Hot MedFax

Quick.  What's the one word tweeted most?  No, it's not sex.  Or Hillary.  Or Trump.  It's a food.  And it's "coffee", followed by "pizza," then "beer." Besides hinting at which foods are popular, tweets may reveal something about our health, according to newswise.com. Communities that expressed positive sentiments about healthy foods were more likely to be healthier overall. Scientists at the University of Utah surveyed nearly 80 million Twitter messages - a random sample of one percent of publicly available, geo-tagged tweets - over the course of one year. They then sorted through the 4 million tweets about food for ones that fell on opposite ends of the health spectrum: tweets mentioning fast food restaurants, or lean meats, fruits, veggies or nuts. Out of that top 10 list, only the fourth most popular food-related item, "Starbucks", fit into the fast food category. The seventh, "chicken", was the onl...

Scientists are finding out more and more about how important the womb is, when it comes to healthy babies.  A whole new school of thought has been raised about how critical the environment for the fetus is as it's growing inside a woman. Some even believe it's more important than the quality of the egg. Now it may even determine how old your baby gets, and how well he ages, according to newswise.com. New studies are finding that aging begins in the womb.  Now let me explain this. And the offspring of mothers with lower levels of oxygen in the womb - which, in humans, can be a consequence of smoking during pregnancy or of pregnancy at high altitude - aged more quickly in adulthood. The researchers found that adult rats born from mothers who had less oxygen during pregnancy had shorter telomeres than rats born from uncomplicated pregnancies, and experienced problems with the inner lining of their blood vessels - signs that they had aged more quickly and were predi...

As if you needed another reason to quit smoking. . . Now there's definitive proof it's linked to oral cancer. According to newswise.com, researchers have found a link between tobacco and the virus that causes this kind of cancer. Johns Hopkins scientists have shown a strong association between tobacco use or exposure and infection with oral human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16), the sexually transmitted virus responsible for mouth and throat cancers worldwide. The numbers of such cancers have increased 225 percent in the United States over the past two decades.   HPV16 is found in 80 percent of cancers located in the back of the throat and is transmitted through oral sex.   Remember Michael Douglas? “The practice of oral sex is common, but this cancer is rare. So there must be cofactors in the process that explain why some people develop persistent HPV16 infections and HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancers when most other people don’t,” says Gypsyamber D’So...

Here's another reason to give up smoking.  It may make you want to commit suicide. Seriously, a new study has found that smoking may contribute to suicide risk. Cigarette smokers are more likely to commit suicide than people who don’t smoke, studies have shown.  In the past, this used to be attributed to the fact that many people with psychiatric illnesses, smoke, and they, of course, may be more prone to suicide.  But new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis finds that smoking itself may increase suicide risk and that policies to limit smoking reduce suicide rates.  The study reports that suicide rates declined up to 15 percent, relative to the national average, in states that implemented higher taxes on cigarettes and stricter policies to limit smoking in public places. “Our analysis showed that each dollar increase in cigarette taxes was associated with a 10 percent decrease in suicide risk,” said author Richard A. Grucz...

Here's another reason not to get angry.  A new study has found that there's a n early fivefold increase in risk for heart attack in the two hours following outbursts of anger. newswise.com quotes  lead author Elizabeth Mostofsky, MPH, ScD, a post-doctoral fellow in the cardiovascular epidemiological unit at BIDMC and an instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health ,  “There has been a lot of research on anger; we already know it can be unhealthy, but we wanted to quantify the risk, not just for heart attack, but for other potentially lethal cardiovascular events as well.  She notes that the study might help patients think more about how they manage anger in their everyday lives and encourage physicians to discuss medications and psychosocial supports with their patients for whom anger is an issue, especially patients with known cardiovascular risk factors. The study results showed that the risk of heart attack, with symptoms like chest pain, shortness of ...

It's been quite some time since cigarettes have been advertised as sophisticated and status-y, though, when I was growing up in the '60s and early '70s, smoking ads were as ubiquitous as well, commercials for Optimum. In those days the cancer sticks, as they were sometimes called, were allowed to be advertised on TV and smokers were everywhere, in the movies, TV shows, on magazine covers (remember magazines?). But over time, the ads have either disappeared, or changed.  At first I was fascinated by the woman who lost her fingers and toes to smoking, or the one who was bedridden after a stroke and had to be cared for, for everything, by her preteen son, or the man, hawking up his lungs in the mirror. But they're even more hard-core today.  I can barely watch the young man in bed who's had a stroke and lies motionless and barely breathing in a bed, his tormented eyes seeming, to me at least, to be beseeching the camera to let him die, now, or the gaunt man in t...

OK.  What's the biggest cause of cancer?  If you guessed smoking, you'd be right.  But if you guessed meat , you'd be right, too. A multicountry study just published finds that smoking, diets rich in animal products, and alcohol have the strongest correlations with cancer incidence rates, according to newswise.com.   This study is an ecological study in which incidence rates for the various types of cancer for males and females from 87 countries with high quality cancer incidence rate data as well as all 157 countries with cancer incidence rate data were compared statistically with indices for various risk modifying factors.' The animal products index included meat, milk, fish, and eggs.  "For the 87 countries with high quality cancer data, the smoking and animal products indices explained over half of the cancer incidence rates, with alcoholic beverage supply explaining a smaller amount," newswise.com reports.  Surprisingly, in men, the smoking ind...

