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Hospital coffee machines have received some side-eye as a potential source of spreading infection, but a new study debunks the belief. “To our great relief…a general ban on coffee makers doesn’t seem necessary,” concluded researchers led by Dr. Sarah Victoria Walker, head of the Institute for Clinical Microbiology and Hospital Hygiene in Ludwigsburg, Germany. For their study, German researchers swabbed 25 automatic capsule coffee makers and espresso machines. Of the machines, 17 were from break rooms and offices in a university hospital in Cologne, Germany, and the other eight were in the homes of staff members. All of the coffee makers had been in use for at least a year. Researchers swabbed them in five specific places – the drip tray, the outlet, the buttons, the handle of the water tank and the inside of the water tank. The researchers focused on what the World Health Organization calls its high-priority ESKAPE pathogens — Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species. Those bacteria all pose an increasing threat because they are antibiotic-resistant and can lead to fatal blood infections in a hospital setting. Unsurprisingly, bacterial growth was detected on every coffee machine. What’s more, hospital machines were about three times as heavily colonized with microbes as home machines, with 360 strains isolated from 72 swabs compared to 135 strains from… read on > read on >

The average U.S. adult eats a meal’s worth of snacks every day, a new study suggests. Americans average about 400 to 500 calories in snacks daily, often more than what they ate at breakfast, according to data from more than 23,000 people. These extra calories offer little in the way of actual nutrition, said senior researcher Christopher Taylor, a professor of medical dietetics with Ohio State University’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. “Snacks are contributing a meal’s worth of intake to what we eat without it actually being a meal,” Taylor noted in a university news release. “You know what dinner is going to be: a protein, a side dish or two,” Taylor added. “But if you eat a meal of what you eat for snacks, it becomes a completely different scenario of, generally, carbohydrates, sugars, not much protein, not much fruit, not a vegetable. So it’s not a fully well-rounded meal.” There’s one bright spot – people with type 2 diabetes tended to eat fewer sugary foods and snacked less overall than either those without diabetes or with prediabetes. “Diabetes education looks like it’s working, but we might need to bump education back to people who are at risk for diabetes and even to people with normal blood glucose levels to start improving dietary behaviors before people develop chronic disease,” Taylor said. For… read on > read on >

Elite athletes who suffer a sudden cardiac arrest might have genetics that make them more vulnerable to heart disease, a new study suggests. Analysis of more than 280 top-level endurance athletes revealed that 1 in 6 have measures that would normally suggest heart disease and reduced heart function, researchers report in the journal Circulation. Those athletes also carried a rich load of genes associated with heart disease, researchers said. “The phenomenon of the athletes’ heart has long been known, but we were the first team to investigate the role an athlete’s genetic makeup plays in their heart function and structure,” researcher Dr. Diane Fatkin, a molecular cardiologist at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney, said in a news release. “What we have found is that there are far more profound changes than thought and that a high number of these athletes do have altered heart function,” she continued. A series of recent near-tragedies on playing fields and in gymnasiums have prompted increased interest in how heavy exercise can affect the hearts of elite athletes. In late July, University of Southern California freshman guard Bronny James – son of Lakers basketball star LeBron James — collapsed from a cardiac arrest during an offseason workout. And Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered an on-field cardiac arrest during a 2022 football game, following a hit to… read on > read on >

Heat coupled with smog can be a particularly lethal mix, especially for older adults, a new study finds. Unfortunately, both hot temperatures and air pollution are going to increase as the planet warms, and so will deaths, researchers report. “We are experiencing more and more frequent wildfires, which cause pollution, and wildfires happen during the hotter days. So, there will be more of these occurrences in the future,” said lead researcher Md Mostafijur Rahman, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. Although extreme heat and air pollution each increase the risk of dying, the combination increases the risk exponentially, he noted. Extremely hot days increase the risk of dying by just over 6%. On days when air pollution is high, death risk increases by 5%. However, on very hot, highly polluted days, that risk increases 21%, Rahman said. To come to that conclusion, his team used death certificates from California’s Department of Public Health to analyze more than 1.5 million deaths across the state between 2014 and 2019. They also used data on air temperature and levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). PM2.5 is known to cause health problems. They found that on days when both heat and air pollutions were high, the risk of dying from heart conditions jumped nearly 30%, and the risk of dying from respiratory… read on > read on >

Severe obesity appears to be on the rise among young U.S. children, based on data from a federal supplemental nutrition program. About 2% of children between 2 and 4 years of age in the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program were severely obese by 2020, a new study reports. That’s about 33,000 of the more than 1.6 million kids in the program. The data dashes hopes that progress had been made within the program against severe obesity, which is defined as a BMI that’s either above 35 or at least 20% greater than that of the heaviest 5% of kids, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). BMI is short for body mass index, an estimate of body fat based on height and weight. Severe obesity among WIC kids had dropped to 1.8% in 2016 from 2.1% in 2010, according to findings published Dec. 18 in the journal Pediatrics. This jibes with other studies that have noted an uptick in severe obesity among young kids, as high as 2.9% of 2- to 4-year-olds in 2018, the researchers said in background notes. “We were doing well and now we see this upward trend,” researcher Heidi Blanck, chief of the CDC’s Obesity Prevention and Control Branch, told the Associated Press. “We are dismayed at seeing these findings.” In all, 20 states saw… read on > read on >

