Category: Medicine
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Blood Pressure Medication Recall: What Is In This That May Cause Cancer?
DPA/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES Do you have an idea of what is in these blood pressure medications? Take away the “I” from an idea and you’ve got a NDEA. That’s the chemical that seems to have contaminated certain lots of irbesartan, a type of blood pressure medication. NDEA is short for N – nitrosodiethylamine.…
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How To Cure Type 2 Diabetes Without Medication
Eva Bee/The Observer It’s 10 years since Professor Roy Taylor revolutionized treatment for type 2 diabetes with a groundbreaking study that showed the disease could be reversed through rapid weight loss. Until his research was published, type 2 diabetes was thought to be an incurable, lifelong condition. Now, for many people, we know it is not. But…
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Portable Device Detects Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Biomarkers on The Spot
David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering Because of the logistics and invasive procedures involved, many people put off getting tested for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Thanks to a new portable device, however, such testing could soon be performed non-invasively at just about any location. Ordinarily, testing for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and…
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Should You Get The Flu Jab? Why It’s Not Just a ‘Bad Cold’, Who Can Have It and Other Vaccine Myths Debunked
Flu vaccines do a great job of limiting the number of people who end up in hospital with the illness. Last winter, getting vaccinated cut the risk of being hospitalized by 66% in children and 25% in adults over 65. But there are persistent misconceptions about the vaccine that put some people off from getting…
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Beyond Ozempic: New Obesity Drugs Could Be Cheaper and Even More Effective
Steve Gschmeissner/Scence Photo Library/Getty Images Two new drugs for treating obesity are on course to become available in the next few years — and they offer advantages beyond those of the highly effective blockbuster drugs already on the market. The first, called orforglipron, is easier to use and to produce, and it will probably be cheaper than existing treatments. The second,…
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Taking Vitamins May Help Tumours To Grow
Chay_Tee/Shutterstock Taking vitamin or mineral supplements could be feeding tumours and allowing them to grow, suggests new research. Common antioxidants such as vitamins A, C, and selenium and zinc when taken additionally can all cause blood vessels in cancer to grow. The discovery has come as a surprise as antioxidants were believed to be protective. The…
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Roman Medicine: 6 Ways People Stayed Healthy In Ancient Rome
“Baths, wine and sex corrupt our bodies, but baths, wine and sex make life worth living”. This inscription – from the tomb of a Roman merchant of Ephesus, Tiberius Claudius Secundus – indicates that, like us, the Romans sought a sensible balance between an enjoyable existence and a healthy one. Dr Nick Summerton shares six…
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Combination Cholesterol Therapy Could Save Thousands of Lives, Study Suggests
(Lauren Hurley/PA) (PA Archive) People who have had a heart attack should immediately be offered a combination of cholesterol lowering drugs with statins and another cholesterol medication, new research suggests. The study found that people with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) – which includes those who have experienced a heart attack or unstable angina – were 47% less…
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Menopause Symptoms: How To Prepare For Effects on Your Brain
Afriandi/Moment RF/Getty Images Menopause, which marks the end of a woman’s reproductive life, is something roughly half of the world’s population will go through if they live long enough. But this stage — like so much surrounding women’s health — is poorly understood. A drop in hormones, primarily estrogen, is the driving force behind menopause’s signature event:…
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Hey, There’s a Second Brain in Your Gut
Getty Images Scientists have known for years that there’s a “second brain” of autonomous neurons in your long, winding human digestive tract—but that’s about where their knowledge of the so-called abdominal brain ends. Now, research published in 2020 shows that scientists have catalogued 12 different kinds of neurons in the enteric nervous system (ENS) of mice. This…
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Should Your Benefits Plan Cover Weight-Loss Drugs Like Ozempic
Getty While many employer plans cover the weight-loss drug Ozempic as a diabetes treatment, only 22 percent of U.S. employers cover any kind of prescription drugs for weight loss, according to a survey from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, a nonprofit membership organization that provides information for those working in the employee benefits industry.That could change…
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Here’s What A Doctor Says Actually Happens When You Die
PETER DAZELEY VIA GETTY IMAGES Aside from “breathing”, “sleeping”, and “putting on Troy McClure’s accent every time you say his name”, I reckon panicking about death is one of the most universal human experiences. Obviously, part of the problem of wondering what happens when you die is that nobody with any real qualifications can answer…
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How Ozempic Face Is Altering The Way People Look
Getty / Reuters With 86,700 tagged videos on TikTok, and celebrity fans including Oprah and Elon Musk, the world is fascinated with so-called weight loss drugs. Ozempic, one of the most well-known, is actually a medication used to treat type 2 diabetes, improving blood sugar to reduce the risk of major cardiovascular incidents. The Ozempic guidelines outline that the drug which…
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How Do People Get Parasitic Brain Worms Like The One RFK, Jr., Had?
Zephyr/Getty Images Experts explain how certain worms can infect the brain and why they are an important global public health problem. Earlier this week news broke that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., claimed to have once had a dead worm in his brain. Kennedy had been experiencing memory loss and mental fog, and he…
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Silicon Valley’s Favorite New Supplements
Clark Miller Everyone in Silicon Valley is on something these days. In all, the global supplement industry is expected to surpass $192 billion in 2024, driven by web ads, podcast hosts and word-of-mouth recommendations. There are the time-tested basics, like creatine and protein powders, as well as a medicine cabinet’s worth of more unusual and much less…
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Experimental Antibody Drug Prevents and Even Reverses Diabetes Onset
Depositphotos Scientists have developed a promising new drug that could prevent and even reverse the onset of type 1 diabetes. The experimental monoclonal antibody drug acts like a shield to protect insulin-producing cells from damage, even extending lifespan in some cases. Type 1 diabetes occurs when a patient’s immune system begins attacking the beta cells…