Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

Patients who lose the use of their hands and arms after a stroke or traumatic brain injury could regain some function through deep brain stimulation (DBS), new research demonstrates. DBS involves surgical placement of electrodes to deliver electrical impulses to areas of the brain regulating specific activity. It is often used to treat control movement problems associated with Parkinson’s disease. “Arm and hand paralysis significantly impacts the quality of life of millions of people worldwide,” said corresponding author Elvira Pirondini, an assistant professor of physical medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. “Currently, we don’t have effective solutions for patients who suffered a stroke or traumatic brain injury, but there is growing interest in the use of neuro-technologies that stimulate the brain to improve upper-limb motor functions.” The team proposed using DBS to stimulate a structure deep within the brain called the motor thalmus, a key hub of movement control. Because this had never been done before, they first tested it in monkeys, which have the same links as people between the motor cortex and muscles. As soon as the stimulation was turned on, the monkeys had significantly better muscle activation and grip. No involuntary movement was seen. Then, they repeated the procedure using the same stimulation settings in a human volunteer who was already set to undergo DBS implantation to help with arm tremors caused… read on > read on >

Food left in the stomach or stool left in the bowel can impede a doctor’s ability to successfully perform an endoscopy or colonoscopy. Now, research finds this scenario is more likely if the patient is taking popular new weight-loss meds such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro or Zepbound. For these patients, “inadequate bowel preparation was more common” before endoscopy or colonoscopy, according to researchers led by Dr. Ruchi Mathur. She’s an endocrinologist and gastrointestinal researcher at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. Mathur’s team published its findings Oct. 1 in the journal JAMA Network Open. As the researchers noted, prior studies have suggested that people taking GLP-1`medications might face a higher odds of “aspirating” food when undergoing procedures requiring anesthesia. Because the drugs can also cause constipation and a delayed emptying of the stomach, Mathur’s group wondered if the meds might leave residues in the digestive tract that could interfere with the clarity of endoscopic procedures. To find out, they looked at endoscopies and colonoscopies performed on 209 patients who were all overweight or obese (mean BMI of about 34) and averaging about 63 years of age. Seventy of the participants were taking a GLP-1 medicine, with almost half of that group taking Ozempic or Wegovy. The other 139 participants were not taking a GLP-1 med. For 23 folks undergoing an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD), where a camera is snaked through… read on > read on >

Following the historic destruction of Hurricane Helene, many Americans must now return to their mangled homes and begin the heartbreaking task of clean-up. After making landfall in Florida near Tallahassee as a ferocious Cat 4 storm on Thursday, Helene caused record-breaking storm surges in Tampa, flash flooding in Atlanta and power outages, massive flooding and mud slides in the mountains of North Carolina. Even as rescuers continued to search on Monday for survivors, more than 120 people across six states have already been confirmed dead. For survivors, federal health experts warn they must be prepared for the many dangers that likely await them when they return to their homes. Perhaps the most pressing is the risk of electricity or gas leaks, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Be sure to go back during daylight, so you don’t need to try to turn on any lights, and use battery-powered flashlights or lanterns rather than candles, gas lanterns or torches. First and foremost, if there’s standing water and you can turn off the house’s main power from a dry location, do that first — before you start cleaning up, the CDC says. It’s a different story if accessing the main power switch means entering standing water. In that setting, you need to call an electrician to turn it off. “Never turn power on or… read on > read on >

More than 14 million seniors a year take a tumble, and those falls can be life-changing. “The relationship between falls and dementia appears to be a two-way street,” said Molly Jarman, senior author of a new study showing that cognitive decline may increase an older person’s risk for a fall and the trauma that follows a fall may also speed up progress of dementia. The study by Jarman, deputy director of the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and her colleagues notes that falls are among the most common reason for trauma center admissions and the No. 1 cause of injury in older adults. “Thus, falls may be able to act as precursor events that can help us identify people who need further cognitive screening,” Jarman said in a hospital news release. Her team looked at Medicare claims data for more than 2.4 million seniors who suffered a traumatic injury and how they were doing a year later. Half of the patients were injured in a fall. Of those, 10.6% were later diagnosed with dementia, the study found. Falls increased the risk of a future dementia diagnosis by 21%. As such, the researchers recommend that older adults who go to the hospital for care after a fall undergo cognitive screening either in the ER or in the hospital.… read on > read on >

There’s a strong link between self-esteem and good times between the sheets, a new study suggests. Folks ranking high in self-esteem also tended to rate their sex lives as satisfying, reported a team from the Universities of Zurich and Utrecht, in Switzerland and The Netherlands. The effect could work in both directions, researchers believe. “People with higher self-esteem tend not only to be sexually active more often, but also to be more satisfied with their sexual experiences,” said lead authors Elisa Weber and Wiebke Bleidorn, from the department of psychology at the University of Zurich. The data was based on interviews conducted over 12 years with more than 11,000 German adults, averaging about 26 years of age. They were asked questions such as, “How satisfied are you with your sex life?” and “How often have you had sexual intercourse, on average, during the past three months?,” or asked to agree or disagree with statements such as “Sometimes I believe that I’m worthless” or “I like myself just the way I am.” There was a strong correlation between higher levels of self-esteem and an active, satisfying sex life, the researchers found. The relationship seemed “reciprocal” over time: For example, as levels of self-esteem climbed higher, sex got more satisfying, too. And as folks enjoyed happier sex lives, self-esteem levels rose. They researchers noted that sexual satisfaction… read on > read on >

