Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

It’s a social media darling and one of the hottest prescription medications on the U.S. market. But does Wegovy really help patients lose weight? Yes, a new study suggests. Investigators analyzed data on more than 100 people using Wegovy (semaglutide). They found that after a year participants had shed more than 13% of their body weight on average. “This medication showed superior weight-loss outcome to all previously approved anti-obesity medications that were tested,” said study lead author Dr. Wissam Ghusn, a research fellow in gastroenterology and hepatology with the Precision Medicine for Obesity Program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Semaglutide was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2017 to help control blood sugar levels and reduce the risk for heart attacks, stroke and death among patients with type 2 diabetes. For this purpose, the once-weekly injectable medication — sold under the brand name Ozempic — helps the body make more insulin, which lowers blood sugar levels for people with diabetes. But the drug was also associated with weight loss, and the FDA approved it for that purpose in 2021. Sold as Wegovy, the self-administered injectable is given at a higher once-a-week dosage of 2.4 mg. It is intended as a weight-loss medication for adults with an “overweight” body mass index (BMI) between 27 and 29 who also struggle with at… read on > read on >

(HealthDay News) – Two western U.S. states issued air quality alerts over the weekend as heavy smoke from fires blazing in Canada drifted south. Both Colorado and Montana experienced air quality issues because of dozens of Canadian fires. A third state, Utah, noted that it was beginning to see smoke, while Idaho had experienced haze last week, the Associated Press reported. “People with heart or lung disease, older adults and children should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion; everyone else should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion,” Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment said in its alert. It issued air quality alerts and advisories for the eastern part of the state, including Denver. Air quality is considered unhealthy for sensitive groups when particle pollution is between 151 and 200. Parts of Colorado’s Front Range were at 168 on Saturday, the AP reported. In the province of Alberta, Canada, fires have led to the evacuation of thousands of residents. The health impact was “very high risk” on Saturday in the cities of Calgary and Edmonton, the AP reported. The smoke in Montana was mostly in the central and eastern parts of the state. In its alert, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality advised residents to avoid outdoor exertion if they could see haze or smoke. More information The American Lung Association has more on the impact of… read on > read on >

The Atlantic hurricane season in the United States starts June 1, and some dangers might not be immediately obvious: carbon monoxide poisoning, fires and electric shock. “Hurricanes and major storms in the U.S. have increased in frequency and severity in recent years. This hurricane season may bring widespread destruction that could impact millions of Americans,” said Alex Hoehn-Saric, chair of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. “I urge consumers to follow CPSC’s safety tips to prepare ahead of storms to prevent loss of life in a storm’s aftermath,” he said in a commission news release. Carbon monoxide (CO) from gasoline-powered portable generators can kill within minutes if used improperly. It has no color or odor, so can render a person unconscious even before they recognize the symptoms of nausea, dizziness or weakness, the CPSC warns. This gas kills nearly 100 Americans using portable generators each year. Black individuals have a higher risk of death, accounting for 23% of those who died between 2011 and 2021, according to the CPSC. To stay safe, the commission advises following these recommendations: Never operate a portable generator inside a home, garage, basement, crawl space or shed. It’s not enough to open doors or windows. Lethal levels of CO can still build up. Use these generators outside only, at least 20 feet away from the house. Direct the exhaust away… read on > read on >

It’s well known that it’s unhealthy to have belly fat accumulating around your abdominal organs, but there’s a more insidious form of fat that could be even more hazardous to your health, a new study says. Fat that infiltrates your muscles appears to dramatically increase your risk of death, according to findings published May 16 in the journal Radiology. Fatty muscle — a condition called myosteatosis — was associated with a 15.5% increase in absolute risk of death in a group of healthy adults, researchers found. By comparison, obesity appeared to increase participants’ absolute mortality risk by only 7.6%, results show. Fatty liver disease raised risk by 8.5% and muscle wasting by 9.7%. “The signal [for muscle fat risk] was so much stronger for this otherwise healthy cohort,” said senior researcher Dr. Perry Pickhardt, chief of gastrointestinal imaging at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “It really stood out as a strong biomarker beyond the things I think we all accept as important measures. “I think there’s going to be profiling of patients where if you line up myosteatosis with a very fatty liver or maybe abundant visceral fat, you might be a lot worse off than if you just had one of those or two of those,” Pickhardt added. Muscle fat has been a subject of increasing interest in the… read on > read on >

Ever heard of the winter blues? This common phrase is used to describe that blah feeling that strikes during winter months when the weather is cold and the sky is gray in many parts of the country. The reality is, the winter blues is a form of depression. “When there is a shift in the season and our access to daylight, our bodies struggle to adjust to the new light and time frame,” Susan Albers, a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic, explains in an online video. This phenomenon is referred to as seasonal depression. What is seasonal depression? This type of depression is also known as seasonal affective disorder or SAD. The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) describes SAD as “changes in your mood and behavior whenever the seasons change.” Feeling hopeless, helpless or irritable are all signs of depression. When those emotions occur seasonally and last for several months, it could be SAD. Contrary to what you may think about seasonal affective disorder, it can strike at any time of the year, not just in the winter. In fact, there are two types of SAD. Fall-onset SAD or winter depression usually begins in the fall or early winter and symptoms ease in the summer. Symptoms of spring-onset SAD or summer depression begin in the late spring or early summer. Summer depression is… read on > read on >

