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Radon, an invisible, naturally occurring radioactive gas, appears to raise a person’s risk of stroke, a new study suggests. Already known as the second leading cause of lung cancer, these new findings suggest exposure to radon can increase risk of stroke by as much as 14%, according to a report published Jan. 31 in the journal Neurology. “Our research found an increased risk of stroke among participants exposed to radon above — and as many as two picocuries per liter (pCi/L) below — concentrations that usually trigger Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommendations to install a home radon mitigation system,” said researcher Dr. Eric Whitsel, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Radon is produced when metals like uranium or radium break down in rocks and soil, researchers said. The gas can make its way into homes through gaps around pipes and cracks in basement walls and floors. For the new study, researchers tracked nearly 159,000 women with an average age of 63, none of whom had suffered a stroke at the start of the study. The team followed participants for an average of 13 years, during which there were nearly 7,000 strokes. Researchers used participants’ home addresses to gather radon concentration data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the EPA. EPA standards recommend that average indoor radon… read on > read on >

Black American women have much higher rates of high blood pressure than white women, and it’s especially deadly if hypertension sets in before the age of 35, new research shows. Black women diagnosed with high blood pressure before the age of 35 had triple the odds of suffering a stroke, compared to Black women without hypertension, the study found. “This research was motivated by the glaring disparity I have seen in my own practice. Strokes are occurring at younger ages among my patients who identify as Black and among women,” study lead author Dr. Hugo Aparicio said in an American Heart Association (AHA) news release. “Early-onset stroke, particularly at midlife, is even more tragic because these patients often have families or are caretakers for sick family members,” noted Aparicio, a professor of neurology at Boston University’s School of Medicine. Aparicio’s team plans to present its findings at next week’s International Stroke Conference in Phoenix. Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. Already, high blood pressure is a much bigger threat to Black American women compared to other patients. According to the AHA, about 58% of Black women have high blood pressure, compared to 43% of white women, 38% of Asian women and 35% of Hispanic women. That makes the rate of hypertension among Black American women “among… read on > read on >

A walk in the woods appears to sharpen the mind better than an urban asphalt amble, a new brain scan study finds. People strolling through an arboretum at the University of Utah performed better on brain function tests than those who walked around an asphalt-laden medical campus, according to findings published recently in the journal Scientific Reports. EEG data showed that a nature walk lit up brain regions related to executive control, which influences a person’s working memory, decision-making, problem-solving and planning, researchers said. “The kinds of things that we do on an everyday basis tend to heavily use those executive attentional networks,” said researcher David Strayer, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah. “It’s an essential component of higher-order thinking.” Humans have a primal need for nature, the researchers noted. “There’s an idea called biophilia that basically says that our evolution over hundreds of thousands of years has got us to have more of a connection or a love of natural living things,” Strayer said in a university news release. “And our modern urban environment has become this dense urban jungle with cellphones and cars and computers and traffic, just the opposite of that kind of restorative environment,” he added. To see how a nature walk might affect the brain, researchers recruited 92 participants and recorded EEG readings on each immediately before and… read on > read on >

Even small increases in a man’s cardio fitness can significantly reduce his risk of developing prostate cancer, researchers report. An annual increase in aerobic fitness of 3% or more is linked to a 35% lower risk of prostate cancer, according to a report published Jan. 30 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. “Improvements in [cardiorespiratory fitness] in adult men should be encouraged and may reduce the risk of prostate cancer,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Kate Bolam, an exercise oncology researcher with the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences GIH in Stockholm. There already is good evidence regarding the benefits of physical activity when it comes to overall cancer risk, but the association between fitness and prostate cancer risk has not been well-studied, researchers said in a journal news release. To examine this, they analyzed the records of nearly 58,000 men kept in a national occupational health profile database. The men included in the study had taken at least two cardio fitness tests, measured by pedaling on a stationary bike. The database also included information on physical activity, lifestyle and body-mass index. Researchers divided the men into groups according to their fitness trends – those whose heart fitness improved by 3% or more annually, fell by more than 3% or remained stable during the study period. During an average follow-up period… read on > read on >

Elon Musk, co-founder of Neuralink, said this week that the company placed the first brain implant in a human over the weekend. In a statement posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter that is now owned by Musk, the billionaire said the patient was “recovering well.” He added that “initial results show promising neuron spike detection.” Musk offered no additional details about the patient. But when Neuralink announced in September that it would begin recruiting people for brain implant trials, the company said it was searching for people with quadriplegia due to spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Laura Cabrera, who researches brain science at Pennsylvania State University, told the Associated Press that even though Neuralink uses cutting-edge robotic surgery to place the device precisely in the brain, there are potential dangers to the procedure. Brain surgery is “not a trivial thing,” she said, bringing with it risks such as brain hemorrhage or seizures. “And so I think we have to be mindful that even though they’re using a novel way to implant the device, we just don’t know if it’s truly going to be a … safer approach for human patients.” Neuralink isn’t the only company developing brain-computer interface technology to treat brain disorders and overcome brain injuries. According to clinicaltrials.gov, there are more than 40 such trials in progress. Neuralink’s device… read on > read on >

