Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

Driving at night can be risky business, as a dangerous combination of darkness and the glare of bright lights can make it hard to see the road, but one expert offers some safety tips. “If you have to drive in the evening time and you’re not comfortable, try to stick with roads that you know and make sure you know where you’re going so you don’t have to be looking at street signs, which are harder to see at night,” said Dr. Sumitra Khandelwal, a professor of ophthalmology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. If you do have to venture out in your car after dark, check your vehicle first, she stressed. “One of the first things to do for nighttime driving has nothing to do with the eyes; it’s to optimize all aspects of driving with your car that allow for better nighttime vision,” Khandelwal explained. A dirty windshield can make starbursts, halos, glares, smearing and streaking more apparent in the dark, so cleaning it is critical for clear vision. Headlights get dirty just as easily, particularly if it rains and mud or water gets splattered on them, so Khandelwal recommends wiping off any dirt or splash marks before you get behind the wheel. Even after cleaning your windshield and headlights, there are plenty of vision issues that can make it difficult for… read on > read on >

It’s known by the street name “gas station heroin,” but a new government report finds the highly addictive supplement Neptune’s Fix may also contain synthetic pot. The product has already been linked to seizures, brain swelling and hallucinations, researchers reported Thursday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC report centered on a 2023 investigation of 17 adults in New Jersey who had severe reactions after consuming Neptune’s Fix or similar products containing tianeptine. Thirteen were hospitalized in intensive care as a result. Tianeptine, an antidepressant that can act like an opioid, is sold as a dietary supplement at gas stations and convenience stores across the United States. It’s often marketed for pain relief, depression or anxiety. While not approved for use in the United States, it is approved for use in some European, Asian and Latin American countries. In the CDC study, doctors in New Jersey tested six samples of Neptune’s Fix consumed by two of the patients. They discovered the presence of more than tianeptine: kavain, a substance used for anxiety, and two different types of synthetic pot were also detected in the test samples. “It was a surprise to find those compounds in there at all,” senior study author Dr. Diane Calello, medical director of the New Jersey Poison Control Center, told NBC… read on > read on >

It might take a combination of treatments to rein in problem acne in teens and adults, updated guidelines from the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) suggest. The guidelines on the all-too-common condition (acne affects 85% of teens and many adults) haven’t undergone a revision since 2016. The 2024 updates include “discussion of new topical medications, which are directly applied to the skin, and systemic treatments, which are taken by mouth,” explained Dr. John Barbieri, co-chair of the AAD’s Acne Guideline Workgroup. The new updates are all evidence-based, with 18 recommendations in all. Four items fell under the guidelines’ “strong recommendation” header: The use of benzoyl peroxide creams to curb the amount of acne-linked bacteria on the skin The use of retinoid creams such as adapalene, tretinoin, tazarotene and trifarotene, to help clear pores and lower inflammation Oral antibiotics such as doxycycline, as well as antbiotic creams, to also help lower bacteria levels and inflammation Combination use, as needed, of all of the above The AAD also had five “good practice” recommendations for dermatologists when treating acne: The guidelines advise “combining multiple different treatment types, as this can lead to better results.” Use antibiotics sparingly, because overuse can trigger resistant strains of bacteria Using benzoyl peroxide alongside an antibiotic can lessen the risk for resistance Patients plagued by larger acne bumps may need injected corticosteroid therapy… read on > read on >

Advanced brain recording techniques have revealed how neurons in the human brain work together to produce speech. The recordings provide a detailed map of how people think about what words they want to say and then speak them aloud, researchers report in the Jan. 31 issue of the journal Nature. Specifically, the map shows how speech sounds like consonants and vowels are represented in the brain well before they are spoken, and how the brain strings them together during language production. “Although speaking usually seems easy, our brains perform many complex cognitive steps in the production of natural speech — including coming up with the words we want to say, planning the articulatory movements and producing our intended vocalizations,” said senior study author Dr. Ziv Williams, an associate professor in neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Our brains perform these feats surprisingly fast — about three words per second in natural speech — with remarkably few errors,” Williams added in a hospital news release. “Yet, how we precisely achieve this feat has remained a mystery.” The findings could form the basis of sophisticated brain-machine interfaces capable of producing synthetic speech, the researchers said. They also could provide insight into a wide array of disorders that hamper or prevent speech. “Disruptions in the speech and language networks are observed in a wide variety of neurological… read on > read on >

Certain copycat eyedrops may be contaminated and could give users an antibiotic-resistant eye infection, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Wednesday. The packaging for South Moon, Rebright and FivFivGo eyedrops mirrors the packaging for Bausch & Lomb’s Lumify eyedrops, an over-the-counter product approved for red eye relief. However, samples of the knockoff South Moon eyedrops were contaminated with Burkholderia cepacia complex, a strain of bacteria that could result in an antibiotic-resistant infection, the FDA said in a news release. B. cepacia is a known cause of infections in hospitalized patients, and poses a particular risk to people with weakened immune systems or chronic lung diseases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People with symptoms of an eye infection should talk with their doctor or seek medical care immediately, the FDA advised. Rebright tested negative for contamination, but both Rebright and South Moon lacked the active ingredient in Lumify, brimonidine tartrate. No samples of FivFivGo drops could be obtained for testing and analysis. The FDA recommends consumers not use any of the products, since they are unapproved and should not be for sale in the United States. Consumers who’ve bought these products should throw them out. The origin of the products is currently unclear, the FDA added. South Moon’s label says it is made by Shantou Cross-border Premium Products E-Commerce Co.… read on > read on >

