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Enjoy that summer sun, but keep some safety tips in mind, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advises parents. “It’s great to see children enjoying nature and reaping the benefits of outdoor activities,” Atlanta-based pediatrician Dr. Rebecca Philipsborn said in an AAP news release. “As we encounter more intense weather events, including severe heat, there are some layers of protection that families can use to help their kids stay healthy.” Among the issues to consider are air quality and pollution. Sun and heat can worsen local air pollution. You can check your local Air Quality Index, the AAP suggests. This will help you to know when air pollution, wildfires and heat raise the risk of asthma and other health issues. For sun protection, keep babies under 6 months old out of direct sunlight. Instead, they should be shaded by a tree, umbrella or stroller canopy. Dress your baby in lightweight clothing that covers the arms and legs. Use brimmed hats to prevent a sunburn on the neck. Older kids should also cover up, staying in the shade when possible and limiting sun exposure during the peak intensity hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Damaging UV (ultraviolet) rays can bounce back from sand, water, snow or concrete, so be especially careful in these areas. Choose tightly woven or cotton clothing that is cool and protective.… read on > read on >

Autopsy is currently the only way to definitively diagnose chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease often seen in athletes who’ve suffered repeated blows to the head. But there may be a way to predict which athletes are likely to develop CTE, researchers report June 28 in the journal Neurology. They outline criteria for a condition called traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, where CTE is suspected based on cognitive impairment, behavior changes and other factors. “These findings suggest that this new diagnosis of traumatic encephalopathy syndrome may be useful in professional sports such as boxing and mixed martial arts and may be helpful in predicting who may experience cognitive decline,” study co-author Brooke Conway Kleven said in a journal news release. She is with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Public Health. CTE was originally studied in boxers as “punch-drunk syndrome.” The progressive and fatal brain disease is linked to the development of dementia. For the new study, researchers studied 130 active and retired professional fighters in boxing, martial arts and mixed martial arts. They were a part of a brain health study run by the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Participants had brain scans and took cognitive tests when the study began. Researchers found that those who met the criteria for traumatic encephalopathy syndrome had greater declines in brain volume. These participants also had… read on > read on >

After a focus on her own mental health and that of other athletes, U.S. gymnast Simone Biles will return to elite competition. Biles will begin with the Aug. 5 U.S. Classic outside of Chicago, the Associated Press reported. She has not competed since the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, where she removed herself from several events because of a mental health struggle. Biles, 26, is a seven-time Olympic medalist and the 2016 Olympic champion. She has taken most of the past two years off while advocating for athletes to be able to protect their mental health, the AP reported. In the interim, she also got married to NFL player Jonathan Owens, a defensive back for the Green Bay Packers, this spring. In Tokyo, after withdrawing from events, Biles cheered for her American teammates before returning for the balance beam final. At the time, Biles explained her withdrawal by saying she had “the twisties,” a term used in gymnastics to indicate that the athlete has lost spatial awareness in the air. The U.S. Classic typically is considered a warmup for the national championships, which will be held in late August, the AP reported. Biles previously returned to the Classic in 2018 after a two-year hiatus following her wildly successful 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. While she was the center of attention prior to Tokyo,… read on > read on >

Obesity is a known contributor to a host of health risks ranging from diabetes to cancer, but new research suggests it may also delay recovery from a mild traumatic brain injury. Why? The systemic inflammation that being obese can cause in the body may be a driving factor, according to researchers. “This is a very understudied population related to obesity impacting outcomes,” said lead study author Shawn Eagle, a research assistant professor in University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Department of Neurological Surgery. “But knowing that a person with excess body fat may have a worse time can serve as a starting point for finding certain targeted treatments that may be useful to help that individual person get better.” It’s well known that severe obesity impairs thinking abilities, Eagle noted. And Eagle had observed that patients who were carrying excess body fat were having a more difficult time recovering from mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) while he was working in a concussion specialty clinic. “The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. It’s very well known that higher inflammation after a TBI is related to worse outcomes, and obesity is essentially an inflammatory condition,” Eagle said. Though they are called “mild,” these head injuries can cause serious symptoms. Some patients even have functional limitations a full year later. Cognitive behavioral and physical… read on > read on >

Nearly 4 out of 10 girls and young women aren’t getting enough iron and they may have their periods to blame, a new U.S. study shows. Menstrual bleeding, especially when heavy, is a major risk factor for iron deficiency and iron-deficiency anemia, the researchers explained. There are health consequences associated with being low in iron, noted study author Dr. Angela Weyand, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. “Iron is important in the making of red blood cells, but also has multiple roles outside of this. We know that iron deficiency can cause many issues including problems with sleep, cognition, energy level and mood,” she said. In addition to blood loss from menstruation, many young women may not be getting enough iron in their diet, especially vegans and vegetarians. “Studies have shown that dietary iron intake in the U.S. has dropped over the past decade,” she said. “Meat, fish and poultry are high in heme iron, which is the most easily absorbed, but non-heme iron can be found in many fruits, vegetables and nuts.” For the new study, Weyand and her colleagues looked at data on the iron status of nearly 3,500 females aged 12 to 21 who were part of the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in 2003 to 2010 and 2015 to 2020. Overall, just… read on > read on >

