Tag: study

Nearly 8 in 10 (78%) of U.S. adults lose sleep over daily stresses like work, relationships, and more, according to a new report. More than half (56%) of Americans, ages 18 and older, toss and turn over at least one money issue. The biggest money stressor: everyday expenses, which nearly 1 in 3 (32%) say they occasionally lose sleep over.

Other than everyday expenses, the most popular financial insomnia contributors include saving enough money for retirement (24%), health care or insurance bills (22%), the ability to pay credit card debt (18%), mortgage or rent payments (18%), educational expenses (11%) and stock market volatility (5%). Those who are losing sleep over money include:

Recently, the New York Times reported on an interesting study by the National Sleep Foundation in an article titled "Study Finds Many Are Too Tired for Sex", which suggested that, "One in four Americans married or living with someone say they are so sleep-deprived that they are often too tired to have sex."

Many of my clients in my San Francisco private practice and couples in our Marriage Prep 101 workshops shared these sleep foundation findings with us.

A person’s current marital status and past marital losses may be related to their survival odds after a stroke, a new study suggests.

U.S. researchers followed stroke survivors for an average of five years after the event and found those who were never married, remarried, divorced or widowed had significantly higher risks of dying compared to those who had a long-term stable marriage.

Losing two or more marriages to death or divorce raised the odds of mortality after stroke still higher, though never-marrieds had the highest risk of all.

A virtual firestorm erupted in 2011 with the publication of the US Preventive Services Task Force’s draft recommendation that healthy men should no longer receive a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test to screen for prostate cancer because "the test does not save lives overall and often leads to more tests and treatments that needlessly cause pain, impotence, and incontinence," as reported in the New York Times. The final version of the USPSTF recommendation was released in May 2012. The American Urologic Association recommends that men ages 55 to 69 talk with their doctors about having a PSA test. Men who are African American or have a familial history of prostate cancer should consider being tested starting at age 40.

Parents searching for elusive work-life balance may see smartphones and tablets as a way to escape the office in time to be home for dinner each night, but these gadgets can also be a huge distraction and source of stress, a recent study suggests.

When researchers asked a group of parents to slow down and answer detailed questions about how and when they use mobile technology, people revealed a lot of internal conflict about how the devices are changing their lives.

"Every time a new technology is introduced, it disrupts things a little, so in many ways this is no different from the anxieties that families and our culture felt with the introduction of the TV or telephone," said lead study author Dr. Jenny Radesky, a pediatrics researcher at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor.

If you feel stressed out around the holidays, you are not alone. Recent research indicates 69 percent of Americans feel stressed by thoughts that they don’t have enough time and/or money. Almost a quarter of us report feeling "extreme stress" over the holidays. One study found that holiday shopping can raise heart rates 33 percent, similar to running a marathon.

The holidays are also a time when people are more susceptible to sadness and depression. We may overeat, overindulge, and take a holiday from healthy routines such as getting enough exercise and sleep. These changes, in turn, can make us more exhausted and emotionally fragile, and at greater risk of getting sick.

When Elizabeth Kennedy’s 84-year-old father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease two years ago, she removed the car keys from his Johnstown, Pennsylvania home and his Volkswagen Passat from the driveway. Despite warnings from his four children and his doctor, any opportunity to get behind the wheel would have proven too tempting for Kennedy’s newly widowed dad.

"He was convinced he was a perfectly good driver, and he took it like he was being attacked," she said. "My father didn’t understand why we told him he couldn’t drive anymore."