Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

MONDAY, Dec.2, 2024Doctors have potent new weapons against the deadliest cancer in America and they want to make sure they’re on the radar of current and former smokers. “Lung cancer screening is the most powerful tool we have to lower cancer [deaths],” said Dr. Timothy Mullett, medical director of the Markey Cancer Center Network and immediate past chairman of the American Cancer Society Commission on Cancer. “Early-stage cancer is more treatable and at a lower cost than late-stage disease, and patients are more likely to get back to work,” he noted. To mark Lung Cancer Awareness Month, the American College of Surgeons (ACS) is highlighting the importance of smoking cessation in preventing lung cancer and sharing insights about screening and the impact of biomarker testing. Get screened While early detection saves lives, only about 6% of eligible patients are screened regularly. A low-dose CT scan is recommended for adults between the ages of 50 and 80 who have a 20-pack-year smoking history. That’s equivalent to smoking a pack a day for 20 years or two packs a day for 10. The scan takes just a few minutes. “If you’re eligible, talk to your doctor about getting screened,” Dr. Luis Armando Godoy, of UC Davis Health, advised in an ACS news release. Treatment advances Advances in personalized therapies offer hope even when cancer is in a… read on > read on >

The collected evidence is in, and drinking about eight cups of water per day is, in fact, good for you. So says a University of California San Francisco team who crunched the data from 18 randomized controlled trials. “For such a ubiquitous and simple intervention, the evidence hasn’t been clear and the benefits were not well-established, so we wanted to take a closer look,” explained study senior author Dr. Benjamin Breyer, chair of the university’s Department of Urology. “To our knowledge, this is the first study assessing the benefits of water consumption on clinical outcomes broadly,” he said in a university news release. Breyer’s team published its findings Nov. 25 in JAMA Network Open. The best evidence that lots of water is good for you came from studies citing its power to prevent kidney stones, and to also help folks lose weight. If you’ve had a kidney stone, drinking eight cups of water each day can help prevent a recurrence, the evidence showed. Drinking six or more cups of water per day also seemed to help adults shed excess pounds, studies showed, although eight cups per day didn’t help teens lose weight. Headaches seemed to ease in frequency if adults upped their water intake, and other trials found that lots of water could help prevent migraines and urinary tract infections. Having about four cups… read on > read on >

Bouncing a soccer ball off the head during play could be doing real damage to the brain, a new study suggests. MRI brain scans of male and female soccer athletes suggests that lots of “heading” could damage areas of the brain already known to be linked to debilitating concussion-linked conditions, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). “The potential effects of repeated head impacts in sport are much more extensive than previously known and affect locations similar to where we’ve seen CTE pathology,” said study senior author Dr. Michael Lipton, professor of radiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. “This raises concern for delayed adverse effects of head impacts.” He and his colleagues are slated to present their findings in Chicago next week at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Previous studies have suggested that head impacts of all kinds might be linked to neurological issues such as CTE, according to an RSNA news release. In the new study, Lipton’s groups used a high-tech form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track changes in “microstructures” close to the surface of the brains of 352 amateur soccer players and 77 “non-collision” athletes, such as runners. Participants ranged from 18 to 53 years of age. Players who had engaged in a lot of soccer headers showed changes in the brain’s… read on > read on >

The cutting-edge weight-loss drug Zepbound can protect obese people from developing type 2 diabetes, a new clinical trial has found. Zepbound reduced the risk of diabetes in obese prediabetic patients by more than 90% during a three-year period compared to placebo, trial results show. “These results show that type 2 diabetes may be prevented, even in people who are on the verge of it, by using a medicine that causes weight loss,” researcher Dr. Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, said in a news release. People with prediabetes have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, but have not yet developed full-blown type 2 diabetes. Obesity is a risk factor both for prediabetes and for type 2 diabetes. For this clinical trial, more than 2,500 obese people were randomly assigned to receive one of three different doses of Zepbound, or a placebo, for more than three years. Of those patients, more than 1,000 had prediabetes. Zepbound (tirzepatide) in an injectable drug that activates receptors in the body for glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP) receptors, researchers said. These receptors help slow digestion, reduce appetite and improve blood sugar control. GLP-1 drugs have been shown to promote significant weight loss. In this trial, patients taking Zepbound had lost 12% to 20% of their initial weight… read on > read on >

The outgoing Biden administration will propose that pricey GLP-1 obesity medications such as semaglutide (Wegovy), and tirzepatide (Zepbound) be covered by Medicare and Medicaid. However, the move would have to be approved by the new Trump administration. Right now, a law passed by Congress two decades ago prevents the Medicare and Medicaid from covering any “weight loss” drug. Under the Biden proposal, that rule would be circumvented by calling the medications treatments for the disease of obesity and its related health issues. “We don’t want to see people having to wait until they have these additional diseases before they get treatment,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told The New York Times. Under the proposed rule, every state Medicaid program would be required to cover the cost of the medications, which currently are priced at more than $1,200 per month before any drug company discounts. According to CMS estimates, passage of the rule would open access to the weight-loss medications to 3.4 million potential new patients under Medicare and another 4 million under Medicaid. But the incoming Trump administration would need to sign off on the new legislation. The person tapped by the president-elect to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, has long been a skeptic of the drugs, asserting that weight… read on > read on >

