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Banning menthol cigarettes could help convince smokers quit the habit, a new study finds. People who prefer menthol cigarettes would rather buy nicotine gum or other nicotine replacement therapies than switch to traditional tobacco cigarettes, researchers reported recently in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. In addition, menthol cigarette smokers were less likely to use e-cigarettes as a substitute if menthol vaping products are also restricted, researchers found. “I think the most important conclusion from this study is that we can improve health outcomes by emphasizing policies that reduce sales of flavored products and increase accessibility of nicotine replacement therapies,” said researcher Roberta Freitas-Lemos, an assistant professor at the Virginia Tech Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. More than 9 million adults — about 32% of all smokers — use menthol cigarettes, researchers said in background notes. Menthol makes smoking easier by reducing the harshness of cigarette smoke and cooling the throat. The Biden Administration has come under fire for delaying a proposed U.S. Food and Drug Administration ban on menthol cigarettes. In a September hearing before Congress, FDA leaders said a menthol ban is still in the works. “It’s a priority for us. We followed through rule-making processes and it’s presently with the White House and it continues to be a priority for us,” Brian King, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, told a… read on > read on >

There’s just something about sitting. New research shows that too much time on sofas and chairs harms the heart — even among people who get the minimum recommended amount of daily exercise. “Taking a quick walk after work may not be enough” to offset the health dangers of sitting, said study lead author Chandra Reynolds. She’s a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Her team published its findings recently in the journal PLOS One. The data comes from an ongoing study of over a thousand former or current Coloradans, 730 of who are twins. Reynolds’ team focused on participants aged 28 to 49. Study lead author Ryan Bruellman said the cohort was relatively young, because “young adults tend to think they are impervious to the impacts of aging. But what you do during this critical time of life matters.” Bruellman is now a PhD candidate at the University of California, Riverside. A lot of the participants were sitting a lot of the time: An average of almost nine hours per day, according to the study. Exercise rates ranged from 80 and 160 minutes of moderate physical activity per week and less than 135 minutes of vigorous exercise weekly. The Boulder team then assessed each person’s “heart age” using two key heart health indicators: total cholesterol/high-density lipoprotein and body mass… read on > read on >

Many people turn to mindfulness meditation to help them manage their chronic pain, a practice that’s been used for centuries. However, it’s been an open question whether meditation is simply functioning as a placebo, rather than actually quelling pain. Now, a new study involving brain scans has revealed that’s not the case. Mindfulness meditation engages distinct brain mechanisms to reduce pain, and those are not part of a placebo response, researchers reported. “These two brain responses are completely distinct, which supports the use of mindfulness meditation as a direct intervention for chronic pain rather than as a way to engage the placebo effect,” said lead researcher Fadel Zeidan, a professor of anesthesiology with the University of California, San Diego. For the study, researchers recruited 115 healthy people and randomly placed them into four different treatment groups: An actual mindfulness meditation practice that involved focusing on breath without judgment A sham meditation practice that only consisted of deep breathing A placebo cream that patients were trained to believe reduce pain A control group that listened to an audiobook The team then applied a very painful but harmless heat stimulus to the back of every person’s leg and scanned their brains, to see how each responded to the pain. Placebo cream and the sham medication practice both lowered pain, but mindfulness meditation was significantly more effective at… read on > read on >

