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Good sleep is important for the health of overweight men and women, a new study shows. Heavy-set people who stay awake too late tend to have a higher risk of metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions that increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other chronic health problems. “Our research shows that disruptions in the body’s internal biological clock could contribute to negative health consequences for people who may already be vulnerable due to weight,” said lead investigator Brooke Shafer, a postdoctoral researcher with the Oregon Health & Science University’s (OHSU) Sleep, Chronobiology and Health Laboratory. What’s more, poor sleep produces different health risks between men and women, results show. For the study, researchers recruited 30 people with a BMI greater than 25, which put them into an overweight or obese category. The research team used saliva samples to figure out the time in the evening when each person’s body started producing the hormone melatonin, which kicks off the process of falling asleep. The participants then logged their sleep habits over the following seven days. Researchers used the sleep diaries to determine who had a narrow versus wide window between melatonin onset and sleep. A narrow window means that someone falls asleep shortly after melatonin onset, and a wide window means the opposite. A narrow window suggests the person is staying awake… read on > read on >

Your heart health before and after a heart attack might be influenced by how loud your neighborhood is, new research suggests. One study found that people under 50 were more prone to heart attack if they lived in a noisy area, while another study showed the prognosis for heart attack survivors was worse if neighborhood noise was an issue. “These data provide some of the first insights that noise exposure can affect prognosis,” said Marianne Zeller from the University of Burgundy and Hospital of Dijon, in France. She’s the lead author of the second study. Both studies were presented Tuesday in London as part of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) annual meeting. Construction, cars honking, crowd noise: It can all be a chronic source of stress for urban dwellers, and stress is a known heart risk factor. To determine the impact of a noisy neighborhood on cardiovascular health, doctors in Bremen, Germany, assessed the neighborhood noise levels of 430 people aged 50 or younger who were brought to a hospital for a heart attack (clinically known as a myocardial infarction). People with low levels of heart risk factors — issues such as diabetes or smoking — were more likely to be admitted to the hospital with a heart attack if they happened to live in a noisy neighborhood, said a team led by Hatim… read on > read on >

People with multiple sclerosis appear to have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, a new study suggests. MS patients are far less likely to have elevated blood levels of toxic proteins that form amyloid plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, researchers report. “Our findings imply that some component of the biology of multiple sclerosis, or the genetics of MS patients, is protective against Alzheimer’s disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Matthew Brier, an assistant professor of neurology and radiology with Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “If we could identify what aspect is protective and apply it in a controlled way, that could inform therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s disease,” Brier added in a university news release. Researchers undertook the study after noticing that MS patients under their care didn’t develop Alzheimer’s as they grew older, even if they had a family history of the disease. “I noticed that I couldn’t find a single MS patient of mine who had typical Alzheimer’s disease,” said senior researcher Dr. Anne Cross, chair of neuroimmunology at the Washington University School of Medicine. “If they had cognitive problems, I would send them to the memory and aging specialists here at WashU Medicine for an Alzheimer’s assessment, and those doctors would always come back and tell me, ‘No, this is not due to Alzheimer’s disease,’” Cross said.… read on > read on >

New Medicare rules could make 3.6 million Americans — or even more — eligible for treatment with the pricey weight-loss drug Wegovy, a new study finds. Under the new rules, the government will pay for Wegovy treatment if a person with high BMI also has heart disease. Until now, federal regulations have restricted Medicare from covering drugs prescribed solely for weight loss, researchers noted. For this study, researchers analyzed data from people 65 and older who took part in a federal health and nutrition survey between 2011 and 2020. Maximum annual costs to Medicare could be as high as $34 billion if Wegovy is prescribed to all patients with high BMI and a history of heart attack, stroke, hardened arteries or chest pain, the data show. Wegovy has a list price of about $1,350 for a 28-day supply, according to GoodRx.com. But even if heart disease is more narrowly defined by federal regulators, covering Wegovy (semaglutide) looks to be a budget-buster for the Medicare program, researchers said. Under a narrow definition of heart disease, “only 1 in 7 Medicare beneficiaries with elevated BMI are likely to be eligible to receive semaglutide, but costs to Medicare could still exceed $10 billion per year,” said lead researcher Dr. Alexander Chaitoff with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences. The findings were published Aug. 26… read on > read on >

Researchers now have a better idea where love resides in the human brain — and which types of love are the most powerful. MRI scans show that love mainly resides in areas of the brain associated with the processing of social cues, researchers reported Aug. 26 in the journal Cerebral Cortex. Love for one’s children generated the most intense brain activity — so intense that it actually bled over into other parts of the brain, researchers found. “In parental love, there was activation deep in the brain’s reward system in the striatum area while imagining love, and this was not seen for any other kind of love,” said researcher Parttyli Rinne, at Aalto University in Finland. Romantic love also generated lots of brain activity, but that activity confined itself to the social regions of the brain, researchers found. Love of nature and animals activated the reward system and visual areas of the brain, but not the social regions involved in love of other humans. “We now provide a more comprehensive picture of the brain activity associated with different types of love than previous research,” Rinne said in a university news release. For the study, researchers asked 55 parents involved in loving relationships to mull over brief stories related to six different types of love. “You see your newborn child for the first time. The baby… read on > read on >

