Getting around in winter works best if you’re taking good care of the feet that take you places. Orthopedic specialists at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City say they often see an uptick in avoidable injuries and foot problems during the winter. They offered some tips for winterizing your feet. First, make sure your winter shoes and boots still fit. “Our feet change as we get older, and footwear that fit us last year may now be too tight,” said Dr. Mark Drakos, an orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon at HSS Long Island and the main hospital in Manhattan. “Squeezing your feet into shoes that are too snug can lead to foot pain, blisters, bruises and other problems.” Drakos recommends shopping for new shoes and boots in the late afternoon or evening because feet get larger throughout the day. Take along the socks you plan to wear in cold weather. Thicker socks require more room. Don’t forget good traction, which can help keep you on your feet on snowy or icy ground. “It may seem like common sense, but the first winter storm of the season often catches people off guard, and we tend to see more injuries,” said Dr. Andrew Elliott, an orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon at HSS in Manhattan and Paramus, N.J. Elliott recommends keeping a spare pair…  read on >  read on >

The key to keeping skin soft in winter: Moisturize. “Skin tends to be drier when the weather is less humid, so individuals should moisturize at least twice a day, if not more often,” according to Dr. Vicky Zhen Ren, a dermatologist and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Ren offered some tips for getting that moisture back into skin. Use an ointment or cream rather than a lotion. Lotions have higher water content and not as much of the agents that prevent dry skin. Apply creams after a shower or bath to lock in the moisture. Choose lukewarm water temperatures instead of hot showers or baths. Limit them to five to 10 minutes. A humidifier at home during the dry season can help. Just be sure to keep it clean. Wear clothing that protects the skin from the wind and cold. Creams that contain urea, lactic acid, ammonium lactate or alpha hydroxy acids may be beneficial for skin that is thick or scaly. However, these may also be irritating if the skin is fissuring or cracking. Anyone can get dry skin. People who have eczema may be especially susceptible to weather changes. Keep track of your skin habits because some symptoms can be a sign of cancer or thyroid, kidney or liver disease. If you’re taking good care of your skin and…  read on >  read on >

It might seem like your toddler or preschooler has a nose that is always runny, but experts say that’s normal. “Children under 6 years of age average six to eight colds per year, with symptoms lasting an average of 14 days,” said Dr. Maria Mejia, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “It’s very normal for children to contract illnesses frequently as their immune systems build.” Most of these colds happen between September and April, Mejia added. Children enrolled in day care or school are simply exposed to a lot of pathogens, viruses and bacteria, which their less developed immune systems just can’t fight off. “A general rule of thumb is that if your child gets better after a week to 10 days, it was most likely a cold,” Mejia noted in a Baylor news release. “If their symptoms persist longer and/or seem to come on after exposure to certain substances or during seasonal changes, allergies are probably to blame.” When a child does appear to have symptoms consistent with an allergy, the primary care provider may recommend visiting an allergist or ear, nose and throat specialist. Children who show signs of a virus should immediately see a doctor if they display one or more of a variety of symptoms, including refusing to drink anything for a…  read on >  read on >

Elon Musk swears by the weight-loss drug Wegovy, and Kim Kardashian is rumored to have used it to shed 16 pounds in three weeks to squeeze into a vintage gown once worn by Marylin Monroe. But the intense public demand for Wegovy has triggered a shortage of the diabetes version of the injectable medication, known as Ozempic. That’s leaving patients with the blood sugar disease in a real bind. Made by Novo Nordisk, semaglutide (Ozempic) has been on the market since 2017 to help manage type 2 diabetes. But in June 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved semaglutide to treat weight loss under the brand name Wegovy. Ever since Wegovy arrived on the market, Novo Nordisk has struggled to meet demand, experts said. Unfortunately, people who want to drop pounds and can’t find Wegovy are getting doctors to write them off-label prescriptions for Ozempic, eating into supplies of a drug that’s vital in the treatment of diabetes. “We’ve heard reports of people really struggling to fill their prescriptions,” said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief science and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association. “I still see patients at the Joslin Diabetes Center, and I can tell you that some of my patients have said, oh, yeah, you know, I had to go to lots of different pharmacies to finally find it. It’s been a…  read on >  read on >

