Health Care Issues Motivate Iowa Voters To Turn Out For Caucuses

Health care consistently polls as the top issue Iowa voters care about. In the western part of the state, one doctor faces growing debt as he sometimes treats patients without coverage for free.

* This article was originally published here

Life Expectancy Rose Slightly In 2018, As Drug Overdose Deaths Fell

The turnaround is welcome news after rising drug overdose and suicide rates had pushed life expectancy down since 2014. Could America be turning the tide on opioid addiction?

(Image credit: Andrew Harnik/AP)

* This article was originally published here

Amid Coronavirus Scare, U.S. Counts Thousands Of Flu Deaths

The CDC estimates at least 8,000 U.S. deaths from the flu so far this season. The same strategies to prevent the spread of this respiratory virus can help protect against the spread of coronavirus.

* This article was originally published here

Study examines prostate cancer treatment decisions

A five-year follow-up study of more than 2,000 US men who received prostate cancer treatment is creating a road map for future patients regarding long-term bowel, bladder and sexual function in order to clarify expectations and enable men to make informed choices about care.

* This article was originally published here

5 Confirmed Cases Of The Coronavirus In The U.S.

NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about the new U.S. cases of coronavirus that originated in China.

* This article was originally published here

How To Relax On Busy Weekends

Weekends are supposed to be time off, but often they get filled up with errands. NPR's Life Kit podcast has some suggestions on how to relax when your weekend gets busy.

* This article was originally published here

How Super Sniffer Dogs Are Helping Detect Disease Around The World

Our canine buddies can do more than play fetch. Turns out dogs' incredible sense of smell is a secret weapon in medicine.

(Image credit: Kayla Dear/Getty Images/EyeEm)

* This article was originally published here

Health disparities: You ain’t seen nothing yet

Welcome to the machine

A survey in the UK showed that the gap in health between rich and poor is widening. From the US perspective that comes as a bit of a surprise. After all, don’t the Brits have universal healthcare through the NHS?

But of course, social determinants of health such as diet, exercise, stress, access to transportation, and education play a bigger role in health than the healthcare system. With socioeconomic disparities widening, it serves to reason that health disparities will grow, too.

So where do things go from here? They probably get worse –that’s my guess. Current political and economic forces in the US, UK and elsewhere point toward an exacerbation of current gaps. And as climate change makes the world a generally harsher environment it’s the poor who will be more adversely affected by floods, fires, air pollution, etc.

But in a decade or two that will be nothing compared with the haves and have nots wrought by the advancement of medical technology. Expect the well off to increasingly invest in tools that let them get further ahead: for example cyborg inventions that augment intelligence, strength, vision, hearing and more. Not to mention artificial organs and genetic interventions to greatly extend life.

Will such modifications make people happy? Maybe not. But it will enable them to lord it over the rest of society to an increasingly greater degree.

Enjoy!

The post Health disparities: You ain’t seen nothing yet appeared first on Health Business Group.

* This article was originally published here

Poor mental health 'both cause and effect' of school exclusion

Children with mental health needs require urgent support from primary school onwards to avoid exclusion, which can be both cause and effect of poor mental health, new research concludes.

* This article was originally published here

'To Stop Now Would Be Foolish': Doubling Down On Services For High-Cost Patients

A study this month showed giving extra social services to the neediest patients didn't reduce hospital readmissions. Now health advocates say that might not be the right measurement of success.

(Image credit: Oivind Hovland/Ikon Images/Getty Images)

* This article was originally published here

Becoming less active and gaining weight: Downsides of becoming an adult

Leaving school and getting a job both lead to a drop in the amount of physical activity, while becoming a mother is linked to increased weight gain, conclude two reviews.

* This article was originally published here

New Respiratory Virus In China Raises A Lot Of Questions

A troubling new virus that surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan last month is raising concerns. Health authorities there say they have identified at least 139 people who've been infected.

* This article was originally published here

Assessing The Injuries After Iranian Missile Attack

Eleven U.S. service members have been sent to hospitals abroad after suffering injuries in Iran's missile strike in Iraq. Scott Simon speaks to neuropsychiatrist Stephen Xenakis about what that means.

* This article was originally published here

Ingestible medical devices can be broken down with light

Engineers have developed a light-sensitive material that allows gastrointestinal devices to be triggered to break down inside the body when they are exposed to light from an ingestible LED.

* This article was originally published here

New vulnerability in kidney cancer

Medical researchers have identified a possible way to treat tumors while sparing nearby healthy tissue.

* This article was originally published here

Molecular understanding of drug interactions suggests pathway to better malaria treatments

Researchers have for the first time demonstrated what happens at the molecular level when two compounds known to inhibit crystal growth were combined, yielding new insights into malaria treatments and, more broadly, improving the process of drug development.

