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Federal agents have seized more than 1.4 million illegal vaping products being smuggled into the United States from China. A three-day operation at Los Angeles International Airport resulted in the seizure of 41 shipments of illegal e-cigarettes worth more than $18 million, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. The products included the hugely popular brand Elf Bar, as well as other flavored vapes that have been banned by the FDA. The seized vaping products will be destroyed, the FDA said. Many of the products were intentionally mis-declared as items like toys, shoes or household items in an attempt to evade customs, the FDA said. “Those shamelessly attempting to smuggle illegal e-cigarettes, particularly those that appeal to youth, into this country should take heed of today’s announcement,” Brian King, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in an agency news release. “Federal agencies are on to their antics and will not hesitate to take action.” “The significant value of these seized products is also a sobering reminder to these bad actors that their time and money would be better spent complying with the law,” King added. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids applauded the news, noting that Elf Bar was the most commonly used brand among young vapers in the 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey. “This is the strongest enforcement action the government has… read on > read on >

The first postpartum depression pill approved for use in the United States is now available to women who need it, the drug’s makers announced Thursday. Sold under the name Zurzuvae, the medication can quickly ease severe postpartum depression and help women regain their emotional equilibrium following childbirth. The medication, which is now stocked in specialty pharmacies, can also be shipped directly to patients, Biogen and Sage Therapeutics Inc. said in a news release Thursday. “Having an option like Zurzuvae that can work at Day 15 and improve symptoms in as early as three days has the potential to make a profound difference in the lives of women with PPD [postpartum depression],” Dr. Kristina Deligiannidis, a professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York City who has been the lead investigator on the clinical trials that led to Zurzuvae’s approval, said in the company news release. Advocates welcomed the news. “It’s critical that as a society we recognize PPD is a serious medical condition. I have witnessed the devastating impact untreated PPD can have on women, only heightened by the fact that Black and Brown women and those living in a lower socioeconomic status are disproportionately impacted,” said Wendy Davis, executive director at Postpartum Support International, said in the company news release. “PPD should not be treated as an afterthought. We need to embrace the care… read on > read on >

Most women know that their menstrual cycle can affect their mood. Now, new research suggests suicidal thoughts may peak at certain points during the monthly cycle. The finding could have an upside, helping people pinpoint when they might be most vulnerable to suicide, so they can better prevent it. “As clinicians, we feel responsible for keeping our patients safe from a suicide attempt, but we often don’t have much information about when we need to be most concerned about their safety,” said study senior author Tory Eisenlohr-Moul, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC). “This study establishes that the menstrual cycle can affect many people who have suicidal thoughts, which makes it one of the only predictable recurring risk factors that has been identified for detecting when a suicide attempt might occur,” Eisenlohr-Moul added in a university news release. In the study, her team asked 119 women to complete daily surveys of any suicidal thoughts they might have, or any other mental health issues they experience, over the course of at least one menstrual cycle. The study found that suicidal thoughts, planning and attempts were more common in the “perimenstrual” phase — the days just before and after onset of menses (bleeding). But patterns weren’t universal. Feelings of “depression, anxiety and hopelessness” were most common during the premenstrual and… read on > read on >

Hours plunked down in front of the TV or staring at a phone screen in childhood could bring poor heart health decades later, a new study shows. Finnish researchers say kids who were largely sedentary tended to turn into young adults who battled high cholesterol and other health troubles. “Our study shows increased sedentary time in childhood may contribute to two-thirds of the total increase in a person’s cholesterol levels before their mid-twenties,” study lead author Dr. Andrew Agbaje said in a news release from the Endocrine Society. “This suggests childhood sedentariness may be a major risk factor for elevated cholesterol and subsequent premature heart attack or stroke when individuals reach their mid-forties,” said Agbaje, who is at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio. His team published its findings Dec. 14 in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, an Endocrine Society journal. In the study, 11-year-olds were fitted with activity trackers and were also regularly checked for cholesterol levels. Their health was then followed for 13 years. One main finding: ‘Couch potato’ kids became even more rooted to their sofas as they aged. Average sedentary time rose from 6 hours per day in childhood to 9 hours per day as they became young adults. Agbaje’s group calculate that this lack of physical activity contributed to 70% of the rise in cholesterol over the… read on > read on >

Smoking shrinks the human brain, and once that brain mass is lost then it’s gone for good, a new study warns. Brain scans from more than 32,000 people strongly link a history of smoking with a gradual loss of brain volume. In fact, the more packs a person smoked per day, the smaller their brain volume, researchers found. The study also establishes the potential series of events that leads to smoking-related brain loss, with a genetic predisposition to smoking eventually causing decreased brain volume. “It sounds bad, and it is bad,” said senior study author Laura Bierut, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “A reduction in brain volume is consistent with increased aging,” Bierut added in a university news release. “This is important as our population gets older, because aging and smoking are both risk factors for dementia.” The study, published recently in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, helps explain previous studies that have found smokers at higher risk for age-related brain decline and Alzheimer’s disease. “Up until recently, scientists have overlooked the effects of smoking on the brain, in part because we were focused on all the terrible effects of smoking on the lungs and the heart,” Bierut said. “But as we’ve started looking at the brain more closely, it’s become apparent that smoking is… read on > read on >