Huntington’s disease is a devastating, fatal neurological illness with little means of treatment, but a new study in mice offers a glimmer of hope. Huntington’s occurs when inherited genes cause key proteins to fold and clump together within brain cells. Over time, this severely hampers brain function and patients lose the ability to talk, walk, swallow and focus. There’s no cure, and the illness is typically fatal within a decade or two of symptom onset. However, new research in mice is investigating the utility of “peptide-brush polymers” as treatment. The peptides involved in the therapy are naturally occurring proteins that may block the lethal clumping of Huntington’s-associated proteins within brain cells. In studies conducted in a mouse model of Huntington’s, use of the polymer treatment appeared to “rescue” brain cells harmed by protein clumping and reverse Huntington’s symptoms, a joint team from Northwestern University and Case Western Reserve University reported. Of course, studies in mice sometimes fail to deliver the same results in people. Nevertheless, study co-lead author Nathan Gianneschi, of Northwestern University in Chicago, said “it’s quite compelling when you see animals behave more normally than they would otherwise” after the polymer treatment. Gianneschi, a professor of chemistry at Northwestern, has a personal stake in the new research. “My childhood friend was diagnosed with Huntington’s at age 18 through a genetic test,” he said in… read on > read on >

Text messages and other online feedback can help prevent obesity in very young children, a new study demonstrates. Kids had a healthier weight-for-height growth curve during their first two years if parents were offered electronic feedback on feeding habits, playtime and exercise, researchers found. “What is kind of exciting from our study is we prevented those children who would have had an unhealthy weight in the first place and helped them have a healthier weight, which sets them up better for health throughout their lives,” said co-lead researcher Dr. Eliana Perrin, a professor of primary care at the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health in Baltimore. About 1 in 5 school-aged kids were obese in 2017-2018, and these rates are expected to have increased since the pandemic, researchers said. In a prior study, Perrin and her colleagues found that in-clinic counseling improved healthy growth in newborns up to 18 months of age, but not through the age of 2. That might be because pediatric office visits become less frequent past a child’s first year of life, the researchers reasoned. Given that, they created a follow-up study focusing on using digital technology to continue providing health and diet counseling for new parents, even if they’re no longer dropping by a doctor’s office. “We found that parents are eager for more information to… read on > read on >

Women who’ve had concussions are more likely to suffer severe mental health problems following childbirth, a new study shows. A history of concussion increased a new mother’s risk of severe mental illness by 25%, after adjusting for other factors, Canadian researchers reported. “We found that individuals with a history of concussion were significantly more likely to experience serious mental health challenges, such as psychiatric emergency department visits or self-harm, in the years following childbirth,” said lead researcher Samantha Krueger, a registered midwife and doctoral candidate in health research methodology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She conducted the study while at the the University of Toronto’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 750,000 pregnant women in Ontario between 2007 and 2017. These women’s mental health outcomes were tracked for up to 14 years following delivery. Among women with a history of concussion, 11% experienced severe mental illness. Only 7% of those without prior concussions developed severe mental disorders. The findings, published Nov. 4 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, were particularly striking among women with no prior history of mental health problems. A history of concussion increased their risk of severe mental illness following delivery by 33%. “This association was especially strong for people with no prior mental health history, meaning that concussion may be… read on > read on >

Yoga can help ease chronic low back pain, even if the classes are conducted online, a new study shows. Guidelines recommend using physical therapy or yoga to treat lower back pain before moving on to painkillers, but it can be tough for some people to make it to a yoga studio. “Attending yoga classes in person can be challenging,” said senior researcher Dr. Robert Saper, chair of the wellness and preventive medicine at Cleveland Clinic. But the study found that people taking virtual yoga classes had a sixfold greater reduction in pain compared with those not assigned to the online sessions, researchers reported Nov. 1 in the journal JAMA Network Open. The online yoga students also had a nearly threefold improvement in their back-related function. “This research shows that a virtual yoga class program can be a safe and effective therapeutic option for the treatment of chronic low back pain,” Saper said in a Cleveland Clinic news release. For the study, 140 people with chronic low back pain were randomly assigned to either participate in a virtual live-streamed yoga class for 12 weeks or continue with their usual medical care. All the participants were members of Cleveland Clinic’s Employee Health Plan from either northeast Ohio or Florida. In the classes, yoga instructors delivered a program designed especially for virtual delivery to treat people with low… read on > read on >