* This article was originally published here

Burnout linked with irregular heartbeat

Feeling excessively tired, devoid of energy, demoralized, and irritable? You may have burnout, a syndrome associated with a potentially deadly heart rhythm disturbance.

* This article was originally published here

Is It Wrong To Volunteer At An Orphanage?

There's a growing global outcry over what critics call ''orphanage tourism." But some charities are proponents of volunteering in orphanages.

(Image credit: Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty)

* This article was originally published here

How a gut infection may produce chronic symptoms

For some unlucky people, a bout of intestinal distress like traveler's diarrhea leads to irritable bowel syndrome. Recent discoveries have given scientists a better idea of how this happens, and potential leads for new treatments.

* This article was originally published here

Speech-disrupting brain disease reflects patients' native tongue

English and Italian speakers with dementia-related language impairment experience distinct kinds of speech and reading difficulties based on features of their native languages, according to new research by scientists at the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center and colleagues at the Neuroimaging Research Unit and Neurology Unit at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan.

* This article was originally published here

Feeling Artsy? Here's How Making Art Helps Your Brain

Making art is fun. But there's a lot more to it. It might serve an evolutionary purpose — and emerging research shows that it can help us process difficult emotions and tap into joy.

(Image credit: Meredith Rizzo/NPR)

* This article was originally published here

Sweeps Of Homeless Camps In California Aggravate Key Health Issues

Cities have tasked police and sanitation workers with dismantling homeless camps that they say pose a risk to health and safety. But that's meant some displaced people are losing needed medications.

(Image credit: Anna Maria Barry-Jester/Kaiser Health News)

* This article was originally published here

San Diego Schools Sue Juul Labs Over Youth Vaping Epidemic

San Diego Unified School District alleges that vaping-related illnesses caused by the e-cigarette maker's products increase student absences, forcing schools to spend on prevention and treatment.

(Image credit: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

* This article was originally published here

Stakes High For Democrats And Republicans In Bid To Rush ACA To Supreme Court

Both sides say they want the high court to quickly weigh in on a case that could invalidate the federal health law. Whatever the court decides will likely have consequences in 2020 elections.

(Image credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

* This article was originally published here

Shutdown of coal-fired plants in US saves lives and improves crop yields

The decommissioning of coal-fired power plants in the continental United States has reduced nearby pollution and its negative impacts on human health and crop yields, according to a new study.

* This article was originally published here

New Year, New Beginnings!

2019 has been a year of tremendous and positive transformation for me. At the beginning of the year, I’d decided to take serious action towards reducing my environmental footprint. As such, I became vegan, started eating organic food and as much as possible, buy local! I made lots of efforts to go zero waste, too and took a hard long look at my consuming habits, reducing my urge and false needs to purchase new stuff commensurately.

Now 2020 sets out to be a year of even greater change for me…

As some of you know, I’ll be flying out to beautiful sunny Costa Rica in just a few days, where I will be staying for the next 3 months. I’ll only be taking a back pack, a camera and a small laptop with me, and I don’t really have a plan as to what I am going to do when I’m there… All I know is I intend to live in the present moment, to just go with the flow and see where life takes me, one moment at a time.

(more…)

The post New Year, New Beginnings! appeared first on The Healthy Foodie.

* This article was originally published here

Hope, Happiness And Social Connection: Hidden Benefits Of Regular Exercise

A new book, The Joy of Movement, offers more motivation to exercise. It's not just about getting fit or looking good: Exercise can give you courage, pleasure and better friendships.

(Image credit: Boris Austin/Getty Images)

* This article was originally published here

Breakthrough study on molecular interactions could improve development of new medicines

A first-of-its-kind study on molecular interactions by biomedical engineers will make it easier and more efficient for scientists to develop new medicines and other therapies for diseases such as cancer, HIV, and autoimmune diseases.

* This article was originally published here

Trump Administration Issues Partial And Temporary E-Cigarette Ban

The FDA plans to ban all flavors from e-cigarette cartridges except menthol and tobacco. Flavored vaping products will be allowed back on the market after companies submit to an FDA review process.

* This article was originally published here

Combining neurologic and blood pressure drugs reduces breast tumor development in mice

Adding a medication used to treat epilepsy, bipolar disorder and migraines to a blood pressure medicine reversed some aspects of breast cancer in the offspring of mice at high risk of the disease because of the high fat diet fed to their mothers during pregnancy. Conversely, this treatment combination increased breast cancer development in the offspring whose mothers had not been fed a high fat diet during pregnancy.

* This article was originally published here

From crab studies, a broader approach to identifying brain cells

In a new study, a team tests the notion that a cell's identity can be described solely by the genes it expresses. The study advocates a more 'multimodal' approach to defining cell identity.

* This article was originally published here