Folks who depend on e-bikes and powered scooters to get around know they might get hurt, but they might be surprised by just how likely that really is. Rates of injury on the trendy transportation devices skyrocketed between 2019 and 2022, Columbia University researchers report. E-bike injuries jumped 293%; those involving powered scooters were up 88%. “Our results underscore the urgent need to improve micromobility injury surveillance and to identify strategies for cities to improve user’s safety so that micromobility can be a safe, sustainable, equitable and healthy option for transportation,” said first study author Kathryn Burford. She’s a postdoctoral fellow in epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. Micromobility covers any small, low-speed, human- or electric-powered transportation device. And these devices are growing in popularity: Between 2019 and 2022, e-bike sales surpassed those of electric cars and trucks — up by a whopping 269%. Drawing from a nationwide injury surveillance system, Burford’s team looked at patterns for more than 1.9 million injuries associated with e-bikes, bicycles, hoverboards and powered scooters. The sample included data from 96 U.S. hospitals. Of 48.8 million injuries that resulted in an ER visit between 2019 and 2022, 1.9 million involved micromobility devices. Bicycles were No. 1, accounting for 33.2 of every 1,000 ER injuries. Powered scooters were No. 2, with 3.4 of every… read on > read on >

Four out of five pregnant women will become deficient in an essential nutrient, iron, by their third trimester, a new study finds. The researchers and other experts are now advocating that iron levels be routinely checked during a pregnancy for the safety of a mother and her baby. Right now, guidelines from the United States Preventive Services Taskforce (USPSTF), an influential independent panel of medical experts, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) do not advocate for regular iron checks. However, the new findings suggest that both groups should “change their approach to diagnosis to screen all pregnant women for iron deficiency, irrespective of the presence or absence of anemia, and recommend supplementation when present for the most frequent nutrient deficiency disorder that we encounter,” wrote the authors of an editorial accompanying the new study. The findings were published Sept. 26 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The new research was led by Dr. Elaine McCarthy, a lecturer in nutrition at the School of Food and Nutritional Sciences at University College Cork, in Ireland. Her team noted that pregnancy brings on a 10-fold surge in uptake of dietary iron to supply the needs of both the fetus and the mom-to-be. A woman’s bodily “iron stores” at the beginning of her pregnancy can help supply much of this needed iron, but McCarthy’s team… read on > read on >

Brain damage that veterans suffered from flying shrapnel has provided a major clue that could lead to better treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new study says. Veterans who suffered shrapnel damage connected to their amygdala, the fear center of the brain, were less likely to develop PTSD, researchers reported Sept. 24 in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The results suggest that PTSD could be treated by using electrical pulses to disrupt brain networks linked to the amygdala, they added. “This is a very real brain disease, and we can localize it to certain brain circuits,” said corresponding author Dr. Shan Siddiqi, a psychiatrist in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics. “Unfortunately, people sometimes assume PTSD has to do with how mentally strong or weak a person is, but it has nothing to do with moral character.” Researchers previously have uncovered brain networks to successfully treat depression and addiction using neurostimulation, and have been trying to locate the network associated with PTSD. For this study, the research team examined 193 patients from the Vietnam Head Injury Study who’d suffered brain injuries from shrapnel penetrating their skulls. “Some of these veterans who got shrapnel in their head went on to develop PTSD, but many of them did not,” said study co-author Dr. Michael Fox, director of the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics.… read on > read on >

In a finding that suggests Ozempic and Wegovy have powers that extend beyond weight loss, a new study finds the medications might also lower people’s risk of opioid overdose. People with type 2 diabetes prescribed semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) had a significantly lower risk of an opioid OD than patients taking any of eight other diabetic medications, researchers found. The results show “semaglutide as a possible new treatment for combating this terrible [opioid] epidemic,” said lead researcher Rong Xu, a biomedical informatics professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. For the study, researchers analyzed six years of medical data for nearly 33,000 patients with opioid use disorder who also had type 2 diabetes. The data found that those prescribed semaglutide were less likely to suffer from an opioid overdose. The new study was published Sept. 25 in the journal JAMA Network Open. If this effect is confirmed in clinical trials, semaglutide could provide a new means of protecting people suffering from opioid addiction, Xu said in a university news release. About 107,500 people died from drug ODs in 2023 in the United States, mainly from opioids, researchers said in background notes. About 72% of drug ODs involve opioids. Only about a quarter of people with opioid addiction are taking effective medicines to prevent overdoses, and half discontinue treatment within six months, researchers said. “Not everyone… read on > read on >

During a tense hearing before a Senate committee on Tuesday, Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen faced tough questions over the company’s high prices for its blockbuster drugs Ozempic and Wegovy. While testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Jørgensen shifted the blame for those prices to pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs), explaining that Ozempic and Wegovy would likely no longer be offered by PBMs if they had a lower list price, NBC News reported. A “high list price,” he explained, “is more likely to lead to more access to patients,” because PBMs can get larger rebates with higher-priced drugs. Still, Committee Chair Sen. Bernie Sanders did get Jørgensen to agree to meet with PBMs to discuss lowering the cost of Ozempic and Wegovy, NBC News reported. Sanders noted that he had received commitments in writing from “all the major PBMs” — UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Rx, CVS Health’s Caremark and Cigna’s Express Scripts — that if Novo Nordisk substantially reduced the list price, they wouldn’t take Ozempic and Wegovy off their formulary lists. PBMs work with insurance companies to negotiate discounts or rebates on drugs in return for coverage. PBMs have been criticized for pushing patients to higher-priced drugs, NBC News reported. For months, Sanders has railed against how much Novo Nordisk charges Americans for both Ozempic (used to treat type 2 diabetes) and… read on > read on >