Weekly Gravy « Weekly Gravy

All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

There’s an expanded nationwide recall of Sportmix pet food products underway, after links were found between a mold-borne toxin in the food and the deaths of 70 dogs, with 80 other dogs being sickened, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Monday. The announcement expands upon a recall first issued on Dec. 30 by Midwestern Pet Foods, Inc. At the time, the company said that at least 28 dogs had already died after eating Sportmix pet food. Testing of the pet food products conducted by the Missouri Department of Agriculture found “very high levels of aflatoxins,” the FDA noted. Aflatoxins are toxins produced by the mold Aspergillus flavus. They can trigger very serious illness in pets, and these poisons can be present even if the food doesn’t appear to be moldy. On Monday, after reports of at least 70 canine deaths tied to the tainted food, Midwestern “expanded the recall to include all pet foods containing corn and manufactured in the company’s Oklahoma plant, and having an expiration date on or before July 9, 2022,” the FDA said in its statement. The agency said not all of the dog deaths have been confirmed as caused by aflatoxin, but the FDA also stressed that “this count is approximate and may not reflect the total number of pets affected.” The agency said it is conducting an ongoing… read on > read on >

You have probably seen the social media posts: Your good friend’s co-worker is raising money online to help pay for cancer treatments or another friend needs funds to pay medical bills after a car crash. Crowdsourced fundraising seems to, at least partly, fill a gap between out-of-pocket health care costs and what people can afford. A new study looked at what the role of one of the best-known sites, GoFundMe, has played in crowdsourcing funds for medical costs over the past several years. “I think the most striking finding for us was the magnitude that the number of these fundraisers have grown over the past few years,” said study author Dr. Suveen Angraal, an internal medicine resident physician at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The study focused solely on GoFundMe fundraisers, extracting data between May 2010 (when the site began) and December 2018. The researchers found 42 fundraisers for medical conditions in 2010 and 119,373 in 2018, a number that rose incrementally through the years. “It’s a pretty dramatic increase that shows the magnitude of how big the issue is and how big the problem is when it comes to the cost of health care,” Angraal said. “We know that health care in the U.S. is expensive and, time and again, we have seen — not just me, but many of our colleagues across the… read on > read on >

Brain drain: Arguing with others puts a lot more strain on your brain than agreeing with them, a new study finds. “Our entire brain is a social processing network,” said senior author Joy Hirsch, professor of psychiatry, comparative medicine and neuroscience at Yale University. “However, it just takes a lot more brain real estate to disagree than to agree.” The researchers, from Yale and University College London, asked 38 adults whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of potentially contentious statements such as “same-sex marriage is a civil right” or “marijuana should be legalized.” Researchers then monitored the participants’ brain activity when they were paired up and had face-to-face discussions about the topics. When people agreed, their brain activity was harmonious and tended to be focused in sensory areas of the brain such as the visual system, possibly in response to social cues from the other person, according to the authors. When people disagreed, sensory areas of the brain were less active while there was increased activity brain areas that handle higher order executive functions, such as reasoning. “There is a synchronicity between the brains when we agree,” Hirsch said in a university news release. “But when we disagree, the neural coupling disconnects.” She noted that in discord, the two brains engage many emotional and thinking resources “like a symphony orchestra playing different music.”… read on > read on >

New research offers a novel explanation for the long-term brain problems many COVID-19 patients experience. Many coronavirus patients report headaches and “brain fog” for weeks or months after they recover from respiratory symptoms. It’s been believed that these lingering neurological issues are the result of nerve cell damage, but the new study suggests that the virus may instead be striking the brain’s small blood vessels. Previous studies found that COVID-19 can cause inflammation in and around the blood vessels elsewhere in the body, so the researchers decided to examine brain tissue for the same thing in 13 patients who died of COVID-19. The investigators found that small blood vessels in the brain tissue had signs of inflammation and damage to their walls, but there was little evidence of damage to nerve cells, according to the study published online recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors noted that most of the brains analyzed in the study were from COVID-19 patients who weren’t hospitalized. Previous research has focused on patients who had long hospital stays, including being on ventilators. Those factors can make it difficult to determine the direct impacts of the virus on the brain, explained study co-author Dr. Daniel Perl, director of the Brain Tissue Repository at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Washington, D.C. “COVID-19 seems to have… read on > read on >

Most folks infected with COVID-19 will only have mild or moderate illness — but that means they’ll still be stuck at home and feeling really lousy. What’s the best way to cope? In many ways, you want to behave as you would if you were suffering from a cold or the flu, said infectious disease expert Dr. Aaron Glatt. “The general good advice we give to people is eat well, make sure you drink enough, make sure you get enough rest, don’t overexert yourself,” said Glatt, chairman of the department of medicine and hospital epidemiologist at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, N.Y. “Sometimes patients do a little bit more than they can, and I don’t want to say it exacerbates things, but it exacerbates things,” he continued. “It makes them much more tired and much more fatigued and it can be sometimes like a domino effect.” Difficulty breathing is the most troubling symptom related to COVID-19, so you might want to order a home pulse oxygen monitor (“oximeter”) to keep track of your blood oxygen levels, suggested Dr. Teresa Murray Amato, chairwoman of emergency medicine at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills in Queens, N.Y. Fingertip monitors can be purchased online for about $20. Blood oxygen levels “below 90 warrant at least a call to your doctor and, if persistent, a visit to your local… read on > read on >

