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THURSDAY, Oct. 6, 2022 (American Heart Association News) -- Several days after running a 10K event in Atlanta in 2019, Arthur Vaughn found himself breathless simply walking across the room.Vaughn's primary care physician recommended he see a cardiologist. The exam included a stress test. After three minutes on the treadmill, Vaughn vomited. The doctor told him to ask his then-wife to join them.When she arrived, the doctor broke the news: Vaughn was in such severe heart failure that he would need a transplant.Vaughn fell to the ground, crying. "I'm not ready to die!" said the then-50-year-old.Vaughn was admitted to a local hospital. He continued to get weaker, drifting in and out of consciousness. Later that week, he was airlifted to another facility better able to care for cases like...

THURSDAY, Oct. 6, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Replacing diesel-powered trucks and the toxic pollutants they spew with electric vehicles would save tens of thousands of U.S. lives, a new American Lung Association report says.The benefit would accrue if all medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold have zero emissions by 2050, and if the electricity they use comes from non-combustion renewable energy, not fossil fuels, by 2035, according to the report ."Because truck pollution is such a huge source of pollution that threatens health in communities across the United States, this transition to zero-emission trucks and zero-emission clean energy by 2050 would result in 66,000 avoided premature deaths, 2 million asthma attacks avoided and $735 billion in human cumulative public health benefits because...

THURSDAY, Oct. 6, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Millions of women routinely check Instagram after giving birth, only to see posts by other new moms showing off how fast they got back into svelte shape.Of course, photos like those can be a real downer for women who don't have the time or resources to lose pregnancy weight that quickly. Are they "failures" for not doing so? No, say Australian researchers who published the new findings recently in the journal Healthcare. The study will also be presented Oct. 18-22 at the International Congress on Obesity in Melbourne, Australia.The investigators found that the average woman probably does not post Instagram "postpartum body" shots. Those who do post may give Instagram users a skewed version of what a postpartum figure is supposed to look like....

THURSDAY, Oct. 6, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- If you have dogs, you probably already know that petting them can give you a lift. Researchers set out to prove that using technology to show what happens in the brain when stroking or sitting next to a dog. They also compared that to petting a stuffed animal. They found that when study participants viewed, felt and touched real dogs it led to increasingly high levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex, which helps regulate and process social and emotional interactions."Prefrontal brain activity in healthy subjects increased with a rise in interactional closeness with a dog or a plush animal, but especially in contact with the dog the activation is stronger," wrote study authors led by Rahel Marti at the University of Basel in Switzerland....