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With flu rampant in the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers to be wary of over-the-counter products that promise to cure you of influenza, prevent it or reduce its severity. Sellers offering these products may make claims that are not accurate or safe, the FDA cautions. “These products can be found online, including popular marketplaces, and in retail stores. They may be labeled as dietary supplements, foods, hand sanitizers, nasal sprays or devices,” according to an FDA news release. Fraudulent products also include some herbal teas, certain air filters and light therapies that claim to prevent or cure the flu, or treat symptoms, such as fever, muscle aches and congestion. Putting faith in these bogus products might cause people to delay, forgo or stop the medical treatment they need, leading to serious and life-threatening harm, the FDA warned. The ingredients could also cause side effects and interactions with other medications people may be taking. Websites selling these products may appear to be online pharmacies selling prescription drugs. Legitimate online pharmacies do exist, but so do many websites that look like safe online pharmacies and are actually fraudulent. Visit the FDA’s BeSafeRx campaign to learn how to safely buy prescription medicines online. Even homeopathic products require some caution, and none are FDA-approved. They are generally labeled as containing very small amounts… read on > read on >

Diets higher in fruit, vegetables and omega-3 fatty acids could improve astronaut health during long spaceflights while still sticking to requirements for what can go on board, according to new research. A new study tested this theory on a spaceflight simulation chamber on Earth with 16 people: 10 men and six women. Four individuals participated in each 45-day, Earth-based, closed-chamber mission. They either ate a standard astronaut diet or one that was enhanced with more fruits and vegetables, along with more fish and other sources of omega-3 fatty acids. While the standard spaceflight diet is currently used on the International Space Station, the enhanced diet provided more than six servings of fruits and vegetables a day and between two to three servings of fish a week. It also featured other healthy foods. The study found the enhanced diet was associated with lower cholesterol levels, lower cortisol levels (suggesting lower stress), and greater cognitive speed, accuracy and attention compared to the standard diet. It was also tied to a more stable microbiome. The report was published online recently in Scientific Reports. This enhanced spaceflight diet has significant health and performance benefits, said study author Grace Douglas, advanced food technology lead scientist for NASA in Houston, and colleagues. It may be beneficial for astronauts, even on short space missions, the research team noted in a journal news… read on > read on >

Women who had diabetes during pregnancy might want to treat themselves to another cup of joe. New research shows that drinking coffee may lower their risk of type 2 diabetes. Compared to the general female population, women who had gestational diabetes may have 10 times the risk for type 2, according to researchers at the Global Centre for Asian Women’s Health (GloW) at the National University of Singapore. “The overall findings suggest that caffeinated coffee, when consumed properly [2 to 5 cups per day, without sugar and whole-fat/high-fat dairy], could be incorporated into a relatively healthy lifestyle for certain population,” GloW researcher Cuilin Zhang said in a university news release. Past studies had shown that drinking 2 to 5 cups of caffeinated or decaf coffee daily was healthier than artificially and sugar-sweetened drinks. To learn more, researchers followed more than 4,500 women who had a history of gestational diabetes over 25 years, examining long-time coffee consumption and risk. Most of the participants were white. Compared to those who drank no coffee, those who downed 4 or more cups a day after their pregnancies had a 53% lower risk of type 2 diabetes. Those who drank 2 to 3 cups lowered their risk by 17%, and those who drank 1 cup or less had a 10% lower risk, the study found. Decaf wasn’t found to have… read on > read on >

The key to keeping skin soft in winter: Moisturize. “Skin tends to be drier when the weather is less humid, so individuals should moisturize at least twice a day, if not more often,” according to Dr. Vicky Zhen Ren, a dermatologist and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Ren offered some tips for getting that moisture back into skin. Use an ointment or cream rather than a lotion. Lotions have higher water content and not as much of the agents that prevent dry skin. Apply creams after a shower or bath to lock in the moisture. Choose lukewarm water temperatures instead of hot showers or baths. Limit them to five to 10 minutes. A humidifier at home during the dry season can help. Just be sure to keep it clean. Wear clothing that protects the skin from the wind and cold. Creams that contain urea, lactic acid, ammonium lactate or alpha hydroxy acids may be beneficial for skin that is thick or scaly. However, these may also be irritating if the skin is fissuring or cracking. Anyone can get dry skin. People who have eczema may be especially susceptible to weather changes. Keep track of your skin habits because some symptoms can be a sign of cancer or thyroid, kidney or liver disease. If you’re taking good care of your skin and… read on > read on >

It might seem like your toddler or preschooler has a nose that is always runny, but experts say that’s normal. “Children under 6 years of age average six to eight colds per year, with symptoms lasting an average of 14 days,” said Dr. Maria Mejia, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “It’s very normal for children to contract illnesses frequently as their immune systems build.” Most of these colds happen between September and April, Mejia added. Children enrolled in day care or school are simply exposed to a lot of pathogens, viruses and bacteria, which their less developed immune systems just can’t fight off. “A general rule of thumb is that if your child gets better after a week to 10 days, it was most likely a cold,” Mejia noted in a Baylor news release. “If their symptoms persist longer and/or seem to come on after exposure to certain substances or during seasonal changes, allergies are probably to blame.” When a child does appear to have symptoms consistent with an allergy, the primary care provider may recommend visiting an allergist or ear, nose and throat specialist. Children who show signs of a virus should immediately see a doctor if they display one or more of a variety of symptoms, including refusing to drink anything for a… read on > read on >

