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Cancer survivors in the throes of loneliness are more likely to die compared to those with companionship, a new study finds. Further, people who are the most lonely are the most likely to die, results show. “Loneliness, the feeling of being isolated, is a prevalent concern among cancer survivors,” said lead researcher Jingxuan Zhao, a senior associate scientist in health services research at the American Cancer Society. Cancer diagnosis and treatment tends to isolate people as they engage in a personal struggle with the dreaded disease, straining their social relationships, Zhao explained. “There are more than 18 million cancer survivors in the U.S. and that number is expected to increase to 22 million by 2030,” Zhao said. “We need to address this critical issue now.” For the study, researchers tracked more than 3,400 cancer survivors aged 50 and older who responded to a federally funded study on retirement and health between 2008 and 2018. About 28% of the survivors reported severe loneliness, and another 24% reported moderate loneliness. Those reporting the highest level of loneliness were 67% more likely to die than the least lonely, researchers found. The new study was published April 25 in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. “What’s needed is the implementation of programs to screen for loneliness among cancer survivors and to provide social support to those in… read on > read on >

The emotional turmoil caused by a stolen dog is akin to that of a parent losing a child, a new study finds. The findings support the idea that pets truly become family members to their owners, researchers said. When faced with the theft of a pet, owners tend to feel a similar sense of powerlessness, grief and loss. In fact, some study participants felt the loss of a dog was more intense than the death of a friend or relative, owing to the closeness of the bond they had with their pet but not with some family members. “It provides evidence of the intense love of dogs and the parental accountability of guardians,” said lead researcher Akaanksha Venkatramanan, an assistant psychologist with the Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in the U.K. For the study, published April 25 in the journal Animal-Human Interactions, researchers conducted interviews with four people who’d had their dogs stolen. The people were recruited through social media. “This research was launched when my friends’ dog, Lola, was stolen from under her nose in her back garden by someone we presume was posing as a delivery driver,” researcher Lindsey Roberts, a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England, said in a journal news release. “The distress rocked everyone, and I felt more had to be done to support those who… read on > read on >

Better heart health can lead to a sharper mind for middle-aged Black women, a new study says. Black women with worse heart health experienced a 10% decrease in their ability to think on their feet over two decades, researchers found. On the other hand, Black women with good heart health showed little decline in their mental processing. “Take care of your heart, and it will benefit your brain,” said lead researcher Imke Janssen, a professor of family and preventive medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “Better cardiovascular health in women in their 40s is important to prevent later-life Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and to maintain independent living.” For the study, researchers assessed heart health among middle-aged Black and white women and compared it to cognitive tests the women took every one to two years for 20 years. The study included 363 Black and 402 white women who started testing in 1997, when they were between the ages of 42 and 52. The heart health measures included weight, blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol, as well as lifestyle factors like eating right, exercise, sleeping well and not smoking. Black women in good heart health specifically had brain benefits when it came to processing speed, or how fast the mind can accurately recognize incoming visual and verbal information. However, heart health had no association with the brain… read on > read on >

Advanced scanning techniques can find hidden inflammation in the brains of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, a new study shows. This “smoldering” inflammation detected by positron emission tomography (PET) brain scans could help explain why patients continue to decline even though imaging shows no brain changes, researchers reported recently in the journal Clinical Nuclear Medicine. “One of the perplexing challenges for clinicians treating patients with MS is after a certain amount of time, patients continue to get worse while their MRIs don’t change,” explained lead researcher Dr. Tarun Singhal, an associate professor of neurology and director of the PET Imaging Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Singhal and colleagues started the study after noticing patients being treated with the most effective MS therapies available had symptoms that continued to worsen. The team has been working for eight years on newfangled brain scans involving microglia, immune cells in the brain that are thought to have a role in MS but cannot be seen by routine MRIs. The new technique involves a tracer dye that binds to the microglia cells. PET scans track the movement of such tracers, allowing doctors to observe the way tissues and organs in the body interact. A similar PET tracer scan has been FDA-approved to track amyloid beta protein in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients, the researchers noted. “This is… read on > read on >

School lunches will soon contain less added sugars and salt under new nutrition standards announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday. “We all share the goal of helping children reach their full potential,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a news release announcing the changes. “Like teachers, classrooms, books and computers, nutritious school meals are an essential part of the school environment, and when we raise the bar for school meals, it empowers our kids to achieve greater success inside and outside of the classroom.” The new standards will be implemented over the next few years, the USDA added. Schools serve breakfasts and lunches to nearly 30 million children every school day. These meals are the main source of nutrition for more than half of these children, according to the USDA. The changes announced Wednesday are the first significant reform of school meal standards since the passage of the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The Biden administration has also created a national strategy to end hunger and reduce diet-related disease by 2030. History suggests the moves will work: A 2023 study found the changes that took place during the Obama administration to push more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products significantly decreased kids’ and teens’ body mass index. Current dietary guidelines recommend limiting added sugars to less than 10% of daily calorie intake,… read on > read on >

Emulsifiers — substances that are essential ingredients in processed foods — appear to increase people’s risk of type 2 diabetes, a new study finds. In fact, the more emulsifiers that people eat as part of their food, the higher their risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers reported April 23 in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. These results, if confirmed by follow-up studies, should add to “the debate on re-evaluating the regulations around the use of additives in the food industry, in order to better protect consumers,” lead author Mathilde Touvier, research director with the French Institute of Health and Medical Research. Emulsifiers are additives that help bind two substances that typically separate when they’re combined, like oil and water, according to the European Food Information Council. These commonly used food additives are often added to processed and packaged foods to improve their appearance, taste and texture, and to lengthen their shelf life, researchers said. Cakes, cookies, desserts, yogurts, ice cream, chocolate, breads, margarine and ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat meals all typically contain emulsifiers, researchers noted. The safety of emulsifiers has been evaluated by food safety and health agencies, as with all food additives, the researchers said. However, recent studies suggest that emulsifiers might disrupt healthy bacteria in the gut, increasing the risk of inflammation, insulin resistance and diabetes, researchers said. To evaluate this potential risk,… read on > read on >

