the number of young people taking anti-depressants has grown massively since the start of the pandemic a study published in Pediatrics says people between the ages of 12 and 25 received anti-depressants at a 64% higher rate than before the pandemic and it's even higher for girls between the ages of 12 and 17 which saw a 130% increase since since March of 2020 joining us to talk about that and more Health stories today is Dr Jeff poof W Health's chief officer this is alarming Dr poof what does it
tell you you know it is and we've been hearing more and more reports about increased levels of depression anxiety amongst young people children uh this one uh noting predominantly uh in females I think there's a few things uh I think no surprise that the pandemic was hard on kids um some of them had to stay home from school there was lack of that social interaction uh I think you know in general uh that's been a big contributor uh I think the other thing uh that you know we're seeing is uh expl
osive use of social media there's lots of studies that suggest that that can significantly increase the stress level depression anxiety amongst children especially uh girls uh and uh you know if there's a silver lining I'm happy to see that these U kids are at least getting on medications uh we have seen other reports that suggest that some of them are trying to self- treat with alcohol and drugs too which is never a good thing and obviously never recommend it if there are problems that are goin
g on talk to people like you talk to their doctor right absolutely get some help well speaking of the pandemic there is a lot of talk recently about long covid and its effects and now a new study shows there may be reason that some people experience brain fog more than others can you explain this yeah now this is a small study uh the the group in the study arm is about a dozen people but um what a lot of people may not know uh is that the blood vessels in our brain have special filtering abiliti
es it's called the bloodb brain barrier and it keeps things like toxins some medications from crossing over and interacting with our brains uh with these researchers discovered is that inflammatory levels are very high in individuals with postco symptoms uh and it looks like it's making that blood brain barrier a little bit more leaky more stuff can get through toxins inflammatory markers U maybe chemicals that are the result of or causing this brain fog so the study is too small to say anything
with conclusion but at the same time uh the mechanism they're proposing does make some sense as to why people may be having brain fog as part of their long Co and I know a lot of people who experience symptoms like these you know people say oh it's all in your head I'm sure this kind of gives them a little bit of relief saying no there's something to this whole thing yeah there's enough people who have this foggy kind of component with long covid uh that that it's not in their head there is som
ething going on uh it's just up to scientists now to try to figure out what is the ideology how is that actually happening uh from a biological level seems like we're making at least a little bit of progress when it comes to that you know when it comes to heart health totally Switching gears here most of us think the more muscles the lower the heart risk right but this may not be the case especially when it comes to abdominal muscles but only in men can you talk more about this I sure can so uh
this is a study uh that looks at you know abdominal muscle like square area so how much abdominal muscle do you have uh and uh this study found that males not females uh with a higher number or a higher amount of abdominal square area uh did worse they had worse cardiovascular complications uh than those that had smaller now important thing to to point out uh we're talking about uh the square area so not muscle density it's not to say a six-pack is bad people with high muscle density actually do
really well uh but this does suggest that it's not just about having muscle it's the quality of muscle uh and if your muscle um is is a little bit less dense meaning it has more infiltration with fat and things like that uh it can be an indicator of a higher cardiovascular risk as you get older yeah it depends what's on top of that muscle all that excess right absolutely absolutely abolutely all right Dr pot off stay safe out there and warm because you know the Bottom's going to drop out and it
's going to start snowing in a few hours so you bet we'll see you next week thanks
Comments