The GLP-1 drug semaglutide can help obese people manage debilitating knee arthritis, a new trial has found. People who received weekly injections of semaglutide — the active agent in the diabetes drug Ozempic and the weight-loss medication Wegovy — had a nearly 14% decrease in their body weight after 68 weeks, compared with 3% of people given a placebo, results showed. The trial was funded by Novo Nordisk, the drug company that makes semaglutide. This weight loss translated into a decrease in knee pain and improved knee function among those taking semaglutide, researchers reported Oct. 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Obesity-related knee osteoarthritis is a progressive condition that can lead to pain and stiffness of the knee and impair critical daily functions such as walking or moving around,” said lead researcher Dr. Henning Bliddal, a professor of rheumatology with Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark. “The risk of developing the condition is more than four times higher in people with obesity,” Bliddal added in a Novo Nordisk news release. Added weight places more stress on the knee, causing the natural cartilage that cushions the joint to wear down more quickly, experts say. Dropping excess pounds is often recommended to treat knee arthritis, but it can be tough to achieve through diet and exercise alone, Bliddal noted. For this study, researchers recruited 407 adults… read on > read on >

Hillary Fisher thinks receiving weight-loss surgery as a teenager put her on the path to a better life. Fisher is one of 260 teens who participated in a long-term study which recently concluded that weight-loss surgery can bring lasting health benefits for obese teenagers. “It changed my life,” Fisher, now 31, said in a news release. “The improved health and self-esteem that came with the 100-pound weight loss were important to me and I would certainly do it again.” Fisher was not alone in her success: The surgery led to substantial and sustained weight loss for more than half of the study’s participants during a decade of follow-up, researchers reported Oct. 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The teens also had fewer obesity-related health problems in adulthood like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol, researchers report. “Our study presents impressive outcomes of the longest follow-up of weight-loss surgery during adolescence, which validates bariatric surgery as a safe and effective long-term obesity management strategy,” said lead investigator Justin Ryder, vice chair of research for the Department of Surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Fisher decided to undergo the surgery at age 16. “I was crushed by the daily issues I faced due to my weight, health problems and bullying in high school,” Fisher said. “After many… read on > read on >

Smokers diagnosed with cancer often shrug and keep lighting up, figuring a few more butts won’t make much difference. They’re very mistaken, a new study finds. Smokers are 22% to 26% less likely to die if they quit following a cancer diagnosis, researchers found. The best outcomes occurred in patients who quit within six months of their cancer diagnosis and remained off the butts for at least three months, researchers reported Oct. 31 in the journal JAMA Oncology. “While smoking cessation is widely promoted across cancer centers for cancer prevention, it remains under-addressed by many oncologists in their routine care,” said principal investigator Paul Cinciripini, chair of behavioral science and executive director of the Tobacco Research and Treatment Program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “Our research underscores the critical role of early smoking cessation as a key clinical intervention for patients undergoing cancer treatment,” Cinciripini added in an MD Anderson news release. For the study, researchers followed more than 4,500 smokers who had been diagnosed with cancer and were in a quit smoking program at MD Anderson. Nearly all of the quit support was provided via telemedicine. Cancer patients who successfully abstained from smoking had an average survival of four years, compared with two years for those who couldn’t quit, results show. “This is a call to action for experts, regulatory… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Banning Menthol Cigarettes Might Drive Smokers to Quit-Smoking Therapies

Too Much Sitting Harms the Heart, Even in Folks Who Exercise

Mindfulness Meditation Could Have Direct Effect in Reducing Pain

New Approach to Fight Huntington’s Disease Shows Early Promise

Text-Messaging Program Helps Parents Keep Infants at Healthy Weight

History of Concussion Could Raise a New Mom’s Odds for Mental Health Issues

Online Yoga Classes Can Ease Lower Back Pain

Ozempic, Wegovy Could Help Ease Knee Arthritis Pain

Weight-Loss Surgery for Teens Brings Lasting Benefit

Quitting Smoking After Cancer Diagnosis Boosts Survival by Up to 26%