Better to act young than to look young

Washington, Feb 12: People who are optimistic may contribute to the health of their partners, staving off the risk factors leading to Alzheimer's disease, dementia and cognitive decline as they grow old together, according to a study.

The research, published in the Journal of Personality, followed nearly 4,500 heterosexual couples from the US Health and Retirement Study for up to eight years.

The researchers found a potential link between being married to an optimistic person and preventing the onset of cognitive decline, due to a healthier environment at home.

"We spend a lot of time with our partners.They might encourage us to exercise, eat healthier or remind us to take our medicine," said William Chopik, an assistant professor at the Michigan State University in the US.

"When your partner is optimistic and healthy, it can translate to similar outcomes in your own life. You actually do experience a rosier future by living longer and staving off cognitive illnesses," Chopik said.

An optimistic partner may encourage eating healthy foods, or working out together to develop healthier lifestyles, the researchers said.

For example, if a person quits smoking or starts exercising, their partner is close to following suit, they said.

"We found that when you look at the risk factors for what predicts things like Alzheimer's disease or dementia, a lot of them are things like living a healthy lifestyle," Chopik said.

"Maintaining a healthy weight and physical activity are large predictors.There are some physiological markers as well. It looks like people who are married to optimists tend to score better on all of those metrics," he said.

The researchers said there is a sense where optimists lead by example, and their partners follow their lead.

They also suggest that when couples recall shared experiences together, richer details from the memories emerge.

Chopik noted while there is a heritable component to optimism, there is some evidence to suggest that it's a trainable quality.

"There are studies that show people have the power to change their personalities, as long as they engage in things that make them change," Chopik said.

"Part of it is wanting to change. There are also intervention programs that suggest you can build up optimism," he added.

Washington, Jun 20: Pregnant and postpartum women are usually at a high risk of depression and anxiety - one in seven women struggle with symptoms in the perinatal period and the coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating those struggles according to a recent study.

The study was published in Frontiers in Global Women's Health, which found that the likelihood of maternal depression and anxiety has substantially increased during the health crisis.

"The social and physical isolation measures that are critically needed to reduce the spread of the virus are taking a toll on the physical and mental health of many of us," said Dr. Margie Davenport of the University of Alberta, Canada, who co-authored the study.

For new moms, those stresses come with side effects.

"We know that experiencing depression and anxiety during pregnancy and the postpartum period can have detrimental effects on the mental and physical health of both mother and baby that can persist for years," said Davenport.

Such effects can include premature delivery, reduced mother-infant bonding, and developmental delays in infants.

The study surveyed 900 women - 520 of whom were pregnant and 380 of whom had given birth in the past year - and asked about their depression and anxiety symptoms before and during the pandemic.

Before the pandemic began, 29 percent of those women experienced moderate to high anxiety symptoms, and 15 percent experienced depressive symptoms. During the pandemic, those numbers increased - 72 percent experienced anxiety and 41percent experienced depression.

Because lockdown measures have affected daily routines and access to gyms, researchers also asked women whether their exercise habits had changed. Of the women surveyed, 64 percent reduced their physical activity since the pandemic began, while 15 percent increased and 21 percent experienced no change.

Exercise is a known way to ease depression symptoms, so limited physical activity may result in an uptick in depressive symptoms. Indeed, the study found that women who engaged in at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week had significantly lower symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The findings are somewhat limited given the fact that researchers could not survey women before the pandemic began (since they could not know a pandemic would occur). The women surveyed could only offer their pre-pandemic symptoms in hindsight.

Also, while the researchers asked women about their symptoms using validated measures, only mental health care professionals can validly diagnose an individual with depression or anxiety.

The study was specifically interested in the impact of COVID-19 on new moms, but Davenport says maternal mental health is a critical issue no matter the time.

"Even when we are not in a global pandemic, many pregnant and postpartum women frequently feel isolated whether due to being hospitalized, not having family or friends around or other reasons," she said.

