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Booze could threaten a sleeping air passenger’s heart health, particularly on long-haul flights, a new study warns. Alcohol combined with cabin pressure at cruising altitude lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood and raises the heart rate for a long period, even in the young and healthy, researchers explained. And the more alcohol a person drinks, the greater these effects might be – especially among older passengers or those with chronic health problems, results show. Blood oxygen levels can decline to around 90% in healthy passengers at cruising altitude, researchers said in background notes. Anything lower than that is considered hypobaric hypoxia, or low blood oxygen levels at high altitude. Alcohol relaxes blood vessel walls and increases heart rate during sleep, causing an effect similar to hypobaric hypoxia, researchers said. That made them suspect the combination could do harm to sleeping air passengers. For their experiment, researchers recruited 48 people ages 18 to 40. They assigned half to a sleep lab under normal air pressure and half to an altitude chamber that mimicked cabin pressure at cruising altitude. Among those, half were asked to drink an amount of vodka that roughly equaled two cans of beer or two glasses of wine. The combination of alcohol and cabin pressure caused a fall in blood oxygen levels to just over 85%, and a compensatory increase in… read on > read on >

Maternal mortality rates in the United States continue to exceed those in other wealthy nations, with most women dying during pregnancy and childbirth in ways that were preventable, a new report shows. In 2022, U.S. women had a death rate from complications of pregnancy and childbirth of 22 deaths per 100,000 live births, researchers found. That’s a rate more than double and sometimes triple that of other high-income countries, researchers said. For example, there were zero recorded maternal deaths in Norway that year. Further, Black women have the highest maternal death rate in the United States, at nearly 50 deaths per 100,000 live births. “This study provides a bleak picture of how poorly the U.S. is performing when it comes to maternal mortality rates compared to other high-income countries,” said study author Munira Gunja, a senior researcher with the Commonwealth Fund. For the study, researchers assessed maternal health across 14 nations: the United States, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. About two-thirds (65%) of maternal deaths in the United States occur after birth, and more than 80% are preventable, the report found. Severe bleeding, high blood pressure and infection are the leading causes of maternal death within the first week following delivery, researchers report. In the subsequent weeks and months, weakening of the… read on > read on >

Could the blockbuster GLP-1 meds like Wegovy and Ozempic have a role to play in helping people cut down on problem drinking? A new study suggests so. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland report that obese folks with drinking issues who took the drugs to shed pounds had an up to 56% reduction in re-occurrence of alcohol use disorder over one year later, compared to those not using the meds. “This is very promising news in that we may have a new therapeutic method to treat alcohol use disorder,” said lead researcher Rong Xu. She’s a professor of biomedical informatics at the Case Western’s School of Medicine. Prior data has suggested that something about GLP-1 diabetes/weight-loss drugs can have the effect of curbing excess drinking. And the Case Western team have already shown that semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) can have other unexpected health benefits. “In January we showed that semaglutide is associated with a decrease in suicidal thoughts, and in March, we demonstrated that semaglutide is also associated with a reduction in both new diagnoses and recurrence of cannabis use disorder,” Xu noted in a university news release. So what about alcohol intake? In the new study, Xu’s team pored over the electronic health records of nearly 84,000 patients with obesity. Compared to people who weren’t taking semaglutide, those who took the med saw a… read on > read on >

Ozempic and Wegovy appear to improve people’s sensitivity to tastes, potentially lowering their desire for sweets, a new study suggests. The active ingredient in the weight-loss medications, semaglutide, also appears to affect the way that the tongue and brain respond to sweet tastes, researchers reported Saturday at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston. “People with obesity often perceive tastes less ‘intensely,’ and they have an inherently elevated desire for sweet and energy-dense food,” said researcher Mojca Jensterle Sever, an endocrinologist with the University Medical Centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia. For the study, researchers randomly assigned obese women to receive either semaglutide injections or a placebo. For four months, researchers measured the participants’ taste sensitivity using strips containing different concentrations of tastes. They also used MRI scans to measure brain responses to a sweet solution dripping onto their tongues, both before and after the women ate a standard meal. Researchers also took tissue samples to evaluate genetic activity in the participants’ tongues. Women receiving semaglutide experienced changes in their taste perception, in the ways their taste bud genes expressed themselves and the way their brain responded to sweets. The changes track with those seen in animal studies, Jensterle Sever said. “Clinicians will likely correlate the findings with reports from their patients on changes in desire for certain foods, which go beyond broad changes in appetite and… read on > read on >

