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Category: Health

Pharmacies share medical data with police without a warrant, inquiry finds

Pharmacies share medical data with police without a warrant, inquiry finds

The Washington Post reports: The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have handed over Americans’ prescription records to police and government investigators without a warrant, a congressional investigation found, raising concerns about threats to medical privacy. Though some of the chains require their lawyers to review law enforcement requests, three of the largest — CVS Health, Kroger and Rite Aid, with a combined 60,000 locations nationwide — said they allow pharmacy staff members to hand over customers’ medical records in the store….

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Microplastics in drinking water affect behavior and immunity in mice, study reveals

Microplastics in drinking water affect behavior and immunity in mice, study reveals

PsyPost reports: A study published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences has uncovered startling effects of microplastics on mice, revealing significant behavioral changes and immune responses in both young and old subjects. This research expands our understanding of how these environmental pollutants might be affecting mammals — potentially including humans. Microplastics, tiny plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in diameter, have been a growing concern for environmentalists and health professionals alike. Found in everything from water bodies to human…

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Gut microbes may play role in social anxiety disorder, say researchers

Gut microbes may play role in social anxiety disorder, say researchers

The Guardian reports: While some people might relish the prospect of a new year party, for others socialising can trigger feelings of fear, anxiety and distress. Now researchers say microbes in the gut may play a role in causing social anxiety disorder, opening up fresh possibilities for therapies. Scientists have previously found the gut microbiome – the collection of bacteria and other organisms that live in the gastrointestinal system – differs for people who have social anxiety disorder (SAD) compared…

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Intermittent fasting seems to result in dynamic changes to the human brain

Intermittent fasting seems to result in dynamic changes to the human brain

Science Alert reports: Scientists looking to tackle our ongoing obesity crisis have made an important discovery: Intermittent fasting leads to significant changes both in the gut and the brain, which may open up new options for maintaining a healthy weight. Researchers from China studied 25 volunteers classed as obese over a period of 62 days, during which they took part in an intermittent energy restriction (IER) program – a regime that involves careful control of calorie intake and fasting on…

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America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority

America has a life expectancy crisis. But it’s not a political priority

The Washington Post reports: The commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration had an urgent message last winter for his colleagues, brandishing data that life expectancy in the United States had fallen again — the biggest two-year decline in a century. Robert Califf’s warning, summarized by three people with knowledge of the conversations, boiled down to this: Americans’ life expectancy is going the wrong way. We’re the top health officials in the country. If we don’t fix this, who will?…

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Israelis now fear catching the diseases that are spreading across Gaza

Israelis now fear catching the diseases that are spreading across Gaza

The Times of Israel reports: The death of a badly wounded IDF soldier in an Israeli hospital who was infected with a dangerous strain of fungus while fighting in the Gaza Strip has raised concerns about disease in Gaza affecting troops and possibly spreading to Israeli civilians. According to a Kan public broadcaster report, the soldier was brought to Assuta Ashdod Medical Center two weeks ago with severe limb injuries. Despite round-the-clock care, the fungus proved to be treatment-resistant and…

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American adults pack in a meal’s worth of snacks every day

American adults pack in a meal’s worth of snacks every day

Ohio State University news: Snacks constitute almost a quarter of a day’s calories in U.S. adults and account for about one-third of daily added sugar, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzing data from surveys of over 20,000 people found that Americans averaged about 400 to 500 calories in snacks a day – often more than what they consumed at breakfast – that offered little nutritional value. Though dietitians are very aware of Americans’ propensity to snack, “the magnitude of the…

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A Texas case shows that abortion ban exemptions are a sham

A Texas case shows that abortion ban exemptions are a sham

Michelle Goldberg writes: Soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, horror stories started emerging of women denied medically urgent abortions for pregnancies gone dangerously awry. In response, the anti-abortion movement developed a sort of conspiracy theory to rationalize away the results of their policies. Abortion rights activists, they argued, were deliberately misconstruing abortion laws, leading doctors to refuse to treat women who obviously qualified for exceptions. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care…

