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Keeping Abreast

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

The story is familiar: a diagnosis of breast cancer, followed by surgery to remove existing, low-risk tumors, then radiation and hormone therapy to lessen the chances of recurrence. A new study suggests, however, that the middle step of radiation may be unnecessary for many older patients.

Researchers looked at more than 1,300 women over the ...Read more

Not So Hard To Swallow

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

Monitoring gastric distress is hard to do and often involves sliding camera-equipped scopes or catheters through the nose to internal places of interest. A new ingestible device may soon hit the market: a camera about the size of a quarter.

In tests on pigs, researchers said it delivered location measurements comparable to an X-ray, but ...Read more

It's Hard To Be a Teen Girl These Days

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

New data suggests teen girls in American are being swept up in a wave of sadness and trauma, reports STAT, citing CDC data. They are experiencing record levels of violence, sadness and thoughts of suicide, almost double the rate for teen boys.

Nearly 3 in 5 teen girls said they felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021, STAT reported -- a 60%...Read more

Shady Side of the Heat

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

Climate change has resulted in more extreme weather, including hotter, longer heat waves, which in turn have elevated the danger to people's health, especially those with chronic illnesses.

Researchers looked at how to prevent premature deaths attributed to higher temperatures by examining heat and mortality records in 93 European cities.

...Read more

Watch This Ad, Buy This Drug

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

Drug ads on TV are almost always annoying, and frightening, too, if you listen to the mandatory disclaimers about some of the bad things that might happen if you take the drug.

Presumably, the advertised drugs represent an improvement over what's already on the market, but a published study suggests otherwise. It found that less than one-...Read more

Read This Now; Don't Wait

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

No one thinks procrastinating is a good thing. Well, almost no one. But a new study shows how it really might not be good for your health and well-being. Researchers surveyed 3,525 college students, asking them to rate their tendency to procrastinate on a standard scale; then followed up every three months for a year, asking about mental ...Read more

Vaping and Oral Health

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

There's a growing body of evidence that vaping (e-cigarettes) is associated with poorer health, including contributing to asthma, lung scarring and exposure to carcinogenic chemicals.

But vaping, like tobacco use, is also linked to oral health. Vaping has been tied to bleeding after brushing and possibly worse. Researchers say it's hard to ...Read more

Life Is a Marathon

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

But extending it might just involve short bursts of activity.

A recent study found that brief bouts of robust exercise, such as super-fast walking for one or two minutes a day, measurably reduce the risk of dying over the seven years of follow-up by researchers.

Specifically, the risk fell 38% to 40% for any cause of death and for cancer ...Read more

A Different Kind of Twindemic

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

Twin births have been in decline in the U.S. for the last decade, falling roughly 3% per year, after previous decades of growth. The pandemic changed that. The CDC reports that after falling 7% from 2019 to 2020, twin births bounced back 2% from 2020 to 2021.

Researchers think part of the reason may be that many parents who were using ...Read more

Medicaid Update

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

The Affordable Care Act, originally passed in 2010 and sometimes called Obamacare, created access to health care for millions of Americans. In less than two months, states that had expanded Medicaid under new ACA provisions will be able to return to regular Medicaid renewal processes, as a part of the unwinding of COVID-19-related coverage ...Read more

At-home Flu Tests

Health Advice / Scott LaFee /

By now, many (perhaps most) Americans have used and become comfortable with the idea of at-home tests for COVID-19. So why not at-home flu tests? The Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical companies have considered the idea in the past but rejected it because 1) at-home flu tests were deemed too inaccurate and 2) those who tested ...Read more

 

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