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About 1 in 8 adults over 50 showed signs of food addiction, according to the survey. “We think this is also true in younger populations.”Gearhardt and her team used questions from the Yale Food Addiction Scale to measure whether older adults were experiencing core indicators of addiction. If I had emotional problems because I hadn’t eaten certain foods, I would eat them (17%, once a week). Gearhardt was a member of the group that devised the Yale Food Addiction Scale. The difference is you can’t stop eating food.”Gearhardt said that the survey results should encourage health providers to ask patients about dietary habits.

More men are being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer that is less likely to respond to treatments, a new study from the American Cancer Society suggests. Even more concerning than the rise in advanced cancer diagnoses is the increased number of prostate cancer deaths. “This increase is concerning and requires a new look at prostate cancer screening,” Tewari said. Essentially, that’s like 16 Boeing 747s crashing.”Black men had a 70% higher incidence of prostate cancer than white men. Declines in prostate cancer screeningIn 1994, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of measurements of the prostate specific antigen (PSA) to be used as part of a screening test for prostate cancer.

Austin Johnson in August 2019 when his eyes and skin had turned yellow from liver disease caused by years of heavy drinking. Courtesy Austin JohnsonCirrhosis or severe liver disease used to be something that mostly struck people in middle age, or older. “We’re definitely seeing younger and younger patients coming in with what we previously thought was advanced liver disease seen in patients only in their middle age, 50s and 60s,” said Mellinger. Since 2018, Mellinger, and doctors at the Michigan Alcohol Improvement program provide psychiatrists and addiction specialists to patients with liver disease. The yellow color in his skin and eyes — a symptom of severe liver disease — has disappeared.

When it comes to persistent bad breath, the types of probiotic bacteria found in fermented foods like yogurt, sourdough bread and miso soup may help ease the offending odor, a new study suggests. A major cause of persistent bad breath is gaseous blends of sulfur and other elements, known as volatile sulfuric compounds, that are produced by mouth bacteria, the researchers note. To take a closer look at whether probiotic bacteria might help manage bad breath, the researchers scoured the medical literature for studies on the topic. Bad breath severity in the trials was assessed by measurements of the compounds detected in the mouth, along with a score that indicated how strong the bad breath odors were at various distances from the mouth. Nutritionist Perri Halperin said people with persistent bad breath should see a dentist for potential underlying health issues.

Participants who were offered cash incentives for either pounds lost or for completing certain activities were more likely to lose weight compared with those who were simply offered tools, such as diet books, fitness trackers and access to a weight loss program, the study found. On average, participants in the goal-directed group earned $440.44, as compared to $303.56 in the outcome-based group. “Even if less weight is lost, adopting lifelong physical activity or better eating habits may be more important,” she said. Kushner, who was not involved with the new study, agreed that low-income people face extra challenges when it comes to weight loss. What’s not clear, however, is how the strategy of offering cash for weight loss could be implemented in a real-world setting, outside of academia.

☆ Americans are eating more whole grains, but are still confused by the food labels
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Linda Carroll | Linda Carroll Is A Regular Health Contributor To Nbc News | Reuters Health. She Is Coauthor Of | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

At least half of the grains consumed daily should be whole grains, according to the USDA's recommendations. “Consumers need to be careful when they go shopping for whole grain foods,” said Zhang. What’s important is the percentage of the total grain in the food that is actually whole grain, Zhang said. The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans identifies whole grain foods as those containing 50% or more by weight of the grain- or flour-containing component as whole grain ingredients. For example, when a product is described as being made with whole grains, that doesn’t mean it’s 100% whole grains, Cholewka said.

For decades doctors have been telling their patients that high levels of HDL, otherwise known as “good cholesterol,” could protect them from heart disease. But a new study suggests that having a lot of so-called good cholesterol doesn’t mean a lower risk of heart attacks. The new findings surprised the researchers, who originally designed their study to understand how cholesterol levels in Black and white middle-aged adults without heart disease affected their future risks. Previous research on "good" cholesterol and heart disease consisted of mostly white adults. Low HDL levels were associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease in white participants, but not Black participants.

