Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

People preparing to watch Monday’s total eclipse of the sun need to protect their vision during the event, eye doctors say. Powerful ultraviolet rays can do permanent damage to the eyes if people look directly at the sun as the moon is sliding into place before it, said Starr Schroeder, an emergency department nurse at Penn State Health Lancaster Medical Center. Special solar viewing glasses are required to watch the solar eclipse progress, Schroeder said. “At no point during a partial eclipse is it safe to look at the sun without special eye protection,” Schroeder said in a Penn State news release. “Not even the darkest sunglasses are safe.” Observing a solar eclipse without proper protection can damage both the cornea and the retina, said Dr. Ajay Soni, a pediatric ophthalmologist at Penn State Health Children’s Lancaster Pediatric Center. One potential condition is photo-keratitis, which is damage to the cornea from UV rays. The cornea is the clear, dome-shaped covering at the front of the eye. “It’s a sunburn on the cornea, and is quite painful because the cornea is so sensitive,” Soni said. Soni added that patients typically recover on their own within a few days. A more serious risk is solar retinopathy, which can cause permanent eye damage. There’s no pain associated with solar retinopathy, which causes scarring on the retina, which is… read on > read on >

People with Long COVID might be able to exercise to improve their health, something that up to now has been discouraged, a new study suggests. “The World Health Organization [WHO] and other major bodies have said that people with post-COVID should avoid intense exercise,” said lead researcher Andrea Tryfonos, a postdoctoral investigator with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. But the new findings show that Long COVID patients do just as well after exercise as healthy people, “even though they had more symptoms to begin with,” Tryfonos said in an institute news release. “By equally well, I mean that they did not worsen their symptoms or negatively affect their body during the 48 hours we observed them.” Early observations suggested that exercising with Long COVID could be harmful, researchers noted. Folks with Long COVID often experience symptoms like extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, elevated heart rate and muscle weakness, and these are often exacerbated by exertion. To see whether exercise helps or harms, researchers recruited 31 people with Long COVID and matched them to 31 healthy people. All participants completed three different exercise sessions consisting of high-intensity interval training and moderate-intensity aerobic exercise — both on an exercise bike – as well as strength training. The sessions happened in random order a few weeks apart, researchers said. All participants underwent a battery of medical exams before,… read on > read on >

Women who enter menopause before their 50s and who also have heart disease risk factors may be at especially high risk for thinking declines and later dementia, new research shows. “While cardiovascular risk factors are known to increase a person’s risk for dementia, what is lesser known is why women have a greater risk for Alzheimer’s disease than men,” said study lead author Jennifer Rabin, of the University of Toronto. “We examined if the hormonal change of menopause, specifically the timing of menopause, may play a role in this increased risk.” Rabin’s team found that it did. “We found that going through this hormonal change earlier in life while also having cardiovascular risk factors is linked to greater cognitive problems when compared to men of the same age,” she explained in a news release from the American Neurological Association. Maintaining good blood flow to and within the brain is a known factor in neurological health. High blood pressure, smoking and diabetes can all impair brain blood flow. In the new study, Rabin’s team tracked the cognitive health of 16,720 people, averaging 65 years of age, evenly divided as to gender. They further divided the female participants into three subgroups: Those who experienced earlier menopause between the ages of 35 and 48; those who entered menopause between ages 49 and 52 (which is typical); and those… read on > read on >

Desks that require folks to stand or move as they work also might help them produce better results on the job, a new study suggests. People’s brains became sharper when working at a desk that made them stand, step or walk rather than sit, results show. Reasoning scores in particular improved when at an active workstation, researchers said. “It is feasible to blend movement with office work that previously would have been done during long periods of sitting,” said senior study author Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a preventive cardiologist with the Mayo Clinic. “Active workstations may offer a way to potentially improve cognitive performance and overall health, simply by moving at work.” For the study, researchers recruited 44 participants to test four different office settings during four consecutive days. The first day, people sat at a typical desk for work. The next three days, they worked at an elevated desk, either standing, walking on a treadmill or using a stepper. Typing speed slowed down slightly at active workstations, but the accuracy of their typing was not affected, researchers found. On the other hand, tests revealed that their brain function either improved or stayed the same when they were active while working. The participants scored better on reasoning tests when standing, stepping or walking, compared to sitting, results show. The new study was published April 4 in… read on > read on >

Three anti-smoking groups announced Tuesday that they have sued the U.S. government yet again after it missed its latest deadline for enacting a ban on menthol cigarettes. This is the second lawsuit that the plaintiffs — the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council, Action on Smoking and Health and the National Medical Association — have filed against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over delays in banning menthol cigarettes. The first lawsuit, filed in 2020, demanded that the FDA add menthol to its list of prohibited flavors for public health reasons. Once the agency began to take action on the issue, that lawsuit was dismissed. In the latest lawsuit, the groups claim the agency missed a March deadline for issuing a final rule on a menthol ban. Menthol cigarettes are particularly popular in the Black community. “Because of defendants’ inaction, tobacco companies have continued to use menthol cigarettes to target youth, women and the Black community — all to the detriment of public health,” the lawsuit stated. “As African American physicians, we are deeply disturbed at the continuing delays in FDA’s finalizing of the ban on menthol cigarettes,” Dr. Yolanda Lawson, president of the National Medical Association, said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “Our patients, more than any other group, become disabled and die prematurely due to the continued use of these cigarettes.”… read on > read on >

