Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

THURSDAY, Dec. 8, 2022 (HealthDay News) – Lasik eye surgery is a common vision-correcting procedure that many Americans view as safe and effective, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has now drafted guidance that warns of potential complications. Although many patients are happy with the results after surgery, the recommended new guidance says complications can include dry eyes, double vision, difficulty with night driving and, in rare cases, chronic eye pain. Even after surgery, some patients will still need eyeglasses. The draft also notes that certain types of patients may be at higher risk of problems, including people with chronic conditions such as diabetes and those who take certain medications, the New York Times reported. Since the recommendations were first released this summer, more than 600 people and professional organizations have weighed in on the issue. “All we’re asking for is balance,”said Dr. Vance Thompson, incoming vice president of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, told the Times. “This document mainly emphasizes the dangers and complications of Lasik, with no mention of the advantages, and the tone is negative enough that it will scare patients.” Thompson noted that more than 90% of patients in the FDA’s studies were satisfied because they were “achieving good vision without spectacles, which is the goal of most patients.” Surgeons and device manufacturers have sought to have… read on > read on >

A proposed U.S. federal ban on menthol cigarettes doesn’t go far enough and needs to include other menthol products, from pipe tobacco to cigarette tubes, researchers say. New evidence shows both the appeal and the addiction potential of these substitutes in adults who smoke menthol cigarettes, said scientists from Rutgers University Center for Tobacco Studies in New Brunswick, N.J., and Ohio State University. “Tobacco companies have rebranded their roll-your-own cigarette tobacco as pipe tobacco, to avoid taxes, and rebranded flavored cigarettes as flavored cigars to skirt a federal ban,” said co-lead investigator Andrea Villanti, deputy director of the Rutgers Center. “We have already seen companies advertising pipe tobacco and cigarette tubes alongside cigarettes and filtered cigars,” Villanti said in a Rutgers news release. “The products we tested in our study are likely to be products that tobacco companies will promote following a ban on menthol cigarettes.” The researchers looked at 98 adults who smoke menthol cigarettes in four sessions held over three weeks. Participants first smoked their usual brand of menthol cigarettes, and then they were randomized over three other tests. These were smoking a preassembled roll-your-own cigarette using menthol pipe tobacco and a mentholated cigarette tube; smoking a menthol-filtered little cigar, and smoking a non-menthol cigarette. None of these products are part of the proposed ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which… read on > read on >

Manufacturers make all kinds of health claims, but can taking a dietary supplement actually lower your heart disease risk? A comprehensive analysis of prior research suggests that in certain cases the answer is yes. Some types of supplements – such as omega-3 fatty acids, folic acid and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) — do provide a cardiovascular leg up. But many supplements were found to offer no heart health benefit of any kind, and others were potentially harmful. “We evaluated 27 different types of supplements, and found that there are several that offered cardiovascular benefits,” said study author Dr. Simin Liu, director of the Center for Global Cardiometabolic Health at Brown University in Providence, R.I. These included omega-3 fatty acids, which reduced the risk of early death due to heart disease. Other supplements that were shown to benefit the heart included folic acid, L-arginine, L-citrulline, Vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, alpha-lipoic acid, melatonin, catechin, curcumin, flavanol, genistein and quercetin. But some common supplements had no long-term effect on heart disease outcomes or risk for type 2 diabetes, Liu noted. They included vitamins C, D, E and selenium. Beta carotene supplements, meanwhile, were associated with an increase in early death from all causes. The findings are an outgrowth of a research review prompted by what Liu and his colleagues described as lingering confusion in the heart health community as… read on > read on >

One of the two most common drugs used to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD) appears better than the other, a new, small study suggests. Among 106 patients with “wet” age-related macular degeneration, 50% of those treated with aflibercept (Eylea) could be weaned off the drug after one year, compared with only 17% of those treated with bevacizumab (Avastin), researchers found. “The results from this study point to an additional, previously unappreciated advantage of aflibercept over bevacizumab,” said lead researcher Dr. Akrit Sodhi, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. “The improved ability to wean patients off therapy will need to be considered when choosing between these two medications.” The findings suggest that aflibercept’s much higher price tag — it costs about $2,000 per treatment while bevacizumab costs only $100 per treatment — might be worth it. The study was funded by the U.S. National Eye Institute. AMD is the most common cause of vision loss among people 50 and older, affecting more than 7 million Americans. Of these, nearly 2 million who suffer from advanced AMD will lose their vision, the researchers noted. These patients include those who have wet AMD, which is characterized by the growth of abnormal blood vessels in the retina that can bleed or leak damaging fluids into light-sensing tissue. Treatment of wet AMD… read on > read on >

A high number of preteens and teens in the United States have viewed pornography and many have also sent or received nude or seminude photos — sexting — over their smartphones, a new study reveals. “The prevalence rates we found in this study suggest that school counselors must be prepared to talk about sexting and pornography use with students, and to change the narrative about these behaviors,” said Amanda Giordano, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the University of Georgia Early College of Education, in Athens. “It’s important that students know that sending a sext is not a new requirement for romantic relationships and that pornography does not reflect expectations for sexual activity,” Giordano added in a university news release. For the study, the researchers questioned 350 students, aged 12 to 17 years. The investigators found that 15% had sent a sext to someone. About 25% had ever received a sext. About 25% had ever been asked to send a sext. About 12% said they had felt pressure by someone to send a sext in the past year. This pressure was concerning because of the unintended consequences of sexting, such as having the picture forwarded to others, put online or used as a form of blackmail to get the person to meet other demands, the researchers said. “If your boyfriend, girlfriend… read on > read on >