The analysis by Canadian researchers, published Tuesday in Radiology, compared the chest scans of marijuana smokers and tobacco-only smokers who were matched according to age. Unlike cigarettes, joints aren’t filtered, and marijuana smokers inhale more deeply and longer than cigarette smokers do. The marijuana smokers were identified by a search through the Ottawa Hospital records, using the terms “marijuana” and “cannabis.” Then Revah and her colleagues determined which of the marijuana smokers had had the chest scan. They then searched for nonsmokers and the cigarette smokers who had received chest scans to compare to the marijuana smokers. The marijuana smokers were ages 20 to 73, the nonsmokers were ages 19 to 75, and the tobacco-only smokers were ages 50 to 71.

An experimental drug could eventually offer hope to millions of people struggling with uncontrolled high blood pressure, new research has found. Overall, 20% to 30% of adults experience high blood pressure, Brown said in an email. Uncontrolled hypertension accounts for 5% to 10% of all people with hypertension. Hypertension is diagnosed when a person has a blood pressure of 130/80, while a systolic measurement of 120-129 mm Hg is considered to be “elevated.” A normal range is less than 120/80 mm Hg. Those who received the highest dose of the medication saw their systolic blood pressure — the top number in the measure — drop an extraordinary 20 points during the study.

An earlier study in adults showed that the drug did indeed help with weight loss. “We’ve entered the phase where we are seeing the kind of weight loss where teens come to us in tears. In addition to the weight loss, the drug reduced some cardiovascular risk factors, including waist circumference and bad cholesterol. As it turns out, even when people get weight loss surgery, “three years out, there is significant weight gain,” Li said. When a weight loss drug like this is prescribed to patients, that shouldn’t be the end of things, Li said.

Chickenpox vaccines have virtually wiped out severe complications and deaths in American children from the highly contagious virus, a new report finds. Chickenpox —which is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, a type of herpes virus — was considered just a normal part of growing up until the vaccine became available in 1995. The chickenpox vaccine implementation is “a tremendous achievement,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Mona Marin, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease. An estimated 90.3% of children have been vaccinated against chickenpox by age 2, according to the CDC. The CDC recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine for children, teens and adults who have never had the disease.

Scientists may have found a culprit for what can trigger Crohn’s disease. Cadwell and his colleagues discovered the norovirus connection to Crohn’s fortuitously when they were studying mice that had been engineered to develop the intestinal disease. Many of the mice had gotten norovirus and “the mice developed intestinal abnormalities only in the presence of a viral infection,” Cadwell explained. On a hunch, the researchers treated the mice that had developed the rodent version of Crohn’s with the human version of the API5 protein. Crohn's treatments can worsen infectionsThat would be welcome news to Heather Schlueter, who learned three years ago that her excruciating abdominal pain was due to Crohn’s disease.

For their study, Wilson and her colleagues first set out to train a variety of 20 pet dogs to point with their noses at samples from a person who was stressed. The dogs' accuracy at detecting the stress samples — from 90 percent to 96.88 percent — was even better than the researchers anticipated. Scientists discovered how a dog's sense of smell and the sense of vision are closely linked in its brain. She compared it to dogs who can smell cancer by picking out breath samples in a line-up. It’s hard to tell whether the dogs equate what they smell with actual feelings of stress, Houpt said.

☆ What happens when you don't get enough sleep? Blood samples show heart risks.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-21 | by ( Linda Carroll | Linda Carroll Is A Regular Health Contributor To Nbc News | Reuters Health. She Is Coauthor Of | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

“In subjects who had undergone sleep restriction, the number of immune cells circulating in the blood was higher. To look at the impact of restricted sleep on the immune system, Swirski and his colleagues conducted experiments in humans and in mice. Once again, the researchers drew blood samples and totaled the number of immune cells. Moreover, the stem cells that give birth to immune cells had changed as a result of the six weeks of shortened sleep. Those marks on the stem cells, through a series of steps, eventually lead to less diversity among the immune cells.

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