Health/Fitness « Weekly Gravy

Dozens of over-the-counter lubricating eyedrops and artificial tears faced recall in 2023, due to contamination and unsafe manufacturing practices. “This year, we’ve seen an especially large number of recalls in ophthalmologic products,” said Gary Novack, a clinical professor with the UC Davis Health Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences in Davis, Calif. People who regularly use eye drops to fend off dry eyes or help with contact lenses should be aware of these recalls, and take steps to protect themselves, Novack said. “Now that the public health emergency phase of the pandemic is over, the FDA is doing more inspections and they are finding a number of issues at manufacturing plants,” Novack explained in a university news release. The recalls began in February with three brands taken off shelves, including one linked to serious infections, vision loss and four deaths, Novack said. “It’s very rare to get infections from eye drops. However, what we learned this year is that it can happen,” Novack said. “It’s serious not only for potentially losing vision, but in some rare cases patients developed systemic infections and died.” Additional recalls followed in August, October and November, leaving consumers confused about whether any over-the-counter eye drops are safe to use. Products like eye drops are particularly tricky to manufacture because they need to be sterile and germ-free, and they must be… read on > read on >

Kids with emotional problems or ADHD can find the holidays a very challenging time, as all the routines that provide a sense of order are jumbled in a whirl of activities. The kids are home from school and restless, their parents are hauling them along to Christmas shopping and holiday gatherings, and they’re eating lots of heavy meals and sugary treats. But there are ways to limit the stress that the holidays can place on kids with depression, anxiety, an eating disorder or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), said Melissa Meyer, a child psychiatry specialist at DMG Children’s Rehabilitative Services in Phoenix. Communication is key when it comes to outings, Meyer said. Knowing what will happen can help decrease a child’s anxiety. For example, let children know what’s going to be happening ahead of time – how long you’ll be out, who will be with you, what kind of food they can expect. And don’t be afraid to share with your child if you’re feeling stressed, tired or anxious, Meyer said. “He or she will take comfort in knowing that even adults get nervous and stressed during the holidays,” Meyer said. Sleep is another important component to maintaining your child’s mood, Meyer said. Kids with emotional issues need good sleep, at least eight to 10 hours a night. Meyer also cautions against using screens as a… read on > read on >

Doctors who overprescribe antibiotics are often blamed for medication-resistant illnesses, but new research points to another potential culprit: air pollution. Controlling air pollution could reduce antibiotic resistance, greatly reducing deaths and economic costs, according to a new in-depth global analysis were published Aug. 7 in The Lancet Planetary Health.. “Antibiotic resistance and air pollution are each in their own right among the greatest threats to global health,” said lead author Hong Chen, a professor at Zhejiang University in China. “Until now, we didn’t have a clear picture of the possible links between the two, but this work suggests the benefits of controlling air pollution could be twofold: Not only will it reduce the harmful effects of poor air quality, it could also play a major role in combatting the rise and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” Chen said in a journal news release. Some potential pathways include hospitals, farms and sewage-treatment facilities that emit and spread antibiotic-resistant particles through the air and across distances, the study found. Evidence suggests air pollution contributes to the spread of this antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to the study. Sources of air pollution called PM2.5 include industrial processes, road transportation and domestic coal and wood burning. About 7.3 billion people globally are directly exposed to unsafe average annual PM2.5 levels. About 80% of those people live in low- and middle-income countries, the… read on > read on >

The first step in treating vertigo is understanding its cause. Many conditions can trigger vertigo an expert says. Middle ear fluid, dislodged crystals in the inner ear, Meniere’s disease, vestibular neuritis and vestibular migraine all can cause vertigo, according to Dr. Mina Le. She is an otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeon with Mountainside Medical Group in New Jersey. “If your vertigo is from middle ear fluid, you likely have trouble hearing and it may sound like you’re underwater,” Le said in a news release from Hackensack Meridian Health. “You may have pain or pressure in the affected ear,” she continued. “The problem commonly begins after a head cold. A physician can look at your eardrum to confirm this diagnosis. You will get antibiotics if it’s an acute infection, and decongestants and nasal balloon therapy if it’s chronic.” Short bouts of dizziness may be due to benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). “If your vertigo only lasts for a few seconds at a time, and if it is brought on by turning your head or rolling over in bed, you most likely have BPPV, in which the crystals in your inner ear are dislodged,” Le said. “A physician can confirm this diagnosis with a Dix-Hallpike test.” If you have BPPV, you will be treated with a method called the Epley maneuver, in which the head is turned from… read on > read on >

Dandruff becomes more common in the cold winter months, when the chilly air and dry heat causes a person’s scalp to flake and itch. But while it might be an annoying and unattractive condition, dandruff doesn’t mean you are an unclean person, the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) says. “It is a common misconception that dandruff is caused by poor hygiene,” Dr. Mona Sadeghpour, a board-certified dermatologist in Pittsburgh, Pa. and Lone Tree, Colo., said in an academy news release. “Causes range from oily skin to hair care habits, along with some medical conditions.” Luckily, there are a number of effective treatments available for dandruff, the AAD says. Many folks can treat mild dandruff at home by regularly washing their hair, experts say. Folks with a more persistent case of dandruff might turn to a shampoo specially formulated to treat the condition. Effective dandruff shampoos should contain at least one of these ingredients, the AAD says: Zinc pyrithione, salicylic acid, sulfur, selenium sulfide, ketoconazole, or coal tar. If one shampoo doesn’t work, you should try alternating between shampoos containing different active ingredients, the AAD recommends. Some dandruff shampoos need to sit on your scalp for about 5 to 10 minutes before rinsing, the AAD says. Check the instructions on the bottle. People also can better treat dandruff by shampooing according to their hair type. For… read on > read on >