The potential health benefits of GLP-1 diabetes and weight loss meds keep piling up: New research shows they may also shield your kidneys from harm. In the largest study to date on the effects of the drugs on the kidneys, researchers found GLP-1s help the protect the organs in people with or without diabetes. GLP-1s include blockbuster diabetes medicines such as Ozempic and its weight-loss spinoff, Wegovy. “This is the first study to show a clear benefit of GLP-1 receptor agonists on kidney failure or end-stage kidney disease,” said study lead author Dr. Sunil Badve, a kidney specialist and professorial fellow at The George Institute for Global Health in Sydney, Australia. The study suggests that GLP-1s “have a key role in kidney-protective and heart-protective treatment for patients with common medical conditions like type 2 diabetes, overweight or obesity with cardiovascular disease, or chronic kidney disease,” he said in a news release. The research was published Nov. 25 in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. Badve and colleagues conducted what’s called a meta-analysis — a large review of data from multiple studies, in this case 11 large-scale clinical trials of GLP-1s involving more than 85,000 people in all. Close to 68,000 had type 2 diabetes, while just over 17,600 were overweight or obese with heart disease but did not have type 2 diabetes. The GLP-1 medicines taken… read on > read on >

TUESDAY, Nov. 26, 2024 (HeathDay News) — A potentially important form of brain signaling appears to be affected whenever concussion strikes, according to new research involving high school football players. “This study is important because it provides insight into both the mechanisms and the clinical implications of concussion in the maturing adolescent brain,” said study co-lead author Alex Wiesman, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. He and his colleagues are slated to present their findings next week in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). As the researchers explained, multiple concussion studies have already examined the effects of head injury on what’s known as periodic or “rhythmic” brain signaling, which is crucial to attention, movement or sensory processing. But much less has been known about non-rhythmic brain signaling. “Most previous neuroscience research has focused on rhythmic brain signaling, which is also called periodic neurophysiology,” explained study lead author Kevin Yu, a neuroscience student at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. “On the other hand, aperiodic neurophysiology refers to brain signals that are not rhythmic.” For a long time, neurologists haven’t paid a lot of attention to aperiodic signaling, considering it mere “background noise” in the brain. But that perspective is beginning to change. “While it’s often overlooked, aperiodic activity is important… read on > read on >

Preschoolers prone to tantrums appear to have a higher risk of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by the time they reach school age, a new study says. Young children who struggle to control their emotions and behavior have more ADHD symptoms by age 7, researchers found. Their conduct is more likely to be poor and they are more apt to suffer from emotional problems like sadness or worry by that age, results show. “Emotion regulation skills are acquired from early in life and are thought to strengthen gradually over childhood,” lead researcher Aja Murray, a lecturer in psychology with the University of Edinburgh in the U.K., said in a news release. “Children, however, acquire these skills at different rates and slower acquisition may serve as a marker for neurodevelopmental and mental health issues.” For the study, researchers analyzed data on roughly 19,000 young people born between 2000 and 2002 in the U.K. Results showed that ADHD symptoms are significantly associated with a child’s tendency to have extreme emotional responses and slower development of their ability to regulate those emotions, researchers said. The less able children were able to manage their emotions, the greater their risk for ADHD, results show. This association held even after other risk factors for ADHD and mental health problems were taken into account, researchers said. Based on these results, early testing might be… read on > read on >

A cancer diagnosis can bring overwhelming stress and depression to women, but new research suggests yoga can help ease that emotional toll. “A wellness intervention that integrates yoga and psychological tools may strengthen the connections among the mind, body and spirit, leading to a better and more meaningful quality of life,” said study senior author Deidre Pereira. She’s an associate professor of clinical and health psychology at the University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville. The new research involved 51 women who’d been diagnosed with some form of gynecological, gastrointestinal or thoracic cancer. According to a university news release, they “enrolled in a 10-week, in-person, group intervention that used breathing and relaxation techniques, mindfulness meditation, psychotherapy skills and gentle yoga aimed at improving physical and mental quality of life.” Based on answers to detailed questionnaires, Pereira’s team found women reporting a lowering of their symptoms of anxiety and depression after completing the program. When it came to the physical symptoms of depression, the program was especially helpful to women of color, the researchers noted. “Quality of life during and beyond cancer treatment is a critical component of whole-person cancer care,” explained study co-lead author Elizabeth Kacel, a recent graduate of the clinical psychology doctoral program at UF. It’s the program’s use of yoga/meditation alongside psychotherapeutic training that really seemed to help, she added. “The combination of both… read on > read on >

New research suggests that a thyroid medication often prescribed to older Americans may be linked to a common problem in old age — bone loss. Levothyroxine is a synthetic hormone often prescribed to treat hypothyroidism. People with the condition don’t make enough thyroxine on their own, which can cause weight gain, fatigue, hair loss and eventually lead to serious, even deadly, complications. An estimated 23 million Americans take levothyroxine daily. Some take it for so long that it’s no longer clear why it was prescribed to begin with or even if it is still needed, researchers said. “Data indicates that a significant proportion of thyroid hormone prescriptions may be given to older adults without hypothyroidism,” said study leader Dr. Elena Ghotbi, a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. A normal range for thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) in the blood is between 0.4 to 5.0 microunits per milliliter. Excess TSH has been tied to increased risk of broken bones. For this study, Ghotbi’s team wanted to learn whether using levothyroxine and having hormone levels on the high end of that range might cause more bone loss over time in older adults with normal thyroid function. They drew on data from 445 participants in a Baltimore-based study of older adults with normal thyroid levels. Participants included 49 women and 32 men taking… read on > read on >