You’ve noticed your young child complains of headaches and rubs their eyes a lot. Does that mean it’s time to get glasses? It could, says a Baylor College of Medicine expert, and noticing these signs early is critical for young children because their schoolwork could suffer or they could lose their vision completely. “There is a period — approximately the first eight years of life — when the brain and the eye are learning to work together, and the visual system is still developing,” said Dr. Christina Weng, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at Baylor. “During this time, parents should watch out for behavioral changes because they can be a sign of potential eye problems.” “When children have trouble seeing, they often act out or exhibit other signs of stress, and it can be challenging to determine the cause of their behavior,” she explained. “It is very helpful for parents to pay attention to what situations trigger their behavior.” For instance, does your child become upset when watching a movie far away from the screen? Or does he or she avoid reading or other forms of near-sight work or seem to ignore people or objects in the distance? Any of those scenarios could point to potential vision trouble, Weng said. Additional symptoms associated with vision loss include: Frequent headaches Excessive eye rubbing Holding a book, phone… read on > read on >

People with HIV can no longer be turned away if they try to enlist in the U.S. military, a federal judge has ruled. The decision, issued this week by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkma, said the Pentagon’s ban on HIV-positive people seeking to join the armed forces contributes “to the ongoing stigma surrounding HIV-positive individuals while actively hampering the military’s own recruitment goals.” “Modern science has transformed the treatment of HIV,” Brinkema wrote in her ruling. “Asymptomatic HIV-positive service members with undetectable viral loads who maintain treatment are capable of performing all of their military duties, including worldwide deployment.” Importantly, HIV can’t be spread through saliva, sweat, tears, group exercise or sharing a bathroom. Instead, most people get HIV through anal or vaginal sex or when sharing needles, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Antiretroviral therapy can also keep HIV viral loads to low or undetectable levels, and patients who are virally suppressed won’t transmit the virus through sex or syringe-sharing, according to the CDC. In recent years, the Pentagon’s policies toward HIV-positive Americans have come under legal fire. In 2022, Brinkema struck down the military’s ban on people who are HIV-positive from joining the armed forces as officers or deploying abroad, CNN reported. Following that ruling, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a memo that said people who are HIV-positive will no longer be automatically barred from… read on > read on >

Many young adults are experimenting with “bed rotting” and other sleep trends that have gone viral on TikTok and other social media platforms, a new poll shows. Sleep experts say these trends likely won’t do any immediate harm, but they add that people would do better to see a doctor if they’re not getting adequate nighttime rest. “It is critical to differentiate whether the reason for experimenting with new ’sleep trends’ is because of existing difficulties with sleep or unsatisfactory wakefulness, as utilizing trends like ‘bed rotting’ may actually worsen the sleep problem you may be experiencing,” said Dr. Anne Marie Morse, a sleep medicine physician for Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania. About 37% of Americans have tried one or more of this year’s viral sleep trends, according to the new survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). Members of Generation Z in particular are experimenting with these trends, with 55% saying they’ve tried at least one. “Bed rotting” has become particularly popular. It involves staying in bed, sometimes for up to a day or more, with hopes of improved rest even as the person engages in activities other than sleep, experts explained. About a quarter of Gen Zers (24%) said they’d tried bed rotting, the survey found. This trend reflects a broader shift in how people use their time in bed, experts… read on > read on >

“Red flag” laws are an effective means of preventing suicide, a new study finds. About one life was saved for every 17 times that an extreme risk protection order (ERPO) kept firearms out of the hands of a troubled individual, researchers reported Aug. 20 in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. “This analysis provides important information for making the case that ERPOs can save lives,” said lead researcher Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, in Durham, N.C. “These laws do not affect private gun ownership rights for anyone who is not dangerous and is law-abiding, and they are broadly supported by people across the political spectrum,” Swanson added in a Duke news release. Judges issue ERPOs after determining that a person poses an imminent risk to either themselves or other people, researchers explained in background notes. The person’s guns are temporarily taken away. Laws allowing ERPOs are now active in 21 states and the District of Columbia. For the study, researchers analyzed ERPOs issued against nearly 4,600 people in California, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington. They used death records to determine whether these people had wound up committing suicide. Guns are far and away the most lethal means of suicide, with a 90% fatality rate, researchers said. In all other suicide methods,… read on > read on >

Women who suffer frequent migraines don’t have any increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, finds a new study that refutes earlier research. “These results are reassuring for women who have migraine, which itself causes many burdens, that they don’t have to worry about an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease in the future,” said researcher Dr. Tobias Kurth, director of the Institute of Public Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Germany. For the study, researchers tracked more than 39,000 women, of whom more than 7,300 had suffered migraines. During a follow-up of 22 years, 685 of the women were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease — 128 with a history of migraine and 557 with no migraine. After adjusting for other factors that can affect Parkinson’s risk, researchers found that women with migraine were no more likely to develop the neurodegenerative disease than those without. It didn’t matter if a woman had frequent migraines, or if she experienced visual auras prior to a migraine headache — the result always was no association between migraine and Parkinson’s, researchers said. However, more research is needed to confirm the lack of a link between migraines and Parkinson’s, researchers said. The findings were published Aug. 21 in the journal Neurology. “Since this study involved only female health professionals who were primarily white people, more research is needed to determine whether the… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Overweight? Good Sleep Is Even More Crucial to Your Health

Noisy Neighborhoods Might Raise Heart Attack Risk

Could Having MS Help Shield Against Alzheimer’s Disease?

3.6 Million Americans Could Be Covered for Wegovy Under New Medicare Rules

Science Probes Where Love Lives in the Brain

Does Your Child Need Glasses? Look for These Signs

Federal Judge Rules That U.S. Military Cannot Reject HIV-Positive Enlistees

Are ‘Bed Rotting’ and Other TikTok Sleep Trends Good for You?

Laws That Remove Guns From ‘At Risk’ People Save Lives

No Link Found Between Migraines, Parkinson’s Disease