Schizophrenia second only to age as greatest risk factor for COVID-19 death

People with schizophrenia, a mental disorder that affects mood and perception of reality, are almost three times more likely to die from the coronavirus than those without the psychiatric illness, a new study shows. Their higher risk, the investigators say, cannot be explained by other factors that often accompany serious mental health disorders, such as higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and smoking.  

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the investigation showed that schizophrenia is by far the biggest risk factor (2.7 times increased odds of dying) after age (being 75 or older increased the odds of dying 35.7 times). Male sex, heart disease, and race ranked next after schizophrenia in order.

"Our findings illustrate that people with schizophrenia are extremely vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19," says study lead author Katlyn Nemani, MD. "With this newfound understanding, health care providers can better prioritize vaccine distribution, testing, and medical care for this group," adds Nemani, a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health.

The study also showed that people with other mental health problems such as mood or anxiety disorders were not at increased risk of death from coronavirus infection.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, experts have searched for risk factors that make people more likely to succumb to the disease to bolster protective measures and allocate limited resources to people with the greatest need. Although previous studies have linked psychiatric disorders in general to an increased risk of dying from the virus, the relationship between the coronavirus and schizophrenia specifically has remained unclear. A higher risk of mortality was expected among those with schizophrenia, but not at the magnitude the study found, the researchers say.

The new investigation is publishing Jan. 27 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers believed that other issues such as heart disease, depression, and barriers in getting care were behind the low life expectancy seen in schizophrenia patients, who on average die 15 years earlier than those without the disorder. The results of the new study, however, suggest that there may be something about the biology of schizophrenia itself that is making those who have it more vulnerable to COVID-19 and other viral infections. One likely explanation is an immune system disturbance, possibly tied to the genetics of the disorder, says Nemani.

For the investigation, the research team analyzed 7,348 patient records of men and women treated for COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic in NYU Langone hospitals in New York City and Long Island between March 3 and May 31, 2020. Of these cases, they identified 14 percent who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, mood disorders, or anxiety. Then, the researchers calculated patient death rates within 45 days of testing positive for the virus.

They note that this large sample of patients who all were infected with the same virus provided a unique opportunity to study the underlying effects of schizophrenia on the body.

"Now that we have a better understanding of the disease, we can more deeply examine what, if any, immune system problems might contribute to the high death rates seen in these patients with schizophrenia," says study senior author Donald Goff, MD. Goff is the Marvin Stern Professor of Psychiatry at NYU Langone.

Goff, also the director of the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research at NYU Langone, says the study investigators plan to explore whether medications used to treat schizophrenia, such as antipsychotic drugs, may play a role as well.

He cautions that the study authors could only determine the risk for patients with schizophrenia who had access to testing and medical care. Further research is needed, he says, to clarify how dangerous the virus may be for those who lack these resources. Goff is also the vice chair for research in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Langone.

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Our brains control pain perception

Pain perception is essential for survival, but how much something hurts can sometimes be amplified or suppressed: for example, soldiers who sustain an injury in battle often recall not feeling anything at the time. A new study published honed in on the brain circuitry responsible for upgrading or downgrading these pain signals, likening the mechanism to how a home thermostat controls room temperature.

The paper's senior author and a scientist for the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), told AFP the region responsible was the central amygdala, which according to her work appeared to play a dual role.

Studying mice, researchers found that the activity in neurons that express protein kinase C-delta amplified pain, while neurons that express somatostatin inhibited the chain of activity in the nerves required to communicate pain. The central amygdala isn't completely responsible for pain itself: if it were removed entirely, then "the 'ouch' of things, or the protective pain, would remain intact," he said.

"It seems to be sitting there waiting for something to happen," for example responding to stress or anxiety that amplifies pain, or being forced to focus on a task that diverts your attention and reduces pain. Experiencing pain can be a vital warning to seek help, for example in a person experiencing appendicitis or a heart attack.

People who are born with insensitivity to pain, meanwhile, often do not realize the severity of injuries and are at greater risk of early death. But not all pain is useful. According to a 2012 survey, about 11 per cent of US adults have pain every day and more than 17 per cent have severe levels of pain.

