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Category: Health

If you can’t balance on one leg for at least 10 seconds, you may die within a decade

If you can’t balance on one leg for at least 10 seconds, you may die within a decade

ZME Science reports: Human balance, or lack thereof, can be a reliable proxy that reflects a person’s health and potential underlying conditions. Recent research on more than 1,700 middle-aged and older subjects found that those who couldn’t balance on one leg for 10 seconds had a much higher death rate than those who could. Similar to how a police officer might ask you to step out of the vehicle and perform a balancing task to see if you’re intoxicated, this…

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Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes

Science reports: Deep in the human gut, myriad “good” bacteria and other microbes help us digest our food, as well as keep us healthy by affecting our immune, metabolic, and nervous systems. Some of these humble microbial assistants have been in our guts since before humans became human—certain gut microbes are found in almost all primates, suggesting they first colonized a common ancestor. But humans have also lost many of these helpers found in other primates and may be losing…

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How the sugars in mucus tame the body’s unruly fungi

How the sugars in mucus tame the body’s unruly fungi

Wired reports: Katharina Ribbeck’s lab collects mucus—the often gooey substance present in places like the mouth, gut, reproductive tract, and intestines. While the slimy goop may not be pretty from the get-go, a purification process can brighten it up. “Once you remove particulates and microbes, it’s a beautiful, beautiful clear gel—like egg white,” says Ribbeck, a professor of bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s really gorgeous.” Ribbeck cares about spit because she’s trying to deconstruct how glycans, tiny…

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‘Marching towards starvation’: UN warns of hell on earth if Ukraine war goes on

‘Marching towards starvation’: UN warns of hell on earth if Ukraine war goes on

The Guardian reports: Dozens of countries risk protests, riots and political violence this year as food prices surge around the world, the head of the food-aid branch of the United Nations has warned. Speaking in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday, David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said the world faced “frightening” shortages that could destabilise countries that depend on wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia. “Even before the Ukraine crisis, we were facing an unprecedented…

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Universal health care could have saved more than 330,000 American lives during the pandemic

Universal health care could have saved more than 330,000 American lives during the pandemic

Rachel Nuwer writes: Americans spend more on health care than people in any other nation. Yet in any given year, the piecemeal nature of the American medical insurance system causes many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs. Not surprisingly, COVID-19 only exacerbated this already dire public health issue, as evidenced by the U.S.’s elevated mortality, compared with that of other high-income countries. A new study quantifies the severity of the impact of the pandemic on Americans who did not have access…

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Poland shows the risks for women’s lives when abortion is banned

Poland shows the risks for women’s lives when abortion is banned

The New York Times reports: It was shortly before 11 p.m. when Izabela Sajbor realized the doctors were prepared to let her die. Her doctor had already told her that her fetus had severe abnormalities and would almost certainly die in the womb. If it made it to term, life expectancy was a year, at most. At 22 weeks pregnant, Ms. Sajbor had been admitted to a hospital after her water broke prematurely. She knew that there was a short…

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Rural America reels from violent crime

Rural America reels from violent crime

The Wall Street Journal reports: Local prosecutor Rebecca McCoy used to think of her home in central Arkansas as a place where the worst crimes were usually stolen tractors and lawn mowers. In March 2020, she was called to the trailer of a 72-year-old man who had been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. It was White County’s first homicide in almost two years. By that December, there were 11 more. In Marion County, a swampy stretch of South…

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Video: Covid and the brain — a neurological health crisis

Video: Covid and the brain — a neurological health crisis

  Brain fog. Memory lapses. Difficulties focusing or sustaining attention. All these cognitive issues have plagued some who have otherwise recovered from a bout of Covid-19. In this video, Stanford neurologist Michelle Monje describes her work showing how even mild respiratory infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus may lead to lingering problems with the brain. Monje, who has long treated and studied cancer patients with similar symptoms following chemotherapy, says that the damage isn’t necessarily caused by the virus itself. Instead,…

