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TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Intermittent fasting is all the rage due to its potential health benefits, and now a new review shows this style of eating really does produce weight loss and may even improve certain markers of heart health.Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term for several diets that alternate between feasts and fasts. The 5:2 diet involves eating normally five days of the week and restricting your calories on the other two days. Alternate-day fasting calls for a fast day-feast day-fast day pattern. In contrast, time-restricted eating refers to eating only during specific time windows each day. "The new study demonstrates that the different forms of intermittent fasting, i.e., alternate-day fasting, the 5:2 diet and time-restricted feeding, are all...

TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Cortisone injections have gotten a bad rap in recent years as a treatment for arthritis pain, because steroids are known to damage cartilage and could potentially cause the joint to further deteriorate.But a new study suggests that if used wisely, cortisone shots are as safe as another type of injection used to treat knee arthritis.Occasional cortisone shots don't appear to cause knees to deteriorate any faster than injections of hyaluronic acid, a substance injected to lubricate joints stiffened by arthritis, the researchers said."Knee replacement rates were, if anything, a little bit less in the group that got the cortisone injections," said senior researcher Dr. David Felson, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Boston University...

TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- You might have heard a lot about the human papillomavirus (HPV) and its role in cervical cancer, but this sexually transmitted virus can also cause another type of cancer.Rates of oropharyngeal cancer, which occurs in the middle part of the throat, are rising rapidly among older men throughout the United States. They're also growing among women in the Southeast and Midwest.Investigators from University of Texas Health School of Public Health have been examining the occurrence of these cases, finding also that people diagnosed with large tumors and the death rate related to this have increased in the past decade. "Ten, 15 or 20 years ago, what we observed was that the oropharyngeal cancer incidents were largely an issue among young...

TUESDAY, Dec. 21, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Far from terrorizing people as they did in "Jaws," sharks may offer humanity hope in fending off future coronavirus outbreaks, new research suggests. That's because their immune systems have unique antibody-like proteins called VNARs that can prevent the SARS-COV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 and its variants from infecting human cells, the researchers said. The findings have so far only been seen in the lab and VNAR treatments have not yet been tested in humans, the investigators stressed. Shark VNARs are one-tenth the size of human antibodies and can bind to infectious proteins in unique ways that enhance their ability to combat infection, the authors said. “These small antibody-like proteins can get into nooks and crannies that human...