dallas-based provider of benefits software used by small and m...
Source: SharpBrains - January 9, 2024 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Peak Performance Technology & Innovation CBT depression digital app digital therapeutic healthcare benefits Koa Health Mental-Health self-harm wellness chatbot Woebot worker benefit Source Type: blogs
Visualizing Clearance of Cerebrospinal Fluid via the Glymphatic System
In this study, we describe an MRI method based on chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) of the Angiopep-2 probe to visualize the clearance function of the glymphatic system.
We injected rats with Angiopep-2 via the tail vein and performed in vivo MRI at 7 T to track differences in Angiopep-2 signal changes; we then applied the same principles in a bilateral deep cervical lymph node ligation rat model and in ageing rats. We demonstrated the feasibility of Angiopep-2 CEST for visualizing the clearance function of the glymphatic system. Finally, a pathological assessment was performed. Within the model group, th...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 9, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
How Can the Immune System Go Awry?
This post is part of a miniseries on the immune system. Be sure to check out the other posts in this series that you may have missed.
The immune system is designed to closely monitor the body for signs of intruders that may cause infection. But what happens if it malfunctions? Overactive and underactive immune systems can both have negative effects on your health.
Autoimmune Disorders
To effectively monitor the body for pathogens, the adaptive immune system has to learn what a pathogen “looks like” on a molecular level. During their development, white blood cells go through training to learn how to differe...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - January 8, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Cells Injury and Illness Diseases Immunology Miniseries Infectious Diseases Microbes Sepsis Source Type: blogs
The Probiotic Bacteria That Could Reverse Depression And Anxiety
The type of bacteria that helps the brain manage stress, anxiety, and depression. (Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog)
Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog - January 7, 2024 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Mina Dean Tags: Depression Source Type: blogs
Bonus Features – January 7, 2024 – New executives at CitiusTech, MultiPlan, and NextGen, plus 15 other stories
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.
News and Studies
A study from Epic Research found women screened for breast cancer annually have a 17% lower risk of mortality after a breast cancer diagnosis than those screened every two years. Women who are Black, over 60, o...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 7, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT ACO REACH Amenities Health Arcadia Healthcare Solutions athenahealth Atropos Health BioProcure Bloomlife CitiusTech Corti Deciphex directtrust Epic Research Equality Health Eric Meizlish Healthcare IT Today Bonu Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 8th 2024
This study examined whether the local injection of the supernatant of activated PRP (saPRP) into the salivary gland (SG) could help prevent aging-induced SG dysfunction and explored the mechanisms responsible for the protective effects on the SG hypofunction.
Human salivary gland epithelial cells (hSGEC) were treated with saPRP or PRP after senescence through irradiation. The significant proliferation of hSGEC was observed in saPRP treated group compared to irradiation only group and irradiation + PRP group. Cellular senescence, apoptosis, and inflammation were significantly reduced in the saPRP group.
Th...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 7, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Sirtuin 2 Overexpression Fails to Extend Life in Mice
One long-lasting result of the hype engineered over sirtuin 1 overexpression as a possible avenue to modestly slow aging is a continued focus on other sirtuins in the context of aging. Sirtuin 1 overexpression turned out to be entirely unimpressive, a dead end. Sirtuin 6, however, is more interesting, and overexpression in mice does modestly extend life span, possibly by improving DNA repair efficiency. It may also be the case that sirtuin 3 overexpression can improve mitochondrial function to a great enough degree to also be interesting.