Often this leads to dependence on potent painkillers like opioids, or attempting to self-medicate through counterfeit or illicit drugs which are increasingly laced with deadly fentanyl. By better understanding the brain mechanisms responsible for pain modulation, researchers hope to eventually find better cures: potentially ones that target only those forms of pain that are "bad" and not useful.

"The healthy response is you get pain, it tells you something is wrong, it heals, and the pain goes away," he said. "In chronic pain, that doesn't happen, the system gets stuck. If we can identify what makes the system gets stuck, then we can reverse it."

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Your posture impacts how you perceive your food

If you want to savour your food, standing and eating is a bad option.

According to recent findings, standing while eating can mute taste buds, impacting the taste evaluation, temperature perception, and overall consumption volume of the food that you're eating, recent findings suggest.

As part of a recent study, researchers found out that posture impacts taste perception. They also noticed that food tastes better when you're sitting down.

A team of researchers looked specifically at how the vestibular sense, which is responsible for balance, posture and spatial orientation, interacts with the gustatory sensory system, which impacts taste and flavour.

The researchers found that holding a standing posture for even a few minutes prompts physical stress, muting taste buds.

The force of gravity pushes blood to the lower parts of the body, causing the heart to work harder to pump blood back up to the top of the body, accelerating heart rate. This activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and leads to increased concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol.
The chain reaction reduces sensory sensitivity, which impacts food and beverage taste evaluation, food temperature perception and overall consumption volume.

When people experience discomfort, foods that normally taste good do not appear as pleasant to the palate. He confirmed his hypothesis by having 350 participants rate the tastiness of a pita chip. Those who were standing gave it a less favourable rating than those who were sitting in a padded chair.

Researchers then provided participants with classic-bite-sized brownies baked at a local restaurant that was tested and widely considered pleasant tasting. Those who were sitting down rated them to be most delicious.

However, when the baker altered the recipe and made the taste unpleasant by adding an extra 1/4 cup of salt, the results were the opposite. Participants standing up didn't notice the brownies tasting saltier to that extent and actually rated them to have a relatively more favourable taste perception than those who sampled them while sitting down.

According to the researchers, these findings suggest that parents might be able to make unpleasant-tasting, healthy foods seem more palatable to reluctant children by having them eat standing up ( vs. sitting down). In a similar vein, it might be beneficial to maintain a standing posture when consuming pharmaceutical products that have unpleasant tastes.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/                                                                                                                                                FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                  https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/                                                              FOR CROCHET DESIGNS                                                                                                                                                                                                  https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com

Everything Is Energy And We Control It With The Power Of Our Thoughts

The Nobel Prize awardees in physics, beyond doubt, proved that the physical world is one big ocean of energy that materializes and dematerializes in a split second, over and over again. Nothing is solid. This is the world of quantum physics.

They proved that thoughts are responsible for holding this ever changing energy field together in the form and shape of the objects we know.

So why do we see a person, instead of flashing clusters of energy?

Think of a film roll. A film is a collection of about 24 frames per second. Each frame is separated from the other by a small space. Compared to the speed these frames change with, our eyes are tricked and see them as a continual film.

Think about television. The cathode tube is a simple tube with a bunch of electrons hitting the screen in a certain way, making an illusion of shape and movement.

Anyway, this is how all objects are made.

We have five physical senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste). Each of these senses has a specific range (for an example, a dog hears a different range of sound than people do; snakes see a different spectrum of light than us, and so on). In other words, our senses perceive energy from a certain fixed point of view and that’s how they create images and form our perception.

But that’s neither exact nor complete. That’s just an INTERPRETATION.

All our interpretations are based exclusively on our “inner map” of reality, but not the real truth. Our “map” is the result of the collective experience of our personal lives.

Our thoughts are associated with this invisible energy and they determine what form it will take. 

They can literally change the universe “particle after particle”, creating our 3D life.

Look around you.

Everything you see in our physical world began as an idea which kept growing until it materialized into a physical object through a series of steps.