"It is critical to increase awareness of the impact of social (and physical) isolation on the mental health of pregnant and postpartum women," Davenport added.

Increased awareness makes diagnosis and treatment - the ultimate goal - more likely.

Global poverty could rise to over one billion people due to the COVID-19 pandemic and more than half of the 395 million additional extreme poor would be located in South Asia, which would be the hardest-hit region in the world, according to a new report.

Researchers from King's College London and Australian National University published the new paper with the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) said that poverty is likely to increase dramatically in middle-income developing countries and there could be a significant change in the distribution of global poverty.

The location of global poverty could shift back towards developing countries in South Asia and East Asia, the report said.

The paper, 'Precarity and the Pandemic: COVID-19 and Poverty Incidence, Intensity and Severity in Developing Countries,' finds that extreme poverty could rise to over one billion people globally as a result of the crisis.

The cost of the crisis in lost income could reach USD 500 million per day for the world's poorest people, and the intensity and severity of poverty are likely to be exacerbated dramatically.

The report said that based on the USD 1.90 a day poverty line and a 20 per cent contraction, more than half of the 395 million additional extreme poor would be located in South Asia, which would become the hardest hit region in the world mainly driven by the weight of populous India followed by sub-Saharan Africa which would comprise 30 per cent, or 119 million, of the additional poor.

The report added that as the value of the poverty line increases, a larger share of the additional poor will be concentrated in regions where the corresponding poverty line is more relevant given the average income level.

For instance, the regional distribution of the world's poor changes drastically when looking at the USD 5.50 a day poverty line the median poverty line among upper-middle-income countries.

At this level, almost 41 per cent of the additional half a billion poor under a 20 per cent contraction scenario would live in East Asia and the Pacific, chiefly China; a fourth would still reside in South Asia; and a combined 18 per cent would live in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), whose individual shares are close to that recorded for sub-Saharan Africa.

India plays a significant role in driving the potential increases in global extreme poverty documented previously, comprising almost half the estimated additional poor regardless of the contraction scenario, the report said.

Nonetheless, there are other populous, low and lower-middle- income countries in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and East Asia and the Pacific accounting for a sizeable share of the estimates: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Indonesia come next, in that order, concentrating a total of 18 19 per cent of the new poor, whereas the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, and the Philippines could jointly add 11 12 per cent.

Taken together, these figures imply that three quarters of the additional extreme poor globally could be living in just ten populous countries.

The report added that this high concentration of the additional extreme poor is staggering , although not necessarily unexpected given the size of each country's population.

On one hand, data shows that three of these ten countries (Ethiopia, India, and Nigeria) were among the top ten by number of extreme poor people in 1990 and remained within the ranks of that group until 2018.

Despite this crude fact, two of these countries have managed to achieve a sustained reduction in their incidence of poverty since the early 1990s, namely Ethiopia and India, reaching their lowest poverty headcount ratio ever recorded at about 22 and 13 per cent, respectively. Nonetheless, the potential contraction in per capita income/consumption imposed by the pandemic's economic effects could erase some of this progress.

The researchers are now calling for urgent global leadership from the G7, G20, and the multilateral system, and propose a three-point plan to address the impact of the COVID-19 on global poverty quickly.

Professor of International Development at King's College London and a Senior Non-Resident Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER Andy Sumner said the COVID-19 crisis could take extreme poverty back over one billion people because millions of people live just above poverty.

Millions of people live in a precarious position one shock away from poverty. And the current crisis could be that shock that pushes them into poverty.

Professor Kunal Sen, Director of UNU-WIDER said the new estimates about the level of poverty in the world and the cost of the COVID-19 pandemic to the world's poor are sobering.

We cannot stand by and see the hard work and effort of so many be eradicated. We will know what the real impact is in time, but the necessary action to ensure we achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 needs to be planned now, Sen said.