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Dreary, chilly winter days might cause some year-round runners to think twice about their jog, but recent research suggests the benefits of cold weather running outweigh those of running in warmer conditions. Specifically, cold weather can help runners burn more bad fat, lose more weight and feel healthier overall. “Cold weather doesn’t have to force runners indoors and I encourage my patients to continue safely running outdoors,” said Dr. Joshua Blomgren, an assistant professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “Exercise is medicine, even in the winter.” Running in cold weather produces less heat stress on the body, which can make a winter jog easier than one in the summer, Blomgren said. Higher body temperatures are associated with increased exertion and strain on the heart, lungs and metabolism. On the other hand, winter running can boost your metabolism at a time when cold temperatures are causing your average metabolism to slow down in an attempt to preserve fat, Blomgren explained. Cold weather jogging tricks the body into stopping that slowdown, helping you maintain a healthy weight. Scientific evidence also suggests that exercising in cold temperatures can help convert “bad” white fat to “good” brown fat, Blomgren said. White fat can cause inflammation and insulin resistance, while brown fat is metabolic tissue that helps burn calories. Blomgren does issue some cautions to folks who choose… read on > read on >

U.S. suicide numbers reached a grim new high in 2022. The increase was most acute among women over the age of 24, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, almost 49,500 people lost their lives to suicide in 2022, the report found, a 3% rise from the nearly 48,200 deaths recorded in 2021. That makes the 2022 death toll from suicide “the highest number ever recorded in the United States,” according to the CDC researchers. The data they presented is also preliminary, so “the 2022 final number of suicides is likely to be higher as additional death certificates with pending causes of death are determined to be suicides,” they noted. For reasons not explained in the report, middle-aged and older women appeared to be hit hardest by the rise in suicides. In absolute numbers, men are still far more likely than women to kill themselves: In 2022, 39,255 males died by suicide versus 10,194 females. However, the percentage increase in suicides among women in 2022 was much steeper than what was seen among men: 4% versus 1%, respectively, the CDC team noted. The 2022 rise among females was concentrated in those aged 25 and older. While suicide rates fell among younger women and female teens, it jumped 7% for women between the ages of 25 and 34. Women… read on > read on >

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 29, 2023 (Healthday News) — The diabetes drug Mounjaro prompted more weight loss among overweight and obese adults than Ozempic did in a real-world setting, researchers report. Both Mounjaro (tirzepatide) and Ozempic (semaglutide) mimic the effects of the gut hormone GLP-1, which triggers insulin production, helps control appetite and slows the movement of food through the stomach. But Mounjaro also stimulates a second gut hormone known as GIP, which may explain the findings, the investigators said. Both medications treat type 2 diabetes, but they have become wildly popular because they also help people shed unwanted pounds. Because of that, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved higher doses of both Mounjaro and Ozempic for weight loss under the brand names Zepbound and Wegovy, respectively. The new study was published recently on the preprint server MedRxiv and hasn’t yet undergone peer-review so should be considered preliminary. Many doctors have suspected Moinjaro might be more potent after seeing how their diabetes patients fared on both drugs, CNN reported. However, there haven’t been many studies that compared the drugs head-to-head, especially in people who don’t have diabetes. “Over 70% of American adults have overweight or obesity, and so there’s this huge potential for these medications to be used and [there’s] really a lack of information,” lead study author Dr. Patricia Rodriguez, a senior applied scientist at Truveta Research,… read on > read on >

It’s not just bumper-to-bumper highway traffic that’s causing your blood pressure to spike during your daily commute. New research shows that the exhaust fumes spewing from all those vehicles triggers a significant increase in car passengers’ blood pressure. The observed increase is comparable to the effect of a high-salt diet, researchers found, and the effect can last up to 24 hours. “The body has a complex set of systems to try to keep blood pressure to your brain the same all the time. It’s a very complex, tightly regulated system, and it appears that somewhere, in one of those mechanisms, traffic-related air pollution interferes with blood pressure,” said researcher Dr. Joel Kaufman, a University of Washington physician and professor of environmental and occupational health sciences. For the study, his team drove healthy adults ages 22 to 45 three times through rush-hour Seattle traffic while monitoring their blood pressure. Unfiltered road air was allowed to enter the car on two of the drives, while on the third the car was equipped with high-quality HEPA filters that screened out 86% of the air pollution from traffic. Breathing unfiltered air resulted in blood pressure increases of more than 4.5 millimeters of mercury, compared to the drives with filtered air, researchers said. The increase occurred rapidly, peaking about an hour into the drive, and it held steady for at… read on > read on >

People can walk away their risk of developing type 2 diabetes – but only if they walk fast enough, a new report finds. Folks who walk at least 2.5 miles an hour appear to have a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes, according to a study published Nov. 28 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. That’s the equivalent of 87 steps per minute for men and 100 steps per minute for women, said a team led by Dr Ahmad Jayedi of Semnan University of Medical Sciences in Semnan, Iran. And the faster above that threshold, the better – every half-mile per hour you add to your walking speed is associated with an additional 9% reduction in risk, results show. Walking has been associated with a lower risk of diabetes, but these findings show that a brisk pace is better than a slow amble, researchers said. “While current strategies to increase total walking time are beneficial, it may also be reasonable to encourage people to walk at faster speeds, to further increase the health benefits of walking,” the researchers noted in a journal news release. In this analysis, the team conducted a review of all long-term studies that included data on diabetes risk and walking. They identified 10 relevant studies involving more than a half million people from the United States, the U.K. and… read on > read on >

