Sports « Weekly Gravy

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin has been released from a Buffalo hospital just nine days after he suffered cardiac arrest during a Monday night football game. “Damar Hamlin has been discharged from Buffalo General Medical Center/Gates Vascular Institute,” the Buffalo Bills team announced on Twitter Wednesday. “We have completed a series of tests and evaluations,” Dr. Jamie Nadler, the physician who led Hamlin’s care at Buffalo General Medical Center, added in the posting. “And in consultation with the team physicians, we are confident that Damar can be safely discharged to continue his rehabilitation at home and with the Bills.” There has been no announcement on what caused Hamlin to go into cardiac arrest, The New York Times reported. Hamlin, 24, collapsed after tackling Bengals receiver Tee Higgins during a Jan. 2 football game. When Hamlin suddenly collapsed and fell backward, on-field medical staff swiftly gave him CPR before he was taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. The game was postponed and later canceled. The Buffalo Bills played the New England Patriots last Sunday. They finished 13-3, which was a half-game behind Kansas City Chiefs for the AFC’s No. 1 seed, CBS News reported. The Bills would have been No. 1 seed had they won the unfinished game against the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bills will now play a wild-card round against the Miami Dolphins… read on > read on >

Anyone who has ever gardened knows what a labor of love it can be as you dig deep in the dirt to plant seeds and then take pride in your first crop, but new research shows it also translates into better health. It turns out that community gardens in urban areas can have folks eating more fresh food and getting exercise, while it can also ease stress and anxiety. “These kind of interventions that have a strong social organization, that have access to nature and contact with nature, where there’s active participation, these are the ingredients that we need to think about to have successful interventions to address a whole variety of health outcomes,” said senior study author Jill Litt. She is a professor in the department of environmental studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, and a senior scientist at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. For this study, researchers wanted to do a randomized, controlled trial on community gardens, to add to information from previous gardening studies. Litt said she was approached by Denver Urban Gardens to study the benefits when there were only 40 gardens in the city. Now, there are 180. “It hooked me. It was the most fascinating system where we could actually see how behavior change happens,” Litt said. “People were connecting to the landscape. They had social relationships, they… read on > read on >

TUESDAY, Jan. 10, 2023 (HealthDay News) – Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is now back in New York. The football player who collapsed on the field after suffering cardiac arrest during a Monday night game in Cincinnati has been released from an Ohio hospital, and will continue his recovery in a Buffalo hospital, the Buffalo Bills football team posted on Twitter. “Mr. Hamlin has been released and returned to Buffalo. I traveled with him to the airport this morning with our UC Health air care and mobile care crew, including teammates who were with us on the field when Mr. Hamlin collapsed,” Dr. William Knight IV, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and director of the Emergency Medicine MLP Program, told CBS News. Hamlin, 24, collapsed after tackling Bengals receiver Tee Higgins. When Hamlin suddenly collapsed and fell backward, on-field medical staff swiftly gave him CPR before he was taken to Cincinnati Medical Center. The game was postponed and later canceled. The Buffalo Bills played the New England Patriots last Sunday. They finished 13-3, which was a half-game behind Kansas City Chiefs for the AFC’s No. 1 seed, CBS News reported. The Bills would have been No. 1 seed had they won the unfinished game against the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bills will now play a wild-card round against… read on > read on >

The swimmer came to shore struggling to breathe and coughing up blood. A keen competitive long-distance swimmer and triathlete, the woman was fit and healthy when she started a nighttime open water swim event. But a couple weeks earlier, she’d had breathing difficulties during another open water swim that had forced her to abandon the event. She’d felt breathless for days after. The woman, in her 50s, had fallen prey to what’s becoming better known as a hazard associated with open water swimming – fluid on the lungs, or pulmonary edema. Open water swimming has become very popular, but mounting evidence points to a link between the activity and a condition called swimming-induced pulmonary edema (SIPE), according to Dr. James Oldman, lead author of a study published Jan. 9 in BMJ Case Reports. Oldman is a cardiologist with Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust in the U.K. First reported in 1989, SIPE leaves swimmers struggling to draw breath as fluid collects in the air sacs of the lungs. It affects an estimated 1% to 2% of open water swimmers, but cases are likely to be underreported, Oldman and his colleagues wrote. Older age, long distances, cold water, female gender, high blood pressure and heart disease are among the risk factors for SIPE, the researchers said. However, it often occurs even in those who are… read on > read on >

An antidote to teenage depression might be found in school gymnasiums and on sports fields, a major new review argues. Supervised exercise programs are associated with significant reductions in symptoms of depression among children and teenagers, according to the analysis of data from 21 studies involving more than 2,400 kids. “This is the first time that we’ve been able to put enough studies together so that we can make a pretty good conclusion to answer the question, ‘Is physical activity and exercise good for children with depressive symptoms?’” said co-study author Walter Thompson, a retired professor of exercise physiology with Georgia State University in Atlanta. “The answer is overwhelmingly yes.” Further, the data indicate a specific dose of exercise that will produce the biggest benefit in children: Around an hour of physical activity three days a week provided the best relief for symptoms of depression. “And you know, that’s pretty close to what the federal government has recommended as regular exercise for both children and adults, somewhere between 75 and 150 minutes a week,” Thompson said. The study also found that exercise programs shorter than 12 weeks produced greater benefits — possibly because such a tightly defined program allows participants a positive sense of achievement and accomplishment, according to an editorial co-authored by Eduardo Bustamante, an assistant professor of kinesiology and nutrition at the University… read on > read on >

