The Los Angeles Times (11/16, Bardin) reported, “While the lion’s share of youth anti-smoking efforts has focused on cigarettes, a new report in the CDC journal Preventing Chronic Disease suggests more needs to be done to reduce the number of teens smoking flavored tobacco from hookahs.”

A recent report said that “18.5% of 12th-grade students admitted to using a hookah in the previous year. And what’s particularly concerning to the study authors…is that many young people don’t seem to recognize that hookah use carries serious health risks: Hookah smoke contains many of the same toxins as cigarettes and has been associated with a similar laundry list of diseases such as lung cancer and respiratory illness.”

Related Links:

— “Teenage hookah smoking rates must be reduced, experts say,” Jon Bardin, Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2012.

On its front page, the New York Times (11/19, A1, Quenqua, Subscription Publication) reports, “Pediatricians are starting to sound alarm bells about boys who take unhealthy measures to try to achieve Charles Atlas bodies that only genetics can truly confer. Whether it is long hours in the gym, allowances blown on expensive supplements or even risky experiments with illegal steroids, the price American boys are willing to pay for the perfect body appears to be on the rise.”

In fact, “in a study to be published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, more than 40 percent of boys in middle school and high school said they regularly exercised with the goal of increasing muscle mass,” with 38 percent saying “they used protein supplements,” and about six percent admitting to experimenting with steroids. The piece goes on to explain the anabolic steroid use in men may cause testosterone production to stop.

But it is not just boys who are trying to “increase muscle size or tone,” USA Today (11/19, Healy) reports. In “some cases, they are nearly as widespread among girls,” the study found. The “study is a reminder that parents and physicians need to be aware that these behaviors are going on and that they need to be discussed with their adolescents, says Joel Brenner, medical director of the Sports Medicine Program at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, Va., and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness.”

While “the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing substances is clearly dangerous and needs to be avoided…inappropriate changes to diet or exercise can also be hazardous, he says.”

Related Links:

— “Muscular Body Image Lures Boys Into Gym, and Obsession,” Douglas Quenqua, New York Times, November 19, 2012.

The Los Angeles Times (11/16, Bardin) “Science Now” blog reports that “professional rappers have teamed up with researchers from the National Institutes of Health to study what happens in the brain during freestyle rapping.” The research, “published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest that the process is similar to that of other spontaneous creative acts, including jazz improvisation.” The research “was initiated by the Los Angeles-based rappers Daniel Rizik-Baer and Michael Eagle and carried out by Allen Braun and Siyuan Liu of the NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.”

AFP (11/16) reports, “Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the researchers compared the freestyle brain photos with those captured when the rappers repeated well-rehearsed lyrics.” The investigators “noticed a ‘functional reorganisation’ during the freestyle phase in the singers’ prefrontal cortex – an area of the brain associated with complex cognitive behaviour and decision making.”

Related Links:

— “This is your brain on freestyle rap, “Jon Bardin, Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2012.

CQ (11/16, Adams, Subscription Publication) reports that “teen smoking nationwide fell from 12.6 percent of adolescents in 2002 to 8.7 percent in 2010,” according to an analysis released Thursday by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The SAMHSA report “included state-by-state results showing that the number of teenagers who said they smoked in the past month fell significantly in 41 states.” CQ notes that the analysis indicated that Wyoming “has the nation’s highest rate of teen smoking at 13.5 percent, which is more than double the rate of 5.9 percent for Utah, the state with the nation’s lowest rate.”

Medwire (11/15, Cowen) reports, “Peer support for patients with bipolar disorder (BD) may help improve adherence to online psychoeducation programs,” according to a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The 407-patient study revealed that “among recently diagnosed BD patients assigned to an online psychoeducation program, those with peer support had significantly greater adherence than those without.” In addition, “patients with peer support had greater, albeit nonsignificant, improvements in depression symptoms and functioning than those without.”

Related Links:

— “Peer support benefits psychoeducation for bipolar patients,”Mark Cowen, Medwire News, November 15, 2012.