Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

THURSDAY, Nov. 30, 2023 (Healthday News) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it plans to require the removal of all lead pipes from the country’s water systems. The proposed rule, an ambitious effort that will cost up to $30 billion over the next decade, would affect about 9 million pipes that send water to homes in countless communities across the United States. “Lead in drinking water is a generational public health issue, and EPA’s proposal will accelerate progress towards President Biden’s goal of replacing every lead pipe across America once and for all,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in an agency news release. “With collaboration and the focused actions proposed today, EPA is delivering on our charge to protect all Americans, especially communities of color, that are disproportionately harmed by lead in drinking water systems.” Utility companies will be expected to cover most of the cost of pipe replacements, but there is $15 billion available in the 2021 infrastructure law to help them pay for it, the agency noted. The proposal “is grounded in the best available science and successful practices utilized by drinking water systems to protect children and adults from lead in drinking water,” added EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox. “Cities like Newark, N.J., Benton Harbor, Mich., and Green Bay, Wisc. have all successfully gotten the lead out of their water… read on > read on >

Elevated levels of thyroid hormone appear to harm the aging brain, increasing seniors’ risk of dementia or other cognitive disorders, a new study finds. High levels of thyroid hormone — a condition called thyrotoxicosis — was associated with thinking problems whether they came from an overactive thyroid gland or from taking thyroid medication, researchers found. “Our results suggest that an increased risk of cognitive disorders is among the potential negative consequences of thyroid hormone excess, a common consequence of thyroid hormone therapy,” said senior researcher Dr. Jennifer Mammen, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. “Clinicians considering thyroid hormone therapy in older adults should avoid over-treatment by using age-appropriate treatment strategies,” Mammen added in a university news release. Some prior studies have suggested that high thyroid levels were associated with an increased risk of cognitive disorder, but those results have been mixed, researchers said. Additionally, those earlier studies didn’t include excess thyroid hormone caused by taking medication. Thyroid hormone is among the most common prescriptions in the United States, researchers said. As many as 20% of people prescribed thyroid hormone might be taking too much, putting them at risk for thyrotoxicosis. “Our goal was to investigate whether aggressive treatment practices … can also possibly cause cognitive harm,” said lead researcher Roy Adams, an assistant professor of psychiatry and… read on > read on >

Minding your heart health when you’re young could spare your brain from dementia decades later, new research confirms. Chinese researchers looked at data on more than 450,000 older Britons. They found that people who’d already been in poor cardiovascular health before they reached the age of 45 had a 25% higher odds of developing dementia, compared to those with better heart heath. “What surprised us most was the linear relationship between age of coronary heart disease onset and dementia,” said senior study author Fanfan Zheng. “This shows the huge detrimental influence of premature coronary heart disease on brain health,” added Zheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College in Beijing. The findings were published Nov. 29 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Doctors have long known that failing heart health can pose a threat to the brain, with links to poorer brain circulation and even strokes. But does the timing of heart disease onset matter? To find out, Zheng’s group analyzed data from the UK Biobank database. They looked at the medical records of hundreds of thousands of Britons who averaged 57 years of age when they were enrolled in the Biobank. About 12% of the participants had already been diagnosed with heart disease by the time they enrolled. The researchers then tracked cases of new-onset… read on > read on >

Dreary, chilly winter days might cause some year-round runners to think twice about their jog, but recent research suggests the benefits of cold weather running outweigh those of running in warmer conditions. Specifically, cold weather can help runners burn more bad fat, lose more weight and feel healthier overall. “Cold weather doesn’t have to force runners indoors and I encourage my patients to continue safely running outdoors,” said Dr. Joshua Blomgren, an assistant professor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “Exercise is medicine, even in the winter.” Running in cold weather produces less heat stress on the body, which can make a winter jog easier than one in the summer, Blomgren said. Higher body temperatures are associated with increased exertion and strain on the heart, lungs and metabolism. On the other hand, winter running can boost your metabolism at a time when cold temperatures are causing your average metabolism to slow down in an attempt to preserve fat, Blomgren explained. Cold weather jogging tricks the body into stopping that slowdown, helping you maintain a healthy weight. Scientific evidence also suggests that exercising in cold temperatures can help convert “bad” white fat to “good” brown fat, Blomgren said. White fat can cause inflammation and insulin resistance, while brown fat is metabolic tissue that helps burn calories. Blomgren does issue some cautions to folks who choose… read on > read on >