People who feel lonely and socially isolated might benefit from more sleep, especially if they’re a young adult, a new study suggests. Better sleep is associated with significantly less emotional and social loneliness, researchers report. Younger adults in particularbenefit from better sleep, but people of all ages report less loneliness after they’ve slept well, results show. “Loneliness is an urgent public health crisis, and there is a pressing need for providers to better understand and treat it,” said lead researcher Joseph Dzierzewski, vice president of research and scientific affairs at the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Office warned in 2023 about a public health crisis of loneliness and isolation, researchers noted. Even before the pandemic, about half of U.S. adults were experiencing loneliness, and the social isolation measures required to protect health likely made matters even worse, the warning said. “Our results highlight the important role that sleep plays in understanding loneliness across the adult lifespan,” Dzierzewksi said in a university news release. “Perhaps efforts to improve sleep health could have a beneficial effect on loneliness, especially for young people.” Adults should get about seven hours of sleep each night to promote optimal health and alertness, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says. For this study, nearly 2,300 adults with an average age of 44 completed an online sleep health… read on > read on >

Ozempic and Wegovy might help lower the risk of pancreatitis in patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes, a new study says. Up to now, doctors have been cautious about prescribing semaglutide to patients with a history of pancreatitis, because they feared the drug could worsen the condition, said lead researcher Dr. Mahmoud Nassar, a fellow in endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at the University of Buffalo in New York. In fact, the drug’s prescribing information even warns about this potential side effect, Nassar noted. “Our research highlights the safety and the potential for GLP-1 receptor agonists [like semaglutide] to reduce the risk of acute pancreatitis recurrence in individuals with obesity and type 2 diabetes, challenging previous concerns and offering new hope for effective disease management,” Nassar said. For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 638,000 patients with a history of pancreatitis. The patients were located across 15 countries, but they were mainly from the United States. Researchers tracked how many patients developed pancreatitis again within 15 years of starting either semaglutide or other drugs for diabetes and obesity. The other drugs included SGLT2 inhibitors, which decrease blood sugar levels by preventing glucose from being absorbed in the kidneys, and DPP4 inhibitors, which help the pancreas release insulin. About 15% of patients taking semaglutide had wound up suffering a recurrence of pancreatitis, compared with… read on > read on >

Nerve surgery can reduce the number of headache days for people who suffer frequent migraines, a new review finds. The procedure also can decrease the frequency and intensity of migraine attacks, according to results published in the June issue of the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. “Our study adds new evidence that headache surgery improves both sets of measures, providing a more comprehensive assessment of the results of headache surgery,” said researcher Dr. Jeffrey Janis, a professor of plastic surgery, surgery, neurosurgery and neurology at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Migraine surgery seeks to relieve nerve compression at trigger sites in the head and neck, researchers explained. This pressure is thought to contribute to headaches. Neurologists assessing migraine treatments tend to focus on whether they reduce the number of days a person has a headache, Janis said. On the other hand, plastic surgeons performing headache surgery typically use an index that evaluates the frequency, intensity and duration of migraines, Janis added. “This discrepancy is one reason why some headache specialists have been slow to recognize the growing body of evidence showing the effectiveness of headache surgery,” Janis noted in a journal news release. For this review, researchers decided to consider both ways of assessing the effectiveness of migraine surgery, so that both groups of professionals could find common ground regarding the procedure. The… read on > read on >