Regular exercise appears to enhance and even grow crucial areas of the human brain, new research using MRI scans shows. It’s long been known that physical activity is a brain-booster, but this international study illustrates ways this could be happening. “With comprehensive imaging scans, our study underscores the interconnected synergy between the body and the brain,” said study senior author Dr. Rajpul Attariwala, a radiologist at Prenuvo, a medical imaging center in Vancouver, Canada. Reporting recently in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Attariwala and colleagues analyzed more than 10,000 brain scans conducted at various Prenuvo centers. A pattern emerged: People who regularly engaged in running, walking or sports tended to have larger volumes of gray matter in their brains. Gray matter helps with the processing of incoming information, the researchers noted. These avid exercisers also tended to have larger volumes of white matter. White matter helps connect different brain regions and is crucial to memory. You didn’t have to run marathons to get a brain benefit, the team found. “We found that even moderate levels of physical activity, such as taking fewer than 4,000 steps a day, can have a positive effect on brain health,” study co-author Dr. David Merill said in a journal news release. He directs the Pacific Brain Health Center at Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, Calif. “This is much less… read on > read on >

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey confirmed Wednesday that she has used a weight-loss medication to help her shed pounds and get healthy. Winfrey has added the drug to a regimen that includes regular exercise and other lifestyle tweaks, People magazine reported. Weight fluctuations “occupied five decades of space in my brain, yo-yoing and feeling like why can’t I just conquer this thing, believing willpower was my failing,” Winfrey told the magazine. Her most recent weight-loss journey began after she had knee surgery in 2021. “I started hiking and setting new distance goals each week. I could eventually hike three to five miles every day and a 10-mile straight-up hike on weekends,” she said. “I felt stronger, more fit and more alive than I’d felt in years.” But that wasn’t the only change she made to her life, said Winfrey, who turns 70 in January. “I eat my last meal at 4 o’clock, drink a gallon of water a day, and use the Weight Watchers principles of counting points. I had an awareness of [weight-loss] medications, but felt I had to prove I had the willpower to do it. I now no longer feel that way.” “I was actually recommending it to people long before I was on it myself,” she noted. After an epiphany in July during a panel conversation with weight-loss experts, she changed her… read on > read on >

Being in a marriage or long-term relationship typically includes promises of monogamy, but new research shows a surprising number of folks, mostly men, are open to the idea of having another person in the mix. Fully one-third of men in the United Kingdom are open to the idea of having more than one wife or long-term girlfriend, while only 11% of women would want someone else in their relationship, results show. Those trends hold when considering both types of polygamy, researchers said. Those are polygyny, a man marrying more than one woman, or polyandry, where a woman marries more than one man, researchers found. About 9% of men said they would share their partner, versus 5% of women interested in such a relationship, according to the report in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. “This study shows that a sizable minority of people are open to such relationships, even in the U.K, where such marriages are prohibited,” said lead researcher Andrew Thomas, a senior lecturer in psychology at Swansea University in Wales. “Interestingly, many more men are open to the idea than women — though there is still interest on both sides,” Thomas added. For this study, researchers asked 393 heterosexual men and women in the U.K. how they felt about a committed partnership in which they shared their other half with someone else. “Comparing polygyny… read on > read on >

Mpox is making headlines again, as an outbreak of severe disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa has infected thousands of people and killed hundreds. Amid this worrying scenario, researchers at New York University (NYU) offer a glimmer of good news: Smaller doses of the mpox vaccine Jynneos, given in a different way, still offer good protection against the infection. “Our study shows that smaller vaccine doses of mpox vaccine administered in two doses, spread out over weeks to months, were similar to the full [subcutaneous] FDA-approved dose,” said study co-lead investigator and NYU infectious disease specialist Dr. Angelica Cifuentes Kottkamp. That could be welcome news in a crisis. “Implementing the smaller dose was a good emergency measure in the face of immediate shortages of the vaccine,” Kottkamp said in an NYU news release. Her team published its findings in the Dec. 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. After an outbreak of mpox last year stretched vaccine supplies, researchers tried the new formulation to help meet demand. Instead of injecting a large dose of vaccine below the skin, the new formulation uses two much smaller doses, given between the skin’s layers, and spaced out by as much as three months. In August 2022, the United States approved this new delivery method in the face of mpox vaccine shortages. According to the… read on > read on >

A California company has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve MDMA, the active ingredient in party drugs like molly and ecstasy, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When announcing the new drug application (NDA) filing on Tuesday, MAPS Public Benefit Corp. noted it has been studying the drug for this use for years. The FDA has 60 days to decide whether whether MDMA will be accepted for review and whether it will be fast-tracked through the approval process, the company said. The drug would be given in concert with talk therapy. “The filing of our NDA is the culmination of more than 30 years of clinical research, advocacy, collaboration and dedication to bring a potential new option to adults living with PTSD, a patient group that has experienced little innovation in decades,” MAPS CEO Amy Emerson said in a company news release. “If approved, MDMA-assisted therapy would be the first psychedelic-assisted therapy, which we hope will drive additional investment into new research in mental health.” MDMA belongs to a class of psychoactive drugs that produce experiences of emotional connection, relatedness and emotional openness. Meanwhile, roughly 13 million Americans suffer from PTSD each year, the company said. The symptoms can be debilitating, and patients can also suffer anxiety, depression and substance use disorder. That doesn’t include the economic burden of treating PTSD,… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

FDA Seizes 1.5 Million Illegal Vaping Products, Including Elf Bar

Postpartum Depression Pill Now Available to Women, Drug Maker Says

Suicide Risk May Fluctuate With the Menstrual Cycle

‘Couch Potato’ Kids Can Become Young Adults With Heart Trouble

Smoking Can Shrink Your Brain

More Research Shows the Brain Benefits of Exercise

Oprah Winfrey Says She Uses Weight-Loss Medication

1 in 3 Men Open to Having More Than One Partner. Women, Not So Much

As Congo Outbreak Continues, Study Finds Low-Dose Mpox Vaccine Still Offers Protection

FDA Asked to Consider Party Drug MDMA as Treatment for PTSD