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Study Links Heavy Cannabis Use To Higher Death Risk, Psychosis

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Heavy weed use may be far more dangerous than people realize, according to a pair of studies published in JAMA Network Open. People diagnosed with cannabis use disorder (CUD) may face nearly triple the risk of death over five years compared to those without the disorder, according to a large study published Feb. 6. The study, conducted in Ontario, Canada, found that people treated for CUD in hospitals or emergency rooms were 10 times more likely to die by suicide than those in the general population. They were also significantly more likely to die from trauma, drug poisoning and lung cancer, researchers found. A separate study — published Feb. 4 — linked rising cases of psychosis and schizophrenia in Canada to CUD since the country legalized recreational marijuana in 2018. Researchers suspect C.U.D. is even more widespread than the data indicate.  When they analyzed Ontario health records from 106,994 people diagnosed with CUD during a hospital or emergency room visit between 2006 and 2021, researchers found: 3.5% of people with CUD died within five years of treatment, compared to 0.6% of a similar group of people without CUD. CUD patients still had a 2.8 times higher risk of death than the general population even after other risk factors like mental illness, heart disease, cancer and other substance use were considered. Young adults aged 25 to…  read on >  read on >

ER Visits for Burns, Eye Issues Rose 8-Fold During Recent L.A. Fires

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Los Angeles County residents are still recovering from the devastation of the Palisades and Eaton fires, and new data show that emergency department (ED) visits for wildfire-related issues jumped eight-fold in the days after the fires broke out. In fact, the new data “likely underestimate the prevalence of wildfire-associated ED encounters,” a team led by Emily Kajita of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH) concludes. Fueled by bone-dry conditions and winds reaching gusts of 100 mph, the Palisades and Eaton fires roared through tens of thousands of acres, destroying more than 16,000 structures and killing 29 people.  The fires took weeks to put out completely and dirtied the air Los Angelenos breathed during that time. Kajita and colleagues looked at LACDPH data on ED encounters occurring in 90% of hospitals across the county. Overall, ED visits actually dropped by 9% in the first six days after the fires broke out, compared to the three weeks prior.   The researchers note that this is in keeping with ED trends during natural disasters generally, as people focus more on moving away from affected areas; schools and businesses are shut down; and many folks take added precautions around their health. However, between Jan. 7 and 12 there was a sharp spike in ED encounters for illnesses and injuries linked directly to the fires.  Rates for…  read on >  read on >

NFL Players Are Now Avoiding Opioids for Pain, Study Finds

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Ahead of this weekend’s Super Bowl, some good news for the athletes: NFL players are largely avoiding opioid-based pain relievers when injuries strike. A new study of data from the 2021 and 2022 seasons finds the National Football League’s efforts to curb addictive opioid use is working, with the drugs comprising less than 3% of all pain meds prescribed.  “Moreover, only 10 percent of NFL athletes received even a single prescription for an opioid during a one-year period,” noted study co-author Dr. Kurt Kroenke, a researcher-clinician at the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine, in Indianapolis.  “I think there’s been much greater attention to what can be done in the training room for NFL athletes for their injuries and pain that doesn’t rely on medicines,” he added.  Many Americans fall prey to opioid misuse and addiction when they are prescribed the drugs to ease pain from injury or another cause.  Even the toughest athletes can be vulnerable. “Professional football is a very physical sport,” Kroenke said in a Regenstrief news release. “But anyone who watches professional hockey or NBA basketball or big league soccer and even college and high school sports, realizes how these players also are prone to injuries and pain.” When it comes to pro football players, he added, “there’s always been a concern from a safety and health perspective about…  read on >  read on >

Super Bowl Food Ads Are Loaded With Salt, Study Finds

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Set, hut! Super Bowl Sunday is almost here. But it’s not just about big plays and bad calls, it’s also a sodium tsunami. On average, foods advertised during NFL games contain 40% of the daily recommended sodium intake, researchers reported recently in JAMA Network Open. “We proved what probably a lot of people have long suspected, and that is that foods advertised during NFL games … are frequently high in sodium and calories and fat content,” senior study author Dr. Paul Hauptman, dean of the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine and chief academic officer for Renown Health, told CNN. His team analyzed 10 NFL games from September to November 2023 and found that 10% of commercials featured food products. And the sodium content in those foods ranged from 220 mg to 1,872 mg — nearly half the recommended daily limit, CNN reported. The median was 910 mg, meaning half had more sodium, half had less. Fast food ranked No. 1 in sodium, researchers noted. Eating too much salt is linked to high blood pressure, heart failure and stroke. “Blood pressure is directly related to stroke, cardiovascular disease — even to death from cardiovascular disease and heart failure,” Dr. Stephen Juraschek told CNN. He’s a hypertension specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and associate professor of nutrition at Harvard Medical School…  read on >  read on >

