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Wildfires raging in several states and Canada are triggering air quality alerts and evacuation orders across the western parts of the United States. Smoke and haze have filled the skies in California, Oregon, Arizona, Washington and several other western states: As of Wednesday, there were 79 large, active wildfires that have burned over 1.4 million acres across the country, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Evacuation orders are in effect for 15 fires in the Northwest, the Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, Canada is battling about 430 active wildfires in British Columbia and 177 in neighboring Alberta, including two that led to the evacuation of up to 25,000 visitors and residents of the Canadian Rockies’ largest national park, the AP reported. To deal with the pollution spewing from these wildfires, air quality alerts and advisories have been issued in many parts of the western United States: The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued air quality alerts for the eastern counties of Harney, Malheur, Grant, Baker and Morrow until further notice. In Idaho, air quality advisories were sent out to the central counties of Ada, Canyon, Gem, Owyhee, Payette and Washington. In north central Washington, the Colville Reservation, all of Chelan County, plus the Methow Valley down to Brewster in Okanogan County were under air quality alerts until further notice. Last but not least, Canadian authorities issued an air quality advisory for… read on > read on >

The Olympics are often described as a rare, once-in-a-lifetime shot at international sports glory. That may be more true for Olympic track and field competitors than other athletes, a new study reports. There appears to be a peak performance age for track and field athletes, who specialize in running, jumping and throwing events, researchers report. It turns out that the peak age for these athletes is 27. After age 27, there’s only a 44% chance that an athlete’s peak is still ahead of them, results show. That number drops every subsequent year. What’s more, the average age of Olympic track and field athlete has remained remarkably consistent over the past three decades — just under 27. “Because the Olympics occur only once every four years, track and field athletes must carefully consider when and how they should train to maximize their probability of qualifying for the Olympics while at their personal peak,” said lead researcher David Awosoga, a master’s student in data science at the University of Waterloo in Canada. For the study, researchers analyzed year-by-year career performance data from every track and field athlete at the Olympics since the 1996 games in Atlanta. The team considered each athlete’s gender, nationality, event type and training level. Researchers focused on track and field because for many of these athletes, the Olympics offers the best chance to… read on > read on >

Finding yourself packing on the pounds around your waist and arms? If so, you might be at heightened risk for neurological illnesses like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, new research suggests. There was one other physical characteristic that lowered the odds, however: muscle strength. Stronger folk appeared to have a lower odds for neurological illnesses compared to weaker people, reported a team of Chinese researchers. “This study highlights the potential to lessen people’s risk of developing these diseases by improving their body composition,” said study lead author Dr. Huan Song, of Sichuan University in Chengdu. “Targeted interventions to reduce trunk and arm fat while promoting healthy muscle development may be more effective for protection against these diseases than general weight control,” she added. The findings were published July 24 in the journal Neurology. Over a nine-year span, the researchers tracked the health and body characteristics of almost 413,000 British people who averaged 56 years of age when they entered the study. Song’s group measured each person’s waist and hip, tested their hand-grip strength, their bone density and their fat and lean mass. Over the nine years, 8,224 people did go on to develop neurodegenerative diseases, typically Alzheimer’s disease, other forms of dementia or Parkinson’s. After adjusting for other health risk factors that can affect the brain — things like high blood pressure, smoking, drinking and diabetes… read on > read on >

Obese kids infected with dengue are significantly more likely to suffer severe illness requiring hospitalization, a new study warns. A new analysis of nearly 5,000 dengue-infected Sri Lankan children found that weight plays a powerful role in how sick the mosquito-borne virus can make a kid. Kids with higher BMIs had higher hospitalization rates than those children who weighed less, researchers reported recently in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The heaviest children — those who are clinically obese — were twice as likely to be hospitalized as the rest, results show. “With the increase in obesity in many countries, it would be important to create awareness and educate the public of the potential risks regarding obesity and risk of severe disease and hospitalization from dengue,” said senior researcher Dr. Neelika Malavige, a professor of immunology and molecular medicine at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Sri Lanka. The study comes weeks after health officials in the Florida Keys issued a dengue alert following two confirmed cases of the infectious disease there, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a nationwide advisory about an increased risk of dengue infections in the U.S. Dengue reached a historic high of more than 6.5 million cases and more than 7,300 deaths worldwide in 2023, researchers said in background notes. And the world is about… read on > read on >

Millions of Americans deal with the sleep deficits brought on by sleep apnea, and many turn to one of the few treatments out there, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines. But what if new neurochemical targets in the brain could lead to new, less cumbersome therapies for sleep apnea? That’s what a team at the University of Missouri-Columbia are working on in their lab. They’ve pinpointed specific brain chemicals in mouse brains that link sleep apnea to one of its most unhealthy side effects, high blood pressure. “Our ultimate goal is to eventually help clinicians develop specific drugs to target either these neurochemicals or the proteins they bind to in a way that reduces high blood pressure,” explained senior study author David Kline, an investigator at the university’s Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. The study, which was led by postdoctoral researcher Procopio Gama de Barcellos Filho, involved mice whose brains were subjected to a low-oxygen state similar to what humans experience when they periodically stop breathing due to sleep apnea. Examining the rodents’ neurochemistry, Filho and Kline noticed key changes when in this “hypoxic” state. “When oxygen levels in the blood drop during sleep apnea, the forebrain sends warning signals to the brainstem area that controls heart and lung functions,” Kline explained. “By studying these signals, we found that two neurochemicals, oxytocin and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH),… read on > read on >

