Latest news with #FeinbergSchoolofMedicine
New York Post
2 days ago
- Health
- New York Post
Doctors' warning about ‘insidious' social media trend damaging teen girls' health — with girls as young as 7 taking part
Pore decisions, indeed. It's no secret that young girls are obsessed with beauty — just look at the popularity of 'get ready with me' videos on social media. In a survey last year, more than three in four parents (76%) reported that their 7- to 17-year-old girls have a 'skin care routine.' 4 Young girls are spending big bucks for a skin care routine that may be harmful to their health, a new study found. TikTok/@chastitynolan A groundbreaking new study out of Northwestern University warned that these girls are shelling out a lot of money for skin care that may cause redness and not protect them from the sun's harmful rays. 'It's problematic to show girls devoting this much time and attention to their skin,' said corresponding study author Dr. Molly Hales, a postdoctoral research fellow and a board-certified dermatologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. For this study, Hales and another researcher created their own TikTok accounts under the guise that they were 13. They collected 100 unique videos suggested in the 'For You' tab. 4 Researchers estimated that girls are dropping an average of $168 for about a month's worth of products. They analyzed the demographics of content creators, the products used and the total cost of routines, finding that girls 7 to 18 are applying an average of six facial products at once. Some girls use more than a dozen. Researchers estimated that these kids fork out an average of $168 for about a month's worth of products. In the jaw-dropping cases, they are spending more than $500. The products in the top viewed videos contained 11 active ingredients on average. In one clip, a creator rubbed 10 products on her face in six minutes. 'As she's applying the products, she begins to express discomfort and burning, and in the final few minutes, she develops a visible skin reaction,' said senior study author Dr. Tara Lagu, an adjunct lecturer of medicine and medical social sciences at Feinberg. Hales noted that the irritation stems from using products with clashing active ingredients, as well as applying the same active ingredient over and over again, not knowing it's in several products. Girls also face the risk of sun sensitivity and a skin allergy known as allergic contact dermatitis, which causes a rash. Only 26% of daytime skin care regimens included sunscreen, the Northwestern study found, even though it's key to preventing skin cancer. The research — billed as the first peer-reviewed study to explore the pros and cons of teen skin care routines shared on social media — was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics. 4 In a survey last year, more than three in four parents (76%) reported that their 7- to 17-year-old girls have a 'skin care routine.' TikTok/@ Beyond the health risks, mental distress is also a concern. Beauty videos on social media can contribute to lower self-esteem and pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards. Lagu noted that many videos 'emphasized lighter, brighter skin.' 'We're setting a very high standard for these girls,' Hales said. 4 TikTok is only for users 13 and older, a rep said. AP 'The pursuit of health has become a kind of virtue in our society, but the ideal of 'health' is also very wrapped up in ideals of beauty, thinness and whiteness,' she added. 'The insidious thing about 'skincare' is that it claims to be about health.' TikTok is only for users 13 and older, a rep reminded CNN, and creators who are too young are removed from the platform. The company also works with third-party adolescent development experts and doctors to establish safeguarding policies, the spokesperson added.
New York Times
29-03-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Using a ‘Tiny Bit of Math' May Improve Your Heart Health, Study Suggests
Many people use a smartwatch to monitor their cardiovascular health, often by counting the number of steps they take over the course of their day, or recording their average daily heart rate. Now, researchers are proposing an enhanced metric, which combines the two using basic math: Divide your average daily heart rate by your daily average number of steps. The resulting ratio — the daily heart rate per step, or DHRPS — provides insight into how efficiently the heart is working, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The study found that people whose hearts work less efficiently, by this metric, were more prone to various diseases, including Type II diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, stroke, coronary atherosclerosis and myocardial infarction. 'It's a measure of inefficiency,' said Zhanlin Chen, a third-year medical student at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and lead author of the new study; his coauthors included several Feinberg faculty physicians. 'It looks at how badly your heart is doing,' he added. 'You're just going to have to do a tiny bit of math.' Some experts said they saw wisdom in DHRPS as a metric. Dr. Peter Aziz, a pediatric cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said it appeared to be an advance on the information provided by daily steps or average heart rate alone. 'What is probably more important for cardio fitness is what your heart does for the amount of work it has to do,' he said. 'This is a reasonable way to measure that.' The metric does not look at heart rate during exercise. But, Dr. Aziz said, it still provided an overall sense of efficiency that, importantly, was shown by researchers to have an association with disease. The size of the study added validity to the findings, Dr. Aziz said. The scientists mapped Fitbit data from nearly 7,000 Smartwatch users against electronic medical records. Mr. Chen said that a simple way to grasp the value of the new metric was to compare two hypothetical individuals. Both take 10,000 steps a day, but one has an average daily resting heart rate of 80 — in the middle of the healthy range — while the other's daily resting heart rate is 120. The first person would have a DHRPS of 0.008, the second 0.012. The higher the ratio, the stronger the signaling of cardiac risk. In the study, the 6,947 participants were divided into three groups based on their ratios; those with the highest showed a stronger association with disease than other participants did. The D.H.R.P.S. metric was also better at revealing disease risk than were step counts or heart rates alone, the study found. 'We designed this metric to be low-cost and to use data we're already collecting,' Mr. Chen said. 'People who want to be in charge of their own health can do a little bit of math to figure this out.'