The world is being flooded with internet-driven misinformation, but there are ways to counter fake news with the facts, a new report says. These include aggressive fact-checking, preemptively debunking lies before they take root and nudging people to be more skeptical before sharing information, the American Psychological Association analysis found. The product of more than a year’s work by a panel of international experts, the report explains why anyone is susceptible to misinformation if it’s presented in an enticing way. For example, a person is more likely to believe misinformation if it comes from an apparently credible source or a group to which they belong, the report revealed. People also are more likely to believe false statements if they appeal to powerful emotions like fear or outrage, or if they paint groups viewed as “others” in a negative light. “’Echo chambers’ bind and isolate online communities with similar views, which aids the spread of falsehoods and impedes the spread of factual corrections,” the report said. And misinformation is viral – people are more likely to believe it the more it is repeated, even if it contradicts their own personal knowledge. “It is effortful and difficult for our brains to apply existing knowledge when encountering new information; when new claims are false but sufficiently reasonable, we can learn them as facts,” the report said. “Thus, everyone is… read on > read on >

It might seem that surfing the web could cause a person’s mental health to suffer, but a landmark new study has concluded that internet use poses no major threat to people’s psychological well-being. Researchers compared country-level internet and broadband use to the mental well-being of millions of people in dozens of countries, and came away with no evidence that the internet is causing widespread psychological harm. “We looked very hard for a ‘smoking gun’ linking technology and well-being and we didn’t find it,” said senior researcher Andrew Przybylski, a professor of human behavior and technology at the Oxford Internet Institute in the U.K. The team also looked more closely at specific age groups as well as gender and, again, came up empty-handed — refuting concerns that internet use might be harming the psychological health of younger people and women. “We meticulously tested whether there is anything special in terms of age or gender, but there is no evidence to support popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk,” Przybylski noted in an Oxford news release. In fact, average life satisfaction has increased more for females over the past two decades, researchers found. For the study, researchers compared data from two different reports on well-being and mental health against the amount of internet and smartphone use. They examined data on the mental health of 2… read on > read on >

Personal trainers can help people increase their strength and their fitness. Could a “brain coach” be just as useful in preventing Alzheimer’s’ disease? A new study suggests that personalized health and lifestyle changes can delay or even prevent memory loss for older adults at high risk of Alzheimer’s or dementia. People who received personal coaching experienced a 74% boost in their thinking and memory tests compared with those who didn’t receive such attention. “This is the first personalized intervention, focusing on multiple areas of cognition, in which risk factor targets are based on a participant’s risk profile, preferences and priorities, which we think may be more effective than a one-size-fits-all approach,” said co-lead researcher Dr. Kristine Yaffe, vice chair of research in psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). For the study, researchers recruited 172 participants and assigned half to receive personal training in health and lifestyle areas believed to increase Alzheimer’s risk. The participants were between the ages of 70 and 89, and all had at least two of eight risk factors for dementia — physical inactivity, high blood pressure, uncontrolled diabetes, poor sleep, use of prescription medications associated with risk of cognitive decline, high depressive symptoms, social isolation and smoking. Patients met with a nurse and health coach and selected specific risk factors they wanted to address. They set personal goals… read on > read on >

Folks who smoke weed along with cigarettes are doing serious damage to their lungs, a new study warns. People who do both are 12 times more likely to develop emphysema than nonsmokers, due to the damage they’re doing to the lung’s air sacs, researchers report. “There is a common public misconception that marijuana smoking is not harmful,” said researcher Dr. Jessie Kang, a cardiothoracic radiologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. “With our study, we show that there are physical effects of marijuana smoking on the lungs and that cigarette smoking and marijuana smoking may have a combined damaging effect on the lungs,” Kang added. Even though weed is one of the most widely used psychoactive substances in the world, little is known about the effects of smoking cannabis on a person’s lung health, researchers noted. Tons of research has linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer, emphysema and COPD, but “currently not much research exists on the effects of marijuana smoking on the lungs,” Kang noted. For their study, Kang and her colleagues examined chest CT images of four patient groups – nonsmokers, cigarette smokers, marijuana smokers and combined tobacco and weed smokers. Weed smokers included in the study had toked at least four times a month for at least two years, researchers said. In addition to increased risk of emphysema, combined weed and… read on > read on >

Evidence that soccer heading — where players use their heads to strike a ball — is dangerous continues to mount. Research to be presented at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting in Chicago on Tuesday points to a measurable decline in brain structure and function as a result of the practice. “There is enormous worldwide concern for brain injury in general and in the potential for soccer heading to cause long-term adverse brain effects in particular,” said senior study author Dr. Michael Lipton, a professor of radiology and an affiliate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University in New York City. “A large part of this concern relates to the potential for changes in young adulthood to confer risk for neuro-degeneration and dementia later in life.” Unlike other studies that have examined adverse effects at one point in time, Lipton’s team looked at brain changes over two years. They asked 148 amateur players (average age: 27) how often they play, practice and head the ball — and in what situations. Their exposure was ranked low, moderate or high. Just over a quarter of participants were women. Players’ verbal learning and memory were assessed and each had a specialized head scan known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). These advanced MRI techniques track the movement of water through brain tissue. The images were telling.… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Cold Weather Running May Be Even Healthier

U.S. Suicide Numbers Hit New Record High in 2022

Mounjaro Beats Ozempic for Weight Loss in Early Trial

Commuting on a Highway? Your Blood Pressure May Pay a Price

Your Walking Speed Influences Your Risk for Diabetes

Misinformation Is Everywhere. Experts Offer Tools to Counter It

Internet Poses No Threat to Mental Health, Major Study Finds

Could a ‘Brain Coach’ Help Folks at Higher Risk for Alzheimer’s?

Smoking Tobacco Plus Weed Greatly Raises Odds for Emphysema

Soccer ‘Heading’ Tied to Declines in Brain Function