(HealthDay News) – New research has found that people who are transgender are far more prone to suicide than their peers. The new study, using Denmark’s centralized data repository, found that transgender people had 7.7 times the rate of suicide attempts compared to others, the study found. They also had 3.5 times the rate of suicide deaths. Suicide rates in all groups did decrease over time, the study noted. Still, transgender people died at younger ages than others, whether by suicide or from other causes, researchers said. “This is beyond doubt a huge problem that needs to be looked at,” study co-author Dr. Morten Frisch, a sexual health epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, told the New York Times. To study the issue, his team identified nearly 3,800 transgender people in Denmark through hospital records and applications for legal gender changes. The study found 92 suicide attempts and 12 suicide deaths in the transgender group between 1980 and 2021. The U.S. and Denmark have similar suicide rates, so the findings may also apply in America, the researchers noted. Yet it’s also possible the data don’t capture all suicides among transgender people or contain information on all transgender people, the Times noted. “These surveys tend to include much broader spectrums of trans individuals, and we cannot be as certain that our results are as problematic… read on > read on >

Having a couple of drinks a day won’t protect you from obesity or diabetes, a new study suggests. Everybody knows that heavy drinking isn’t good for your health, but whether moderate alcohol consumption is protective or harmful is still open for debate, researchers say. “Some research has indicated that moderate drinkers may be less likely to develop obesity or diabetes compared to non-drinkers and heavy drinkers. However, our study shows that even light-to-moderate alcohol consumption (no more than one standard drink per day) does not protect against obesity and type 2 diabetes in the general population,” said lead researcher Tianyuan Lu, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. “We confirmed that heavy drinking could lead to increased measures of obesity (body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, fat mass, etc.) as well as increased risk of type 2 diabetes,” Lu added in a news release from the Endocrine Society. For the study, Lu’s team collected data on alcohol use from nearly 409,000 men and women in the UK Biobank (a large-scale biomedical database and research resource). The researchers found that people who had more than 14 drinks per week had higher fat mass and a higher risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. The links were greater among women than men, the researchers noted. They found no association between moderate drinking and better health in people consuming up… read on > read on >

Coffee kickstarts many a sleepyhead’s day, but a new study argues that it’s not the caffeine alone that provides the morning wake-up. People who took a basic caffeine pill did not experience the same sort of brain boost they did from sipping a cup of coffee, according to brain scans. Caffeine alone does activate some regions of the brain associated with readiness to tackle tasks, the researchers said. But the act of drinking coffee produced a more comprehensive response in the brain, the results showed. “Taking into account that some of the effects that we found were reproduced by caffeine, we could expect other caffeinated drinks to share some of the effects,” said lead researcher Maria Picó-Pérez, a postdoctoral researcher with Jaume I University in Spain. “However, others were specific for coffee drinking, driven by factors such as the particular smell and taste of the drink, or the psychological expectation associated with consuming that drink.” For the study, researchers recruited a group of people who typically drink at least one cup of coffee daily. They asked these folks to refrain from eating or drinking caffeinated beverages for at least three hours before going into the lab. Researchers then performed two brief functional MRI (fMRI) scans, one before and another a half-hour after the participant took either a caffeine pill or drank a cup of coffee.… read on > read on >

Growing up in poverty may harm the structural wiring of a child’s brain, a new study claims. Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found a link between both neighborhood and household poverty and the brain’s white matter tracts. These let the brain communicate between its regions and are important for processing information. “White matter integrity is very important in brain development,” said first study author Zhaolong (Adrian) Li, a neuro-imaging research technician in the university’s department of psychiatry. “For example, weaknesses in white matter are linked to visuospatial and mental health challenges in children. If we can capture how socioeconomic status affects white matter early on in a child’s life, the hope is we can, one day, translate these findings to preventive measures.” Some of these white matter differences can be attributed to childhood obesity and lower thinking function, both of which are higher risks in children who grow up in poverty. The lower thinking function may be due partly to limited access to enriching sensory, social and cognitive (mental) stimulation. “Our finding that obesity and cognitive enrichment may be relevant mediators, if confirmed, would provide strong support for managing healthy weight and encouraging cognitively stimulating activities to support brain health in disadvantaged children,” co-corresponding author Tamara Hershey said in a university news release. She is a professor of cognitive neuroscience,… read on > read on >

Clouds of smoke continue to drift over the Eastern United States and Europe from wildfires in Canada, and experts are predicting a longer and more destructive wildfire season due to rising temperatures and drier conditions. Now, new research puts a number on just how dangerous wildfire smoke can be. Smoke particulates from wildfires could cause 4,000 to 9,200 premature deaths and may cost between $36 billion and $82 billion each year in the United States, according to the new study. Wildfires release fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, into the air, and these very tiny particles can travel deep into the lungs and bloodstream and trigger an asthma attack, heart attack or strokes, among other risks. Symptoms may include coughing, wheezing and feeling short of breath. Wildfire smoke can also make conditions like asthma and bronchitis worse, said study author Yunsoo Choi, an associate professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Houston. “PM2.5 from wildfires can also have effects on the heart and blood vessels, increasing the chances of heart attacks and strokes, and making existing heart conditions worse,” he said. “It can cause general inflammation in the body and trigger allergies.” Certain groups, such as children, older adults, pregnant women and individuals with existing respiratory or heart problems, are more vulnerable to PM2.5 from wildfires, Choi said. For the study the researchers, led by… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Protect Your Kids in Blistering Summer Heat

New Ways to Spot Risk for CTE in Boxers, MMA Fighters

After Battling Mental Health Issues, Star Gymnast Simone Biles Plans Return to Competition

Obesity Could Slow Recovery From a Head Injury

Forty Percent of U.S. Girls, Young Women Are Iron Deficient

Transgender People Face Much Higher Risk of Suicide, Landmark Study Shows

A Little Drinking Won’t Help Prevent Obesity, Diabetes

Is Coffee’s Morning Jolt Mostly Placebo?

Growing Up Poor May Rewire a Child’s Brain: Study

Wildfire Smoke Could Cause More Than 9,000 U.S. Deaths Each Year