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WEDNESDAY, Feb. 2, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Many American teens and young adults underestimate the risk of sexually transmitted infections from unprotected oral sex, and that's especially true of young men, a new survey shows.Doctors say oral sex can transmit herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, HIV and human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer, and head and neck cancers.While there is an HPV vaccine, it's not widely used among young men, the researchers noted."Youth deserve to know the facts about the risks of oral sex," said Dr. Tammy Chang, an associate professor of family medicine at Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan."It's not just about sexually transmitted infections, but also the risk for cancer later in life," said Chang, director of the MyVoice...

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 2, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- As the number of U.S. children with COVID-19 continues to surge, there are a number of things parents should know, a pediatric infectious disease expert says."What used to be the average number of children with COVID for the whole hospital is now the average just for the intensive care unit," said Dr. Jessica Ericson, of Penn State Health Children’s Hospital in Hershey, Pa. "Back in October, we were seeing three to five children hospitalized at a time, and now we're averaging about 20 children at a time, with five in the ICU," Ericson said in a hospital news release.For the week ending Jan. 27, more than 808,000 new cases in kids were reported in the United States, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s...

TUESDAY, Feb. 1, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Americans have tossed and turned their way through the pandemic, and a new study shows they are increasingly turning to melatonin in an attempt to get some good rest.But the researchers also issued a warning, because some folks are using amounts that pose a risk to their health.In 2018, Americans were taking more than twice the amount of the over-the-counter sleep aid than a decade earlier, according to the research published Feb. 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Since 2006, a small but growing number of adults are taking amounts of melatonin far above the 5-milligram-a-day dosage typically used as a short-term treatment, the study found."Taking sleep aids has been linked in prospective studies with the development of...

TUESDAY, Feb. 1, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Being overweight or obese has long been linked to poor heart health, but could it also impair your thinking?New research out of Canada suggests it very well might.Working with thousands of young, middle-aged and older adults, the new study highlights what appears to be fat's direct harm on one's ability to think quickly, with rising body fat levels linked to diminishing mental health returns."Our findings are intriguing, because we show that [fat], as it increases, not only increases traditional cardiovascular risk factors like diabetes and high blood pressure, but also influences cognitive [mental skill] test scores," said study lead author Dr. Sonia Anand. She is head of the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in...