Strapping a mask to your face can make for a happier marriage, a new study suggests. Relationships with partners flourish if a person with sleep apnea starts using a continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) machine on a regular basis, researchers found. Snoring is one of the most recognizable symptoms of sleep apnea, and it can reach timber-rattling levels for some. This means both the person with sleep apnea and their partner often lose lots of sleep to the health problem. “No one is at their best when they aren’t sleeping,” said lead researcher Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist with RAND Corp. “In an age where we see couples going through ‘sleep divorces,’ and roughly 50% of marriages end in actual divorce, recognizing how healthy sleep can contribute to healthy relationships is imperative,” Troxel added. Nearly 30 million Americans have sleep apnea, a chronic disease in which the upper airway collapses repeatedly during sleep, disrupting normal breathing, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. The new study involved 36 couples in which a person with sleep apnea started using a CPAP machine, which uses mild levels of air pressure delivered through a mask to keep the throat open. After three months, the couples reported higher levels of relationship satisfaction and lower levels of conflict if the CPAP machine was regularly used. “Recognizing that sleep… read on > read on >

Cerebral aneurysms: For most people, the word signals a sudden, fatal brain bleed that seemingly comes out of nowhere. However, an expert at Penn State Health says that in many cases these brain blood vessel ruptures are spotted early, before they rupture. And even when they do occur, they are not uniformly fatal. What is a cerebral aneurysm? “An aneurysm is like a blister on a water hose,” explained Dr. Scott Simon, a neurosurgeon at Penn State Health’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. “They can happen on any blood vessel in the body.” The trouble is, as they form in the brain in their earliest stages, most people have no idea they’re in any danger. Sometimes, a doctor may spot one in a brain scan conducted for other reasons, Simon said. If a cerebral aneurysm does rupture, about half of the time the event proves fatal, Simon said. Among those who survive, 68% will experience permanent neurological damage. According to Simon, cerebral aneurysms take the lives of half a million people around the world each year. Cerebral aneurysm causes and risk factors According to Simon, the simple answer as to what causes a cerebral aneurysm is, “We don’t know.” Certain risk factors do seem to come into play, however. “We know that they can run in families,” he said in a Penn State news release.… read on > read on >

About one in eight U.S. seniors will be treated for a traumatic brain injury, typically during a fall, a new study finds. Medicare data shows that about 13% of seniors suffered a severe concussion during an average follow-up period of 18 years, researchers report. Although these injuries can be treated, they increase the risk of serious conditions like dementia, Parkinson’s disease, seizures, heart disease, depression and anxiety, they added. “The number of people 65 and older with TBI is shockingly high,” said senior researcher Dr. Raquel Gardner, a neurologist with the Sheba Medical Center in Israel. For the study, researchers tracked about 9,200 Medicare enrollees with an average age of 75. Women, white people, the healthier and the well-off appear at higher risk of concussion, according to the data — a finding that runs counter to prior research. For example, about 64% of people who had a traumatic brain injury were female, even though women represented 58% of the total group studied, researchers said. Likewise, about 84% of people in the total group were white, but whites represented 89% of concussions, results show. About 31% of those with traumatic brain injury were in the top 25% of wealth, while 22% were in the lowest quarter, researchers said. Seniors with concussion also were less likely to have lung disease or to struggle with activities of daily… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

How Drinking on Long-Haul Flights Could Threaten Your Heart

U.S. Maternal Death Rate Remains Much Higher Than Other Affluent Nations

Wegovy, Ozempic May Help Curb Alcohol Dependence

Could New Weight-Loss Drugs Be Changing Women’s Taste for Sweets?

Better Sleep Might Bring Less Loneliness

GLP-1 Weight Loss Meds Might Keep Your Pancreas Healthy

Nerve Surgery May Help Some Battling Severe Migraine

Sleep Apnea Treatment Can Give Couples’ Bond a Boost

What Is a Cerebral Aneurysm? What Are the Signs?

1 in 8 Older Americans Are Stricken With Traumatic Head Injury