Prescription opioids taken during pregnancy are not associated with a substantial increase in risk of developmental disorders like ADHD in children, a new study has found. “A slightly increased risk of neuropsychiatric disorders was found, but this should not be considered clinically meaningful” because it was limited to mothers taking more than one opioid, prescribed high doses and using the drugs over longer periods of time, concluded the research team led by Dong Keon Yon, a professor of pediatrics with Kyung Hee University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea. About 7% of women in the United States are prescribed opioids during pregnancy, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Previous studies have had mixed findings regarding opioid use during pregnancy and various health outcomes in children, mainly due to small sample sizes and short follow-up periods. To produce a high-powered examination of the potential problem, researchers analyzed health data for more than 3.1 million infants born in South Korea between 2010 and 2017 to nearly 2.3 million mothers. Moms were grouped according to the dose, duration and frequency of opioid prescriptions during their pregnancy, and babies were followed an average of six years after birth. About 7% of infants were exposed to opioids during pregnancy, researchers found. The team found a small, but clinically insignificant, increased risk for developmental disorders among… read on > read on >

People taking heartburn meds have a higher risk of migraines and other types of severe headaches, a new study warns. All classes of acid-reducing drugs — proton pump inhibitors, H2 blockers, and even antacids — appear to promote an increased risk of migraine and headache, results show. “Given the wide usage of acid-reducing drugs and these potential implications with migraine, these results warrant further investigation,” said researcher Margaret Slavin, an associate professor of nutrition and food science with the University of Maryland in College Park. “These drugs are often considered to be overprescribed, and new research has shown other risks tied to long-term use of proton pump inhibitors, such as an increased risk of dementia,” Slavin added. Acid reflux occurs when stomach acid backs up into the esophagus, researchers said. It usually occurs after a meal or when lying down, and it can cause heartburn and ulcers. In extreme cases, it can lead to cancer of the esophagus. For the study, researchers looked at data on nearly 12,000 people using acid-reducing drugs, to see whether they’d had migraines or severe headaches within the past three months. Proton pump inhibitors block acid production and help the esophagus heal. Brand names include Prevacid, Prilosec and Nexium. H-2 blockers reduce acid production. Brand names include Tagamet, Pepcid and Axid. And then there are simple antacids containing calcium carbonate… read on > read on >

Most ex-cons are unlikely to receive substance use treatment following their release from prison, even though odds are high they are struggling with addiction, a new study finds. National estimates suggest as many as 85% of inmates leave prison with some form of substance abuse problem, researchers said. But only 17% of ex-cons on Medicaid in Virginia have been diagnosed with substance use disorders, and even fewer have been prescribed addiction-fighting medication, investigators found. “This research shows that many people aren’t getting the medical attention they need as they transition back to their communities,” said lead researcher Peter Cunningham, interim chair of the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Health Policy. For the study, researchers used data from Virginia’s health and corrections departments to track the number of people diagnosed and treated for addiction following their release from prison. More than 4,600 adults were released from county jails and state prisons in 2022, and 85% enrolled in Medicaid within one month of release, the study found. “The good news is that we see a high number of individuals enrolling in Medicaid soon after they are released from prison, and that is in large part due to the state expanding Medicaid coverage in 2019,” Cunningham said in a university news release. However, only 17% had seen a doctor and been diagnosed with a substance use disorder within… read on > read on >

It’s long been known that exposure to agricultural pesticides can greatly raise a person’s odds for Parkinson’s disease. New genetics research now reveals those who might be most vulnerable. A team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), pored over genetic data from 800 Parkinson’s patients living and working in that state’s agricultural heartland, the Central Valley. Many of these people “had long-term exposure to 10 pesticides used on cotton crops for at least a decade prior to developing the disease, with some patients having been exposed as far back as 1974,” the researchers noted in a UCLA news release. They honed in on certain gene variants connected to lysosomes, parts of cells that break down cellular waste. Impairment in lysosomal function has long been linked to the genesis of Parkinson’s, explained a team led by Dr. Brent Fogel, a professor of neurology and human genetics at UCLA. The variants associated with lysosomal processes were “enriched” in patients who’d had prolonged exposures to pesticides, the study showed. The findings were published April 25 in the journal NPJ Parkinson’s Disease. These gene variants also appeared to interfere with proper protein function. According to the researchers, this suggests that aberrant waste-disposal in the cell could be an underlying cause of Parkinson’s, occurring alongside chronic exposure to pesticides. As toxic compounds — including a protein called alpha… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Loneliness Can Shorten Lives of Cancer Survivors

A Stolen Dog Feels Like Losing a Child, Study Finds

Healthier Hearts in Middle Age Help Black Women’s Brains Stay Strong

Better Scans Spot Hidden Inflammation in MS Patients

New School Lunch Rules Target Added Sugars, Salt

Emulsifier Chemicals Are Everywhere in Foods. Could They Raise Diabetes Risk?

Opioids During Pregnancy May Not Raise Psychiatric Risks for Offspring

Could Heartburn Meds Raise Your Migraine Risk?

Drug, Alcohol Abuse Goes Untreated in Many Ex-Prisoners

Genes Could Mix With Pesticide Exposure to Raise Parkinson’s Risk

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