Researchers think they’ve figured out why people can become reinfected with COVID-19, despite immunity gained from either vaccination or a previous infection. It turns out that antibodies produced in the nose — the first line of defense against respiratory viruses like COVID — decline faster than antibodies found in the bloodstream, British scientists say. Nasal antibodies tend to drop nine months after COVID-19 infection, while antibodies in the blood last at least a year, according to findings published online Dec. 19 in the journal eBioMedicine. The study also found that vaccination is very effective in creating and boosting blood-borne antibodies that protect against severe disease, but had very little effect on nasal antibodies. “Before our study, it was unclear how long these important nasal antibodies lasted. Our study found durable immune responses after infection and vaccination, but these key nasal antibodies were shorter-lived than those in the blood,” said lead researcher Dr. Felicity Liew, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. “While blood antibodies help to protect against disease, nasal antibodies can prevent infection altogether. This might be an important factor behind repeat infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its new variants,” Liew added in a college news release. The new study evaluated nearly 450 people hospitalized with COVID-19 between February 2020 and March 2021, before the emergence of the Omicron…  read on >  read on >

Groups of whales, dolphins and porpoises are regularly stranded in shallow waters around the coasts of the United Kingdom. Researchers wanted to understand why, so they studied the brains of 22 toothed whales — or “odontocetes” — that were stranded in Scottish coastal waters. The study included five species — Risso’s dolphins, long-finned pilot whales, white-beaked dolphins, harbor porpoises and bottlenose dolphins. The research showed that four of the stranded animals from different dolphin species had some brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in humans. “These are significant findings that show, for the first time, that the brain pathology in stranded odontocetes is similar to the brains of humans affected by clinical Alzheimer’s disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Mark Dagleish of the University of Glasgow. “While it is tempting at this stage to speculate that the presence of these brain lesions in odontocetes indicates that they may also suffer with the cognitive deficits associated with human Alzheimer’s disease, more research must be done to better understand what is happening to these animals,” Dagleish said in a university news release. The researchers said their results could support the “sick-leader” theory. This means that healthy dolphins would find themselves in dangerously shallow waters after following a confused or lost group leader. While stranded odontocetes can sometimes be moved to deeper waters by teams of experts, others die.…  read on >  read on >

Humans have continued to evolve after splitting from chimpanzee ancestors nearly 7 million years ago, according to a new study that found 155 new genes unique to humans that suddenly arose from tiny sections of DNA. Some of the new genes date back to the ancient origin of mammals, according to the researchers. They suspect a few of these “microgenes” have links to human-specific diseases. “This project started back in 2017 because I was interested in novel gene evolution and figuring out how these genes originate,” said study author Nikolaos Vakirlis, a scientist at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center Alexander Fleming in Vari, Greece. “It was put on ice for a few years, until another study got published that had some very interesting data, allowing us to get started on this work.” For this new study, published Dec. 20 in Cell Reports, his team created an ancestral tree to compare humans to other vertebrate species using previously published genetic data. The investigators tracked the relationship of these genes across evolution and 155 popped up from regions of unique DNA. New genes can arise from duplication in the genome, but these started from scratch. “It was quite exciting to be working in something so new,” said senior author Aoife McLysaght, a scientist at Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland. “When you start getting into these small sizes…  read on >  read on >

Keeping an eye on safety will let the joy from holiday toys last longer, without a trip to the emergency room, experts say. Last year, more than 200,000 people were treated in emergency departments for toy-related injuries, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Dr. Roopa Thakur, a pediatrician at Cleveland Clinic Children’s in Ohio, recommends keeping toy safety in mind safety when choosing a gift. Toys that shoot objects into the air may cause bodily injury, Thakur noted. “They can cause eye injury, especially,” she said in a Cleveland Clinic news release. “So, if you have kids that are running around and shooting things at each other, make sure that there is good supervision.” Small toys and pieces can be choking hazards for young children who could put them in their mouths. Parents should be wary of toys that have button batteries or high-powered magnets, Thakur said. If your child swallows these, they can damage their tissues and intestines, turning holiday fun into a surgical emergency. The highest number of toy-related injuries are from non-motorized scooters. When buying scooters, bikes, rollerblades and tricycles, also get safety gear. “Consider giving a helmet,” Thakur said. “If you are gifting a hover scooter or something similar, knee and elbow pads would be great to gift as well, to prevent injury in the case of a…  read on >  read on >