Newsletter #130: Fighting Stress with Cute Animal Videos? 🤔
Welcome to the Halloween edition of the humanOS newsletter!
This week, we learned that transient stress from presidential elections can actually have serious health consequences; looking at pictures and videos of cute animals significantly lowers markers of physiological stress; drinking both green tea and coffee lowers risk of death in people with type 2 diabetes; and increased daily exposure to nature seems to bolster the immune systems of children.
Scroll down for more info, and stay safe everyone. 👇
This Week’s Research Highlights
🗳️ Election stress may trigger cardiovascular events.
Researchers analyzed data collected by Kaiser Permanente Southern California, a health system that provides care to 4.6 million people. They found that in the two days immediately following the 2016 presidential election, the overall rate of hospitalization for heart attack and stroke was 162% higher when compared to the same two days of the week in the week prior to the election. And as polarizing as that election was, it is hard to imagine that things will be better this time around. In the American Psychological Association’s most recent survey report on the subject, they found that 83% of Americans reported that the future of the United States is a significant source of stress, and 68% of Americans say that the presidential election specifically is a major stressor - up 16 points from 2016! Whatever happens, let’s keep things in perspective, and make sure to take care of ourselves and each other. Plus, there are actually some relatively easy things that you can do to cope with stressful events...
🐱 Feeling stressed out? Looking at cute animals might help.
Researchers recruited 19 participants at a UK university and had them watch a 30-minute slide show that was a mix of images and short video clips with a variety of cute animals while wearing heart rate monitors.
Most of these subjects were scheduled to take an examination 90 minutes later, so needless to say this was a pretty anxious group! At the end of the session, participants showed meaningful physiological and psychological improvements. First of all, the average heart rate of these subjects fell 6.65% (from 72.2 bpm to 67.4 bpm).
Blood pressure also came down, with an average fall in systolic and diastolic blood pressure of 14.9% and 18.28% respectively (from 136/88 to 115/71). Remarkably, the participant with the highest reading dropped from 148/90 to 120/69!
Finally, the results of a validated psychological inventory showed that anxiety levels also cratered - after viewing the cute animals, anxiety decreased by an average of 35%, and as much as 50% in individual participants. Now, we do have to put this in context - this is a (likely) transient reduction in markers of physiological stress in response to an acute stressor. So, r/aww is probably not going to replace blood pressure meds any time soon, but kittens and puppies could certainly be a nice adjunct therapy for otherwise healthy folks, especially in difficult times like we are in right now.
🍂 Increased exposure to green space in play areas might strengthen immune defenses in children.
Remember that in last week’s newsletter, we learned that regular interaction with green spaces appeared to promote beneficial long-term changes in the immune systems of older adults. Do little kids also show immune benefits in response to contact with natural environments? To explore this question, researchers studied a total of 75 urban children aged 3 to 5 years residing in several different daycare environments. Three of these daycare centers were standard urban daycares with gravel play areas, containing little or no green space (this group served as controls). Meanwhile, in four of the daycare yards, the researchers went in and replaced half of the gravel with forest floor vegetation and sod. The children spent on average 1.5 hours per day exposed to this natural material. After 28 days, the children who played in the nature-enriched yards showed significantly more diverse microbiota on their skin, as well as an increase in “friendly” gut bacteria that are known to produce butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that is thought to play a role in gut barrier integrity and immune cell regulation. These changes in the microbes on their skin and in their gut were in turn found to be associated with positive changes to immune cells and anti-inflammatory proteins. This study suggests that it may be possible to modulate the immune system with relatively small changes to the living environment - and it doesn’t take very long to see a measurable impact! (Want to hear more about gut butyrate? Check out our great podcast discussion with Lucy Mailing, Ph.D.).
🍵 Drinking green tea and coffee is linked to lower all-cause mortality among people with type 2 diabetes - and more appears to be better.
Researchers followed 4923 Japanese people with type 2 diabetes for about five years on average. Participants provided background information on various health and lifestyle factors, as well as data about how much coffee and green tea they drank every day. Over the course of the monitoring period, participants who drank either coffee or tea (or both) were at lower odds of dying from any cause, and the benefits appeared to be additive. Drinking up to one cup of green tea every day was associated with 15% lower odds of death, drinking 2-3 cups was associated with 27% lower odds, and consuming 4 or more daily cups was associated with 40% lower odds of all-cause mortality. Drinking one cup a day of coffee was associated with 19% lower odds of dying over the follow-up period while drinking 2 or more cups was associated with 41% lower odds. But the best results were achieved by those who drank a lot of both coffee and tea: drinking 4+ cups of green tea and 2+ cups of coffee daily were associated with a whopping 63% lower risk of death over a 5-year period. This study wasn’t designed to explore potential mechanisms, so we can’t necessarily say why these beverages have this effect, but one reason may be due to modifications in the gut microbiota. For instance, animal research has shown that supplementation with green tea improves glucose tolerance, seemingly by encouraging the growth of beneficial gut bugs like Akkermansia muciniphila. You can imagine that would be helpful for anyone, but especially those with type 2 diabetes.
Question of the Week
What is one health-related subject that you would like to know more about in one month’s time? Check out our content catalog for ideas.
Podcasts We Loved This Week
- Nathaniel Rakich & Maggie Koerth: How to Vote Safely in a Pandemic. Via PODCAST-19 from FiveThirtyEight.
- Nicky Keay: Female Athletes – Hormones, Energy Availability, & the Menstrual Cycle. Via Sigma Nutrition Radio.
- Bianca Jones Marlin: Can Trauma Today Affect Future Children? Via Science Friday.
Products We Are Enjoying
Matcha Love Ceremonial Green Tea Powder
Matcha is a powder made from finely grinding green tea leaves, and is arguably the best way to consume green tea from a purely health standpoint. Because you are ingesting the whole plant, as opposed to an infusion like when you use tea bags, you are getting way more of the bioactive catechins, like EGCG.
This brand is somewhat pricey, but a little goes a long way since there are no fillers, sweeteners, dairy solids, or other additives that you commonly see in matcha products. It is also a beautiful bright green color 😍
