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Intermittent fasting linked to heart risks in research surprise

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

The safety of intermittent fasting, a popular strategy to lose weight by limiting food intake to certain times, was called into question by a surprise finding from research presented at a medical meeting.

Limiting mealtimes to a period of just eight hours a day was linked to a 91% increase in risk of death from heart disease in the study, ...Read more

White House unveils executive order to boost women's health

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

The Biden administration is rolling out an executive order to strengthen women’s health research standards across federal agencies and prioritize its funding in an effort to close the gap on long-standing disparities.

As part of the order, the National Science Foundation and Department of Health and Human Services are instructed to research ...Read more

Children experience more injuries, stress and even burnout when they specialize in one sport

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

From football to baseball, gymnastics to tennis, more young athletes are becoming sports specialists. They join expensive sports clubs or youth leagues and devote themselves to a single sport all year long. But Nirav Pandya, a professor of orthopedic surgery and sports medicine at the University of California San Francisco, says there are ...Read more

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Montana, an island of abortion access, preps for consequential elections and court decisions

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

A years-long battle over abortion access in a sprawling and sparsely populated region of the U.S. may come to a head this year in the courts and at the ballot box.

Challenges to several state laws designed to chip away at abortion access are pending in Montana courts. Meanwhile, abortion rights advocates are pushing a ballot initiative that ...Read more

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How the anti-vaccine movement pits parental rights against public health

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Gayle Borne has fostered more than 300 children in Springfield, Tennessee. She’s cared for kids who have rarely seen a doctor — kids so neglected that they cannot speak. Such children are now even more vulnerable because of a law Tennessee passed last year that requires the direct consent of birth parents or legal guardians for every routine...Read more

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Ask the Pediatrician: Why co-viewing is important

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Most parents I meet these days worry about what their kids do online. After all, it can be hard to know what they're absorbing from their media interactions.

The good news is that online experiences can help kids learn conversation skills, strengthen their decision-making abilities and much more. However, they do need guidance from parents and ...Read more

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Fight health misinformation by influencing the influencers

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Public health institutions are facing the challenge of a lifetime as social media breeds misinformation and disinformation about everything from COVID vaccines to climate change. Now, a creative program at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is trying to flip the script by influencing the influencers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Given...Read more

How meth became an epidemic in America, and what’s happening now that it’s faded from the headlines

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Rural America has long suffered from an epidemic of methamphetamine use, which accounts for thousands of drug overdoses and deaths every year.

William Garriott, an anthropologist at Drake University, explored meth’s impact on communities and everyday life in the U.S. in his 2011 book “Policing Methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in ...Read more

Secret contract aims to upend landmark California prison litigation

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California commissioned an exhaustive study of whether its prisons are providing sufficient mental health care, an effort officials said they could use to try to end a 34-year-old federal lawsuit over how the state treats inmates with mental illness.

But corrections officials won’t disclose basic details of the now-...Read more

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A new $16,000 postpartum depression drug is here. How will insurers handle it?

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

A much-awaited treatment for postpartum depression, zuranolone, hit the market in December, promising an accessible and fast-acting medication for a debilitating illness. But most private health insurers have yet to publish criteria for when they will cover it, according to a new analysis of insurance policies.

The lack of guidance could limit ...Read more

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Mayo Clinic Minute: Advances in multiple myeloma treatment

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

March is Myeloma Awareness Month. Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that most often occurs in people over age 45. It's the second-most common blood cancer and the most common blood cancer in Black people.

Right now, there is no cure for the disease. But as Dr. Joselle Cook, a Mayo Clinic hematologist, explains, recent advances in treatment are...Read more

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Mayo Clinic Minute: What is hepatitis C?

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

It's estimated that 2 to 3 million people in the U.S. are living with the hepatitis C virus, and hundreds of thousands of them are undiagnosed. That's primarily because it tends to be asymptomatic in the initial stages until liver damage sets in decades later.

A recent study coauthored by Dr. Karthik Gnanapandithan, a hospitalist at Mayo Clinic...Read more

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FDA approves Pennsylvania firm's drug for liver disease that soared amid obesity epidemic

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

PHILADELPHIA — A Pennsylvania biotech firm won FDA approval on Thursday for the first drug aimed at treating a common liver disease that has soared amid the obesity epidemic.

The drug, which Madrigal Pharmaceuticals plans to sell as Rezdiffra, was approved to treat scarring and inflammation caused by abnormal accumulations of fat in the liver...Read more

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Sleep expert says daylight saving time comes at a cost to your health

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Americans set their clocks ahead one hour Sunday to transition into daylight saving time. That “springing ahead,” however, can come with serious negative health effects — including an increase in total heart attacks and teen sleep deprivation — researchers discovered.

Beth Ann Malow, director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s ...Read more

How for-profit nursing home regulators can use the powers they already have to fix growing problems with poor-quality care

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Governments at both state and federal levels have yet to fully wield their authority to fight poor-quality care at for-profit nursing homes nationwide, leaving the pressing need for elder care accountability unmet.

Medicare has the power to improve financial accountability at nursing facilities by capping profits while requiring that ...Read more

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Mayo Clinic Minute: Managing respiratory illness at home

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

The influenza season may have peaked, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is far from over. If you or a family member has the flu or other respiratory infection, Dr. Tina Ardon, a Mayo Clinic family medicine physician, says there are ways to manage most respiratory infection symptoms at home.

"Most upper respiratory ...Read more

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How to stay healthy in changing weather conditions

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

The weather can be unpredictable, especially in late winter. One day it might be sunny and warm, the next day it might be freezing and snowy. How does this changing weather affect your health and well-being? And what can you do to protect yourself from getting sick?

Dr. Tejal Shelat, a Mayo Clinic family medicine resident, says fluctuations in ...Read more

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Why even public health experts have limited insight into stopping gun violence in America

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

Gun violence has exploded across the U.S. in recent years — from mass shootings at concerts and supermarkets to school fights settled with a bullet after the last bell.

Nearly every day of 2024 so far has brought more violence. On Feb. 14, gunfire broke out at the Super Bowl parade in Kansas City, killing one woman and injuring 22 others. ...Read more

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Studying use of patients' own reprogrammed cells to attack cancer as alternative to more chemo

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

DENVER -- A process of taking patients’ own cells and reprogramming them to fight cancer has been a last-ditch option for blood cancer patients when nothing else worked, but a new study underway in Aurora is trying to determine whether more patients could benefit from trying the procedure sooner.

Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy, ...Read more

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Operating in the red: Half of rural hospitals lose money, as many cut services

Health Advice / Health & Fitness /

In a little more than two years as CEO of a small hospital in Wyoming, Dave Ryerse has witnessed firsthand the worsening financial problems eroding rural hospitals nationwide.

In 2022, Ryerse’s South Lincoln Medical Center was forced to shutter its operating room because it didn’t have the staff to run it 24 hours a day. Soon after, the ...Read more