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 7, 2022 (HealthDay News) – How singers use their voices, including the genre of music they perform, has an impact on vocal injury, new research finds. Dr. Lesley Childs, medical director of the Voice Center at University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, led a two-part study of more than 1,000 patient records. The study looked at phonotraumatic lesions in patients’ vocal folds, including benign nodules, pseudocysts and hemorrhagic polyps. All of these can lead to hoarseness and are typically caused by overuse or straining of the voice. Researchers found that nodules were almost equally found across all singing genres. Opera singers had a significantly higher proportion of pseudocysts. People who sang in the praise/worship genre had significantly more hemorrhagic polyps. “These findings, combined with clinical observations, suggest that nodules may be related more to the speaking voice than the singing voice since they were more or less equally distributed across genres,” Childs said in a news release. “At the same time, the style of singing, acoustic environment and vocal demands unique to each genre clearly impact both the frequency and type of injuries that develop, with opera singers presenting with more chronic injury patterns and praise/worship singers presenting with more acute injuries.” In the first part of the study, researchers looked at 712 singers who had voice disorders between June 2017 and December… read on > read on >

Researchers may have sniffed out why colds are more likely in wintertime: The answer may lie within the nose. A previously unidentified immune response inside the nose is responsible for fighting off the viruses that cause upper respiratory infections, according to researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Northeastern University in Boston. Unfortunately, cold weather inhibits this protective response, making it more likely that a person will come down with anything from a cold to COVID-19. The new study offers the first biological explanation why respiratory virus infections are more likely to spike in colder seasons, researchers said. “Conventionally, it was thought that cold and flu season occurred in cooler months because people are stuck indoors more where airborne viruses could spread more easily,” said senior researcher Dr. Benjamin Bleier, director of Otolaryngology Translational Research at Mass Eye and Ear. “Our study, however, points to a biological root cause for the seasonal variation in upper respiratory viral infections we see each year, most recently demonstrated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said in a hospital news release. The nose is a prime entry point for viruses or bacteria, which can either be inhaled or directly deposited if a person does something like rub their nose. Once inside the nose, germs work their way backward up the airway and into the body, infecting the cells along the… read on > read on >

Shehzin Tietjen was 27 years old when she felt a lump in one of her breasts while in the shower. That discovery led to a confirmation of breast cancer, an unexpected jolt at her age. “I was really shocked,” said Tietjen, who lives in Atlanta. Though breast cancer is more common in postmenopausal women, about 9% of new breast cancer cases occur in women under 45. Many breast cancer treatments, including chemotherapy, can affect fertility. While Tietjen soon began talking with doctors about preserving her fertility, that’s not a conversation all young women with a similar diagnosis have, according to a survey of more than 700 breast cancer patients by Living Beyond Breast Cancer (LBBC), a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit. Only 49% of survey respondents reported discussing fertility issues with their health care providers, just slightly higher than eight years earlier. Two-thirds of women whose breast cancer was diagnosed before age 45 said it had significant impacts on their sexual health. But 86% said their health care provider was unable to address these issues. Study leader Arin Ahlum Hanson, director of outreach for LBBC, said addressing these fertility and sexual health issues is a critical need. “What is really important is that those conversations are had early on at that point of diagnosis to help young women make those decisions to pursue fertility preservation or just be… read on > read on >

Money may not buy happiness, but it might give low-income obese people an extra incentive to lose weight, a new study suggests. The study, of people from urban neighborhoods, found that cash rewards encouraged participants to shed some extra pounds, versus a weight-loss program with no financial bonuses. And the effects were similar whether people were rewarded for reaching their weight-loss goals, or simply for making healthy lifestyle changes. Over six months, 39% to 49% of people given cash incentives lost at least 5% of their starting weight. That compared with 22% of study participants given no monetary motivation. The caveat, experts said, is that no one knows how financial rewards pan out in the long run. In this study, the weight-loss differences among the groups had begun to narrow by the one-year point. “This would only be impactful if people could keep losing weight at this rate over the longer term,” said Karen Glanz, of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics in Philadelphia. Glanz, who was not involved in the study, said that researchers still have much to learn about the role for financial incentives in weight loss — including how and when it’s best to use them. The concept itself is not new. Studies have suggested that offering people money in exchange for lost pounds can bear fruit… read on > read on >

While people’s immune system T-cells can still target the spike proteins of the COVID coronavirus, their power to do so is waning over time, researchers report. As the virus continues to mutate, T-cell recognition of newer variants may be lost, the researchers cautioned. That could lead to decreasing overall protection by the immune system. Despite the fact that T-cells were still able to recognize parts of the spike protein, called epitopes, including those in the omicron variant, recognition was worse in seven of 10 epitopes that were mutated in different variants, the study found. “Our paper shows that although most people have a diverse T-cell response against the virus, some responses are less effective against omicron. As further variants of concern are identified we will need to consider carefully how new viral mutations affect T-cell recognition,” said lead study author Heather Long, an associate professor in the Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the University of Birmingham in England. “The vaccines currently in use are still vital to protect us from COVID-19,” Graham Taylor, an associate professor in the institute, added in a university news release. “Should SARS-CoV-2 continue to mutate to evade the immune system, our findings will help researchers to develop new vaccines better suited to those variants.” As part of the study, researchers tested CD4+ T-cells collected early in the pandemic from… read on > read on >