Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

The Biden administration has again delayed enacting a ban on menthol cigarettes following intense lobbying from the tobacco industry. Along with that pressure, other critics of the ban have warned that it might anger Black smokers, who use menthol cigarettes at far higher rates than whites — just as President Biden gears up to run for re-election, administration officials told the Washington Post. The delay, which was posted Wednesday, now says officials plan to finalize rules to put the ban in place in March. Officials had originally planned to finalize the rules last August and later signaled to public health groups that they hoped to finish them by January, the Post reported. Still, the ban would not likely go into effect for several years because of the legal challenges that many expect will come. But anti-smoking advocates aren’t waiting to push passage of the ban. Karen Knudsen, chief executive of the American Cancer Society, said her organization is among a coalition of public health associations that this month will take out ads in national newspapers, send letters to lawmakers and use other measures to push the Biden administration to finalize the rule sooner rather than later. “The cost of inaction is high,” Knudsen told the Post, citing projections that a ban on menthol cigarettes would save up to 650,000 lives over the next four decades. Many of the lives… read on > read on >

Games like football, soccer and rugby come to mind when thinking about sports-related concussions. But a smashing tennis shot could cause a traumatic brain injury if the ball whacks a player’s head, a new study argues. Concussions can happen if a tennis ball traveling faster than 89 miles per hour hits someone on the head, researchers report. The average serve speed in professional tennis often exceeds 100 mph for both men and women, according to the website TennisUniverse. Amateur players can’t hit the ball nearly as hard as that, but tennis ball injuries are possible, if rare, even among amateurs, the researchers said. “Understanding and protecting against head injuries induced by tennis ball impacts is very important, given that tennis is a worldwide sport with tens of millions of participants every year,” said researcher Xin-Lin Gao, a mechanical engineering professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Head injuries from a tennis ball is also more likely if the ball strikes the side of the head or if it strikes at a direct 90-degree angle, Gao and colleagues reported recently in the Journal of Applied Mechanics. The researchers came to their conclusions using a computer model similar to that which predicts head injuries that might occur in a car accident. The computer model assessed what might happen to a man’s head if hit by a tennis… read on > read on >

“Forever” PFAS chemicals appear to harm bone health in Hispanic teenagers, a new study finds. The more PFAS chemicals found in the bodies of Hispanic adolescents, the lower their bone density was, researchers report in the Dec. 6 issue of the journal Environmental Research. Peak bone mineral density in adolescence helps predict whether a person will develop osteoporosis later in life, University of Southern California researchers noted. “Many existing studies haven’t included participants this young, but we’re now able to see that this association is already happening at a time when bones are supposed to be developing,” said lead researcher Emily Beglarian, a doctoral student in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are used in a wide range of consumer products, and also are widely present in drinking water and the environment. They are called “forever chemicals” because of their carbon and fluorine molecules, one of the strongest chemical bonds possible. PFAS have been linked to reproductive problems and increased cancer risk, while a growing body of evidence has also tied the chemicals to lower bone mineral density, researchers said. But those studies have focused mainly on older whites. This research team decided to see whether the same risk holds in young Hispanics, a group that faces a heightened risk of bone… read on > read on >

Acne can be terribly embarrassing for a teenager, but a new study has found that adults’ blemishes might have even greater consequences for their social and professional reputation. People are less likely to want to be friends, have close contact or post a pic on social media with a person who has severe acne, researchers found. “Our findings show that stigmatizing attitudes about acne can impair quality of life, potentially by affecting personal relationships and employment opportunities,” said researcher Dr. John Barbieri, a dermatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “Acne is often wrongly perceived as merely a cosmetic issue,” Barbieri added. “It’s important that people with this medical problem get access to treatment, just like any other condition.” Acne occurs in a person’s hair follicles and oil glands, according to Johns Hopkins. Normally, oil from the glands travels up the hair follicles to the skin, keeping the skin moist. But if skin cells plug the follicles and block the oil, bacteria growing inside the follicles can cause pimples and cysts. For this study, Barbieri and his colleagues obtained stock photos of four adults, including men and women with either light or dark skin tone. The researchers digitally altered the pictures to create two additional versions of each, adding either mild or severe acne to the people’s faces. They then performed an experiment with… read on > read on >

The newly approved weight-loss medication known as Zepbound is now available for patients to take, drug maker Eli Lilly announced Tuesday. “Today opens another chapter for adults living with obesity who have been looking for a new treatment option like Zepbound,” Rhonda Pacheco, group vice president of Lilly Diabetes and Obesity, U.S., said in a company news release. “The availability of Zepbound in U.S. pharmacies is the first step, but we have to work hand-in-hand with employers, government and healthcare industry partners to remove barriers and make Zepbound available to those who need it,” Pacheco added. “We are excited to see growing [insurance] coverage in the marketplace, giving millions of Americans access to Zepbound.” It was only last month when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Zepbound as a weight-loss medication. Tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound, had already been approved by the FDA as a treatment for type 2 diabetes called Mounjaro. To trigger weight loss, tirzepatide mimics two hormones, GLP-1 and GIP, which stimulate the release of insulin in the body. It quells appetite and slows the rate at which food moves through the stomach, helping patients feel full. Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss medication, Wegovy, uses semaglutide, which only focuses on GLP-1. That difference translated to greater weight loss with Zepbound than Wegovy, a recent study found. Zepbound has been found to prompt up to a 20.9%… read on > read on >

