Considering a New Year’s resolution to quit smoking? New research might provide all the motivation you need: Each cigarette could shorten your life by up to 22 minutes, researchers say. The findings, published Dec. 29, 2024, in the journal Addiction, were based on mortality data from British smokers and suggest that smoking a pack of… read on > read on >
Tree-lined streets and lush public parks appear to provide city schoolkids a brain boost. Chicago students’ test scores suffered when an invasive insect wiped out half the city’s ash trees, researchers reported in the journal Global Environmental Change. “We found that test scores in areas with ash borer infestations were reduced after the onset of… read on > read on >
Weight loss tops many folks’ list of New Years resolutions, and lots of people are turning to cutting-edge weight-loss drugs like Ozempic to help them drop excess pounds. These drugs, called glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs), work in several different ways to help people lose weight, gain control over their blood sugar levels, and… read on > read on >
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Cases of a bacterial infection called “rabbit fever” have been increasing during the past decade. Cases of tularemia increased by 56% during the 2010s compared to the previous decade, researchers report in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Half of all the nearly 2,500 reported cases between 2011 and 2022 came from four states:… read on > read on >
Eczema can be maddening, causing thick, scaly patches of dry skin that itch like the devil. There’s no cure for the skin condition, but a new study shows that self-guided talk therapy can help a person deal with the itching. Online self-guided cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that teaches patients how to respond to their itching… read on > read on >
A woman’s binge drinking might be related to her hormones. The female hormone estrogen appears to promote binge drinking in women, a new mouse study published recently in the journal Nature Communications shows. Specifically, estrogen causes women to “pre-game,” or consume large quantities of alcohol within the first half-hour after it’s offered, results show. This… read on > read on >
MONDAY Dec. 30, 2024The number of homeless individuals in the U.S. increased by 18% between January 2023 and January 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The HUD’s 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment found that some 770,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, a significant increase… read on > read on >
If you’re a mom right now, you are likely tearing your hair out as you juggle the sizable scheduling demands of the holiday season. Maybe you feel like you are carrying the load alone. New research suggests you are not imagining things, and that it happens all year long to many moms. The study, published… read on > read on >
Norovirus, a highly contagious stomach bug, is surging across the United States this winter, according to the latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data shows 91 outbreaks of norovirus during the week of Dec. 5, a sharp rise from the 69 outbreaks recorded the previous week. For context,… read on > read on >
Federal health officials have confirmed unsettling new details about the first United States case of severe bird flu, reported recently in a hospitalized patient in Louisiana. Genetic samples from the patient contained mutations that could, in theory, help the virus better infect human cells. Importantly, these mutations were observed in the later stages of infection… read on > read on >