On the whole, however, this sort of approach to manipulating metabolism has y...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 4, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Apolipoprotein E is a Longevity-Associated Gene
It remains unclear as to why apolipoprotein E (APOE) variants are associated with longevity in humans. The gene has a well-studied role in Alzheimer's disease, but the reasons why APOE variants are associated with aging remain to be determined. The most likely mechanisms involve (a) interactions with age-related disruptions of lipid metabolism, both in the brain and elsewhere, and (b) indirect effects on the inflammatory behavior of innate immune cells such as microglia. There are plenty of other interactions to further study, however, such as in bone tissue, or effects on the gut microbiome. As is often the case, a great ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 4, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
3 Things Transhumanism Can Give To Healthcare
Imagine a future where aging is not a fate but a solvable puzzle, reshaping the very fabric of medical science. This is what transhumanism aims for. Although this goal is surely too ambitious, we might learn a thing or two from this futuristic movement.
What is transhumanism?
Transhumanism is the position that humans should be permitted to use technology to modify and enhance human cognition and bodily function, expanding abilities and capacities beyond current biological constraints.
It is a philosophical and social movement, with not only technological aspirations. It is also an approach to exp...
Source: The Medical Futurist - January 4, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andrea Koncz Tags: TMF transhumanism Source Type: blogs
Is Alternative Splicing a Meaningful Cause of Degenerative Aging, or Largely a Downstream Side-Effect?
A gene sequence consists of a mix of shorter sequences, only some of which are used to manufacture the protein encoded in that gene. Exon sequences are included and intron sequences are excluded. Nothing is ever quite that simple, of course, but changes in which exons and introns end up in a protein enable multiple proteins to be produced from a single gene sequence. Sometimes this is an accident, assome genes are prone to accidental production of truncated or extended proteins that are toxic. Sometimes this is an evolutionary reuse in which a gene produces several different vital proteins with quite different functions.
...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 3, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Inflammatory Microglia in Degenerative Aging and Alzheimer's Disease
Microglia, the innate immune cells of the central nervous system, can enter an aggressive, inflammatory state in response to the presence of molecular waste, inflammatory signaling, mitochondrial damage, and so forth. They can also become senescent, which is also a pro-inflammatory state. The aging brain, and particularly the brains of patients with neurodegenerative conditions, exhibit a state of chronic inflammation, producing dysfunction, cell stress, and cell death. It remains to be seen as to how effective anti-inflammatory therapies targeting microglia will be in the treatment of neurodegenerative conditions and the ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 3, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Calorie Restriction Mimetics as an Approach to Slow Demyelination
Myelin sheathes axons, the connections between neurons. This sheath is essential to nervous system function, and a range of unpleasant diseases result from loss of myelin, such as through the autoimmune activity of multiple sclerosis. Demyelination occurs to a lesser degree over the course of aging, the standard problem of a complex system becoming disarrayed as the result of various forms of molecular damage and maladaptive reactions to that damage. Here, as elsewhere, chronic inflammation appears to be a contributing cause. Calorie restriction is known to dampen chronic inflammation and favorably alter the behavior of ce...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 3, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Trial By Error: Update on NICE Response to “ Anomalies ” Paper; Higher ME/CFS Population Estimates in CDC Survey
By David Tuller, DrPH In July, the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry published a “whine de coeur” called “Anomalies in the review process and interpretation of the evidence in the NICE guideline for chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalomyelitis.” The lead author was Professor Peter White, lead author of the discredited and arguably fraudulent … Trial By Error: Update on NICE Response to “Anomalies” Paper; Higher ME/CFS Population Estimates in CDC Survey Read More » (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - January 3, 2024 Category: Virology Authors: David Tuller Tags: Uncategorized anomalies CDC JNNP Source Type: blogs
Failing Mitochondrial Quality Control in Aging and Neurodegeneration
Every one of our cells contains hundreds of mitochondria, the descendants of ancient symbiotic bacteria now fully integrated into our biochemistry. Mitochondria contain their own small remnant genome, the mitochondrial DNA, replicate like bacteria, and toil to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a chemical energy store molecule used to power cell processes. Mitochondrial function declines with age, unfortunately, and our cells suffer for it. This contributes meaningfully to many age-related conditions. This decline appears to result in large part from changes in gene expression that impair the various quality control pro...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 2, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
