Browsed by
Category: Health

The ‘Hispanic Paradox’ intrigues a new generation of researchers determined to unravel it

The ‘Hispanic Paradox’ intrigues a new generation of researchers determined to unravel it

Usha Lee McFarling reports: For 40 years, researchers have unsuccessfully tried to explain — or debunk — the “Hispanic Paradox,” the finding that Hispanic Americans live several years longer than white Americans on average, despite having far less income and health care and higher rates of diabetes and obesity. Now, armed with more comprehensive data, powerful genomic tools, and a rich cultural awareness of the communities they study, a new generation of scientists is finally making headway. These researchers, many…

Read More Read More

MDMA as PTSD treatment moves closer to U.S. approval

MDMA as PTSD treatment moves closer to U.S. approval

Nature reports: The psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, has passed another key hurdle on its way to regulatory approval as a treatment for mental illness. A second large clinical trial has found that the drug — in combination with psychotherapy — is effective at treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The results allow the trial’s sponsor to now seek approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for MDMA’s use as a PTSD treatment for the…

Read More Read More

Threads blocks searches related to covid and vaccines as cases rise

Threads blocks searches related to covid and vaccines as cases rise

The Washington Post reports: Instagram’s text-based social platform Threads last week rolled out its new search function, a crucial step toward the platform’s expansion and one that would give it more parity with X, formerly known as Twitter. Tech is not your friend. We are. Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter. Not even 24 hours later, the company was embroiled in controversy. When users went to Threads to search for content related to “covid” and “long covid,” they were…

Read More Read More

Amid another rise in cases, Covid’s new normal has set in

Amid another rise in cases, Covid’s new normal has set in

Helen Branswell writes: Among people who are still paying attention to Covid-19, there’s been a recent surge — not just in viral activity but in the concern once again being paid to Covid. Headlines announce that transmission is surging and hospitalizations for Covid are rising by alarming percentages. There’s debate in some places about whether or not to resume wearing masks. People are worrying about whether the latest subvariant, BA.2.86, spells bad news for our fall and winter, and whether…

Read More Read More

Climate-linked ills threaten humanity

Climate-linked ills threaten humanity

The Washington Post reports: The floods came, and then the sickness. Muhammad Yaqoob stood on his concrete porch and watched the black, angry water swirl around the acacia trees and rush toward his village [Bagh Yusuf, in Sindh province, Pakistan] last September, the deluge making a sound that was like nothing he had ever heard. “It was like thousands of snakes sighing all at once,” he recalled. At first, he thought villagers’ impromptu sandbags, made from rice and fertilizer sacks,…

Read More Read More

America’s surprising partisan divide on life expectancy

America’s surprising partisan divide on life expectancy

Colin Woodard writes: Where you live in America can have a major effect on how young you die. On paper, Lexington County, S.C., and Placer County, Calif., have a lot in common. They’re both big, wealthy, suburban counties with white supermajorities that border on their respective state’s capital cities. They both were at the vanguard of their states’ 20th century Republican advances — Lexington in the 1960s when it pivoted from the racist Dixiecrats; Placer with the Reagan Revolution in…

Read More Read More

Cats with bird flu? The threat grows

Cats with bird flu? The threat grows

Zeynep Tufekci writes: The global H5N1 avian flu outbreak, already devastating wild birds and poultry, keeps spreading to mammals, bringing it one step closer to a potential human outbreak. Of course, since the coronavirus pandemic taught us the importance of responding early and aggressively to outbreaks … Sorry, I’m joking. We don’t seem to have learned much from the Covid outbreak, and it’s not funny. Not enough has been done about an out-of-control H5N1 outbreak at fur farms in Finland or…

Read More Read More

Mitch McConnell may be experiencing focal seizures, doctors suggest

Mitch McConnell may be experiencing focal seizures, doctors suggest

The New York Times reports: A four-line letter, signed by the attending physician of Congress and released by Senator Mitch McConnell on Thursday, suggested that his recent spells of speechlessness were linked to “occasional lightheadedness” perhaps brought on by his recovery from a concussion last winter or “dehydration.” But seven neurologists, relying on what they described as unusually revealing video of Mr. McConnell freezing up in public twice recently, said in interviews Thursday and Friday that the episodes captured in…

