UF Health Podcasts

It’s a question as old as time: Nature or nurture?

When it comes to the malleable, hormone-driven teenage brain, new research suggests the environment in which that adolescent brain develops plays a big role during a time when 75 percent of mental health disorders first appear.

Researchers from Yale University turned to a series of complex algorithms to test their theories. They also used “manifold learning,” a new technique for finding structure in thick biomedical data, like MRI scans.

Whether it’s the neighborhood you grew up in or your own family, when it comes to your emotional and behavioral development, your experience in that environment may be just as important as how your brain processes information.

Using data from the National institutes of Health and others, researchers used MRI scans to analyze teens’ brain activity during emotional and cognitive processing to predict differences in reasoning and emotional and behavioral symptoms.

Notably, researchers saw a greater association of brain activity with mental health symptoms when the algorithms took the neighborhood or family environments into account. The more environmental factors were fed to the model, the better its representation turned out to be.

Ultimately, this finding reinforced what researchers already knew: It’s imperative to consider the environmental situations adolescents must navigate in conjunction with how their brains take in information from those environments.

Being a teenager is hard enough as it is. At least now, however, researchers have more advanced tools to help us understand what’s making teens tick.

What if your kid’s Halloween candy was healthier and better for the environment? Swiss researchers may have made that fantasy more viable with their creation of “whole-fruit chocolate.”

We all know chocolate is a guilty pleasure. The chocolate that fills trick-or-treaters buckets is high in sugar and saturated fat and contributes to obesity and heart disease. Cocoa production also poses a threat to the environment as deforestation leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

But researchers found a way to address these concerns, repurposing parts of the cocoa pod that are typically thrown away. Instead of just using cocoa beans, they also used the cocoa pod husk and pulp to form a gel which they mixed with the cocoa mass to create chocolate.

They call their technique “whole-fruit chocolate.”

The researchers found that using the discarded ingredients provided significant nutritional benefits. The gel, which makes up 20% of the researchers’ proposed chocolate formula, provides comparable sweetness while it lets them do away with sugar beets used in conventional chocolate.

The formula also boasts higher dietary fiber and less saturated fat.

Taste-testers found little difference between the taste of whole-fruit chocolate and conventional chocolate.

Researchers also found that large-scale production of this healthier chocolate could reduce global warming by decreasing land use.

It may take time for whole-fruit chocolate to become an Oct. 31 staple.

But if it does, perhaps you won’t need to be as concerned for your kids’ health — or their teeth — when they bring home a bucket of this new candy.

Scientists are suggesting that we all might have a stake in the stock market even if we’ve never owned a share in any company.

Our very health might be impacted.

Chinese scientists found in a recent study that stock market volatility is associated with a higher death rate from cardiovascular illnesses like stroke or a heart attack.

The mortality risk is most pronounced when stocks go down, especially in a bear market. A look at Chinese death records between 2013 and 2019 found death from heart disease rises about 1%. Suicides rise by 1.77%.

While those percentages appear small, the numbers are not: There were 12.6 million deaths from heart attacks, stroke and suicide in the six-year span.

Losing money and seeing nest eggs diminish causes heart-taxing stress and depression.

The surprise is that mortality also ticks up to a lesser extent when the market rises. Researchers theorize that good news also makes the heart pound.

It’s important to note death records do not show who owned market shares. So, the risk is shared even by those who don’t know the stock market from the supermarket. That seems a tad unfair, like avoiding a rollercoaster because of a fear of heights only to have one drop on your head as you wait on an amusement park bench.

Unfortunately, market volatility affects society and the economy at large. Researchers believe this pendulum of angst and excitement might extend to any nation with a big market, including the United States.

Scientists suggest maintaining the right perspective on economic swings. Pay attention to your mental health. Keep your cool.

And perhaps avoid the financial news when feeling anxious.

Veterinary pain management specialists who focus on anesthesia and analgesia are always looking for new ways to detect and minimize pain in animal patients undergoing anesthesia for a medical procedure. But what if they were able to predict ahead of time the level of pain anticipated? On this show, Dr. Ludovica Chiavaccini, a specialist in anesthesia and analgesia, will discuss an exciting new research project that uses deep learning modeling and video technology to analyze facial expression as a predictor of pain in domestic goats, and how such a tool could potentially benefit patient care for a variety of species in the future.

A persistent American myth holds that it can be safe to smoke during pregnancy if it’s just a tiny bit.

A new study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, however, reiterates that the number of cigarettes that can be safely lit by an expectant mother is easy to calculate.

It’s zero, zip, nada.

Researchers say it’s best to quit smoking before conception because any amount of smoking can cause harm to the baby. Even light smoking, defined as one to two cigarettes a day, can spell trouble for a fetus. Potential ills include premature birth, low birthweight, and developmental issues.

Unfortunately, 1 in 10 expectant mothers in the U.S. smoke.

Scientists also noted that the corollary to the myth that the first three months of pregnancy is the safest time to smoke is also hogwash.

Smoking is one of the most dangerous habits and is the cause of nearly a half-million preventable deaths each year in the United States, pregnant or not.

Cigarettes greatly increase the odds of numerous cancers, heart disease, lung ailments, eye disease, and even dental problems.

For this study, scientists reviewed data from more than 12 million births in the U.S. that qualified for inclusion. The mothers were asked how much they smoked. About 7% smoked in the first trimester and 6% in the second and third.

Moms across the smoking spectrum were shown to have a higher incidence of health problems for their babies than nonsmokers. The risk of harming the baby is higher still for mothers who smoked before pregnancy.

The lesson for all Americans is that smoking is incredibly dangerous, perhaps most so for the most vulnerable — newborns.

Sometimes animals need blood transfusions just like people do — for blood loss, surgery or serious illnesses.

We’ve talked before about the millions of birds that die annually after crashing into buildings. However, the statistics have been off. Tragically, the more accurate count is in the hundreds of millions.

We may be done with hot weather, but it’s likely not done with us — or our pets. So, now’s not the time to let your guard down about pets in cars.

In people, removing creases around the eyes is usually done via a cosmetic procedure dubbed a “nip and tuck.” But in animals, periocular surgery — or surgery around the eye — is usually an essential procedure performed to improve the animal’s quality of life.

It’s that time of year when hurricanes, tropical storms and flooding can batter small farms — but a disaster plan can help mitigate the dangers to livestock.