Women with a common ovarian disorder might be more likely to have memory and thinking problems in middle age, a new study suggests. Females diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) scored lower on cognitive tests than women without the condition, according to a report published Jan. 31 in the journal Neurology. The condition specifically appeared to affect memory, attention and verbal abilities, researchers said. “Polycystic ovary syndrome is a common reproductive disorder that impacts up to 10% of women,” said researcher Dr. Heather Huddleston, director of the PCOS Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “Our results suggest that people with this condition have lower memory and thinking skills and subtle brain changes at midlife,” Huddleston said in a UCSF news release. “This could impact a person on many levels, including quality of life, career success and financial security.” Polycystic ovary syndrome is a hormonal disorder in which the ovaries produce an abnormally high amount of androgens, which are male sex hormones. The condition causes irregular menstruation, as well as excess body hair, weight gain, acne, infertility and thinning hair. Some women with PCOS wind up with ovarian cysts, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. For the study, researchers tracked more than 900 women between the ages of 18 and 30 for three decades, at which time they completed a series of cognitive tests.… read on > read on >

Radon, an invisible, naturally occurring radioactive gas, appears to raise a person’s risk of stroke, a new study suggests. Already known as the second leading cause of lung cancer, these new findings suggest exposure to radon can increase risk of stroke by as much as 14%, according to a report published Jan. 31 in the journal Neurology. “Our research found an increased risk of stroke among participants exposed to radon above — and as many as two picocuries per liter (pCi/L) below — concentrations that usually trigger Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommendations to install a home radon mitigation system,” said researcher Dr. Eric Whitsel, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Radon is produced when metals like uranium or radium break down in rocks and soil, researchers said. The gas can make its way into homes through gaps around pipes and cracks in basement walls and floors. For the new study, researchers tracked nearly 159,000 women with an average age of 63, none of whom had suffered a stroke at the start of the study. The team followed participants for an average of 13 years, during which there were nearly 7,000 strokes. Researchers used participants’ home addresses to gather radon concentration data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the EPA. EPA standards recommend that average indoor radon… read on > read on >

A walk in the woods appears to sharpen the mind better than an urban asphalt amble, a new brain scan study finds. People strolling through an arboretum at the University of Utah performed better on brain function tests than those who walked around an asphalt-laden medical campus, according to findings published recently in the journal Scientific Reports. EEG data showed that a nature walk lit up brain regions related to executive control, which influences a person’s working memory, decision-making, problem-solving and planning, researchers said. “The kinds of things that we do on an everyday basis tend to heavily use those executive attentional networks,” said researcher David Strayer, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah. “It’s an essential component of higher-order thinking.” Humans have a primal need for nature, the researchers noted. “There’s an idea called biophilia that basically says that our evolution over hundreds of thousands of years has got us to have more of a connection or a love of natural living things,” Strayer said in a university news release. “And our modern urban environment has become this dense urban jungle with cellphones and cars and computers and traffic, just the opposite of that kind of restorative environment,” he added. To see how a nature walk might affect the brain, researchers recruited 92 participants and recorded EEG readings on each immediately before and… read on > read on >

Elon Musk, co-founder of Neuralink, said this week that the company placed the first brain implant in a human over the weekend. In a statement posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter that is now owned by Musk, the billionaire said the patient was “recovering well.” He added that “initial results show promising neuron spike detection.” Musk offered no additional details about the patient. But when Neuralink announced in September that it would begin recruiting people for brain implant trials, the company said it was searching for people with quadriplegia due to spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Laura Cabrera, who researches brain science at Pennsylvania State University, told the Associated Press that even though Neuralink uses cutting-edge robotic surgery to place the device precisely in the brain, there are potential dangers to the procedure. Brain surgery is “not a trivial thing,” she said, bringing with it risks such as brain hemorrhage or seizures. “And so I think we have to be mindful that even though they’re using a novel way to implant the device, we just don’t know if it’s truly going to be a … safer approach for human patients.” Neuralink isn’t the only company developing brain-computer interface technology to treat brain disorders and overcome brain injuries. According to clinicaltrials.gov, there are more than 40 such trials in progress. Neuralink’s device… read on > read on >

It’s been a staple at Korean dinner tables for centuries, and the fermented veggie concoction known as kimchi is increasingly familiar to Americans. Now, Korean researchers say a few servings of the spicy food each day might help stave off weight gain. “Consumption of 1–3 servings/day of total kimchi was associated with a lower risk of obesity in men,” and smaller amounts were linked to similar trends among women, concluded a team led by Sangah Shin. She’s with the department of food and nutrition at Chung Ang University, in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. However, there were a couple of downsides to eating too much kimchi, her team added. First, the popular side dish contains a lot of salt, which is never great for health. Secondly, beyond the one-to-three servings per day that did show a benefit, eating more kimchi was linked with obesity overall, the study found. The research was based on data from almost 116,000 Koreans over 40 who were participating in an ongoing health study. About 79,000 were women and about 39,000 were men, and they averaged 51 years of age. Among other factors, the study used questionnaires to track what folks ate each day, and BMI and waist measurements were also obtained. As for “serving sizes,” that varied based on what type of kimchi (usually made from cabbage and/or radish) was eaten. For… read on > read on >