SATURDAY, Dec. 16It’s that time of year when your kids come home with sniffles and sore throats, but when should you worry if they have a fever? To a certain extent, fevers are the body’s natural way of fighting infection, one expert says. “Fever helps the immune system,” explained Dr. Christopher Tolcher, a pediatrician with Agoura-West Valley Pediatrics, part of the Chidlren’s Hospital of Los Angeles network. “It slows down the spread of viruses and bacteria. It helps the body make more antibodies and chemicals that fight the infection, and it helps the immune system’s cells move around better in the body.” “Fevers are almost never dangerous…,” he said in a hospital news release. “A fever has to reach 107 to cause damage to tissues. That’s extremely rare.” That said, if your child’s fever reaches 105 degrees, call your doctor. “It doesn’t mean the child is in danger, but the child should be checked by the doctor that day to see what’s going on,” Tolcher said. A normal body temperature for a child ranges from 97 to 100 degrees, with an average of around 98.6. When a person’s temperature reaches 100.4 or above, it’s considered a fever. But when is a fever considered a medical emergency? Call your child’s doctor right away for: A fever that lasts more than four to five days A fever… read on > read on >

Smoking shrinks the human brain, and once that brain mass is lost then it’s gone for good, a new study warns. Brain scans from more than 32,000 people strongly link a history of smoking with a gradual loss of brain volume. In fact, the more packs a person smoked per day, the smaller their brain volume, researchers found. The study also establishes the potential series of events that leads to smoking-related brain loss, with a genetic predisposition to smoking eventually causing decreased brain volume. “It sounds bad, and it is bad,” said senior study author Laura Bierut, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “A reduction in brain volume is consistent with increased aging,” Bierut added in a university news release. “This is important as our population gets older, because aging and smoking are both risk factors for dementia.” The study, published recently in the journal Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science, helps explain previous studies that have found smokers at higher risk for age-related brain decline and Alzheimer’s disease. “Up until recently, scientists have overlooked the effects of smoking on the brain, in part because we were focused on all the terrible effects of smoking on the lungs and the heart,” Bierut said. “But as we’ve started looking at the brain more closely, it’s become apparent that smoking is… read on > read on >

Regular exercise appears to enhance and even grow crucial areas of the human brain, new research using MRI scans shows. It’s long been known that physical activity is a brain-booster, but this international study illustrates ways this could be happening. “With comprehensive imaging scans, our study underscores the interconnected synergy between the body and the brain,” said study senior author Dr. Rajpul Attariwala, a radiologist at Prenuvo, a medical imaging center in Vancouver, Canada. Reporting recently in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Attariwala and colleagues analyzed more than 10,000 brain scans conducted at various Prenuvo centers. A pattern emerged: People who regularly engaged in running, walking or sports tended to have larger volumes of gray matter in their brains. Gray matter helps with the processing of incoming information, the researchers noted. These avid exercisers also tended to have larger volumes of white matter. White matter helps connect different brain regions and is crucial to memory. You didn’t have to run marathons to get a brain benefit, the team found. “We found that even moderate levels of physical activity, such as taking fewer than 4,000 steps a day, can have a positive effect on brain health,” study co-author Dr. David Merill said in a journal news release. He directs the Pacific Brain Health Center at Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, Calif. “This is much less… read on > read on >

Media mogul Oprah Winfrey confirmed Wednesday that she has used a weight-loss medication to help her shed pounds and get healthy. Winfrey has added the drug to a regimen that includes regular exercise and other lifestyle tweaks, People magazine reported. Weight fluctuations “occupied five decades of space in my brain, yo-yoing and feeling like why can’t I just conquer this thing, believing willpower was my failing,” Winfrey told the magazine. Her most recent weight-loss journey began after she had knee surgery in 2021. “I started hiking and setting new distance goals each week. I could eventually hike three to five miles every day and a 10-mile straight-up hike on weekends,” she said. “I felt stronger, more fit and more alive than I’d felt in years.” But that wasn’t the only change she made to her life, said Winfrey, who turns 70 in January. “I eat my last meal at 4 o’clock, drink a gallon of water a day, and use the Weight Watchers principles of counting points. I had an awareness of [weight-loss] medications, but felt I had to prove I had the willpower to do it. I now no longer feel that way.” “I was actually recommending it to people long before I was on it myself,” she noted. After an epiphany in July during a panel conversation with weight-loss experts, she changed her… read on > read on >

Being in a marriage or long-term relationship typically includes promises of monogamy, but new research shows a surprising number of folks, mostly men, are open to the idea of having another person in the mix. Fully one-third of men in the United Kingdom are open to the idea of having more than one wife or long-term girlfriend, while only 11% of women would want someone else in their relationship, results show. Those trends hold when considering both types of polygamy, researchers said. Those are polygyny, a man marrying more than one woman, or polyandry, where a woman marries more than one man, researchers found. About 9% of men said they would share their partner, versus 5% of women interested in such a relationship, according to the report in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. “This study shows that a sizable minority of people are open to such relationships, even in the U.K, where such marriages are prohibited,” said lead researcher Andrew Thomas, a senior lecturer in psychology at Swansea University in Wales. “Interestingly, many more men are open to the idea than women — though there is still interest on both sides,” Thomas added. For this study, researchers asked 393 heterosexual men and women in the U.K. how they felt about a committed partnership in which they shared their other half with someone else. “Comparing polygyny… read on > read on >