Patients in the earliest stages of multiple sclerosis might develop certain symptoms that offer an early clue to the degenerative nerve disease, researchers report. Depression, constipation, urinary tract infections and sexual problems are all more likely in MS patients five years before their official diagnosis, compared with people who never develop MS, researchers found. Those conditions are also more likely to occur in people with other autoimmune diseases like lupus or Crohn’s disease, results show. These early signs “would not necessarily lead to earlier diagnosis of the disease in the general population, since these conditions are common and could also be signs of other diseases, but this information could be helpful for people who are at a higher risk of developing MS, such as people with a family history of the disease or those who show signs of MS on brain scans but do not have any symptoms of the disease,” said researcher Dr. Celine Louapre, an associate professor of neurology at Sorbonne University in Paris. MS occurs when the immune system attacks the protective sheath that covers nerve fibers, causing progressive interruption of nerve signals between the brain and the body. For the study, Louapre and her colleagues compared more than 20,000 people newly diagnosed with MS with nearly 55,000 people who do not have MS. Each MS patient was matched with three healthy people… read on > read on >

New research challenges a long-held notion that human newborns enter the world with brains that are significantly less developed than those of other primates. Babies are born extremely helpless and with poor muscle control, and human brains grow much larger and more complex than other species following birth, investigators said. Because of those observations, it’s long been believed that human newborns have brains comparatively less developed than other primates at birth. But that’s a false impression, researchers report in the Dec. 4 issue of the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Analysis of brain development patterns in 140 different mammal species has provided new insight into the evolution of human brains, by taking into account factors like fetal gestation and comparative brain size of newborns to adults. “This new work changes the overall understanding around the evolution of human brain development,” said lead researcher Aida Gomez-Robles, an associate professor of anthropology at University College London. “Humans seem so much more helpless when they’re young compared to other primates, not because their brains are comparatively underdeveloped but because they still have much further to go,” Gomez-Robles added in a university news release. Scientists typically judge brain development of different species by comparing the size of their brains as newborns to their brain size as adults, researchers said in background notes. Humans are born with a brain that’s relatively… read on > read on >

People with epilepsy suffer quicker declines in thinking than people without the brain disorder, particularly if they also have risk factors like high blood pressure or diabetes, a new study finds. The difference was significant: Over the course of the 14-year study, those with epilepsy experienced a 65% to 70% faster decline in memory and thinking skills. On top of that, having risk factors for heart disease pushed that percentage 20% higher. “While epilepsy itself is associated with [mild cognitive impairment] and dementia, this risk is substantially magnified in those who also have high blood pressure, diabetes or other cardiovascular risk factors,” said lead researcher Dr. Ifrah Zawar, an assistant professor of neurology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Researchers said their study is unique because it tracked the transition to mild cognitive impairment and dementia in more than 13,700 people who started the study with healthy brains. The participants were recruited at 39 Alzheimer’s disease centers across the United States between September 2005 and December 2021. Fewer than 1% had epilepsy, researchers said. The rate of decline from mild cognitive impairment to dementia was the same in patients with or without epilepsy. The researchers speculate that’s probably because heart risk factors play a much bigger role than epilepsy in the later stages of dementia. The findings were presented Friday at the American Epilepsy… read on > read on >

Gina Arata had a bright future, wrapping up college and preparing for law school, when a 2001 car wreck left her with lasting brain damage. After her recovery, Arata wound up taking a job sorting mail, but struggled even in that. “I couldn’t remember anything,” said Arata, who lives in Modesto with her parents. “My left foot dropped, so I’d trip over things all the time. I was always in car accidents. And I had no filter — I’d get pissed off really easily.” But Arata is doing much better now, thanks to a device that doctors surgically implanted deep inside her brain in 2018. The experimental deep-brain stimulator is carefully calibrated to feed electrical activity to neural networks damaged by Arata’s brain injury. Now, a new study from Stanford researchers details how such implants help patients with brain injuries recover some of their thinking skills. For Arata, the difference was immediate. For example, the device allowed her to rattle off a list of fruits and vegetables when asked to name items found in the produce aisle of a grocery store. But when a researcher turned the device off, she couldn’t name a single one. “Since the implant, I haven’t had any speeding tickets,” Arata added. “I don’t trip anymore. I can remember how much money is in my bank account. I wasn’t able to… read on > read on >

Doing some squats during commercial breaks or between YouTube videos can help couch potatoes keep their minds sharp, a new study suggests. Young volunteers who did short sets of squat exercises every now and then while relaxing performed better in brain games than when they simply sat around for hours, researchers report. Short bursts of exercise might help the brains of people who spend long periods on the couch or behind a desk, the study concluded. “Our half-squat intervention may be able to be used by individuals seeking to break up their sedentary behavior in an effort to preserve cognition during times, such as in the workplace,” the researchers wrote. For the study, a group of young adult volunteers participated in two scenarios: sitting without interruption for three hours; or sitting for three hours but performing a minute of half-squats every 20 minutes. In both settings, the researchers measured volunteers’ blood pressure, blood flow through the carotid artery — which accounts for 75% of total blood flow to the brain — and heart rate after 10 minutes, one hour, two hours and three hours. At the end of each trial, the volunteers completed three thinking tests. In one test, participants were asked to quickly identify if a word they were shown – “red,” “blue,” “yellow,” “green” or “black” – was printed in the same color… read on > read on >