The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is looking to remove the legal underpinning for most regulations against climate change. If approved, the EPA’s proposal would rescind the 2009 decision that set forth a legal basis to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants. Known as the “endangerment finding,” it allowed the EPA to limit emissions from vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas companies under the Clean Air Act. The new proposal argues that Congress didn’t give the EPA permission in the Clean Air Act to regulate these emissions and that the agency essentially overstepped its power. “If finalized, today’s announcement would amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said, as reported by The Washington Post. The EPA issued the endangerment finding in 2009 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are air pollutants. The finding said these gases endanger public health and welfare, allowing the EPA to set rules to limit them. These rules have led to stricter standards for car emissions and limits on pollution from power plants. Former EPA adviser Zealan Hoover told The Post that the new proposal was “not just an attack on science but on common sense.” “The National Climate Assessment provides over 2,000 pages of detailed evidence that climate change harms our health…  read on >  read on >

Veterans who receive traumatic brain injuries in combat often experience crippling post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, leaving them hopeless and potentially suicidal. But help might be on the way from an unlikely source – a psychedelic drug called ibogaine. The drug, derived from the roots of an African shrub called iboga, can safely and effectively treat long-term symptoms of traumatic brain injury in veterans, according to findings from a study of 30 vets recently published in the journal Nature Mental Health. The veterans crossed the border into Mexico to receive treatment with ibogaine, which is outlawed in the U.S., researchers said. “Before the treatment, I was living life in a blizzard with zero visibility and a cold, hopeless, listless feeling,” study participant Sean, a 51-year-old veteran from Arizona with six combat deployments, said in a news release. “After ibogaine, the storm lifted.” Scans reveal that ibogaine alters brain activity in ways that can lower stress and help veterans better process their trauma, researchers found. “No other drug has ever been able to alleviate the functional and neuropsychiatric symptoms of traumatic brain injury,” senior researcher Dr. Nolan Williams, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif., said in a news release. “The results are dramatic, and we intend to study this compound further.” People who take ibogaine often…  read on >  read on >

Veterans who receive traumatic brain injuries in combat often experience crippling post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, leaving them hopeless and potentially suicidal. But help might be on the way from an unlikely source – a psychedelic drug called ibogaine. The drug, derived from the roots of an African shrub called iboga, can safely and effectively treat long-term symptoms of traumatic brain injury in veterans, according to findings from a study of 30 vets recently published in the journal Nature Mental Health. The veterans crossed the border into Mexico to receive treatment with ibogaine, which is outlawed in the U.S., researchers said. “Before the treatment, I was living life in a blizzard with zero visibility and a cold, hopeless, listless feeling,” study participant Sean, a 51-year-old veteran from Arizona with six combat deployments, said in a news release. “After ibogaine, the storm lifted.” Scans reveal that ibogaine alters brain activity in ways that can lower stress and help veterans better process their trauma, researchers found. “No other drug has ever been able to alleviate the functional and neuropsychiatric symptoms of traumatic brain injury,” senior researcher Dr. Nolan Williams, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif., said in a news release. “The results are dramatic, and we intend to study this compound further.” People who take ibogaine often…  read on >  read on >

People intensely grieving a loved one are nearly twice as likely to die within a decade of their loss, a new study says. Those whose grief remained persistently high in the first years following a loss have 88% increased odds of dying within 10 years of their loved one’s passing, according to results published in Frontiers in Public Health. They also are nearly three times more likely to receive mental health care like talk therapy, greater than five times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants, and more than twice as likely to receive sedatives or anxiety drugs, results show. “This is the first study to investigate the long-term use of health care and patterns of mortality over a decade after bereavement in a large-scale cohort,” lead researcher Mette Kjaergaard Nielsen said in a news release. She’s a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Unit for General Practice in Aarhus, Denmark. For the new study, researchers recruited more than 1,700 bereaved men and women in Denmark with an average age of 62. Among them, 66% had lost their partner, 27% a parent and 7% another loved one. The study participants were given a questionnaire that assessed their levels of grief during the first three years after losing a loved one. About 6% of participants had levels of grief that remained high despite the passing of time, and…  read on >  read on >

People intensely grieving a loved one are nearly twice as likely to die within a decade of their loss, a new study says. Those whose grief remained persistently high in the first years following a loss have 88% increased odds of dying within 10 years of their loved one’s passing, according to results published in Frontiers in Public Health. They also are nearly three times more likely to receive mental health care like talk therapy, greater than five times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants, and more than twice as likely to receive sedatives or anxiety drugs, results show. “This is the first study to investigate the long-term use of health care and patterns of mortality over a decade after bereavement in a large-scale cohort,” lead researcher Mette Kjaergaard Nielsen said in a news release. She’s a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Unit for General Practice in Aarhus, Denmark. For the new study, researchers recruited more than 1,700 bereaved men and women in Denmark with an average age of 62. Among them, 66% had lost their partner, 27% a parent and 7% another loved one. The study participants were given a questionnaire that assessed their levels of grief during the first three years after losing a loved one. About 6% of participants had levels of grief that remained high despite the passing of time, and…  read on >  read on >

Urgent care clinics are handing out fistfuls of antibiotics, steroids and opioids for conditions these drugs won’t help, a new study says. “Previous studies had shown that patients continue to receive antibiotics for diagnoses where they may not be indicated, such as for a viral respiratory infection, especially in urgent care settings,” said co-lead researcher Dr. Shirley Cohen-Mekelburg, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. “Our findings reveal that this trend of inappropriate prescribing includes other classes of drugs — including glucocorticoids — and a variety of conditions,” Cohen-Mekelburg added in a news release. For the study, published July 22 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers analyzed health care data for more than 22.4 million urgent care visits that occurred between 2018 and 2022. More than 12% of those visits resulted in a prescription for antibiotics, 9% in a steroid prescription and 1% in a scrip for opioids. The research team then looked to see how many prescriptions were handed out for health conditions the drugs aren’t meant to treat. Among the inappropriate prescriptions, researchers found: Antibiotics prescribed for more than 30% of patients with ear infections, nearly 46% of patients with urinary symptoms and 15% of patients with bronchitis. Steroids prescribed for nearly 24% of patients with a sinus infection, 41% of patients with bronchitis and 12%…  read on >  read on >