Latest Health News

16Dec
2021

Weed May Mess With Your Medicines, Causing Harm

Weed May Mess With Your Medicines, Causing HarmTHURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Many people turn to marijuana or cannabidiol to ease their achy joints and help them sleep, but a new study suggests that could wreak havoc with any other medications they're taking.Why? Because the body uses the same set of enzymes to process them all, scientists report.The chemicals in marijuana — THC, cannabidiol (CBD), cannabinol (CBN) — are metabolized in the body by at least two families of enzymes that also help process and eliminate more than 70% of the most commonly used prescription drugs from the body, the researchers said.That means there's a risk that pot might dangerously amp up the effects of some prescription drugs, or cause other medications to flush through your system so quickly that they do you no good, said lead...

NFL Players Face 4 Times the Odds of ALS

16 December 2021
NFL Players Face 4 Times the Odds of ALSTHURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- NFL players are four times more likely to die of Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) than other people, new research finds, adding to known links between football-related head injuries and brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).And the longer they played football, the greater their risk, the new study found.ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a progressive and fatal disease. It strikes nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing muscle weakness, slurred speech, muscle cramps and twitches, and trouble breathing — all while the mind stays intact, according to the ALS Association.No one knows exactly what causes it. "We now have additional evidence that repetitive head impacts or...

AHA News: An Undetected Heart Attack Led to an Urgent...

16 December 2021
AHA News: An Undetected Heart Attack Led to an Urgent Triple BypassTHURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (American Heart Association News) -- For more than three years, Gary Saunders struggled with heartburn. Antacids helped – if he took a handful of them.He figured it was stress or the "12 to 15 cups of coffee" he drank each day to fuel his long hours managing a busy 24-hour retail store. In his mid-50s, he was exhausted all the time.Nagging from family members and frustration with the constant heartburn finally sent him to get a checkup. It was his first visit to the doctor in years.Learning he had high blood pressure and high cholesterol wasn't too surprising. The surprise was that tests showed he may have had a heart attack."I didn't think you could have a heart attack and not even know," he said.Saunders, who lives in Mohton, Pennsylvania, felt sure the test...

Unsung Heroes of the Pandemic: Dogs

16 December 2021
Unsung Heroes of the Pandemic: DogsTHURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Coping with the isolation, fear and sadness of the pandemic may have been a little easier if you had a trusting and loving dog by your side.But you don't need to tell that to Francois Martin, a researcher who studies the bonds between animals and humans. His two Great Danes helped him through the last two years, and he just completed a study that shows living with a dog gave folks a stronger sense of social support and eased some of the negative psychological effects of the pandemic."When you ask people, 'Why is your dog important to you? What does your dog bring to you?' People will say that it's companionship. It's the feeling of belonging to a group that includes your family dog. It keeps people busy," said Martin, who is section leader...

Pandemic Saw Big Declines in Kids' Use of Drugs, Alcohol, Vaping

16 December 2021
Pandemic Saw Big Declines in Kids` Use of Drugs, Alcohol, VapingTHURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- There may be a silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic, with U.S. health officials reporting an "unprecedented" decline in teens' use of alcohol, marijuana, other illegal drugs and vaping."We have never seen such dramatic decreases in drug use among teens in just a one-year period," said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse."These data are unprecedented and highlight one unexpected potential consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused seismic shifts in the day-to-day lives of adolescents," she added in an institute news release.From 2020 to 2021 — the first year of the pandemic — rates of past-year alcohol use fell from about 55% to around 47% among 12th graders, and from nearly 41% to around 29%...

CDC Vaccine Panel to Again Weigh Safety of J&J COVID Shot

16 December 2021
CDC Vaccine Panel to Again Weigh Safety of J&J COVID ShotTHURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Following continued reports of a rare but life-threatening clotting condition linked to the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, a federal advisory panel will meet Thursday to once again weigh the safety of the shot.The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes vaccine recommendations to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is set to vote on "updated recommendations for use" of the single-dose vaccine, according to an agenda of the meeting.The expert panel will hear updated information about thrombosis and thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a rare blood clotting condition that has been linked to J&J's vaccine, but not to the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.At a COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday, CDC Director Dr....

Early CDC COVID Tests Were Not Only Contaminated, But Flawed: Report

16 December 2021
Early CDC COVID Tests Were Not Only Contaminated, But Flawed: ReportTHURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Along with being contaminated, there was also a basic design flaw in COVID-19 testing kits created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early in the pandemic, a new agency review shows.It was already known that the PCR kits were contaminated, but the CDC's findings published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE are the first to note a design error that caused false positives.When the CDC's test kits were developed and distributed in the early weeks of the pandemic, there were no other authorized tests available.The kits "delayed the availability of more widespread testing,” Dr. Benjamin Pinsky, the director of clinical virology for Stanford Health Care, told The New York Times. “I think it’s important that [the CDC] got...

Heart Transplant Successful in Young Man Who Survived Severe COVID-19

16 December 2021
Heart Transplant Successful in Young Man Who Survived Severe COVID-19THURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- After nearly dying from a severe case of COVID-19, a young male patient received a successful heart transplant even as he was recuperating from his infection while on a ventilator, a new case study reports.The transplant was performed on the 31-year-old patient at the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in May.It's one of the first cases of its kind in the world and shows that heart transplants can succeed after severe COVID-19 infection, according to Dr. Eduardo Mocsári, one of the anesthesiologists on the transplant team.After being diagnosed with inherited cardiomyopathy a few years ago, the patient had developed heart failure and was scheduled to receive a new heart. But he tested positive for COVID-19 when he was...

Over 60? You Have Billions of Potentially Cancer-Causing...

THURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Have you just turned 60 and feel like you're in great health? Well, new research suggests that unseen dangers lurk: Scientists found that cancer-free...

Global Rate of Stroke Cases, Deaths Still Too High

THURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- While strokes and related deaths have declined in rich nations, they remain stubbornly high worldwide, a new study says.Author Liyuan Han attributed the...
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