Research into germs that travel through the human digestive tract shows that some may promote obesity while others might help prevent it. Not only that, but those microbes may act differently in men versus women, the same study found. “Our findings reveal how an imbalance in distinct bacterial groups are likely to play an important role in the onset and development of obesity, with considerable differences between the sexes,” said study lead author Dr Paula Aranaz, from the Centre for Nutrition Research at the University of Navarra in Spain. Her team is slated to present the findings in May at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice. The researchers focused on an end product of human digestion: poop. They carefully analyzed the “metabolome” of stool samples from 251 female and 110 male adult volunteers, averaging 44 years of age. The metabolome is the variety of metabolite molecules that form as gut bacteria break down food, the researchers explained in a meeting news release. Aranaz’ team also used genetic profiling to identify the various types of bacteria in the stool samples. The participants ran the gamut in terms of weight — 65 were normal weight, 110 were overweight and 186 were deemed obese. Certain microbial patterns emerged when it came to correlations between gut microbes and weight. For example, folks who were obese tended to have… read on > read on >

When a soldier is rushed to medical care following a blast or other injury to the head, time is crucial in deciding just how extensive that injury is. Now, the U.S. Army has announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared a bedside whole blood test that can answer that question in about 15 minutes. Prior tests relied on blood plasma or serum, and that meant sending samples to a lab for analysis. The new test, made by Abbott and called the i-STAT TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) cartridge, sidesteps that issue. It could be an advance for the care of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) on the battlefield, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Edward Bailey said in an Army news release. “TBIs are a major concern for Warfighter health, readiness and resiliency,” said Bailey, who is commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC). “This milestone accomplishment demonstrates how Army medical developers can partner with industry to deliver solutions for frontline medical personnel caring for our injured service members.” According to background data supplied by the Army, about half a million U.S. troops have experienced some form of TBI during their training, deployment or even sporting events, between 2000 and 2023. That’s why the Army teamed up with Abbott to develop a quicker test when TBIs occur. Here’s how the i-STAT test… read on > read on >

A total eclipse of the sun is coming up next week, and many folks don’t know that watching it unprotected can cause permanent eye damage, a new survey finds. Nearly 30% of Americans don’t know that looking directly into a solar eclipse without proper eye protection can cause permanent distortions or blind spots in their vision, the researchers found. “The survey results highlight the need for more community education about the true dangers associated with a total eclipse,” said study author Dr. Nicholas Kman, a clinical professor of emergency medicine at the Ohio State University’s College of Medicine. “We can’t stress enough the importance of proper eye protection.” About 32 million Americans live in areas along the path of the total solar eclipse set to occur on April 8, researchers said. A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun and blocks people’s view of the sun. When that happens, people in the “path of totality” will only be able to see the outer atmosphere of the sun, also known as the corona. Next week’s eclipse will start in southwest Texas and pass along the United States in a northeasterly line through parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Looking at an eclipse is the same as staring directly… read on > read on >

Smacking a 100-mile-an-hour fastball or shooting down a fast-moving alien invader in a video game might involve more than fast reflexes, researchers report. Elite gamers and pro athletes may also have a hidden vision advantage over others, a new study finds. Some people can perceive rapidly changing visual cues better than others, researchers reported April 1 in the journal PLOS One. This advantage in eye tracking could explain why some people are better in settings where response time is critical, researchers said. “We don’t yet know how this variation in visual temporal resolution might affect our day-to-day lives, but we believe that individual differences in perception speed might become apparent in high-speed situations where one might need to locate or track fast-moving objects, such as in ball sports, or in situations where visual scenes change rapidly, such as in competitive gaming,” said lead researcher Clinton Haarlem, a doctoral candidate with Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. The rate at which people perceive the world is known as “temporal resolution,” researchers said. Some people effectively see more images per second than others. To quantify this, researchers asked participants to look at a flickering light source. If the light flickered faster than a person’s visual threshold, they saw the light as steady rather than blinking. Some participants saw the light as completely still when it was flashing about… read on > read on >

As their aging brains shrink, older dogs can suffer the same memory and thinking problems as many older humans do. But dogs are just like humans in another way — playtime and social activities can help preserve their brain function, a new study finds. Exercising, socializing, playing with toys and playing with other dogs helped a small group of beagles maintain their brains, researchers reported April 1 in the Journal of Neuroscience. Such social enrichment activities particularly helped maintain the size of the beagles’ hippocampus, a brain region tied to memory and emotion that is particularly sensitive to age-related decline, researchers said. Brain scans “showed that total hippocampal volume increased at an average rate of about 1.74% per year across treatment groups, contrasting with the age-related hippocampal volume decline” observed in previous studies, wrote the research team led by senior researcher Craig Stark, a professor of neurobiology at University of California, Irvine. For the study, researchers tracked the brain health of 43 middle-aged beagles, including 36 females and seven males, for three years as part of a study involving two potential drugs for Alzheimer’s disease. The dogs were all 6 years old at the start of the study. All dogs received daily exercise, play with a rotating set of toys and socialization. They also were allowed to play for a half-hour each day in male-only… read on > read on >