FRIDAY, Dec. 23, 2022 (HealthDay News) – Move your body every day to guard against type 2 diabetes. That’s the upshot of a new study that analyzed Fitbit data and type 2 diabetes rates from participants in a nationwide research program, reporting that women who logged more steps each day had a lower risk of diabetes. “We investigated the relationship between physical activity and type 2 diabetes with an innovative approach using data from wearable devices linked to electronic health records in a real-world population,” said lead author Dr. Andrew Perry, of the Vanderbilt Translational and Clinical Cardiovascular Research Center in Nashville, Tenn. “We found that people who spent more time in any type of physical activity had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Our data shows the importance of moving your body every day to lower your risk of diabetes.” The data came from more than 5,600 people, 75% of them women, who were part of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us research program between 2010 and 2021. All of Us aims to advance individualized health care by enrolling and collecting data on more than 1 million people over many years. Over four years, researchers found 97 new cases of diabetes among the 5,600 people in this new study. People with an average daily step count of 10,700 — a… read on > read on >

Swedish researchers studying anger say it appears there is a pent-up need for anger management and that an internet-based treatment can work. Scientists from the Centre for Psychiatry Research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, had to close its recruitment site after a few weeks because there was so much demand for help with anger issues. “It is usually very difficult to recruit participants for treatment studies. For the anger study, however, it was very easy,” said Johan Bjureberg, an assistant professor at the center. The study included 234 participants, all of whom had significant anger problems. The participants were each randomly assigned to four weeks of either mindful emotion awareness, cognitive reappraisal or a combination of these two strategies, delivered online. “Many people who have problems with anger feel ashamed, and we think the internet format suits this group particularly well because they don’t have to wait in a reception room or sit face-to-face with a therapist and talk about their anger,” Bjureberg said in an institute news release. Mindful emotion awareness is focused on the ability to notice and accept one’s feelings and thoughts without any judgment and without acting on them. Cognitive reappraisal involves focusing on the ability to reinterpret thoughts and situations and identify alternative thoughts that don’t trigger difficult feelings. Combination therapy was most effective, though all options were… read on > read on >

Depression can be tricky to detect in some people, and Black women may exhibit different symptoms, leading to missed care, researchers say. Black women report sleep disturbances, self-criticism and irritability more often than the stereotypical low mood, according to a new study. As a result, standard screening tools may underdiagnose depression in Black women, the study authors said. “Based on our findings, it’s possible that health care providers may miss depression symptoms in Black women, resulting in underdiagnosis and undertreatment,” said lead author Nicole Perez. She’s a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner and postdoctoral associate at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing in New York City. In general, depression symptoms are low mood, loss of interest in activities, changes in appetite or sleep, and feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness. But more than 1,500 possible combinations of symptoms exist that meet criteria for a depressive disorder, according to the study. Research on depression has primarily been conducted in white people, increasing the chances that it will be missed among racial and ethnic minority populations, the authors noted. For this study, researchers analyzed data from 227 Black women who were screened for depression. In addition to a category called somatic symptoms that includes fatigue, insomnia and decreased libido, researchers found that Black women with depression were more likely to be self-critical, irritable and to have an… read on > read on >

Preteens who spend much of their free time watching online videos or playing video games may have a heightened risk of developing obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), a new study suggests. Researchers found that among 9,200 9- and 10-year-olds they assessed, the odds of developing OCD inched up with every daily hour kids devoted to online videos (such as on YouTube) or video gaming. That doesn’t mean kids are perfectly fine until they start browsing the video website. Experts said it’s possible that those on a trajectory toward OCD start to compulsively watch videos or become “addicted” to gaming. “It’s hard to tease apart the chicken-and-egg question,” said lead researcher Dr. Jason Nagata, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. In fact, he added, it’s likely there’s a “bi-directional relationship.” That is, compulsive kids may be drawn to play video games again and again, or watch online videos, where algorithms that feed them a continuous supply of additional videos can pull them down a rabbit hole. All of that, in turn, may worsen their compulsiveness. The bottom line, Nagata said, is that parents would be wise — for a number of reasons — to keep an eye on their kids’ screen time. OCD is a chronic disorder in which people have uncontrollable, recurring thoughts that spur behaviors they need to repeat… read on > read on >

In some parts of the United States, young men face a higher risk of dying from gun violence than if they’d gone to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new study reports. Young men living in certain high-violence ZIP codes in Chicago and Philadelphia run a greater risk of firearm death than military personnel who served in recent U.S. wars, according to findings published online Dec. 22 in JAMA Network Open. Young men in Chicago’s most violent ZIP code were more than three times as likely to experience gun-related death compared to soldiers sent to Afghanistan, the researchers found, while those in Philadelphia’s most violent area were nearly twice as likely to be shot to death. In all ZIP codes studied, young men from minority groups overwhelmingly bear the risk of firearm-related death, the findings showed. “These results are an urgent wake-up call for understanding, appreciating and responding to the risks and attendant traumas faced by this demographic of young men,” said study leader Brandon del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, R.I. His team examined shooting data from 2020 and 2021 in four large U.S. cities — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia. The investigators zeroed in on shootings involving nearly 130,000 men between 18 and 29 years of age. They grouped them by… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Buyer Beware: Bogus Flu Meds Are Out There

Crafting Meals for Astronauts: Healthy Dining in Outer Space

Could Coffee Lower a Woman’s Odds of Diabetes After Pregnancy?

Winter Is Tough on Your Skin – Fight Back

Is Your Kid’s Runny Nose Going on Forever? Here’s What You Need to Know

More Steps Per Day, Lowered Odds for Diabetes in Women

Anger Management Treatment Via the Internet Shows Promise

Women’s Depression Symptoms May Differ by Race: Study

Can Too Much Screen Time Raise a Child’s Odds for OCD?

In Some U.S. Urban Areas, Men Face Higher Gun Death Rate Than in Wartime

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