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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 >

Everyone’s Happiest In The Morning, Study Says

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Never mind the grumbles and groans that accompany a clock alarm, along with a lunge for the snooze bar and murmurs of “five more minutes.” People generally wake in their best frame of mind, enjoying peak mental health and wellbeing in the morning, researchers reported in a new study published Feb. 4 in BMJ Mental Health. They also tend to feel worst around midnight, with the day of the week and season of the year also playing a role, researchers found. “Generally, things do indeed seem better in the morning,” concluded a team led by Feifei Bu, a principal research fellow in behavioral science and health at University College London. These results don’t just give a better insight into how people’s moods change throughout the day, researchers said. They also can help guide future efforts to track and treat people’s mental health, since the time of day can influence how a person might feel. “Our findings indicate the importance of considering time, day and season in mental health and well-being research,” the team wrote. “These factors should also be considered for the design and delivery of interventions, as well as the planning and provision of public health services.” For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 49,000 people who participated in a social study related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, which began in…  read on >  read on >

‘Good’ Cholesterol Could Be Bad For Glaucoma

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The cholesterol that’s good for your heart health might be bad for your eye health, and vice versa, a new study says. “Good” HDL cholesterol appears to increase risk of glaucoma in people older than 55, researchers reported Feb. 4 in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. Conversely, “bad” LDL cholesterol might be associated with a lower risk of glaucoma, researchers report. “HDL cholesterol has been regarded as the ‘good cholesterol’ for seven decades. However, this study demonstrates that high levels of HDL cholesterol are not consistently associated with a favorable prognostic outcome,” concluded the research team led by senior investigator Zhenzhen Liu, an associate professor with the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdon, China. LDL cholesterol contributes to plaque build-up in the arteries, which can eventually lead to heart disease, heart attack or stroke, according to the American Heart Association. On the other hand, HDL cholesterol helps heart health by carrying some LDL cholesterol away from the arteries and back to the liver, where the LDL cholesterol is broken down and excreted, the AHA says. Abnormally high levels of fats in the bloodstream have previously been linked to eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, researchers said in background notes. But findings related to glaucoma have been inconsistent. Glaucoma causes fluid to build up within the eye, with the increasing pressure…  read on >  read on >

Scientists Find More Microplastics in Human Brains

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Tiny microplastics are making their way into the human brain, and new research suggests the problem is getting worse. The new study, published Feb. 3 in the journal Nature, found that brain samples collected in 2024 contained significantly more microplastics than those taken eight years earlier. Researchers say the amount of plastic in the brain has increased by about 50% — the equivalent of an entire plastic spoon in weight. “Compared to autopsy brain samples from 2016, that’s about 50% higher,” he said. “That would mean that our brains today are 99.5% brain and the rest is plastic,” co-lead author Matthew Campen, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, told CNN. Researchers also found that people with dementia had even higher levels of microplasticsplastic fragments in their brains — three to five times more than those without dementia. “It’s a little bit alarming, but remember that dementia is a disease where the blood brain barrier and clearance mechanisms are impaired,” Campen said. Microplastics — tiny fragments of plastic that come from products like water bottles, food packaging and synthetic fabrics — have been found in major organs, including the lungs, heart, liver and even the placenta. But scientists are still trying to understand how they affect the body. “The biggest question is, ‘OK, what are these particles doing to…  read on >  read on >