New research from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago shows that heart health is a concern for many long before adulthood because fewer than one third of children aged 2-19 years scored highly on the American Heart Association's checklist for ideal cardiovascular fitness. Only 2.2% of children in the study had optimal heart health, according to the Life's Essential 8 scoring system, which spans poor, moderate, and high. In the 2- to 5-year age group, over half of the children had good heart health.

About 80% of American adults have low to moderate cardiovascular health based on the American Heart Association checklist for optimal heart health, which now includes healthy sleep as an essential component for heart health. “The new metric of sleep duration reflects the latest research findings: Sleep impacts overall health, and people who have healthier sleep patterns manage health factors such as weight, blood pressure, or risk for type 2 diabetes more effectively,” AHA President Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, MD, said in a news release.

Community-based rehabilitation involved lay people, with no experience in mental health care, supporting people with schizophrenia and their families in their homes. Seventy-nine people with schizophrenia, in 27 villages in Ethiopia, were randomly allocated to take part in community-based rehabilitation for one year, in addition to receiving treatment from nurses at the health centre. Our findings suggest that in low-income countries community-based rehabilitation can help with the recovery of people with schizophrenia, when delivered alongside medication from a local health centre.

The council complements the work of other American Heart Association youth initiatives such as the in-school programs, Kids Heart Challenge and American Heart Challenge, and the American Heart Association Leaders for a Resilient Generation National Council. “The American Heart Association continues to bring great support and value added to education and student programming for the children of Niagara Falls,” Laurrie said.

The American Heart Association has added sleep to its cardiovascular health checklist, which consists of eight factors a person can modify to stay healthy: diet, exercise, tobacco use, weight, cholesterol, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and now, sleep. “Sleep is changeable, and studies show that you can improve aspects of heart health just by improving sleep,” Dr. Grandner says. To get top scores for sleep on the new checklist, adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night.

Scores below 50 indicate poor heart health, while scores between 50 and 79 mean a person is considered in moderate cardiovascular health. Close to 20 percent of U.S. adults had high cardiovascular health; 62.5 percent were classified as moderate; and 17.9 percent were in the low category. Adults scored lowest in the areas of diet, physical activity and BMI, and overall scores were lower as people aged, the study found.

In the METRA group, each participant received a 10-session group-intervention with 2 modules. Participants in the METRA group also had significantly greater reductions in the secondary outcomes, including anxiety, Afghan-cultural distress symptoms, and psychiatric difficulties compared to the treatment as usual group. “In this randomized clinical trial, those in the METRA group had significantly greater improvements in psychiatric symptoms relative to those in the TAU group,” the authors wrote.

Under 30% of American children had high cardiovascular health scores. According to the first research to use the American Heart Association’s new “Life’s Essential 8” metrics and scoring methodology for assessing cardiovascular health levels in adults and children, most children and adolescents in the United States have poor scores for cardiovascular health. Only three CVH metrics were available in NHANES for all children aged 2 to 19 years.

Most studies measure mental health and social media use just once and at the same time, finding that people with greater mental health issues tend to use social media more and concluding that social media use contributes to those issues. By measuring social media use and mental health two years apart, this study is able to get a much better sense of whether high social media use causes mental illness or is a symptom, Dr Winstone said.

If the user wants the avatar to walk, the avatar will. Four theories explain how we may learn from avatars. Avatar factors that promote positive outcomes include similarity to the user, normal body size, ideal avatars, the ability to customize an avatar, avatar transformations, and avatar behaviors. Fox, J.; Bailenson, J. N. Virtual Self-Modeling: The Effects of Vicarious Reinforcement and Identification on Exercise Behaviors.