Misuse of illicit prescription drugs is falling dramatically among U.S. high school students, a new study says. The percentage of seniors who say they’ve misused prescription drugs in the past year has dropped to 2% in 2022, down from 11% back in 2009, researchers reported July 24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “To put these findings in context, the reduction over the past decade was like going from 1 in every 9 high school students using prescription drugs non-medically down to 1 in every 40 high school students,” said researcher Sean Esteban McCabe, director of the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health. For the study, researchers tracked trends regarding the three types of prescription drugs most commonly misused by teens — opioids, stimulants (for example, Ritalin and Adderall) and benzodiazepines (drugs such as Xanax and Valium). They used data collected by the University of Michigan as part of an annual survey of high school students. Not only has illicit use declined, but even legitimate use for medical reasons has dropped among teens. About 16% of high school seniors said in 2022 they’ve ever been prescribed one of these drugs for health reasons, down from 24% in 2009, researchers found. The means of getting a prescription drug for illicit use also has changed over time, with… read on > read on >

The knee develops differently in men and women, with sex-specific distinctions in the joint appearing as early as childhood, a new study finds. Taking these differences into account among girls could help prevent knee arthritis for women later in life, researchers say. Gender-based differences in knee cartilage and ligaments develop prior to puberty and can’t be explained by sex hormones, researchers reported recently in the journal Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. There also are metabolic differences that could affect the knee, particularly in the abundance of various amino acids, researchers said. These differences play key roles in the likelihood of injury early in life, which can increase the risk of knee arthritis for women, they argue. “Young female athletes have a higher risk of ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] injuries compared to young male athletes, and we know these types of injuries can likely develop into osteoarthritis later in life,” said lead researcher Paula Hernandez, an instructor of orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. These findings lay the groundwork for a better understanding of how arthritis is influenced by a person’s biological sex, researchers said. As a result, they can help develop sex-specific exercises that could reduce the risk of injury and arthritis based on biological differences in the joints. “We hope that by showing evidence that sex disparities are not limited… read on > read on >

Youngsters so sick they’ve needed treatment in an ICU appear to bear the scars of that experience years later, a new study finds. Children and teenagers treated in an intensive care unit have a significantly higher risk of developing a mental illness as they grow up, researchers reported July 20 in the Journal of Affective Disorders. “Given our study results, the development of appropriate major psychiatric disorder prevention strategies should be emphasized for child and adolescent ICU survivors,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Ping-Chung Wu, of the Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan. For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 8,700 children admitted to an ICU between 1996 and 2013. Those who survived their illness were followed an average of nearly 10 years. Data showed the survivors had: 4.7 times the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 3.2 times the risk of schizophrenia A doubled risk of bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder 1.7 times the risk of major depression Kids who stayed in the ICU three days or more in particular had a higher risk of these disorders, researchers said. Risk of specific mental illnesses also varied depending on the condition that landed the child in the ICU, researchers found. For example, schizophrenia risk was highest among patients admitted for blood diseases, nervous system disorders and digestive illnesses, while PTSD was… read on > read on >

More and more Americans who use “micromobility” transport, such as electric bikes and e-scooters, are motoring their way straight into the ER, new data shows. In fact, the rate of e-bike injuries among Americans doubled each year between 2017 and 2022, reportED a team led by Dr. Adrian Fernandez, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). There was a concurrent 45% rise in injuries linked to e-scooters. This steep rise in accidents “underscores an urgent need for added safety measures,” Fernandez said in a UCSF news release. His team published its findings July 23 in the journal JAMA Network Open. As the researchers noted, the use of tiny motorized means of getting around has surged 50-fold over the past decade in the United States. E-bikes and e-scooters are not only much easier on the environment than cars, but they are relatively cheap, convenient and can reach speeds of up to 28 miles per hour. But there’s a downside: Accidents. Fernandez and colleagues used data from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System for 2017 through 2022. While 751 injuries on e-bicycles were reported in 2017, that number had spiked to 23,493 just five years later, the team found. At the same time, e-scooter injuries rose from 8,566 to 56,847. Compared to folks riding conventional, pedal-powered bikes, those who opted for electric… read on > read on >

The boom in using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic to treat obesity has resulted in a bust regarding the drugs’ original purpose, which was to treat type 2 diabetes, a new study finds. New prescriptions for these drugs have doubled among people who have obesity but not diabetes, investigators found. As a result, drug shortages have triggered a drop in new prescriptions for type 2 diabetes, even though Ozempic and Mounjaro were initially developed as diabetes drugs, the researchers said. Both drugs were later approved for weight loss under different brand names, Wegovy and Zepbound. “Essentially, after the medication was approved for obesity… use took off so quickly that we lost control and vision of how fast people were picking up these medications,” said lead researcher Dr. Ali Rezaie, medical director of the Cedars-Sinai GI Motility Program. For the study, researchers analyzed the medical data of about 45 million Americans between 2011 and 2023. About 1 million people became new GLP-1 users during that period in time, results show. Researchers classified them based on whether they had diabetes, obesity or some other related medical condition. GLP-1 drugs work by adjusting a person’s hormone levels and suppressing appetite. Semaglutide — the drug sold as Ozempic and Wegovy — is being prescribed disproportionately to females, whites, and those with a BMI of 30 or more, indicating obesity, results… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Wildfires in Western U.S., Canada Create Hazardous Air Conditions

Is There a Peak Performance Age for Olympians?

Where Your Body Stores Fat Could Affect Odds for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s

Dengue May Be Bigger Threat to Obese Children

New Insights Into How Sleep Apnea Affects the Brain

Big Drop in U.S. Kids, Teens Misusing Prescription Meds

Sex Differences in Knee Arthritis Emerge as Early as Childhood

Risk of Mental Illness Rises for Kids Treated in ICUs

U.S. Injuries From Electric Bikes, Scooters Are Soaring

Study Finds Big Shift in Who’s Using GLP-1 Meds Like Ozempic