A meditation technique called mindful breathing can help cancer patients manage their pain and anxiety, a new study finds. Cancer patients who engaged in 20 minutes of mindful breathing experienced a greater reduction in pain than those who weren’t taught the technique. “Twenty-minute mindful breathing effectively and rapidly reduces pain intensity, pain unpleasantness and anxiety in patients with cancer,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Tan Seng Beng, a palliative medicine consultant with the Subang Jaya Medical Center in Selangor, Malaysia. “This brief and accessible intervention offers a complementary approach to traditional pharmacological strategies,” the team concluded. Mindful breathing requires that people focus their attention on their breath as they inhale and exhale, researchers noted.  However, prior research on the potential pain relief from mindful breathing has focused on short meditation sessions lasting just 5 to 10 minutes, researchers noted. For this study, researchers randomly assigned 40 cancer patients to one of two groups. In one group, the patients were taught how to do mindful breathing in a 20-minute session. In the other, doctors listened for 20 minutes as patients talked about their cancer journey. Pain assessment scales showed that all patients who performed mindful breathing experienced a reduction in their cancer pain, compared to the control group. The new study was published Aug. 20 in the journal BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care. “The…  read on >  read on >

Perdue Foods has recalled over 167,000 pounds of chicken nuggets and tenders after consumers complained of finding bits of metal in the products. The recall covers select lots of Perdue Breaded Chicken Tenders, Butcher Box Organic Chicken Breast Nuggets and Perdue Simply Smart Organics Breaded Chicken Breast Nuggets. No injuries or adverse reactions tied to eating these foods have been reported, according to Perdue and the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), but the agency noted in a news release that it is concerned some of the products may still be in consumers’ freezers. The problem first came to light after consumers discovered metal wire bits in chicken they bought. Following an investigation, “we determined the material to be a very thin strand of metal wire that was inadvertently introduced into the manufacturing process,” Jeff Shaw, senior vice president of food safety and quality for Perdue, said in a company statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we decided to voluntarily recall all of these packages of products.” The affected tenders and nuggets can be identified by product codes listed in the FSIS notice. All three products have a best if used by date of March 23, 2025, and establishment number “P-33944” on the back of the package. They were sold at retailers nationwide and online. What should consumers do? Anyone who has…  read on >  read on >

Iron deficiency isn’t being effectively treated in the United States, with low iron levels persisting for years in most patients, a new study finds. Almost 3 of 5 (58%) patients with iron deficiency still had low iron levels three years after their diagnosis, researchers found. Further, it took nearly two years to resolve iron deficiencies in most of the 42% of patients who did recover, results showed. Only 7% of patients had their iron levels return to normal within a year of diagnosis, the study added. “Two years is too long and well beyond the timeframe within which iron deficiency should be able to be sufficiently treated and resolved [with oral or IV treatments],” said lead researcher Dr. Jacob Cogan, an assistant professor of medicine with the University of Minnesota. “The numbers are pretty striking and suggest a need to put systems in place to better identify patients and treat them more efficiently.” Iron deficiency affects nearly 40% of teenagers and young women, but as many as 70% of cases go undiagnosed in these groups, researchers said. Most iron deficiency cases don’t involve full-blown anemia, researchers said. Anemia occurs when the body doesn’t have enough iron to make hemoglobin, the substance in red blood cells that allows them to transport oxygen throughout the body. Cases of non-anemic iron deficiency can cause symptoms like fatigue and…  read on >  read on >

A child at the dinner table talks about trouble at school or an argument with a friend, but parents aren’t listening: They’re checking their smartphones instead. It’s a scenario that plays out millions of times per day across America, and it could be harming the mental health of children, a new study suggests. Kids ages 9 to 11 who said their parents spent way too much on their smartphones were more prone to anxiety, attention issues and hyperactivity later on compared to the youngsters of parents who weren’t phone-obsessed, Canadian researchers report. “When children’s emotional and physical needs are consistently ignored or inappropriately responded to, they are at risk of developing mental health difficulties,” explained a team led by Sheri Madigan, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Her team published their findings Aug. 16 in the journal JAMA Network Open. According to background data from the study, one recent study found that parents of infants now spend an average of more than five hours on their smartphones daily, including looking at a smartphone 27% of the time they are engaging with their baby. Another study found 68% of parents admitting they are often distracted by their smartphones as they interact with their kids. Research has shown that this kind of “technoference” while parenting means less attention paid to children,…  read on >  read on >

A good night’s sleep is crucial for helping people make new memories, a new study says. Neurons that capture new memories during the day reset while you sleep, researchers reported Aug. 15 in the journal Science. “This mechanism could allow the brain to reuse the same resources, the same neurons, for new learning the next day,” said researcher Azahara Oliva, an assistant professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y. The process revolves around the hippocampus, a brain region vital to humans’ ability to create memories. Learning something or engaging in a new experience activate neurons in the hippocampus, storing those events as memories. The same neurons later repeat the same pattern of activity while you sleep, transferring the day’s memories in a larger brain region called the cortex. But what keeps the neurons of the hippocampus from filling up, thus preventing new learning, the researchers wondered. Electrodes implanted into the hippocampi of mice provided a potential explanation. It turns out that those neurons that captured the day’s memories undergo a reset after feeding the latest memories into the cortex, researchers found. Two regions of the hippocampus that capture memories, CA1 and CA3, appear to reset during sleep under the direction of a third region called CA2, researchers said. “We realized there are other hippocampal states that happen during sleep where everything…  read on >  read on >