Many swear that trendy fasting diets are keeping them slimmer and healthier. They may now have some science to back that up. British researchers at the University of Cambridge believe they’ve uncovered the processes that cause fasting to lower bodily inflammation. Long hours without eating appears to trigger a rise in a blood chemical called arachidonic acid, which has anti-inflammatory properties, reports a team led by Clare Bryant of Cambridge’s department of medicine. “We’re very interested in trying to understand the causes of chronic inflammation in the context of many human diseases,” she noted in a university news release. The new findings were published Jan. 23 in the journal Cell Reports. Bryant’s team are focused on what scientists are now calling the “inflammasome” — the cellular “alarm” system by which the body defends itself from injury or illness, triggering inflammation. Inflammatory processes can go awry, however, helping to foster illness on their own. “What’s become apparent over recent years is that one inflammasome in particular — the NLRP3 inflammasome — is very important in a number of major diseases such as obesity and atherosclerosis, but also in diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, many of the diseases of older age people, particularly in the Western world,” Bryant explained. It’s long been known that fasting appears to dampen inflammation, although it’s not been known why. In… read on > read on >

It’s been a staple at Korean dinner tables for centuries, and the fermented veggie concoction known as kimchi is increasingly familiar to Americans. Now, Korean researchers say a few servings of the spicy food each day might help stave off weight gain. “Consumption of 1–3 servings/day of total kimchi was associated with a lower risk of obesity in men,” and smaller amounts were linked to similar trends among women, concluded a team led by Sangah Shin. She’s with the department of food and nutrition at Chung Ang University, in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. However, there were a couple of downsides to eating too much kimchi, her team added. First, the popular side dish contains a lot of salt, which is never great for health. Secondly, beyond the one-to-three servings per day that did show a benefit, eating more kimchi was linked with obesity overall, the study found. The research was based on data from almost 116,000 Koreans over 40 who were participating in an ongoing health study. About 79,000 were women and about 39,000 were men, and they averaged 51 years of age. Among other factors, the study used questionnaires to track what folks ate each day, and BMI and waist measurements were also obtained. As for “serving sizes,” that varied based on what type of kimchi (usually made from cabbage and/or radish) was eaten. For… read on > read on >

Toddlers are famously picky eaters, but parents may be doing their young child’s future gut a huge favor if they insist on a healthy diet. New research shows that toddlers who eat plenty of fish and vegetables, and precious few sugary drinks, are less likely to develop inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) by the time they are teenagers. IBD includes conditions such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. “These novel findings are consistent with the hypothesis that early-life diet, possibly mediated through changes in the gut microbiome, may affect the risk of developing IBD,” concluded the researchers led by Annie Guo, a pediatric nutritionist with the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. For the study, researchers analyzed diet and health data on more than 81,000 children who participated in two large-scale studies in Sweden and Norway. Parents filled out detailed questionnaires about their children’s diet at ages 12 to 18 months, and again at 30 to 36 months. Using that info, researchers estimated each child’s diet quality using measurements of meat, fish, fruit, vegetable, dairy, sweets, snacks and drinks consumption. A higher-quality diet had more veggies, fruit and fish, and less meat, sweets, snacks and drinks. Researchers then tracked each child for an average of 15 to 21 years, to see whether their diet influenced their risk of inflammatory bowel disease. During that period, 131 kids were… read on > read on >

For people with schizophrenia hospitalized after a psychotic episode, getting a long-acting antipsychotic injection works far better than pills to keep them from returning to hospital care. That’s the finding of a new study from researchers at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. They found that injected antipsychotic meds — which provide continuous treatment from two weeks up to six months — were 75% more effective in reducing rehospitalization, compared to the same meds in pill form. “I suspect the lower readmission rate that has been observed with long-acting injections has more to do with people forgetting to take a pill each and every day than with any inherent superiority of the injectable medication,” noted study lead author Dr. Daniel Greer, a clinical assistant professor at the Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy. The findings were published recently in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. As Greer’s team noted, expert guidance already recommends that people with schizophrenia receive long-acting antipsychotics by injection upon discharge from a hospital, rather than pills. But many patients, whether due to needle fears or cost issues, may still opt for pills. That’s a real problem, Greer said, because “other studies on the use of antipsychotic medication have found that roughly three-fourths of patients do not take oral medications exactly as directed.” Conversely, “it’s much easier to get a shot every few… read on > read on >

A disturbing number of people sick with an infectious disease conceal their illness to avoid missing work, travel or social events, new research reveals. About three in four people (75%) had either hidden an infectious illness from others at least once or might do so in the future. These folks reported boarding planes, going on dates and engaging in other social activities while sick, heedless of the infection risk they posed to others, according to a report published Jan. 24 in the journal Psychological Science. This even included health care workers, who presumably should know better. More than three in five people in health care (61%) said they had concealed an infectious illness, results show. The researchers also found a difference between how people actually behave when they’re sick versus how they believe they would act. “Healthy people forecasted that they would be unlikely to hide harmful illnesses — those that spread easily and have severe symptoms — but actively sick people reported high levels of concealment, regardless of how harmful their illness was to others,” said lead researcher Wilson Merrell, a doctoral candidate from the University of Michigan. In one part of the study, Merrell and his colleagues recruited more than 900 participants on the University of Michigan campus, including about 400 university health care employees. Study participants were asked how many days they’d… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

‘Hidden Killer’ Radon Could Raise Your Stroke Risk

High Blood Pressure in Young Black Women Sends Stroke Risks Soaring

How Walking in Nature Sharpens the Mind

Just a Small Boost in Fitness Cuts Men’s Prostate Cancer Risk

Elon Musk Says First Human Has Received Neuralink Brain Implant

New Clues to How Fasting Might Keep You Healthy

Could Eating Kimchi Each Day Help Folks Stay Slim?

Baby’s Diet Could Cut Lifetime Odds for Crohn’s, Colitis

Long-Acting Injected Antipsychotics Help People With Schizophrenia Stay Out of Hospital

Folks Often Hide Infectious Illness at Work, Socializing