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MONDAY, Dec.2, 2024Doctors have potent new weapons against the deadliest cancer in America and they want to make sure they’re on the radar of current and former smokers. “Lung cancer screening is the most powerful tool we have to lower cancer [deaths],” said Dr. Timothy Mullett, medical director of the Markey Cancer Center Network and immediate past chairman of the American Cancer Society Commission on Cancer. “Early-stage cancer is more treatable and at a lower cost than late-stage disease, and patients are more likely to get back to work,” he noted. To mark Lung Cancer Awareness Month, the American College of Surgeons (ACS) is highlighting the importance of smoking cessation in preventing lung cancer and sharing insights about screening and the impact of biomarker testing. Get screened While early detection saves lives, only about 6% of eligible patients are screened regularly. A low-dose CT scan is recommended for adults between the ages of 50 and 80 who have a 20-pack-year smoking history. That’s equivalent to smoking a pack a day for 20 years or two packs a day for 10. The scan takes just a few minutes. “If you’re eligible, talk to your doctor about getting screened,” Dr. Luis Armando Godoy, of UC Davis Health, advised in an ACS news release. Treatment advances Advances in personalized therapies offer hope even when cancer is in a… read on > read on >

The collected evidence is in, and drinking about eight cups of water per day is, in fact, good for you. So says a University of California San Francisco team who crunched the data from 18 randomized controlled trials. “For such a ubiquitous and simple intervention, the evidence hasn’t been clear and the benefits were not well-established, so we wanted to take a closer look,” explained study senior author Dr. Benjamin Breyer, chair of the university’s Department of Urology. “To our knowledge, this is the first study assessing the benefits of water consumption on clinical outcomes broadly,” he said in a university news release. Breyer’s team published its findings Nov. 25 in JAMA Network Open. The best evidence that lots of water is good for you came from studies citing its power to prevent kidney stones, and to also help folks lose weight. If you’ve had a kidney stone, drinking eight cups of water each day can help prevent a recurrence, the evidence showed. Drinking six or more cups of water per day also seemed to help adults shed excess pounds, studies showed, although eight cups per day didn’t help teens lose weight. Headaches seemed to ease in frequency if adults upped their water intake, and other trials found that lots of water could help prevent migraines and urinary tract infections. Having about four cups… read on > read on >

Geoffrey Pointing says its hard to describe the distress of an asthma or COPD flare-up. “Honestly, when you’re having a flare up, it’s very difficult to tell anybody how you feel – you can hardly breathe,” Pointing, 77, of Banbury, England, said in a news release. But an existing injectable drug might make these attacks much less frightening, a new clinical trial has shown. The already-approved drug for asthma could replace steroid medications as a means of quelling asthma and COPD flare-ups, researchers report. Benralizabam, a monoclonal antibody, did a better job than steroids at reducing respiratory symptoms like coughing, wheezing, breathlessness and hacking up phlegm, according to trial results published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. After three months of treatment, four times fewer people taking benralizumab had suffered an asthma or COPD attack, compared to people taking the steroid prednisolone. “This could be a game-changer for people with asthma and COPD,” said lead researcher Dr. Mona Bafadhel, chair of respiratory medicine for King’s College London. “Treatment for asthma and COPD exacerbations have not changed in fifty years despite causing 3.8 million deaths worldwide a year combined,” Bafadhel continued in a news release. “Benralizumab is a safe and effective drug already used to manage severe asthma. We’ve used the drug in a different way — at the point of an exacerbation — to show that… read on > read on >

Bouncing a soccer ball off the head during play could be doing real damage to the brain, a new study suggests. MRI brain scans of male and female soccer athletes suggests that lots of “heading” could damage areas of the brain already known to be linked to debilitating concussion-linked conditions, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). “The potential effects of repeated head impacts in sport are much more extensive than previously known and affect locations similar to where we’ve seen CTE pathology,” said study senior author Dr. Michael Lipton, professor of radiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. “This raises concern for delayed adverse effects of head impacts.” He and his colleagues are slated to present their findings in Chicago next week at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Previous studies have suggested that head impacts of all kinds might be linked to neurological issues such as CTE, according to an RSNA news release. In the new study, Lipton’s groups used a high-tech form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track changes in “microstructures” close to the surface of the brains of 352 amateur soccer players and 77 “non-collision” athletes, such as runners. Participants ranged from 18 to 53 years of age. Players who had engaged in a lot of soccer headers showed changes in the brain’s… read on > read on >

The cutting-edge weight-loss drug Zepbound can protect obese people from developing type 2 diabetes, a new clinical trial has found. Zepbound reduced the risk of diabetes in obese prediabetic patients by more than 90% during a three-year period compared to placebo, trial results show. “These results show that type 2 diabetes may be prevented, even in people who are on the verge of it, by using a medicine that causes weight loss,” researcher Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, said in a news release. People with prediabetes have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, but have not yet developed full-blown type 2 diabetes. Obesity is a risk factor both for prediabetes and for type 2 diabetes. For this clinical trial, more than 2,500 obese people were randomly assigned to receive one of three different doses of Zepbound, or a placebo, for more than three years. Of those patients, more than 1,000 had prediabetes. Zepbound (tirzepatide) in an injectable drug that activates receptors in the body for glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP) receptors, researchers said. These receptors help slow digestion, reduce appetite and improve blood sugar control. GLP-1 drugs have been shown to promote significant weight loss. In this trial, patients taking Zepbound had lost 12% to 20% of their initial weight… read on > read on >