Monday, Monday.  Don't trust that day.  For those of you too young to remember, that was the Mamas and the Papas, lamenting Monday, the day that every week seems to have more of than Fridays. But Monday may be a good day for something.   Quitting smoking . According to Kim Painter at USA Today, "Monday is a particularly popular day to think about it – or at least Google it." Google searches for terms such as "quit smoking help" make up a higher proportion of all searches on Mondays than on any other day, Painter reports.  Could be like the diet thing.  OK, I ate like a pig all weekend but on Monday, I'll start watching my portions again. Call it the Monday Momentum (just made that up). Searches for help with quitting smoking decline through the week and reach a low point on Saturdays – when they are 145% lower than on Mondays, Painter quotes the American Medical Association. "People see Mondays as a fresh start, a chance to get their acts to...

Do you smoke? Many who do, do it to relax.  Experts believe most do it to self-medicate.  But those with mental illness smoke the most, and it's not for the reason doctors originally thought. Who wouldn't want to do anything they could to feel better than someone struggling with depression or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia? Mentally ill people were long thought to smoke so much for that very reason.  But a new study has found that that's just not the case. Instead, "research indicates that psychiatric disease makes the brain more susceptible to addiction," according to newswise.com. Half of all cigarettes sold are to people with mental illness, statistics show, even though smoking rates have fallen below 25% in the general population. "This is really a devastating problem for people with mental illness because of the broad health consequences of nicotine addiction," newswise.com quotes R. Andrew Chambers, M.D., associate professor of psychiat...

Most people are going to benefit from Obamacare.  But not smokers , many of whom will be paying 50% more for health insurance, according to Kelly Kennedy at usatoday.com. The saddest part? It may hurt the poor the most. Kennedy notes that an estimated 29% of adults with incomes below the federal poverty level smoke, vs. 18% of those above. "Smokers – and chewers – in some states may have to pay as much as 50% more in premiums than non-smokers if they sign up for insurance through state health exchanges that open next month, according to provisions in the Affordable Care Act," she writes. It's the old argument.  Tax the people who smoke so much, they'll throw their cigarettes away.  But as with soda and junk food and other things that are bad for us, rarely does this work. Kennedy gives the example of a 25-year-old single man, who, under the new health exchanges, might be charged a premium of $150 a month.  But if he's a smoker, that could go up an extra ...

You've seen them.  The commercials where the woman talks about losing her fingers, the obese one about having to have her son wash her and take care of her toileting needs because she's confined to bed. The one I find the most horrifying, the woman who has to hold an artificial voice box to her throat to talk, her voice a mechanical, unhuman sound. Seems they've worked. More than 200,000 Americans quit smoking after the graphic, federally-funded, anti-cigarette ads ran earlier this year, according to Brady Dennis at The Washington Post. “The TIPS campaign surpassed our expectations,” CDC Director Thomas Frieden told reporters in a call Monday, saying the results represented more than a doubling of initial goals, Dennis notes. “That’s a tremendous success story. These are Americans that will live longer lives, healthier lives with lower health-care costs.” Even better, 100,000 more are expected to quit. "The $54 million ad series, which ended in June 2012, featu...

It's a weird thing but I'm almost starting to feel sorry for smokers. The AP reports today that more and more cities are moving to ban smoking outside, in parks and at beaches, even college campuses. "Outdoor smoking bans have nearly doubled in the last five years, with the tally now at nearly 2,600 and more are in the works," according to the AP. But some experts say there's not good medical evidence that cigarette smoke outdoors can harm the health of children and other passers-by.  I must admit, I absolutely hate it when I must walk through a fog of smoke leaving office buildings but now, at the same time, I feel some sympathy for these beleaguered souls, who, granted, should not be smoking for their own health, but who should have the freedom to do so if they choose.  This is America, after all, is it not? And how about this?  "The evidence of a risk to people in open-air settings is flimsy," Ronald Bayer, a Columbia University professor, tol...

Smoker? Victim of child abuse?  If you're the latter, the former is probably you. Researchers for some time have speculated that there's a link between smoking and child abuse. Now, a new study finds "a connection not between whether or not an abused child will ever begin smoking, but to how much they smoke once they do start," according to newswise.com. "In other words, people are as likely to smoke whether or not they were sexually or physically abused, but they’re inclined to smoke more if they were abused and have a history of smoking," Todd Herrenkohl, a professor in the University of Wisconsin (UW) School of Social Work told newswise.com. The study, which was done by UW, found that "Boys who had experienced either (sexual or physical) abuse and were smokers, smoked more than those who hadn't been abused as a child." For girls who smoked, however, "Only those who had been sexually abused smoked more as adolescents." And...

