health

Reuters UK reports on new research out of the University of Chicago, which concluded that getting old does not mean an end to sex. Survey data from elderly Americans indicates that more than 60% of the men and nearly 50% of the women have been sexually active in the past year.

Reuters reports:

More than three-quarters of American men aged 75 to 85 and half of women that age are still interested in sex, a survey of the elderly by University of Chicago researchers found.

“It’s not age per se; that when you get to 80 it’s all over with,” said sociologist Edward Laumann, who led the study of 3,000 American men and women aged 57 to 85 who lived at home, not in nursing homes.

“It’s driven by more proximate factors such as if you become obese, or you’re smoking too much, or you contract diabetes. Medications can depress sexual interest. The aging process itself is not a major factor driving these results,” he said in a telephone interview.

Read more.

A new article from the ‘Health’ section of Newsweek magazine explores how the gloom and doom of current economic news might have a real physical effect on us. The fear of losing one’s job is a daily concern for many Americans and the physical and mental health consequences are now being documented by social science research.

A psychologist weighs in…

Layoffs create a sense of hopelessness. Stress-related complaints such as insomnia and headaches tend to follow, lingering even after victims find new jobs, says University of Michigan psychologist Richard Price, who tracked more than 700 layoff victims for two years. Research based on 17 years of Pennsylvania unemployment records concluded that employees affected by a mass layoff at a plant were 15 percent more likely to die of any cause over the next two decades. Experts blame the cascade of misfortune that often ensues after a layoff, including the loss of health insurance.

The sociological perspective…

Your health can suffer simply from fear of losing your job, says Sarah Burgard, a sociologist at the University of Michigan. After crunching data from two large national surveys, she concluded that chronic job insecurity over a two-year period rivals the anxiety of a job loss or a major illness. Burgard adjusted her data for what psychologists call “neuroticism” and found that even people who aren’t typically worriers report worse health when they believe their jobs are in danger. Fears of poor job prospects may have similar consequences. 

Full story.

The Houston Chronicle reported today on the growing number of families (specifically in San Antonio) who are turning to food banks and other forms of public assistance under the strain of high food prices and a precarious economy. 

The alarming trend, exemplified in San Antonio…

The San Antonio Food Bank helped 315,869 families in the fiscal year that ended in June, an 85 percent increase from the previous year. The food bank gave away about 30 million pounds of food in the last fiscal year, only second to the 33 million pounds it gave away when thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees arrived here. “Even though we are not dealing with a natural disaster, we are dealing with a disaster nonetheless,” said Zuani Villarreal, the food bank’s director of development. The number of people on food stamps in Bexar County climbed from the previous year by 10,000 people in August, said Stephanie Goodman of the state’s Health and Human Services Department in Austin. Statewide, enrollment increased by 190,000 people.

A sociologist weighs in…

Johnnie Spraggins, a University of Texas at San Antonio sociology professor, said the economy is affecting everyone, but San Antonio has a large population of working poor.

“Basic things like bread and milk are rising, and people can’t do without them, so they turn to the food bank and food stamps,” he said.

Full story.

The Detroit Free Press reports today on a new study out of Michigan State University which suggests that men who have never been married are increasingly just as healthy as their married counterparts. Despite this narrowing gap, this new research suggests that marriage is still beneficial given their findings that widowers report themselves to be in poorer health than those who still had a living spouse — a gap that widened each year. 

MSU author Hui Liu, assistant professor of sociology, said Monday the study shows that policy promoting marriage for health may be outdated, as other forms of long-term commitment become more common. The study also suggests that widows and widowers need strong reinforcement and community support help to keep themselves mentally and physically healthy.

Liu provides an answer as to why, for widowers, the gap between their health and that of married man widened over 30 years…

“People live longer, and the marriage duration increases over time,” she said. It’s more stressful when that long-term companion dies.

Read the full story.

The Times Online (UK) recently published an article entitled, ‘Paranoia has taken over child protection,’ marking yet another alarming reflection on the fear that grips so many parents in the 21st century.

Times writer India Knight writes,

We don’t even trust ourselves to raise our own children: we need books written by childcare “professionals” and television programmes featuring advice from child-less “experts”. In actual fact we know a great deal more than these charlatans, but since we don’t any longer trust instinct we genuinely believe that our vast repository of knowledge (and that of our mothers, sisters, aunts, grannies, friends) is worthless and that a newborn baby is better off with a strict routine dreamt up by someone with a financial motive.

In a report co-authored with Jennie Bristow a few weeks ago, the sociologist Frank Furedi, lamenting the demise of trust, mentioned as an example a mother whose child was invited over to play at a new friend’s house. The parents reassured the mother that they were “cool” – they’d passed a CRB check. I find this chilling.

Visit Furedi’s website and learn more about this sociologist’s new book.