Men with heart risk factors tend to lose their brain health more quickly than women with similar heart risks, a new study finds. These men face brain decline as early as their mid-50s, while women are most susceptible from their mid-60s onward, researchers report in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. “These results suggest that mitigating cardiovascular risk is an important therapeutic target in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, and indicate that this should be addressed aggressively a decade earlier in males than in females,” concluded the research team led by senior researcher Paul Edison, a professor of neuroscience with the Imperial College London. Heart disease risk factors like type 2 diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and smoking have previously been associated with a higher risk of dementia, researchers said in background notes. However, it’s not been clear when these heart health factors begin to take their toll on brain health, and whether there’s any differences between men and women, researchers noted. For the study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 34,500 participants in the UK Biobank, an ongoing large-scale research project. Imaging scans helped track changes in the participants’ brains over time, and researchers calculated their heart disease risk using their recorded health data. Results showed that heart risk factors, obesity and high levels of belly fat caused a gradual loss of brain volume… read on > read on >

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 27, 2024 — Thanksgiving travel is a must for millions of Americans, but those plans will be complicated for some because they’re traveling with a loved one who has Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. “A family trip to visit a loved one, friend, or favorite destination can be a great way to spend Thanksgiving, including for those affected by Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia-related illnesses,” Jennifer Reeder, director of educational and social services for the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, said in a news release. “Whether traveling near or far, there are preparations and adaptations family caregivers can make to help their loved one feel more comfortable and relaxed throughout the trip,” she added. Some tips to help holiday travel stay focused on family and joy include: Before embarking, family and friends should make sure that their loved one can travel at all, Reeder said. As dementia progresses, travel may become too difficult. It’s worth consulting with their doctor to make sure travel is recommended, based on how long the trip will be and the stage of the person’s illness. If the person can travel, make plans that take their abilities into account. Plan travel to minimize their anxiety and stress — for example, they might travel better at specific times of the day, or travel better by plane or by car. During travel, companions… read on > read on >

The outgoing Biden administration will propose that pricey GLP-1 obesity medications such as semaglutide (Wegovy), and tirzepatide (Zepbound) be covered by Medicare and Medicaid. However, the move would have to be approved by the new Trump administration. Right now, a law passed by Congress two decades ago prevents the Medicare and Medicaid from covering any “weight loss” drug. Under the Biden proposal, that rule would be circumvented by calling the medications treatments for the disease of obesity and its related health issues. “We don’t want to see people having to wait until they have these additional diseases before they get treatment,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told The New York Times. Under the proposed rule, every state Medicaid program would be required to cover the cost of the medications, which currently are priced at more than $1,200 per month before any drug company discounts. According to CMS estimates, passage of the rule would open access to the weight-loss medications to 3.4 million potential new patients under Medicare and another 4 million under Medicaid. But the incoming Trump administration would need to sign off on the new legislation. The person tapped by the president-elect to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, has long been a skeptic of the drugs, asserting that weight… read on > read on >

It’s common to find a pitcher soaking their elbow in an ice bucket following a baseball game, in an effort to save their arm for tomorrow’s innings. But athletes about to hit the turf would be better off soaking their aching muscles and joints in a hot tub rather than an ice bath, researchers report in a new small-scale study. A hot soak appears to improve exercise performance among athletes, researchers found. On the other hand, cold soaks are better for lowering inflammation, swelling and fatigue, results show. “While post-exercise [cold water immersion] is common on the sports field, cooling does not always have a positive effect on exercise capacity,” lead researcher Mamoru Tsuyuki, a master’s student in sports and health science at Ritsumeikan University in Shiga, Japan, said in a news release. For the study, researchers asked a small group of endurance athletes to perform 50 minutes of high-intensity interval running, followed by 20 minutes of either a cold-water soak at 59 degrees Fahrenheit or a hot-water tub at 104 degrees F. One hour after the workout, researchers measured the athletes’ jump height and blood levels of enzymes that indicate muscle soreness. The athletes jumped higher after a hot soak compared to a cold soak, results show. “The novel findings from our study are that post-exercise hot water immersion promoted recovery of muscle power… read on > read on >

TUESDAY, Nov. 26, 2024 (HeathDay News) — A potentially important form of brain signaling appears to be affected whenever concussion strikes, according to new research involving high school football players. “This study is important because it provides insight into both the mechanisms and the clinical implications of concussion in the maturing adolescent brain,” said study co-lead author Alex Wiesman, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. He and his colleagues are slated to present their findings next week in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). As the researchers explained, multiple concussion studies have already examined the effects of head injury on what’s known as periodic or “rhythmic” brain signaling, which is crucial to attention, movement or sensory processing. But much less has been known about non-rhythmic brain signaling. “Most previous neuroscience research has focused on rhythmic brain signaling, which is also called periodic neurophysiology,” explained study lead author Kevin Yu, a neuroscience student at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. “On the other hand, aperiodic neurophysiology refers to brain signals that are not rhythmic.” For a long time, neurologists haven’t paid a lot of attention to aperiodic signaling, considering it mere “background noise” in the brain. But that perspective is beginning to change. “While it’s often overlooked, aperiodic activity is important… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Smoker or Former Smoker? Here Are 4 Key Things You Need to Know

Drinking Lots of Water Really Is Good for You, Study Finds

Scientists Develop Whole New Form of Effective Asthma Treatment

Soccer ‘Headers’ Could Pose Danger to Brains

Zepbound Slashes Diabetes Risk in Obese Users

Heart Trouble Harms Men’s Brains Far Sooner Than Women’s

Holiday Travel With a Loved One With Dementia: An Expert Offers Tips

Biden Will Move to Have Medicare, Medicaid Cover GLP-1 Weight-Loss Meds

Cold Plunge or Hot Bath? What’s Best for Ailing Muscles?

Concussions Slow Brain Activity in High School Football Players

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