FRIDAY, Jan. 6, 2023 (HealthDay News) – While NFL safety Damar Hamlin is still critically ill after suffering cardiac arrest during a game on Monday, he is making a “fairly remarkable recovery,” his doctors said during a news conference on Thursday. “There has been substantial improvement in his condition over the past 24 hours,” Dr. Timothy Pritts, a professor in the department of surgery at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, told reporters. “We had significant concern about him after the injury and after the event that happened on the field. But he is making substantial progress. As of this morning, he is beginning to awaken, and it appears that his neurological condition and function is intact.” Hamlin is “awake and breathing,” though still on a ventilator, Pritts added. He can communicate by writing with a pen and paper. “When he asked did we win, the answer is, ‘Yes, you know, Damar, you won, you’ve won the game of life,” said Pritts, referring to Hamlin’s question about who won the game after his collapse. His medical team could not say what caused the cardiac arrest in the 24-year-old, but Dr. William Knight IV said, “tests will continue to be ongoing as he continues to progress.” “It’s been a long and difficult road for the last three days,” said Knight, a professor in the university’s… read on > read on >

Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills player who collapsed Monday after suffering cardiac arrest during a game, is showing “signs of improvement,” his team said Wednesday. Still, the 24-year-old “is expected to remain under intensive care as his health care team continues to monitor and treat him,” the Buffalo Bills tweeted. Meanwhile, Hamlin’s uncle, Dorian Glenn, said Tuesday night that his nephew’s heart stopped both on the field and again at the hospital, where “they had to hit him with the defibrillator.” The player has lung damage and can’t breathe on his own, Glenn said. He is receiving 50% oxygen, down from 100%, CBS News reported. CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus suggested that Hamlin may have experienced “commotio cordis,” a heart arrhythmia that happens with a direct blow to the chest, though that has not been confirmed. It’s the type of injury that causes a “confusion of the heart,” and is experienced by about 30 people in the United States each year, including Little League players who get hit in the chest with a ball, CBS News reported. Getting hit can interfere with the heart’s electrical signals, causing an erratic heartbeat that doesn’t send blood to the brain. “That’s why there are defibrillators on the sidelines of games, is to be able to use them to shock the best heart back into a regular… read on > read on >

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin threw himself into the path of a Cincinnati Bengals ball carrier, taking a hard hit to the chest that sent both NFL players to the ground. Hamlin, 24, stood to dust himself off, took two steps — and then fell flat on his back, limp and unresponsive. Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest following the tough tackle in Monday night’s game, officials now say. He received CPR on the field, and was in critical condition this morning at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. A cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). More than 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside a hospital in the United States every year, the AHA said in a news release. About 9 of 10 people who suffer a cardiac arrest die, the AHA says. Survival depends on immediately receiving CPR from a bystander. Cardiac arrest is not the same as a heart attack, which occurs when a blocked artery prevents blood flow to the heart muscle. Instead, a cardiac arrest is caused by a malfunction in the heart’s electrical system. The heart starts to beat irregularly at first, and then just stops. First aid involves CPR to keep the person alive until a defibrillator shocks the heart into restoring a normal heart rhythm, usually within a… read on > read on >

New Year’s resolutions can be a fickle thing. They are a time-honored way to promise improvements to yourself and your behavior, a “fresh start” to the new year. But if chosen poorly, a resolution also can be a source of anxiety, disappointment and hopelessness. “They tap into the abiding American spirit of relentless self-improvement, and that can be so relentless that it translates into additional stress,” said John Norcross, chair of psychology with the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania and author of “Changeology: 5 Steps to Realizing Your Goals and Resolutions.” About one in four Americans cite their resolutions as a source of anxiety heading into the new year, according to a new poll by the American Psychiatric Association. Choosing an appropriate resolution — and realistic ways to follow through on it — can help relieve some of that stress, experts say. Resolutions tend to focus on a few specific areas — health, money and relationships, Norcross said. “The number one difficulty we encounter is that people make truly unrealistic, grandiose expectations,” Norcross said. Still, it makes sense that people would set lofty goals for themselves as the year turns, said Dr. Rebecca Brendel, president of the American Psychiatric Association. “There’s this temptation when the year switches from 2022 to 2023, then it’s a fresh start and everything in the past is all history,” Brendel… read on > read on >

FRIDAY, Dec. 23, 2022 (HealthDay News) – Move your body every day to guard against type 2 diabetes. That’s the upshot of a new study that analyzed Fitbit data and type 2 diabetes rates from participants in a nationwide research program, reporting that women who logged more steps each day had a lower risk of diabetes. “We investigated the relationship between physical activity and type 2 diabetes with an innovative approach using data from wearable devices linked to electronic health records in a real-world population,” said lead author Dr. Andrew Perry, of the Vanderbilt Translational and Clinical Cardiovascular Research Center in Nashville, Tenn. “We found that people who spent more time in any type of physical activity had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Our data shows the importance of moving your body every day to lower your risk of diabetes.” The data came from more than 5,600 people, 75% of them women, who were part of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us research program between 2010 and 2021. All of Us aims to advance individualized health care by enrolling and collecting data on more than 1 million people over many years. Over four years, researchers found 97 new cases of diabetes among the 5,600 people in this new study. People with an average daily step count of 10,700 — a… read on > read on >