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The Texas abortion case blows up the abortion ban rationale

The Texas abortion case blows up the abortion ban rationale

Jennifer Rubin writes: Abortion rights activists, medical professionals and ordinary women warned the Supreme Court in advance of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision: Legislatures cannot dictate medical decisions without creating horrendous injustices and medical travesties. A recent case from Texas, which has a ban on abortions after six weeks, leaves no doubt about the merits of that argument. The Texas case undermines the rationale for abortion bans and adds to Republicans’ political liability on an issue uppermost…

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Your organs might be aging at different rates

Your organs might be aging at different rates

Scientific American reports: The number of birthdays you’ve had—better known as your chronological age—now appears to be less important in assessing your health than ever before. A new study shows that bodily organs get “older” at extraordinarily different rates, and each one’s biological age can be at odds with a person’s age on paper. The new research, published on Wednesday in Nature, identified about one in five healthy adults older than 50 years old as an “extreme ager”—a person with…

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What we get when we give

What we get when we give

Molly McDonough writes: From where in the body might kindness flow? Folklore and belief systems far and wide point to the heart. Ancient Egyptian mythology, for example, maintained that the leap to the afterlife required a test. Before the deceased could enter, their heart had to be weighed, placed on a balance under the watchful eyes of the gods. The dead person’s heart wasn’t beating, but it wasn’t considered dead weight; it held proof of virtue. If the person had…

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In the gut’s ‘second brain,’ key agents of health emerge

In the gut’s ‘second brain,’ key agents of health emerge

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: From the moment you swallow a bite of food to the moment it exits your body, the gut is toiling to process this strange outside material. It has to break chunks down into small bits. It must distinguish healthy nutrients from toxins or pathogens and absorb only what is beneficial. And it does all this while moving the partially processed food one way through different factories of digestion — mouth, esophagus, stomach, through the intestines and out….

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U.S. coal power plants killed at least 460,000 people in past 20 years, report finds

U.S. coal power plants killed at least 460,000 people in past 20 years, report finds

The Guardian reports: Coal-fired power plants killed at least 460,000 Americans during the past two decades, causing twice as many premature deaths as previously thought, new research has found. Cars, factories, fire smoke and electricity plants emit tiny toxic air pollutants known as fine particulate matter or PM2.5, which elevate the risk of an array of life-shortening medical conditions including asthma, heart disease, low birth weight and some cancers. Researchers analyzed Medicare and emissions data from 1999 and 2020, and…

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Gaza’s next tragedy: Disease risk spreads amid overcrowded shelters, dirty water and breakdown of basic sanitation

Gaza’s next tragedy: Disease risk spreads amid overcrowded shelters, dirty water and breakdown of basic sanitation

By Yara M. Asi, University of Central Florida After more than a month of being subjected to sustained bombing, the besieged people of the Gaza Strip are now confronted with another threat to life: disease. Overcrowding at shelters, a breakdown of basic sanitation, the rising number of unburied dead and a scarcity of clean drinking water have left the enclave “on the precipice of major disease outbreaks,” according to the World Health Organization. As an expert in Palestinian public health…

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Climate change is putting the health of billions at risk

Climate change is putting the health of billions at risk

Grist reports: Eight years ago, the medical journal the Lancet began compiling the latest research on how climate change affects human health. It was the first coordinated effort to highlight scientific findings on the health consequences of climate change, published in the hopes of making the topic more central to global climate negotiations. The Lancet’s annual reports on this topic, which summarize research conducted by dozens of scientists from leading institutions around the world, have become increasingly dire in tone….

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How Republican state politics are shaving years off American lives

How Republican state politics are shaving years off American lives

The Washington Post reports: Mike Czup unspooled the hose to wash his hearse. It was time to pick up the body of yet another neighbor who had died in the prime of life. Since he started working at 15 in the funeral business, Czup has seen plenty of tragedies. But the 52-year-old said he’s still coming to grips with a disturbing fact about the bodies he washes, embalms and entombs: About a quarter of the people he buries are younger…

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