Pregnancy is a difficult and potentially dangerous time in a woman’s life, and U.S. women say they aren’t getting the support they need while they’re expecting, a new HealthDay/Harris Poll has found. Nearly 2 in 5 women who are pregnant or have ever been pregnant (37%) say they have experienced barriers to getting needed care. Worse, women in their prime childbearing years (18 to 34) are more than twice as likely as those who are 35 and older to say they encountered barriers to needed health care during pregnancy and birth — 74% versus 28%. The most common barrier they cite is an inability to make doctor’s appointments because of they are unable to take time off work or find child care. One in 5 women overall (19%) — and 2 in 5 between 18 and 34 (39%) — cite that as a reason they didn’t get the care they needed, poll results showed. As a result, women are nearly unanimous in their support for paid maternity leave and better health care in pregnancy: Nine in 10 women (92%) think maternity leave is crucial for improving mothers’ health outcomes, including 64% who strongly agree. Nine in 10 women (91%) also think maternity leave is key to improving babies’ health outcomes, including 61% who strongly agree. More than 4 in 5 women (86%) say more must… read on > read on >

It’s a wonderful thing to try to save stray animals, but for some people it can turn into a form of hoarding thats dangerous for pets and humans alike. People who “hoard” animals may feel like they’re saving them, but caring for many pets may take a toll on their well-being and that of the animals they take in, according to a new study. “Although most folks with hoarding disorder collect objects, for some folks their main struggle is having more animals than they can care for,” said lead author Mary Dozier, an assistant professor of psychology at Mississippi State University. “Most research on animal hoarding has focused on extreme cases,” she said in a university news release. “We wanted to look at what normative patterns of animal ownership look like, particularly in a rural setting, and if there were any trends we could discover related to animal health.” To do that, Dozier and her colleague Ben Porter examined a decade’s worth of records from MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The study looked for the number of cats and dogs per household and indicators of animal health. This included positive indicators, such as dental visits, and negative ones, such as hydration problems. Dozier said people who have animal hoarding disorder may not recognize that these tendencies are impacting the health of their pets. The researchers… read on > read on >

Men, want to burn fat? Chill out. New research shows that exposure to cold in the morning may help you burn more fat than at other times of day. Exposure to cold activates brown fat, producing heat to help the body maintain its temperature and burn calories, especially those from fat. That makes it an ideal way for guys to improve cardiometabolic health — preventable conditions like heart attack, diabetes and liver disease, for instance. Sorry, ladies. The same may not be true for you. “Our study indicates that the optimum time to undergo cold exposure is at a specific point in the body’s 24-hour cycle,” said study co-author Mariëtte Boon, of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “It may also be that there is a sex difference in how the body responds to cold exposure with respect to boosting metabolism at a certain time point, and it appears that delivering cold exposure therapies in the morning may be more beneficial than the evening for men.” The investigators set out to determine whether there was a circadian (time-influenced) rhythm in humans’ brown fat activity, and if there were any differences between men and women. In rodents, brown fat metabolic activity fluctuates throughout the day, peaking just before waking up, the study authors noted. Heat production from food digestion and activity declines at night. Waking… read on > read on >

When young men pack on excess weight during their teens and 20s, they may inadvertently drive up their risk for prostate cancer later on. The concern stems from new research that examined several decades’ worth of weight fluctuations and prostate cancer rates among nearly 260,000 men in Sweden. The men ranged in age from 17 to 60. Researchers initially observed that overall, participants who put on roughly 1 pound or more per year across their life span had a 10% higher risk for developing aggressive prostate cancer as older adults. A similar weight pattern was linked to a 29% greater risk of fatal prostate cancer. But digging deeper, researchers found that most of the men grew heavier between the ages of 17 and 29. And ultimately most of the weight-associated increase in cancer risk was pegged to weight gains in that age bracket. “We were surprised [by] the rapid weight gain in young adulthood, and that the risk of prostate cancer later in life was strongly associated with this rapid weight gain,” said lead author Marisa da Silva, a postdoctoral fellow at the Lund University Cancer Center in Sweden. She stressed that the findings are not definitive proof that youthful weight gains caused prostate cancer risk to rise, only that the two are linked. Even the possibility of a weight-driven risk factor is important, da… read on > read on >

Combining a swallowable gastric balloon with a weight loss drug may be a way to lose significant body weight, a new study suggests. In about eight months of combination treatment, participants lost an average of 19% of their body weight, and significantly reduced their body mass index (BMI), researchers report. “Combination therapy gives providers much flexibility and further options in managing obesity in patients who need additional weight loss or increased durability,” said lead researcher Dr. Roberta Ienca, from the Nuova Villa Claudia Clinic in Rome, Italy. “The ease of use and low rate of adverse events make it an ideal primary weight loss therapy that can be complemented by medications or other treatments,” she added. Gastric balloons for weight loss are not new, but they haven’t been popular because they require an endoscopy for placement, the study authors said. This new swallowable balloon from Allurion Technologies eliminates the need for a medical procedure. (Ienca and her two co-authors are advisors for Allurion.) In the noninvasive procedure, the balloon is swallowed as a capsule and is filled with liquid after it reaches the stomach. The outpatient procedure takes about 20 minutes. After about 16 weeks, the balloon is excreted naturally. The balloon reduces the amount of food that can be ingested, which leads to weight loss. Taking the diabetes drug liraglutide (Saxenda) enhances feelings of… read on > read on >