People who are stressed by daily problems or trouble at work seem to be more likely to grind their teeth at night. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Head & Face Medicine studied the causes of ’sleep bruxism’, gnashing teeth during the night, finding that it was especially common in those who try to cope with stress by escaping from difficult situations. Maria Giraki, from Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany, worked with a team of researchers to study the condition in 69 people, of whom 48 were ‘bruxers’…

Many people feel insecure when they drive in tunnels. However, their anxiety can be reduced. “Driving in tunnels is actually twice as safe as driving in the open air, when all factors are taken into account,” says SINTEF scientist Gunnar Jensen. However, a rough estimate suggests that as many as 10 - 20 percent of the population feel uncomfortable or very uncomfortable driving in tunnels. Older people in particular tend to feel insecure. In a previous study carried out by SINTEF, as many as 40 percent of the older age-group said that they felt extremely insecure driving in tunnels…

The anxiety that often accompanies a chronic illness can chip away at quality of life and make patients less likely to follow their treatment plan. But regular exercise can significantly reduce symptoms of anxiety, a new University of Georgia study shows. In a study appearing in the Feb. 22 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed the results of 40 randomized clinical trials involving nearly 3,000 patients with a variety of medical conditions…

A new evidence review suggests that giving employees more flexibility over their work schedules is likely to boost their health as judged by measures like blood pressure and stress. But interventions that are motivated or dictated by the needs of the employer, such as cutting hours, either have no effect on employee health or make it worse. “Control at work is good for health,” said review co-author Clare Bambra, a researcher at Durham University, in England…

People with generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, have abnormalities in the way their brain unconsciously controls emotions. That’s the conclusion of a new Stanford University School of Medicine study, and the study authors say the findings could open up new avenues for treatments and change our understanding of how emotion is regulated in everyday life. The work is published online in this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 18 percent of Americans have an anxiety disorder…

Why do we like to return to places we’ve been before, whether it is home or a favourite coffee shop or even the same chair in that coffee shop? Could it be that when stress levels are high, we tend to establish and feel attracted to these preferred places? Canadian and Israeli researchers have found that what appears to be random travelling of mice is actually a pattern

There may well be another important reason for giving your sweetheart sweets for Valentine’s Day besides the traditional romantic one: The “chocolate cure” for emotional stress is now getting new support from a clinical trial published online in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research. It found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in the bodies of people feeling highly stressed. Everyone’s favorite treat also partially corrected other stress-related biochemical imbalances…

After shrinking in 2009, the world economy is expected to grow in 2010 and 2011, the World Bank predicted in a report issued Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reports in a piece that outlines the bank’s predictions (Smith, 1/20). “[T]he report concluded that the [economic] crisis had ‘provoked large-scale human suffering,’” the New York Times writes. The World Bank “estimated that 64 million more people would live on less than $1.25 a day this year than would have been the case without the crisis…

Researchers at the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis VA Medical Center have identified a biological marker in the brains of those exhibiting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A group of 74 United States veterans were involved in the study, which for the first time objectively diagnoses PTSD using magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive measurement of magnetic fields in the brain.

Studying animals in behavioral experiments has been a cornerstone of psychological research, but whether the observations are relevant for human behavior has been unclear. Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have identified an alteration to the DNA of a gene that imparts similar anxiety-related behavior in both humans and mice, demonstrating that laboratory animals can be accurately used to study these human behaviors.