Health & Science

The downside of Facebook

The more time you spend on Facebook, the more unhappy you become. A new study by University of Michigan researchers has strengthened a growing body of research showing that frequent use of the social-networking site leads to feelings of envy, sadness, loneliness, and anger. Researchers gauged the mood of 82 young study subjects by texting them five times a day, asking them detailed questions about how they felt and when they had last gone on Facebook. Visits to the site were directly correlated with negative emotions, including depression and loneliness. Because of the frequency of the mood-measuring, researchers said they were confident that Facebook use was causing the bad feelings, rather than that people were using the site when they felt lonely or sad. When subjects reported face-to-face social contact, the study found, they felt happier and more cheerful—in direct contrast with their online socializing. “On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection,’’ social psychologist Ethan Kross tells TheAtlantic.com. “But rather than enhance well-being, we found that Facebook use predicts the opposite result—it undermines it.’’ Researchers have speculated that because people tend to post an idealized version of their lives on Facebook, with photos and accounts of trips, happy social gatherings, and work or school achievements, it makes visitors to their pages feel that their own lives are comparatively drab, lonely, and unsuccessful.

Dolphins in distress

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Dead and dying bottlenose dolphins are washing up along the Mid-Atlantic coast at an alarming rate. Since June, more than 120 dolphins have appeared on beaches from New York to Virginia—seven times the typical number. Early this month, the National Marine Fisheries Service declared the strandings “an unusual mortality event” requiring immediate attention. “All indications show there’s something serious going on,” Trevor Spradlin, an NMFS marine biologist, tells NationalGeographic.com. Preliminary tests on some of the dolphins have shown evidence of morbillivirus, an infection responsible for one of the largest dolphin die-offs in history. Between 1987 and 1988, more than 700 dolphins with morbillivirus washed up dead along the East Coast, and many more likely perished offshore. It could take researchers several months to determine what’s ravaging the dolphin population this time.

Blood sugar and dementia

High blood sugar doesn’t just increase your risk of developing diabetes—it also increases your risk of developing dementia. Researchers tracked the blood glucose levels of more than 2,000 older adults for seven years and found that those who had high glucose levels—but not diabetes—were nearly 20 percent more likely to develop dementia than those with low levels. Among people with diabetes, those with the highest glucose levels were 40 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia than those with the lowest. Diabetes can damage the kidneys and other organs, but the findings show that the brain may be especially vulnerable to damage from elevated blood sugar levels—perhaps because the sugar causes inflammation in the tiny blood vessels of the brain. “Every incrementally higher glucose level was associated with a higher risk of dementia,” researcher Paul Crane of the University of Washington tells the Associated Press. To reduce the risk of diabetes and dementia, researchers said, people should eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, and maintain a normal weight.

Why insomnia makes you eat

The less sleep you get, the more likely you are to be overweight. Now, The New York Times reports, scientists have discovered one reason why: Sleep loss causes changes in the brain that make you crave high-calorie foods and weakens your willpower to resist them. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, scanned the brains of volunteers while they looked at pictures of various foods and selected those they’d like to eat—first, after a night during which they got eight hours of sleep, and then after a night during which they got none. They found that when sleep-deprived, the volunteers gravitated toward high-calorie options like chocolate and potato chips. Their brains showed increased activity in the amygdala, a region that governs our desire for food, and decreased activity in frontal-lobe regions that regulate decision-making. Not sleeping allows a substance called adenosine to build up in the brain, possibly causing that “double hit” in undesirable brain activity, says study author Matthew P. Walker. Sleeping, he says, is “the single most effective thing people can do every day to reset their brain and body health.”