Girls whose periods begin before the age of 13 are at higher risk of becoming adult women with diabetes, compared to girls who start menstruation later, new research shows. An earlier onset of periods also appears to hike a woman’s odds for stroke before the age of 65, the same study found. Why the link?… read on > read on >
Neurologist Dr. Deborah Holder says she often has parents come to her with kids who’ve experienced what they call “funny spells.” “Sometimes I start talking to a parent and find out the parent has [also] had ‘funny spells’ for years, but had no idea they were epileptic seizures,” said Holder, who practices at Cedars-Sinai Guerin… read on > read on >
TUESDAY, Dec. 5, 2023 (Healthday News) — Hunting season has begun in many parts of the United States, with millions of Americans heading into the woods in hopes of bagging a big buck. But with the season comes tragic accidents. “Every year, within the first 72 hours of hunting season, we see hunting-related injuries,” said… read on > read on >
Doctors report they are seeing what they think is a new syndrome in babies who are exposed to fentanyl while in the womb. All of the infants have cleft palates and unusually small heads, and all were born to mothers who said they’d used fentanyl and other drugs while pregnant. Six babies were first` identified… read on > read on >
New research challenges a long-held notion that human newborns enter the world with brains that are significantly less developed than those of other primates. Babies are born extremely helpless and with poor muscle control, and human brains grow much larger and more complex than other species following birth, investigators said. Because of those observations, it’s long… read on > read on >
Suicide rates for Americans under the age of 18 are rising at unprecedented rates, and a new report points to a likely culprit: The ongoing epidemic of opioid abuse. It’s not that more kids and teens became abusers of opioids, it’s that conditions in their environments worsened due to the crisis, say a team led… read on > read on >
Hispanic women who experience spikes in blood pressure while pregnant may also face higher heart risks years later, new research shows. These “hypertensive disorders of pregnancy” (HDP) — conditions such as preeclampsia, eclampsia and gestational hypertension — may even have a greater role to play in certain heart risks than regular high blood pressure, the… read on > read on >
People with epilepsy suffer quicker declines in thinking than people without the brain disorder, particularly if they also have risk factors like high blood pressure or diabetes, a new study finds. The difference was significant: Over the course of the 14-year study, those with epilepsy experienced a 65% to 70% faster decline in memory and… read on > read on >
Black, Hispanic and low-income kids are less likely to receive surgery that can treat their drug-resistant epilepsy, a new study finds. Researchers discovered that children on anti-seizure drugs who received vagus nerve stimulation were 35% more likely to be alive after 10 years, and those who also had cranial surgery were 83% more likely to… read on > read on >
Unhealthy air from wildfires is causing hundreds of additional deaths in the western United States every year, a new study claims. Wildfires have undercut progress made in cleaning America’s air, and between 2000 and 2020 caused an increase of 670 premature deaths each year in the West, researchers report Dec. 4 in The Lancet Planetary… read on > read on >
