Red meat contains a type of iron that could increase a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes, a new study warns. People who ate the most foods high in heme iron — red meat and other animal products, mainly — had a 26% higher risk of type 2 diabetes than those who ate the least, researchers reported Aug. 13 in the journal Nature Metabolism. In fact, heme iron accounted for more than half of the type 2 diabetes risk associated with unprocessed red meat, researchers found. But non-heme iron, which is found in plant-based foods, had no link at all with type 2 diabetes, results show. “This study underscores the importance of healthy dietary choices in diabetes prevention,” said researcher Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “Reducing heme iron intake, particularly from red meat, and adopting a more plant-based diet can be effective strategies in lowering diabetes risk,” Hu added in a Harvard news release. Heme iron comes from hemoglobin, a blood protein that facilitates the transport of oxygen in red blood cells. It’s commonly found in meat, poultry and seafood, and is more easily absorbed by the body than non-heme iron. For the study, researchers assessed the link between iron intake and type 2 diabetes using 36 years of dietary reports…  read on >  read on >

New research suggests that switching from smoking to vaping won’t prevent some dangerous changes to a person’s genome. A new study conducted in young adults shows similar cancer-linked gene changes in both vapers and smokers. “These findings have significant implications for public health and tobacco regulation that aim to keep vaping products away from young people, who are a particularly vulnerable population,” said study lead author Stella Tommasi. She’s an associate professor of research population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. At issue is a process called DNA “methylation,” essentially an on/off switch for genes that tells DNA if it should operate. The new study looked at the genetics of 30 young adults averaging 23.5 years of age. Some were exclusive e-cigarette users, vaping at least three times per week for at least six months; some were exclusive smokers, smoking at least three times per week for at least a year; and some neither vaped nor smoked. Tommasi’s group used a high-tech gene sequencing technique to look at the genomes of cells taken from each participant in cheek swabs. They found 831 “differentially methylated regions” (DMRs) in the genomes of vapers and 2,863 in smokers. DMRs are genetic areas that may be more or less methylated (switched on/off) in one person versus another. Overall, there was a 46% overlap…  read on >  read on >

Kids more often get the psychiatric care they need if they live in states that mandate insurance coverage for child mental health care, a new study confirms. Parents and caregivers were 20% less likely to say they’d had trouble getting mental health services for a child if they lived in states with comprehensive laws around mental and behavioral health insurance coverage, reported a team from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Going without needed mental health services can lead to tragedy, study lead author Dr. Ashley Foster said. “Unfortunately, in my own practice, I regularly see children who are unable to access needed mental health care, and their symptoms continue to worsen until they reach a crisis point,” said Foster, a pediatric emergency care physician at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. The need is real: A poll released last month by the  U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found that nearly a third of American adolescents and teens received some sort of mental health treatment in 2023. SAMHSA noted that rates of adolescents getting mental health treatment has increased virtually every year since 2009. In the new study, Foster’s team surveyed 30,000 child caregivers nationwide. They found that about 1 in 8 said they’d had trouble accessing mental or behavioral health service for their child between 2016 and 2019. The effect was more common…  read on >  read on >

An apple a day, along with a healthy serving of vegetables, could become a first line of treatment for hypertension, new research suggests. Diet plays a large role in overall health, and the study confirmed that a diet high in fruits and vegetables lowers blood pressure while improving both heart and kidney health. And although most modern diets include animal products, which produce high levels of unhealthy acid in the body, fruits and vegetables can help neutralize that acid. “It’s important for us to remember that the usual diets that we eat in modern societies contain much more animal products like meats than fruits and vegetables,” said lead study author Dr. Donald Wesson, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas at Austin’s Medical School. “So, when we eat a diet like we do in modern societies, more animal products like meat than fruits and vegetables, we have an acid-producing diet.” In the study, published Aug. 6 in the American Journal of Medicine, 153 patients with primary hypertension who also had very high levels of blood acid were divided into three groups: those who added 2 to 4 cups of fruits and vegetables to their daily diet; those who took sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) tablets; or those who received standard blood pressure treatment and medications. The patients were followed for five years. What…  read on >  read on >

Does your kid suffer from wheezing that returns again and again? They might be suffering from a “silent” viral lung infection that would be better treated by changing up their medications, a new study finds. Nearly a quarter of children and teens with severe wheezing have undetected lung infections, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Unfortunately, these infections won’t respond to corticosteroids commonly used to treat wheezing, researchers said. In fact, higher doses of steroids might put children at higher risk of lingering lung inflammation, as well as other known side effects of those drugs. “While steroids can help some children with wheeze, many children in the study showed no patterns of inflammation that would improve with steroids,” said lead researcher Dr. Gerald Teague, a pediatric pulmonologist with the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Instead, these kids should be treated with medications that target viruses and symptoms of viral infection, Teague said. “I advise the parents of my patients that have wheeze episodes that are triggered by colds should be treated with anti-inflammatory medications that build immunity to viruses, such as azithromycin,” Teague said in a university news release. “They look surprised that we would use an antibiotic for a viral infection, but, in fact, azithromycin bolsters the immune response to viruses in a positive way,” Teague added. For…  read on >  read on >