A cup of java may not be a bad idea for men’s health: Drinking lots of coffee may reduce their risk of prostate cancer, researchers report. The investigators analyzed data from 16 studies conducted around the world. Together, the studies involved more than a million men, about 58,000 of who went on to develop prostate cancer. The team was led by urologist Dr. Kefeng Wang, of China Medical University in Shenyang. Their analysis couldn’t prove cause-and-effect, but compared to men with the lowest coffee consumption, those who drank the most coffee had a 9% lower risk of prostate cancer. As well, each additional daily cup of coffee was associated with a 1% reduction in risk, according to the research published online Jan. 11 in the journal BMJ Open. Further analysis showed that compared to those with the lowest consumption, men who drank the most coffee had a 7% lower risk of localized prostate cancer, and a 12% to 16% lower risk of advanced and fatal prostate cancer, respectively. The highest amounts of coffee consumption ranged from two to nine or more cups a day, while the lowest ranged from none to fewer than 2 cups a day. “This study suggests that increased coffee consumption may be associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer,” Wang’s group wrote. “Further research is still warranted to explore the… read on > read on >

A plant-based diet is linked to healthy gut microbes that could lower your risk for conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, a new study finds. “This study demonstrates a clear association between specific microbial species in the gut, certain foods, and risk of some common diseases,” said Dr. Andrew Chan, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “We hope to be able to use this information to help people avoid serious health problems by changing their diet to personalize their gut microbiome.” In this study of more than 1,100 participants from the United States and Britain, researchers collected data on composition of their gut bacteria, dietary habits and blood markers. They found evidence that the microbiome is linked with specific foods and diets, and that its makeup is also associated with levels of metabolic markers of disease. The microbiome has a greater link with these markers than other factors, such as genetics, researchers said. “Studying the interrelationship between the microbiome, diet and disease involves a lot of variables because peoples’ diets tend to be personalized and may change quite a bit over time,” Chan said in a hospital news release. Researchers found that those who ate a diet rich in plant-based foods were more likely to have high levels of specific gut microbes. They also found microbiome-based biomarkers of obesity, heart… read on > read on >

Vaping may not be a way for kids to avoid the smoking habit, after all. A new study finds that teens who start vaping are three times more likely to smoke cigarettes in adulthood than those who never started with electronic cigarettes. Although the number of teens who start smoking cigarettes in high school has declined, vaping has soared. From 2016 to 2019, the number of cigarette smokers among U.S. high school seniors dropped from 28% to 22%, but e-cigarette use increased from 39% to 46%, the researchers found. “The rapid rise in e-cigarette experimentation among the youth of our country appears to mean that we will have a whole new generation of cigarette smokers along with all the health consequences that follow,” said lead researcher John Pierce. He’s a professor emeritus in the department of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego. “There is an urgent need to reconsider the policies on e-cigarettes and at least hold them to the same standards as the cigarette companies, such as restricting their right to advertise to our teens,” Pierce said. For the study, the investigators collected data on nearly 16,000 people in the United States, aged 12 to 24. Nearly two-thirds had tried at least one tobacco product, and almost one-third tried five or more tobacco products, of which e-cigarettes and… read on > read on >

Even people with mild cases of COVID-19 may commonly feel run down and unwell months later, a new study suggests. The study, of patients at one Irish medical center, found that 62% said they had not returned to “full health” when they had a follow-up appointment a few months after their COVID-19 diagnosis. Nearly half complained of ongoing fatigue. Surprisingly, the severity of patients’ initial COVID-19 infections were not a factor: People who’d managed at home were as likely to feel unwell as those who’d been hospitalized. A year into the global pandemic, the problem of “long-haul” COVID-19 is getting increasing attention. Some recent studies estimate that 10% of COVID-19 patients become long haulers, complaining of stubborn problems like fatigue, insomnia, shortness of breath and “brain fog” (problems with memory, focus and other mental skills). Dr. Luis Ostrosky, a professor of infectious diseases at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston, is among the doctors seeing long haulers. “The number-one complaint we see is fatigue,” he said, “and number-two is brain fog.” Ostrosky, who is also a fellow with the Infectious Diseases Society of America, was not involved in the new study. He said most patients who come to his center’s “post-COVID” clinic were sick enough to be hospitalized for the infection. “People who have a more severe, prolonged illness are more likely to have… read on > read on >

When it comes to pumping iron, women have as much to gain as men. A new study compared the results of women and men aged 50 to 90 who started resistance training exercise programs, finding that though men were more likely to gain absolute muscle size, their gains were on par with women’s relative to body size. “Historically, people tended to believe that men adapted to a greater degree from resistance training compared to women,” said senior study author Amanda (Mandy) Hagstrom, exercise science lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. “The differences we found primarily relate to how we look at the data — that is, absolutely or relatively. ‘Absolute’ looks at the overall gains, while ‘relative’ is a percentage based on their body size,” she said in a university news release. The researchers compared muscle mass and strength gains in more than 650 older men and 750 older women across 30 resistance training studies. Most participants had no previous resistance training experience. “We found no sex differences in changes in relative muscle size or upper body strength in older adults,” Hagstrom said. “It’s important for trainers to understand that women benefit just as much as men in terms of relative improvement compared to their baseline.” They found that when looking at absolute gains, older men gained bigger muscles and… read on > read on >

Weekly Gravy

Look Good – Feel Good – Feed Good

A little about: Weekly Gravy

All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Pet Food Recall Expands After 70 Dogs Die From Mold Toxin

Crowdsourcing Raises Billions for Families Hit Hard by Medical Bills

Arguing Taxes the Brain Much More Than Agreement, Scans Show

New Insights Into How COVID-19 Damages the Brain

Stuck at Home, Suffering With COVID? Experts Offer Guidance on Care

Coffee Might Help Ward Off Prostate Cancer

Plant-Based Diet Brings Better ‘Microbiome,’ Healthier Life

Youth Vaping Triples Odds for Adult Smoking

Even Mild Cases of COVID Can Leave ‘Long-Haul’ Illness, Study Shows

Weight Training Benefits Older Women, Men Equally, Study Shows