You literally turn into your most frequent thoughts.

Your life has become what you imagined and believed in.

The world is literally your mirror, allows you to experience everything you believe to be the truth in this 3D plane … until you change it.

Quantum physics tells us that the world is not a constant as it may appear to be. Instead, it is a place of a constant motion which our individual and collective thoughts keep building, tearing down, and rebuilding. It’s a perpetuum mobile.

What we believe to be true is actually an illusion, almost magic.
 
Fortunately, we started to expose the illusion and, most importantly, we are learning how to change it.
Here’s a simple explanation.

What are the components of our body?

The human body is comprised of nine systems, including the circulatory, digestive, endocrine, muscular, nervous, reproductive, respiratory, skeletal and urinary system.

1. What makes these systems?

-Tissues and organs.

2. What are tissues and organs made of?

-Cells.

3. What makes the cells?

– Molecules.

4. What makes a molecule?

– Atoms.

5. What makes an atom?

– Sub-atomic particles.

6. What makes a subatomic particle?

– Energy!
We are just an energy light in its most beautiful and intelligent configuration. An energy which is constantly changing under the surface and all of that it’s controlled by our powerful mind.

You are one big and powerful human being.

If you could see under a strong electronic microscope and do other experiments on it, you would see that you are made up of clusters of forever changing energy in the shape of electrons, neutrons, photons and other sub-atomic particles.

So is everything else around you. Quantum physics tells us that the act of observing the object is the one that causes the object to be there.

The object does not exist independently of its observer! So, as you can see, during observation, your attention is focused on something and your intention literally creates that thing.

That is scientifically proven.

Your world is consisted of soul, mind and body.

Each of these three has a function that is unique. What you can see with your own eyes and experience with your own body is the physical world, which we call the BODY. The body is an effect created by a cause.

That cause is called THOUGHT.

The body cannot produce. It can only experience and be experienced … it’s a unique ability. On the other hand, the thought cannot experience … it can make, create and interpret. It needs a world of relativity (the physical world, Body) to be experienced.

The soul is everything, the one that gives life thought and body.

The body has no power to create, although it gives the illusion that it does. This illusion is the reason behind so many frustrations. The body is a pure effect and has no power to cause or create.

The key is to use this information to see the Universe in a different way than we see it now so that we can manifest what we really want.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/    

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Virtual reality may help treat autism, Parkinson's

Playing games in virtual reality (VR) may help treat people with neurological disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease, a study claims. The technology, could help the patients shift their perceptions of time, which their conditions lead them to perceive differently.

"The ability to estimate the passage of time with precision is fundamental to our ability to interact with the world," said  a post-doctoral fellow.

"For some individuals, however, the internal clock is maladjusted, causing timing deficiencies that affect perception and action," he said in a statement.

The study will help researchers to understand how these deficiencies might be acquired, and how to recalibrate time perception in the brain. It involved 18 females and 13 males with normal vision and no sensory, musculoskeletal or neurological disorders.

The researchers used a virtual reality game, Robo Recall, to create a natural setting in which to encourage re-calibration of time perception. The researchers coupled the speed and duration of visual events to the participant's body movements.

They measured participants' time perception abilities before and after they were exposed to the dynamic VR task.

Some participants also completed non-VR time-perception tasks, such as throwing a ball, to use as a control comparison. The team measured the actual and perceived durations of a moving probe in the time perception tasks. The researchers found that virtual reality manipulation was associated with significant reductions in the participants' estimates of time, by around 15 per cent.

"This study adds valuable proof that the perception of time is flexible, and that VR offers a potentially valuable tool for recalibrating time in the brain," he said.

"It offers a compelling application for rehabilitation initiatives that focus on how time perception breaks down in certain populations," he said.

Weech said that while the effects were strong during the current study, more research is needed to find out how long the effects last, and whether these signals are observable in the brain. "For developing clinical applications, we need to know whether these effects are stable for minutes, days, or weeks afterwards. A longitudinal study would provide the answer to this question," he said.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/                                                                                                                                                         FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                  https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/           

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