HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Everyday Experiences Bring Unexpected Joy

Doing the housework or chatting with a work colleague over lunch are unlikely to be events you go out of your way to capture as a memory. But a new study suggests such everyday experiences that we overlook may bring us pleasure in the future. For this latest study, recently published in the journal Psychological Science, the team conducted a series of experiments to further investigate how we underestimate the joy day-to-day experiences may bring us through memories. We generally do not think about today's ordinary moments as experiences that are worthy of being rediscovered in the future. However, our studies show that we are often wrong. What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future, and more extraordinary than we might expect.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Prolonged Sitting Ages DNA

It is widely known that sitting for prolonged periods of time can have adverse health effects. But a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that shortening the amount of time spent sitting could protect aging DNA and even prolong lifespan. Researchers from this study looked at how physical activity lengthens telomeres. Telomeres sit on the "DNA storage units" of each cell, called chromosomes, and stop them from unraveling or clumping together and "scrambling" the genetic codes they contain. In this way, telomeres are similar to the plastic tips on the end of shoelaces, protecting the string-like chromosomes. There is growing concern that not only low physical activity level in populations, but probably also sitting and sedentary behavior, is an important and new health hazard of our time.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Females More Susceptible to Marijuana

In the first study to assess sex differences in sensitivities to THC, the key ingredient in cannabis, researchers have found that smoking the concentrated marijuana of today may be riskier for women - thanks to the hormone estrogen. The new study, conducted in rats, details how the hormone estrogen makes females more susceptible to effects of THC in marijuana. The researchers, led by Prof. Rebecca Craft of Washington State University, publish their National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Interestingly, the "munchie effect," whereby marijuana use increases appetite, is the only THC reaction where males exhibit more sensitivity than females.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Low-Carb Diet Beneficial

People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have few cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades, a major new study shows. The study was financed by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It included a racially diverse group of 150 men and women — a rarity in clinical nutrition studies — who were assigned to follow diets for one year that limited either the amount of carbs or fat that they could eat, but not overall calories.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Mother’s Attentiveness to Baby’s Babbling Speeds Language

Those of you who have young infants will be familiar with the babbling sounds they like to make. But how do you respond? A new study from The University of Iowa and Indiana University published, in the journal Infancy, suggests that how parents react to their infants' prattling may influence their language development. Infants whose parents are attentive to their babbling sounds have greater advancement in language development, according to researchers. The study found that when mothers made an effort to respond to what they believed their infant was trying to say, their baby showed greater advancement in language development. In detail, they made more advanced consonant-vowel sounds, meaning their babbling started to sound more like words. In addition, these infants began to direct more of their babbling toward their mothers as time elapsed. The infants were using vocalizations in a communicative way, in a sense, because they learned they are communicative.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Decisive Marriages Fare Better

New research shows that how thoughtfully couples make decisions can have a lasting effect on the quality of their romantic relationships. Couples who are decisive before marriage — intentionally defining their relationships, living together and planning a wedding — appear to have better marriages than couples who simply let inertia carry them through major transitions. “Sliding through life-altering transitions leads to a worse outcome,” said Scott Stanley, a research professor at the University of Denver and co-author of the new study.

HCR Update from Mark Sanna: Nursing Homes Game Medicare Stars

The New York Times has found that many top-ranked nursing homes have been given a seal of approval that is based on incomplete information and that can seriously mislead consumers, investors and others about conditions at the homes. The Medicare ratings, which have become the gold standard across the industry, are based in large part on self-reported data by the nursing homes that the government does not verify. Only one of the three criteria used to determine the star ratings — the results of annual health inspections — relies on assessments from independent reviewers. The other measures — staff levels and quality statistics — are reported by the nursing homes and accepted by Medicare, with limited exceptions, at face value.