Climate to COVID, global to local, policies to people: a biopsychosocial ecological framework for syndemic prevention and response in behavioral medicine.

Land development, pollution, and waste have affected natural environments, contributing to hurricanes, wildfires, and pandemic infectious diseases like COVID-19. Globalized corporate food systems that produce ultra-refined foods with low nutritional value contribute to both environmental conditions and health conditions like obesity and undernutrition. This has the greatest impact on communities already suffering from elevated health risks driven by economic inequities rooted in racism.

Couples' Relationship Satisfaction and Its Association with Depression and Spouse Responses Within the Context of Chronic Pain Adjustment.

Background: Chronic pain is one specific health condition where couple relationships have been directly linked to physical and psychological outcomes. Understanding how relationship satisfaction, couple dynamics, and pain adjustment interrelate is crucial for nurses who provide patient-centered care for patients with pain.

Aims: The current study was aimed at examining the associations of depressive symptoms and spouse response styles with relationship satisfaction in the context of West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory classifications.

Toward a Biopsychosocial Ecology of the Human Microbiome, Brain-Gut Axis, and Health.

Objective: Rapidly expanding insights into the human microbiome and health suggest that Western medicine is poised for significant evolution, or perhaps revolution-this while medicine continues on a trajectory from reductionism to a biopsychosocial (BPS) paradigm recognizing biological, psychological, and social influences on health. The apparent sensitivity of the microbiota to perturbations across BPS domains suggests that a broad and inclusive framework is needed to develop applicable knowledge in this emerging area. We outline an ecological framework of the human microbiome by extending the BPS concept to better incorporate environmental and human factors as members of a global, dynamic set of systems that interact over time.

Pain catastrophizing differs between and within West Haven-Yale Multidimensonal Pain Inventory (MPI) pain adjustment classifications: theoretical and clinical implications from preliminary data.

Objectives: Pain catastrophizing is associated with multiple pain outcomes, and is differentially associated with the adaptive coping (AC), dysfunctional (DYS), and interpersonally distressed (ID) coping classifications of the West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI). We examined how catastrophizing, and the underlying components of magnification, rumination, and helplessness, may relate to MPI classifications and differentially relate to pain outcomes across classification groups to inform clinical treatment planning.

Materials And Methods: Sixty-nine adults (70% women) diagnosed with musculoskeletal pain were recruited from 2 pain clinics and completed self-report measures of pain severity, the MPI, Pain Catastrophizing Scale, and the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire.

Hostility and social support explain physical activity beyond negative affect among young men, but not women, in college.

We examined social support as a moderator of cynical hostility in relation to physical activity and body mass index among college students (n = 859; M = 18.71 years (SD = 1.22); 60% women, 84% White).

Cardiovascular and psychological reactivity and recovery from harassment in a biracial sample of high and low hostile men and women.

Background: This study emphasizes the importance of studying the emotional, motivational, and cognitive characteristics accompanying and the potential hemodynamic mechanisms underlying cardiovascular reactivity to and recovery from interpersonal conflict.

Purpose: The relation of dispositional hostility to cardiovascular reactivity during a frustrating anagram task and post-task recovery was investigated.

Methods: The sample was composed of 99 healthy participants (age, 18-30 years; 53% women; 51% Caucasian; 49% African American)-half randomly assigned to a harassment condition.

Nonlinear associations between chronic stress and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery.

A mixed literature on the influence of chronic and acute stress on cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) and recovery suggests a need for improved modeling of these associations. We examined these associations using both linear and nonlinear (quadratic) models. Data were collected on 129 healthy adults [59% female, ages 18-29 years].

Silent myocardial ischemia and cardiovascular responses to anger provocation in older adults.

To determine if older, asymptomatic individuals with no prior history of coronary heart disease with exercise-induced silent myocardial ischemia (SI) during graded exercise treadmill testing exhibit exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity to anger provocation, we compared 42 SI participants and 95 controls. Systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) changes from baseline to three tasks--anger recall, speech role-play, and mental arithmetic with harassment--were assessed. Compared to controls, SI displayed greater HR responses for the speech role-play task only.

Diagnosis of hypertension and high blood pressure levels negatively affect cognitive function in older adults.

Background: Hypertension is associated with diminished performance on tests of cognitive function. The degree to which those diagnosed with hypertension have controlled blood pressure (BP) levels may be a critical determinant of cognitive outcomes. Persons with hypertension and poorly controlled BP are likely to display the worst performance on cognitive tests.

Stress-induced blood pressure reactivity and silent cerebrovascular disease.

Background And Purpose: Exaggerated blood pressure (BP) responses to mental stress, an index of autonomic dysregulation, have been related to enhanced risk for stroke. This study examined cross-sectional relations of stress-induced BP reactivity to silent cerebrovascular disease assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in healthy older adults.

Methods: Sixty-seven nondemented, community-dwelling older adults (ages 55 to 81; 75% male) free of major medical, neurological, or psychiatric disease, engaged in: (1) clinical assessment of resting systolic and diastolic BP; (2) assessment of systolic and diastolic BP responses to 3 laboratory-based mental stressors; and (3) MRI.

Peripheral arterial disease and cognitive function.

Objective: Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is associated with comorbid atherosclerosis of the coronary and carotid arteries and is a significant risk factor for stroke. However, cognitive function in PAD patients before clinically evident stroke remains poorly characterized. Here we hypothesized that, on neuropsychological testing, PAD patients would perform more poorly than healthy control subjects, and persons with mild cardiovascular disease (essential hypertension), but better than stroke patients, thus reflecting a continuum of cognitive impairment associated with increased severity of vascular disease.

Relation of cognitive appraisal to cardiovascular reactivity, affect, and task engagement.

The relation of primary cognitive appraisals to cardiovascular reactivity, affect, task engagement, and perceived stress was examined in 56 men (ages 18-29). Systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), heart rate, preejection period, stroke index, cardiac index, and total peripheral resistance were assessed at rest and during performance of a computerized mental arithmetic task. Extending on prior investigations, threat and challenge appraisals were assessed independently from one another and from secondary appraisals.