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Average liver is no more than three years old, no matter the age of the person carrying it

Average liver is no more than three years old, no matter the age of the person carrying it

Gizmodo reports: Our liver stays plenty youthful even as we get older, new research this week suggests. Using a form of radioactive dating, the researchers estimate that the average age of our liver’s cells is around three years. Some cells seem to live longer than others, however, a finding that may one day help scientists better understand how and why conditions like liver cancer can happen. The new study was led by scientists at the Dresden University of Technology in…

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Pollution from Russia’s war will poison Ukraine for decades

Pollution from Russia’s war will poison Ukraine for decades

Vox reports: In late May, a large plume of pink smoke erupted from a chemical plant and rose above apartment buildings in Ukraine’s eastern city of Severodonetsk. The smoke was toxic — it came from a tank of nitric acid that was struck by Russian military forces. “Do not come out of shelters!” the region’s governor, Sergiy Gaiday, said on Telegram, following the attack. “Nitric acid is dangerous if inhaled, swallowed, and in contact with skin.” Since Russia invaded Ukraine,…

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Unprecedented bird flu outbreaks sweeping the world are concerning scientists

Unprecedented bird flu outbreaks sweeping the world are concerning scientists

Nature reports: A highly infectious and deadly strain of avian influenza virus has infected tens of millions of poultry birds across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. But scientists are particularly concerned about the unprecedented spread in wild birds — outbreaks pose a significant risk to vulnerable species, are hard to contain and increase the opportunity for the virus to spill over into people. Since October, the H5N1 strain has caused nearly 3,000 outbreaks in poultry in dozens of countries….

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Viruses that were on hiatus during Covid are back — and behaving in unexpected ways

Viruses that were on hiatus during Covid are back — and behaving in unexpected ways

STAT reports: For nearly two years, as the Covid pandemic disrupted life around the globe, other infectious diseases were in retreat. Now, as the world rapidly dismantles the measures put in place to slow spread of Covid, the viral and bacterial nuisances that were on hiatus are returning — and behaving in unexpected ways. Consider what we’ve been seeing of late. The past two winters were among the mildest influenza seasons on record, but flu hospitalizations have picked up in…

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Global food supply: ‘An absolute crisis is unfolding before our eyes’

Global food supply: ‘An absolute crisis is unfolding before our eyes’

Simon Tisdall reports: Apocalypse is an alarming idea, commonly taken to denote catastrophic destruction foreshadowing the end of the world. But in the original Greek, apokálypsis means a revelation or an uncovering. One vernacular definition is “to take the lid off something”. That latter feat is exactly what Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, achieved last week, possibly inadvertently, when he suggested Britain was facing “apocalyptic” levels of food price inflation. Tory ministers fumed over what they saw…

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As monkeypox goes global, scientists are on high alert

As monkeypox goes global, scientists are on high alert

Nature reports: More than 120 confirmed or suspected cases of monkeypox, a rare viral disease seldom detected outside of Africa, have been reported in at least 11 non-African countries in the past week. The emergence of the virus in separate populations across the world where it doesn’t usually appear has alarmed scientists — and sent them racing for answers. “It’s eye-opening to see this kind of spread,” says Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California Los Angeles, who…

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The banks collapsed in 2008. Our food system is about to do the same

The banks collapsed in 2008. Our food system is about to do the same

George Monbiot writes: For the past few years, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008. While financial collapse would have been devastating to human welfare, food system collapse doesn’t bear thinking about. Yet the evidence that something is going badly wrong has been escalating rapidly. The current surge in food prices looks like the latest sign of…

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What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

What is our hidden consumption of microplastics doing to our health?

Katharine Gammon writes: Martin Wagner was annoyed that his colleagues were always talking about microplastics in the ocean. It was 2010 and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch had been headline news. Here was this massive gyre, formed by circular ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean, reportedly brimming with plastic particles, killing sea turtles and seagulls. Wagner, a professor of biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, whose lab focuses on the impact of plastics on human and ecosystem…

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