It's weird how things happen.  Last night at a dinner party I was talking to a woman from Britain (after we got all the royal baby stuff out of the way) about what it used to be like in pubs and restaurants, before all the No Smoking laws went into effect. And today in The Wall Street Journal, there's a story about the 10th anniversary of their enforcement in NYC.  The Associated Press goes on to say, "Few measures in Albany changed life in New York more." Would you believe the number of smokers trying to quite during that time increased to 65%, according to Blair Horner, vice president of advocacy at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the AP notes? I'd have to agree.  I've never smoked (finally, I'm in the 1% of something!), but my mother did, and I hated the smell of smoke in the house and the ashtrays, and the cloud of smoke in bars when I was hanging out, looking for a mate.  The Brit remembered a couch that turned b...

So you cut back on smoking, went from a pack a day to just two or three, a dozen years ago.  Here's the really bad news.  It won't help you live longer. According to a story by Linda Searling, a new report has found that, while cutting down on the number of cigarettes you smoke is better than staying at the same level, or increasing it, in the end it's not going to add to your longevity. Over 5,200 smokers -- ages 40 to 65, at the start -- participated in the study.  Over the next 30 years, of the people who continued to smoke, a shocking 84 percent died, Searling reports. If they quit smoking altogether, however, those in the study were more likely to live to at least age 75. Searling adds in the story that they also "were 25 to 35 percent less likely than the others to have died." But, and here's the truly scary part, "There was essentially no difference in the mortality rate for people who had reduced the number of cigarettes ...

We may be living longer.  But we're not living healthier. That's the result of a recent study of the U.S. population that's the largest in 15 years, according to the WSJ's Ron Winslow. Compared to other developed nations, "death rates from illnesses associated with obesity, such as diabetes and kidney disease, as well as neurological conditions like Alzheimer's disease, are on the rise" here, Winslow reports. Winslow, who interviewed the researcher who led the study, Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle., quoted him as saying, "Despite gains in longevity, Americans are living the extra years 'not necessarily in good health.'" Why?  We're getting larger.  The rates of many illnesses, like heart disease and cancer, are more and more being linked to obesity, while those of diabetes and kidney failure, which are known outcomes of obesity, are so...

Here's an interesting fact.   Meatless cafeterias save as many lives as smokeless ones.  Or so According to Neal Barnard, M.D., "Mounting evidence demonstrates that consumption—sometimes as little as one serving a day—of meat and other animal products is associated with increased risk of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and other chronic diseases."  The good news is that meat consumption declined by more than 12 percent between 2007 and 2012—"an unprecedented drop," Barnard writes. Kathy Freston writes at The Huffington Post that our country's t hree biggest killers -- heart disease, cancer, and stroke -- "are linked to excessive animal product consumption."  She notes also that vegetarians have much lower risks of all three. People who live on fruits and veggies also have incredibly lower rates of diabetes and obesity than the general population.  So meat is shaping up as a close second to the dangers tobacco can present to your health. ...

We knew it all along.  Ads do lead people to do things and now a new study has proved that cigarette ads do, indeed, lead teens to smoke. Movies feature fewer people smoking these days than in the past, and while you still don't see an actor walk into a party or restaurant and the first thing they do is light up a cigarette, but the cigarettes are still there, and they're still considered cool. My own mom began smoking when she was 11 (and this was back in the 1930s) because her best friend did, and while my mom was able to quit in her 70s, her friend went on smoking -- and hacking, even through emphysema -- until she died in her mid-80's. I was lucky.  The smell of smoke always filled our house and I couldn't stand it, or the sight of all those ashtrays (though my mom was a clean smoker, and emptied them almost as quickly as they were filled).  As a result, I've chosen never to smoke and am probably the only living person the planet who has never held a ci...

It's been out there for some time but more and more studies are pointing to the decreasing life expectancy of women who are white and don't have much education. At first it was thought that cigarettes were the culprit, as many in this population smoke. But now a new study has found that joblessness also shortens lifespans for women. No one is quite sure why this should be, but as someone who has fought unemployment as a freelance writer for long stretches of my life (thank God, often followed by long stretches of work), I know how depressing and life-draining it can be. I get my identity from my work (when I first became a mother, I thought I had lost myself), and when I'm not working, or writing, I start to shrink.  I feel like everyone is looking at me and thinking I'm a failure (in reality, no one cares!), but the worst part is, I feel like a failure.  I don't know where this comes from as I grew up in a traditional Italian family, where my bigger failu...

When was the last time you saw someone smoking in a movie?  Used to be that everyone smoked on-screen.  But today it seems only the bad guys are the ones who smoke, almost as if that's another reason we shouldn't like them. But alcohol, on the other hand, has become much more visible at the movies, according to a story by Reuters, as reported by Fox News. Movie characters smoke less since 1998 regulations that stopped tobacco companies from buying on-screen brand placements, according to a new study. But the number of times alcohol brands appear has exploded in movies rated PG-13 and below, while the amount of time characters spend drinking hasn't changed. I love "Two and a Half Men," at least, when Charlie Sheen was on, and there was never a scene where he didn't have some kind of glass in his hand. A lot of people see this as a real problem.  "In movie reality, it seems like every occasion is right for a drink," David Jernigan, head of t...