Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

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 >

The repeat head injuries suffered by football players, boxers and other athletes appear to affect brain health long after players have given up their sport. New research from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore could explain why: The persistence in the brain of inflammation tied to the original injury or injuries. “The findings show that participating in repeated collision sports like football may have a direct link to long-term inflammation in the brain,” study senior author Dr. Jennifer Coughlin said in a university news release. She’s an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Hopkins. Key to the new findings is a brain “repair protein,” with the unwieldy name of 18 kDa translocator protein — shortened to TSPO. Whenever a brain sustains injury, TSPO levels quickly rise as the brain tries to heal. TSPO is closely associated with immune cells in the brain called microglia, Coughlin’s group noted. It was thought that spikes in TSPO were only temporary. However, prior studies revealed that levels of the pro-inflammatory protein can remain elevated for up to 17 years. In the new study, the Hopkins team examined PET and MRI brain scans of 27 former NFL players, taken between 2018 and early 2023. They used the scans to compare levels of TSPO in the football players’ brains to those seen in brain scans of 27 former pro college… read on > read on >

Migraine sufferers would do better to talk to their doctor about a prescription drug than reaching for a bottle of ibuprofen, a new study finds. Drugs like triptans, ergots and anti-emetics can be two to five times more effective for treating migraines than ibuprofen, according to a report published Nov. 30 in the journal Neurology. “These results confirm that triptans should be considered earlier for treating migraine, rather than reserving their use for severe attacks,” said researcher Dr. Chia-Chun Chiang, a neurologist with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. People in the throes of a migraine experience intense throbbing head pain, sensitivity to light and sound, nausea or vomiting, and even thinking issues. There are many treatments available, but not much head-to-head data comparing their effectiveness, Chiang said. For this study, Chiang and her colleagues tracked more than 3 million migraines self-reported by nearly 300,000 people using a smartphone app. The app allows users to monitor the frequency of their migraines, the triggers that caused them, the symptoms they had and the effectiveness of the medication they took. Participants reported trying different medications for their migraines a total of 4.7 million times, and noted whether each helped or not. Researchers used that information to calculate the relative effectiveness of each drug, evaluating a total 25 meds across seven drug classes. The top three classes of… read on > read on >

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 29, 2023 (Healthday News) — The diabetes drug Mounjaro prompted more weight loss among overweight and obese adults than Ozempic did in a real-world setting, researchers report. Both Mounjaro (tirzepatide) and Ozempic (semaglutide) mimic the effects of the gut hormone GLP-1, which triggers insulin production, helps control appetite and slows the movement of food through the stomach. But Mounjaro also stimulates a second gut hormone known as GIP, which may explain the findings, the investigators said. Both medications treat type 2 diabetes, but they have become wildly popular because they also help people shed unwanted pounds. Because of that, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved higher doses of both Mounjaro and Ozempic for weight loss under the brand names Zepbound and Wegovy, respectively. The new study was published recently on the preprint server MedRxiv and hasn’t yet undergone peer-review so should be considered preliminary. Many doctors have suspected Moinjaro might be more potent after seeing how their diabetes patients fared on both drugs, CNN reported. However, there haven’t been many studies that compared the drugs head-to-head, especially in people who don’t have diabetes. “Over 70% of American adults have overweight or obesity, and so there’s this huge potential for these medications to be used and [there’s] really a lack of information,” lead study author Dr. Patricia Rodriguez, a senior applied scientist at Truveta Research,… read on > read on >

It might seem that surfing the web could cause a person’s mental health to suffer, but a landmark new study has concluded that internet use poses no major threat to people’s psychological well-being. Researchers compared country-level internet and broadband use to the mental well-being of millions of people in dozens of countries, and came away with no evidence that the internet is causing widespread psychological harm. “We looked very hard for a ‘smoking gun’ linking technology and well-being and we didn’t find it,” said senior researcher Andrew Przybylski, a professor of human behavior and technology at the Oxford Internet Institute in the U.K. The team also looked more closely at specific age groups as well as gender and, again, came up empty-handed — refuting concerns that internet use might be harming the psychological health of younger people and women. “We meticulously tested whether there is anything special in terms of age or gender, but there is no evidence to support popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk,” Przybylski noted in an Oxford news release. In fact, average life satisfaction has increased more for females over the past two decades, researchers found. For the study, researchers compared data from two different reports on well-being and mental health against the amount of internet and smartphone use. They examined data on the mental health of 2… read on > read on >

Personal trainers can help people increase their strength and their fitness. Could a “brain coach” be just as useful in preventing Alzheimer’s’ disease? A new study suggests that personalized health and lifestyle changes can delay or even prevent memory loss for older adults at high risk of Alzheimer’s or dementia. People who received personal coaching experienced a 74% boost in their thinking and memory tests compared with those who didn’t receive such attention. “This is the first personalized intervention, focusing on multiple areas of cognition, in which risk factor targets are based on a participant’s risk profile, preferences and priorities, which we think may be more effective than a one-size-fits-all approach,” said co-lead researcher Dr. Kristine Yaffe, vice chair of research in psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). For the study, researchers recruited 172 participants and assigned half to receive personal training in health and lifestyle areas believed to increase Alzheimer’s risk. The participants were between the ages of 70 and 89, and all had at least two of eight risk factors for dementia — physical inactivity, high blood pressure, uncontrolled diabetes, poor sleep, use of prescription medications associated with risk of cognitive decline, high depressive symptoms, social isolation and smoking. Patients met with a nurse and health coach and selected specific risk factors they wanted to address. They set personal goals… read on > read on >