Good Mental Health Could Be Key to Hip Fracture Recovery

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Many seniors suffer long-term health issues after a hip fracture, even after hip replacement surgeries.  Now, research shows that a patient’s mental health could be crucial to how well they bounce back in the years after these injuries. “Addressing overall mental health during the recovery process from hip fractures is crucial,” concludes study senior author and Harvard University researcher Dr. Sarah Berry. More than 300,000 older American adults are rushed to emergency departments each year for hip fracture, according to the researchers, and more than 500,000 hip replacement surgeries each year involve fractures as a contributing cause. About 1 in 4 patients who’ve fallen and suffered a hip fracture will require long-term care in the year after their fall. The new research looked at data on 129 women over the age of 64 who’d recently undergone a surgery to repair a fractured hip. The data were collected as part of a study led by Dr. Ellen Binder of Washington University in St Louis. Berry and colleagues’ new analysis looked specifically at patient “resilience” following their hip fracture.  They looked at numerous mental health factors, including a patient’s education, thinking skills, mental health and depressive symptoms as measured on various tests. Lower patient scores on what’s known as the Geriatric Depression Scale, as well as higher marks on the Global Mental Health Score, were each associated…  read on >  read on >

Breast Reduction Can Spur Weight Gain in Young Women

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Many women may opt for a breast reduction if they encounter issues such as recurrent neck, back and shoulder pain.   However, a new study suggests a link between these procedures in teens and young adult women and later weight gain. “These patients should be targeted for healthy lifestyle changes to prevent weight gain,” said study lead author William Doyle Jr., a medical student at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He and his colleagues published their findings in the February issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Excess weight can raise risks for complications after breast-reduction surgeries (mammaplasty), especially among teens, according to background information from the researchers. For that reason, overweight patients are advised to lose weight prior to these procedures. But what about weight gain after these surgeries? To learn more, Doyle’s team tracked outcomes for 56 patients under the age of 22 (average age: 18.6 years) who had breast reduction surgeries between 2015 and 2019. Prior to their surgeries, about 29% were determined to be at a healthy weight, while the rest had BMIs in the overweight or obese range. BMI, shorthand for body mass index, is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. The researchers tracked fluctuations in patients’ weight for an average of almost two years post-surgery.  They found that 39.3% of patients had any decrease…  read on >  read on >

Kids Consume More Mature Media When Parents Overuse Screens

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Yikes! The way parents use their phones around their kids may influence how much inappropriate content kids consume. Researchers reported Feb. 4 in the journal BMC Pediatrics that the odds of kids watching R-rated movies or playing mature-rated video games rose with higher parental screen use and inconsistent family media rules. The study analyzed data from more than 10,000 12- and 13-year-olds who were part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. “We wanted to explore parent rules and adolescents’ exposure to mature content because there’s a lack of research to guide parents of young adolescents on media use,” lead author Dr. Jason Nagata told CNN in an email.  “While the American Academy of Pediatrics provides general recommendations for ages 5 to 18, young adolescents are at a unique developmental stage — they’re not little kids anymore, but they’re also not fully independent teens,” Nagata, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, added. Parents in the study answered a 14-item questionnaire, rating their agreement with statements such as, “I try to limit how much I use a screen-based device when I am with my child” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Meanwhile, kids self-reported how often they watched R-rated movies and played mature-rated video games, using a 0-to-3 scale (never to…  read on >  read on >

Diabetic ‘Yo-yo’ Dieting Can Harm Kidneys

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“Yo-yo” dieting — repeatedly losing and gaining weight — can significantly increase risk of kidney disease among people with type 1 diabetes, a new study warns. Diabetics with greater weight fluctuations experienced a 40% decline in their kidneys’ ability to filter toxins from the blood, researchers reported Feb. 4 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. “We showed that high body-weight variability is associated with increased risk of different outcomes of diabetic kidney disease progressions (DKD) in people with type 1 diabetes, independently of traditional DKD risk factors,” lead researcher Dr. Marion Camoin with the University Hospital Center Bordeaux in France said in a news release. “To our knowledge, this is the first study showing this association,” Camoin added. As many as 35% of men and 55% of women yo-yo diet, and this pattern of weight loss and regain has been shown to increase risk of heart disease in both healthy people and people with diabetes, researchers said in background notes. Type 1 diabetes has long been considered a disease of lean people, but obesity is becoming more common in that group as well as the general public, researchers said. For the study, researchers examined six years of body weight data for more than 1,400 people participating in a long-term diabetes health study. The team compared weight fluctuation with six criteria that show how…  read on >  read on >