Read More Read More

Prescriptions for fruits and vegetables can improve the health of people with diabetes and other ailments, new study finds

Prescriptions for fruits and vegetables can improve the health of people with diabetes and other ailments, new study finds

“Food is medicine” programs recognize the vital importance of fresh produce in a person’s overall health. fcafotodigital/E+ via Getty Images By Kurt Hager, UMass Chan Medical School and Fang Fang Zhang, Tufts University The health of people with diabetes, hypertension and obesity improved when they could get free fruits and vegetables with a prescription from their doctors and other health professionals. We found that these patients’ blood sugar levels, blood pressure and weight improved in our new study published in…

Read More Read More

Postponing death by prolonging illness

Postponing death by prolonging illness

Robert S Gable writes: Everyone dies sometime. But when and how? Those questions become more salient as birthdays roll by. It has been said that wherever old people gather there is an ‘organ recital’ of malfunctioning body organs and parts. I, too, have a recital. Last year, at age 88, I woke up in a San Francisco hospital room after having my aortic heart valve replaced by one made of a metal spring and some cow tissue (an ‘Edwards Sapien…

Read More Read More

It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say

It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say

CNN reports: If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose and mouth to protect yourself from a recent uptick of the virus, according to a growing number of experts. That advice should go all the way up to 80-year-old President Joe Biden, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist. “Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following Covid infection,” Reiner said. “At…

Read More Read More

Why a highly mutated coronavirus variant has scientists on alert

Why a highly mutated coronavirus variant has scientists on alert

Nature reports: Researchers are racing to determine whether a highly mutated coronavirus variant that has popped up in three continents will be a global concern — or much ado about nothing. Several laboratories detected the variant last week, and it has been named BA.2.86. Although the lineage seems to be exceedingly rare, it is very different from other circulating variants and carries numerous changes to its spike protein, a key focus of the body’s immune attack on the SARS-CoV-2 virus….

Read More Read More

How do we fix the scandal that is American health care?

How do we fix the scandal that is American health care?

Nicholas Kristof writes: It’s not just that life expectancy in Mississippi (71.9) now appears to be a hair shorter than in Bangladesh (72.4). Nor that an infant is some 70 percent more likely to die in the United States than in other wealthy countries. Nor even that for the first time in probably a century, the likelihood that an American child will live to the age of 20 has dropped. All that is tragic and infuriating, but to me the…

Read More Read More

Montana judge hands young plaintiffs significant victory in landmark climate trial

Montana judge hands young plaintiffs significant victory in landmark climate trial

CNN reports: A Montana judge handed a significant victory on Monday to more than a dozen young plaintiffs in the nation’s first constitutional climate trial, as extreme weather becomes more deadly and scientists warn the climate crisis is eroding our environment and natural resources. In a case that could have legal reverberations for other climate litigation, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that Montana’s continued development of fossil fuels violates a clause in its state constitution that guarantees its citizens…

Read More Read More

Heat harms the mind, not just the body

Heat harms the mind, not just the body

The New York Times reports: If you find that the blistering, unrelenting heat is making you anxious and irritable, even depressed, it’s not all in your head. Soaring temperatures can damage not just the body but also the mind. As heat waves become more intense, more frequent and longer, it has become increasingly important to address the impact on mental health, scientists say. “It’s really only been over the past five years that there’s been a real recognition of the…

Read More Read More

No ‘Oppenheimer’ fanfare for those caught in first atomic bomb’s fallout

No ‘Oppenheimer’ fanfare for those caught in first atomic bomb’s fallout

The Washington Post reports: A strong rumble woke 13-year-old Lucy Benavidez Garwood in the darkness, shaking the three-room adobe house where she and her family lived and rattling dishes in the kitchen cupboard. Neighbors who gathered that morning agreed it must have been an earthquake. They learned the truth several weeks later when U.S. forces attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The atomic bombs dropped on the two cities had been developed in Tularosa’s own backyard — that pre-dawn test blast…

Read More Read More