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TUESDAY, March 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Indoor athletes may be vitamin D-deficient, putting themselves at risk of injury and poor performance, a small study finds. Researchers assessed vitamin D levels in players on George Mason University's men's and women's basketball teams. For the 2018-2019 season, players were given a supplement with a high dose, low dose or no vitamin D. Vitamin D is essential for building and maintaining healthy bones. Without it, bones can weaken, leading to diseases like osteoporosis. It's found in many foods, including dairy products and dark, leafy greens, as well as in sunlight. "Many athletes are now engaging in supplementation, and we don't currently know what the optimal or safe amount of supplementation may be," said study co-author Sina...

TUESDAY, March 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Women with coronary artery disease have less narrowing in their blood vessels but more chest pain than men with the condition, a new study finds. In coronary artery disease, plaque build-up in arteries results in reduced blood flow (ischemia) to the heart. The study included more than 1,100 women and more than 4,000 men whose results on cardiac stress tests indicated they had moderate to severe ischemia. Women had a 38% higher chance of having more chest pain than men, the study found. And that held true even after researchers accounted for such factors as age, race, stress test findings, medication use, smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, prior heart attack, kidney function and overall heart function. The findings are to be presented...

TUESDAY, March 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Here's a clue that you may have coronavirus that might surprise you: a loss of your sense of smell. Groups representing ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialists in Britain and the United States have issued guidances that a sudden loss of a person's sense of smell may be a sign of infection with the new coronavirus. It's not a completely unexpected finding, since a temporary inability to smell -- clinically called anosmia -- has been known to occur after certain viral infections, said the British doctors' group ENT UK. In fact, "post-viral anosmia is one of the leading causes of loss of sense of smell in adults, accounting for up to 40% of cases of anosmia," the group said in a statement. "Viruses that give rise to the common cold are well...

TUESDAY, March 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- As the Earth continues to warm from climate change, an estimated 1.2 billion people will be affected by heat stress from extreme heat and humidity by 2100, a new study predicts. That is four times more people than are affected today and over 12 times more than would have been affected if climate change hadn't happened, researchers say. "When we look at the risks of a warmer planet, we need to pay particular attention to combined extremes of heat and humidity, which are especially dangerous to human health," senior author Robert Kopp said in a Rutgers University news release. He is a professor and director of the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences in New Brunswick, N.J. Heat stress occurs when the body can't cool...