Cinnamon used in applesauce pouches that have been tied to high lead levels in kids may have been deliberately tainted with the toxic element, a source at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says. “We’re still in the midst of our investigation,” Jim Jones, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for human foods, told Politico. “But so far all of the signals we’re getting lead to an intentional act on the part of someone in the supply chain and we’re trying to sort of figure that out.” The applesauce pouches under recall so far are from three brands — Weis, WanaBana and Schnucks. Each is tied to the same manufacturing facility in Ecuador, which the FDA said it is now inspecting. “My instinct is they didn’t think this product was going to end up in a country with a robust regulatory process,” Jones said. “They thought it was going to end up in places that did not have the ability to detect something like this.” As of the latest FDA update on Dec. 12, 65 children under 6 years of age had been diagnosed with symptoms of lead poisoning tied to the recalled applesauce. According to Politico, the FDA suspect the deliberate adulteration of cinnamon included in the applesauce products was “economically motivated.” Typically, that involves boosting the perceived quality of a product while producing it at… read on > read on >

If you’re one of the 50 million Americans with asthma or allergies, 2024 is another year to redouble efforts to manage them. But how? “It’s not always easy to get allergies and asthma under control,” allergist Dr. Gailen Marshall, president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), said in a tip sheet from the organization. “The new year is a great time to take stock of how you’re feeling and assess what kind of changes you might want to make to feel better overall. They might be small changes, which taken together, can mean big improvements in how you navigate your day.” He and the ACAAI offered up a handful of ways you can handle things. Top 5 Resolutions: 1) Update your prescriptions: What worked last year to keep your allergies at bay might not be working by next year: Check in with your board-certified allergist or asthma specialist to make sure you’re up-to-date on the latest meds, the ACAAI said. 2) Ward off respiratory viruses: Folks with asthma and allergies can be at high risk for a lot of germs that hamper breathing, the ACAAI said. Be sure to get up-to-date on your seasonal flu shot, the COVID-19 vaccine and the newly approved respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) shot. The very young and the very old face even higher risks. 3) Keep your… read on > read on >

Dandruff becomes more common in the cold winter months, when the chilly air and dry heat causes a person’s scalp to flake and itch. But while it might be an annoying and unattractive condition, dandruff doesn’t mean you are an unclean person, the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) says. “It is a common misconception that dandruff is caused by poor hygiene,” Dr. Mona Sadeghpour, a board-certified dermatologist in Pittsburgh, Pa. and Lone Tree, Colo., said in an academy news release. “Causes range from oily skin to hair care habits, along with some medical conditions.” Luckily, there are a number of effective treatments available for dandruff, the AAD says. Many folks can treat mild dandruff at home by regularly washing their hair, experts say. Folks with a more persistent case of dandruff might turn to a shampoo specially formulated to treat the condition. Effective dandruff shampoos should contain at least one of these ingredients, the AAD says: Zinc pyrithione, salicylic acid, sulfur, selenium sulfide, ketoconazole, or coal tar. If one shampoo doesn’t work, you should try alternating between shampoos containing different active ingredients, the AAD recommends. Some dandruff shampoos need to sit on your scalp for about 5 to 10 minutes before rinsing, the AAD says. Check the instructions on the bottle. People also can better treat dandruff by shampooing according to their hair type. For… read on > read on >

Much has been made of the effects a pregnant woman’s drinking could have on the health of her unborn child. But alcohol consumption by men also increases the risk of birth defects in newborns – and a new study shows that guys who want to avoid this will have to cut out the booze as much as three months before they try to conceive. Semen from men who regularly consume alcohol has been linked to brain and facial defects associated with fetal alcohol syndrome and other pregnancy complications, researchers said. Now, they say it takes much longer than previously estimated — more than a month — for the effects of alcohol consumption to leave the father’s sperm. “When someone is consuming alcohol on a regular basis and then stops, their body goes through withdrawal, where it has to learn how to operate without the chemical present,” said researcher Dr. Michael Golding, a professor at Texas A&M University’s School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. “What we discovered is that a father’s sperm are still negatively impacted by drinking even during the withdrawal process, meaning it takes much longer than we previously thought for the sperm to return to normal,” Golding said in a university news release. To play it safe, Golding suggests that fathers abstain from alcohol at least three months prior to conception. “There’s… read on > read on >

SATURDAY, Dec. 16It’s that time of year when your kids come home with sniffles and sore throats, but when should you worry if they have a fever? To a certain extent, fevers are the body’s natural way of fighting infection, one expert says. “Fever helps the immune system,” explained Dr. Christopher Tolcher, a pediatrician with Agoura-West Valley Pediatrics, part of the Chidlren’s Hospital of Los Angeles network. “It slows down the spread of viruses and bacteria. It helps the body make more antibodies and chemicals that fight the infection, and it helps the immune system’s cells move around better in the body.” “Fevers are almost never dangerous…,” he said in a hospital news release. “A fever has to reach 107 to cause damage to tissues. That’s extremely rare.” That said, if your child’s fever reaches 105 degrees, call your doctor. “It doesn’t mean the child is in danger, but the child should be checked by the doctor that day to see what’s going on,” Tolcher said. A normal body temperature for a child ranges from 97 to 100 degrees, with an average of around 98.6. When a person’s temperature reaches 100.4 or above, it’s considered a fever. But when is a fever considered a medical emergency? Call your child’s doctor right away for: A fever that lasts more than four to five days A fever… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Hospital Coffee Machines Aren’t Germ-Spreaders, Study Finds

You’re Probably Eating a Meal’s Worth of Snacks Each Day

Genes Hold Clues to ‘Athlete’s Heart’ Syndrome

High Heat, Heavy Smog a Deadly Combo: Study

Rate of Severe Obesity in Kids Is Rising Again

Cinnamon in Applesauce That Sickened Kids May Have Been Deliberately Tainted With Lead

Resolve to Keep Your Allergies, Asthma in Check in 2024

What Is Dandruff & How Is It Treated?

Men Who Want to Be Dads Should Take a Break From Alcohol

Your Child Has a Fever: When Is It Time to See a Doctor?