U.S. suicide numbers reached a grim new high in 2022. The increase was most acute among women over the age of 24, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, almost 49,500 people lost their lives to suicide in 2022, the report found, a 3% rise from the nearly 48,200 deaths recorded in 2021. That makes the 2022 death toll from suicide “the highest number ever recorded in the United States,” according to the CDC researchers. The data they presented is also preliminary, so “the 2022 final number of suicides is likely to be higher as additional death certificates with pending causes of death are determined to be suicides,” they noted. For reasons not explained in the report, middle-aged and older women appeared to be hit hardest by the rise in suicides. In absolute numbers, men are still far more likely than women to kill themselves: In 2022, 39,255 males died by suicide versus 10,194 females. However, the percentage increase in suicides among women in 2022 was much steeper than what was seen among men: 4% versus 1%, respectively, the CDC team noted. The 2022 rise among females was concentrated in those aged 25 and older. While suicide rates fell among younger women and female teens, it jumped 7% for women between the ages of 25 and 34. Women… 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 >

The world is being flooded with internet-driven misinformation, but there are ways to counter fake news with the facts, a new report says. These include aggressive fact-checking, preemptively debunking lies before they take root and nudging people to be more skeptical before sharing information, the American Psychological Association analysis found. The product of more than a year’s work by a panel of international experts, the report explains why anyone is susceptible to misinformation if it’s presented in an enticing way. For example, a person is more likely to believe misinformation if it comes from an apparently credible source or a group to which they belong, the report revealed. People also are more likely to believe false statements if they appeal to powerful emotions like fear or outrage, or if they paint groups viewed as “others” in a negative light. “’Echo chambers’ bind and isolate online communities with similar views, which aids the spread of falsehoods and impedes the spread of factual corrections,” the report said. And misinformation is viral – people are more likely to believe it the more it is repeated, even if it contradicts their own personal knowledge. “It is effortful and difficult for our brains to apply existing knowledge when encountering new information; when new claims are false but sufficiently reasonable, we can learn them as facts,” the report said. “Thus, everyone is… 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 >

Folks who smoke weed along with cigarettes are doing serious damage to their lungs, a new study warns. People who do both are 12 times more likely to develop emphysema than nonsmokers, due to the damage they’re doing to the lung’s air sacs, researchers report. “There is a common public misconception that marijuana smoking is not harmful,” said researcher Dr. Jessie Kang, a cardiothoracic radiologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. “With our study, we show that there are physical effects of marijuana smoking on the lungs and that cigarette smoking and marijuana smoking may have a combined damaging effect on the lungs,” Kang added. Even though weed is one of the most widely used psychoactive substances in the world, little is known about the effects of smoking cannabis on a person’s lung health, researchers noted. Tons of research has linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer, emphysema and COPD, but “currently not much research exists on the effects of marijuana smoking on the lungs,” Kang noted. For their study, Kang and her colleagues examined chest CT images of four patient groups – nonsmokers, cigarette smokers, marijuana smokers and combined tobacco and weed smokers. Weed smokers included in the study had toked at least four times a month for at least two years, researchers said. In addition to increased risk of emphysema, combined weed and… read on > read on >

Environmental contaminants may be driving higher rates of breast cancer in urban areas compared to rural locales, a new North Carolina study finds. “Our analyses indicate significant associations between environmental quality and breast cancer incidence,” said lead author Larisa Gearhart-Serna, who led the research as a Ph.D. candidate at the Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, N.C. The findings, published Nov. 20 in Scientific Reports, were based on data from the Environmental Quality Index (EQI) for North Carolina residents. The EQI is “a county-by-county assessment of air, water, land, built environment, as well as the sociodemographic environment,” study senior author Gayathri Devi explained in a Duke news release. She’s a professor of surgery and pathology and director of the Duke Consortium for Inflammatory Breast Cancer at the institute. Devi and Gearhart-Serna compared EQI data against information on breast cancer case incidence (and cancer stage upon diagnosis) across North Carolina. The team believe the state is a good model for disparities in breast cancer risk, with 10 million people spread across 100 rural and urban counties. Some counties have better “environmental quality” than others, and the Duke team found that folks living in counties with poor environmental quality had about 11 more cases of breast cancer per 100,000 residents, compared to counties with good environmental quality. That was especially true for cases of early (localized) breast cancer,… read on > read on >