MSNBC reports on the recent trend towards more mothers undergoing dramatic cosmetic surgery to alter their bodies post-birth.

The trend…

Among women in their 30s, there was a 9 percent to 12 percent rise in tummy tucks and breast surgery between 2005 and 2006. In 2007, 59 percent of American Society of Plastic Surgeons members surveyed said they saw an increase in patients seeking post-childbirth cosmetic surgery procedures in the previous three years. “Many of my patients are young moms who are doing their best to take care of themselves, but their bodies have gone through some irreversible changes that they find discouraging,” says David Stoker, M.D., of Marina Plastic Surgery Associates in Marina del Rey, Calif.

The sociologist’s commentary…

Others point out that many mothers today are not “just” mothers — they have professional and personal lives outside of the home and don’t want to look like the stereotypical mom. They want to feel better about their bodies, and that desire shouldn’t be dismissed or criticized, says sociologist Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Ph.D., author of “Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture” (Rutgers University Press). “I don’t think we should judge women for wanting to look like they did before they got pregnant,” Pitts-Taylor adds. “Social approval is empowering in our society.”

Read on…

The Boston Globe reports on how the increasing potency of marijuana fuels the fires of partisan marijuana debates.

“…The polarized debate about [marijuana’s] safety has been rekindled by two reports released separately this month by the federal government and a leading drug prohibition group. Both studies conclude that marijuana’s potency has increased, which they link to reports of more addiction, mental health problems, and emergency room admissions related to marijuana use among teenagers.”

And the sociologist weighs in…

In a field with limited research, partisans tend to create paper thin arguments, as easily made as they are countered, said Roger Roffman, professor of sociology at the University of Washington.

“I think [both sides] do a disservice to the general public,” said Roffman, who has written papers and edited books on marijuana use and dependence. On websites of drug policy reform advocates, “you’ll find lots of information about the very adverse consequences of criminalizing marijuana and very little mention of the very real harm associated with marijuana among some people in some circumstances,” he said.

Meanwhile, on government and prohibitionist websites, he said, “you’ll find plenty of information on the harmful consequences of marijuana abuse and very little information, perhaps, on the harmful consequences of criminalizing marijuana.”

Read on.

Today’s edition of the Los Angeles Times reviews Australian sociologist Anthony Elliott’s new book, “Making the Cut: How Cosmetic Surgery Is Transforming Our Lives.” Elliott, chairman of the sociology department at Flinders University, seeks to “examine how cosmetic surgery is at once a driving force and a result of the new, international, techno-speedy, obsolescence-included economy — an almost perfect model of how capitalism not only meets consumer needs but creates them as well.”

LA Times reporter Mary McNamara writes,

“Quoting experts as disparate as Pamela Anderson and Sigmund Freud (surely this is a first), citing cultural events as diverse as reality television and various corporate scandals, Elliott makes the case that millions of people are getting cosmetic surgery not because they are narcissists but because they are afraid. Not just of losing a job to a younger colleague or a spouse to a younger competitor, but of losing the chance to engage in what has become the hottest hobby in America: reinvention.”

“Elliott argues that people, at least the old definition of people, i.e. creatures whose bodies go through a predictable set of changes called “aging,” are increasingly perceived as not only a drag on the new capitalism, with its enjoyment of downsizing and corporate shake-ups (the former CEO with the bags under his eyes is probably tired, the woman with the pooching belly might have children who require her at home some of the time), but also a sign of woefully limited imagination.”

“Elliott seems particularly disturbed by the young people who seem to view cosmetic surgery as an accessory, something to be purchased, used for a season and upgraded (the pages about surgical tourism are particularly hilarious, in a horrifying way).”

“For better or worse,” Elliott writes, “globalization has given rise to the 24/7 society, in which continual self-actualization and dramatic self-reinvention have become all the rage.”

Reuters reports that the likelihood of a person entering a nursing home or another type of long-term care facility is elevated immediately following the death of a spouse according to recent research from Elina Nihtila, of the department of sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Nihtila suggested several reasons behind this pattern.

The Times Colonist reports on Nihtila’s interview with Reuters Health:

“It may be related to the loss of social and instrumental support, in the form of care and help with daily activities such as help in cooking, cleaning, and shopping formerly shared with the deceased spouse,” Nihtila told Reuters Health.

“Second, grief and spousal loss may cause various symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, loss of appetite, sleep disturbances, fatigue and loss of concentration that could increase the need for institutional care. Furthermore, grief may cause increased susceptibility to physical diseases.”

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports on the findings from a study by Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Christakis’ findings…

“A smoker is more likely to kick the habit if a spouse, friend, co-worker or sibling did as well.”

The study concluded that smokers tend to quit in groups, and that those individuals who don’t stop smoking inevitably find themselves excluded from their social circles. Dr. Christakis commented that smoking behavior depends not only on the people you know, but the people who they know as well. Read on…