Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

Improved lung cancer treatment is a major reason for the 31% decline in cancer death rates in the United States between 1991 and 2018, including a record 2.4% decrease from 2017 to 2018, the American Cancer Society says. How the COVID-19 pandemic will affect this downward trend is unknown, the society noted. “The impact of COVID-19 on cancer diagnoses and outcomes at the population level will be unknown for several years because of the time necessary for data collection, compilation, quality control and dissemination,” according to the report’s lead author, Rebecca Siegel. “We anticipate that disruptions in access to cancer care in 2020 will lead to downstream increases in advanced-stage diagnoses that may impede progress in reducing cancer mortality rates in the years to come,” she said in a cancer society news release. The American Cancer Society said about 3.2 million cancer deaths were prevented from 1991 through 2018 due to declines in smoking, earlier detection, and improvements in treatment that led to long-term decreases in deaths from the four leading cancers: lung, breast, colon and prostate. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death, causing more deaths than breast, prostate and colon cancers combined. While there’s been slow progress against breast, prostate and colon cancers in recent years, declines in lung cancer death rates grew from 2.4% a year during 2009 to… read on > read on >

Most folks infected with COVID-19 will only have mild or moderate illness — but that means they’ll still be stuck at home and feeling really lousy. What’s the best way to cope? In many ways, you want to behave as you would if you were suffering from a cold or the flu, said infectious disease expert Dr. Aaron Glatt. “The general good advice we give to people is eat well, make sure you drink enough, make sure you get enough rest, don’t overexert yourself,” said Glatt, chairman of the department of medicine and hospital epidemiologist at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, N.Y. “Sometimes patients do a little bit more than they can, and I don’t want to say it exacerbates things, but it exacerbates things,” he continued. “It makes them much more tired and much more fatigued and it can be sometimes like a domino effect.” Difficulty breathing is the most troubling symptom related to COVID-19, so you might want to order a home pulse oxygen monitor (“oximeter”) to keep track of your blood oxygen levels, suggested Dr. Teresa Murray Amato, chairwoman of emergency medicine at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills in Queens, N.Y. Fingertip monitors can be purchased online for about $20. Blood oxygen levels “below 90 warrant at least a call to your doctor and, if persistent, a visit to your local… read on > read on >

Brain drain: Arguing with others puts a lot more strain on your brain than agreeing with them, a new study finds. “Our entire brain is a social processing network,” said senior author Joy Hirsch, professor of psychiatry, comparative medicine and neuroscience at Yale University. “However, it just takes a lot more brain real estate to disagree than to agree.” The researchers, from Yale and University College London, asked 38 adults whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of potentially contentious statements such as “same-sex marriage is a civil right” or “marijuana should be legalized.” Researchers then monitored the participants’ brain activity when they were paired up and had face-to-face discussions about the topics. When people agreed, their brain activity was harmonious and tended to be focused in sensory areas of the brain such as the visual system, possibly in response to social cues from the other person, according to the authors. When people disagreed, sensory areas of the brain were less active while there was increased activity brain areas that handle higher order executive functions, such as reasoning. “There is a synchronicity between the brains when we agree,” Hirsch said in a university news release. “But when we disagree, the neural coupling disconnects.” She noted that in discord, the two brains engage many emotional and thinking resources “like a symphony orchestra playing different music.”… read on > read on >

You have probably seen the social media posts: Your good friend’s co-worker is raising money online to help pay for cancer treatments or another friend needs funds to pay medical bills after a car crash. Crowdsourced fundraising seems to, at least partly, fill a gap between out-of-pocket health care costs and what people can afford. A new study looked at what the role of one of the best-known sites, GoFundMe, has played in crowdsourcing funds for medical costs over the past several years. “I think the most striking finding for us was the magnitude that the number of these fundraisers have grown over the past few years,” said study author Dr. Suveen Angraal, an internal medicine resident physician at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The study focused solely on GoFundMe fundraisers, extracting data between May 2010 (when the site began) and December 2018. The researchers found 42 fundraisers for medical conditions in 2010 and 119,373 in 2018, a number that rose incrementally through the years. “It’s a pretty dramatic increase that shows the magnitude of how big the issue is and how big the problem is when it comes to the cost of health care,” Angraal said. “We know that health care in the U.S. is expensive and, time and again, we have seen — not just me, but many of our colleagues across the… read on > read on >

Could a cancer diagnosis sometimes produce positive life changes? In a new study, many people with colon cancer, even in advanced stages, believed their diagnosis had brought some beneficial effects to their lives. In surveys of 133 colon cancer patients, researchers found that nearly all — 95% — said their lives had benefited in some way since their diagnosis. Often, they felt their family relationships had strengthened, or they were better able to “take things as they come” and feel grateful for each day. That was the case whether people were in an earlier stage of the disease or had metastatic cancer — meaning it had spread to distant sites in the body. In fact, the study found, no medical factors seemed to influence patients’ capacity for “benefit finding.” On the other hand, that ability to see a “silver lining” did not buffer people against feeling anxious, sad or otherwise distressed. While that might seem counterintuitive, experts said it actually makes sense. People can simultaneously see the positives in their lives, and be distressed by dealing with a cancer diagnosis, said lead researcher Lauren Zimmaro, a senior postdoctoral associate at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Benefit-finding, she said, is about finding meaning in the midst of difficulties, and not “putting a positive spin on things.” “It’s more realistic than that,” Zimmaro said. Allison Applebaum,… read on > read on >

Vaping may not be a way for kids to avoid the smoking habit, after all. A new study finds that teens who start vaping are three times more likely to smoke cigarettes in adulthood than those who never started with electronic cigarettes. Although the number of teens who start smoking cigarettes in high school has declined, vaping has soared. From 2016 to 2019, the number of cigarette smokers among U.S. high school seniors dropped from 28% to 22%, but e-cigarette use increased from 39% to 46%, the researchers found. “The rapid rise in e-cigarette experimentation among the youth of our country appears to mean that we will have a whole new generation of cigarette smokers along with all the health consequences that follow,” said lead researcher John Pierce. He’s a professor emeritus in the department of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego. “There is an urgent need to reconsider the policies on e-cigarettes and at least hold them to the same standards as the cigarette companies, such as restricting their right to advertise to our teens,” Pierce said. For the study, the investigators collected data on nearly 16,000 people in the United States, aged 12 to 24. Nearly two-thirds had tried at least one tobacco product, and almost one-third tried five or more tobacco products, of which e-cigarettes and… read on > read on >

A plant-based diet is linked to healthy gut microbes that could lower your risk for conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, a new study finds. “This study demonstrates a clear association between specific microbial species in the gut, certain foods, and risk of some common diseases,” said Dr. Andrew Chan, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “We hope to be able to use this information to help people avoid serious health problems by changing their diet to personalize their gut microbiome.” In this study of more than 1,100 participants from the United States and Britain, researchers collected data on composition of their gut bacteria, dietary habits and blood markers. They found evidence that the microbiome is linked with specific foods and diets, and that its makeup is also associated with levels of metabolic markers of disease. The microbiome has a greater link with these markers than other factors, such as genetics, researchers said. “Studying the interrelationship between the microbiome, diet and disease involves a lot of variables because peoples’ diets tend to be personalized and may change quite a bit over time,” Chan said in a hospital news release. Researchers found that those who ate a diet rich in plant-based foods were more likely to have high levels of specific gut microbes. They also found microbiome-based biomarkers of obesity, heart… read on > read on >