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The effects include higher rates of high blood pressure, diabetes and dementia.

Living near an airport increases the chances of developing diseases such as diabetes, dementia or high blood pressure, a new study finds.

The paper, released Tuesday by green NGO Transport & Environment, blames fine particles and elements in jet fuel for the health impacts.

“A total of 280,000 cases of high blood pressure, 330,000 cases of diabetes, and 18,000 cases of dementia may be linked to UFP [ultrafine particle] emissions among the 51.5 million people living around the 32 busiest airports in Europe,” estimate the researchers from the CE Delft consultancy, which authored the study.

Nearly 1.8 billion adults are at risk of cancer, stroke, dementia and diabetes due to insufficient exercise, according to a new report released on Wednesday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said physical inactivity has increased globally by five percentage points from 2010 to 2022, yet around 31% of adults still don't meet exercise guidelines.

The study, published in The Lancet Global Health journal, pointed out that 34% of women and 29% of men are inactive.

If current trends continue, 35% of people will be inactive by 2030, the report said.

"Physical inactivity is a silent threat to global health, contributing significantly to the burden of chronic diseases," said Ruediger Krech, director of the WHO's health promotion department.

Vivek Murthy made declaration after weekend in which dozens of Americans were killed or wounded in mass shootings

The US surgeon general on Tuesday declaredgun violence a public health crisis, driven by the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country.

The advisory issued by Dr Vivek Murthy, the nation’s top doctor, came as the US grappled with another summer weekend marked by mass shootings that left dozens of people dead or wounded.

“People want to be able to walk through their neighborhoods and be safe,” Murthy told the Associated Press in a phone interview. “America should be a place where all of us can go to school, go to work, go to the supermarket, go to our house of worship, without having to worry that that’s going to put our life at risk.”

Since March, I’ve been waking up earlier. Before that time, I’d typically go to bed at 11 p.m. and naturally wake up between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m. Then, for some reason, regardless of what time I went to bed, I started spontaneously waking up between 5:30 and 6 a.m. Consequently, I moved my bedtime earlier, […]

Higher PFAS exposure could cause lactation to slow or stop altogether within six months, new research finds

Women exposed to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” prior to pregnancy face an elevated risk of being unable to breastfeed early, new research finds.

The study tracked lactation durations for over 800 new moms in New Hampshire and found higher PFAS exposure could cause lactation to slow or stop altogether within six months.

The findings are “cause for concern” said Megan Romano, an epidemiologist at Dartmouth University and lead author.

“For all women who are exposed, there’s a little bit of a decrease in the amount of time they breastfeed beyond delivery,” Romano said.

In the wake of a debilitating cyberattack against one of the nation’s largest health care systems, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse at an Ascension hospital in Wichita, Kansas, said he had a frightening experience: He nearly gave a baby “the wrong dose of narcotic” because of confusing paperwork.

Ruckle, who has worked in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ascension Via Christi St. Joseph for two decades, said it was “hard to decipher which was the correct dose” on the medication record. He’d “never seen that happen,” he said, “when we were on the computer system” before the cyberattack.

A May 8 ransomware attack against Ascension, a Catholic health system with 140 hospitals in at least 10 states, locked providers out of systems that track and coordinate nearly every aspect of patient care. They include its systems for electronic health records, some phones, and ones “utilized to order certain tests, procedures and medications,” the company said in a May 9 statement.

More than a dozen doctors and nurses who work for the sprawling health system told Michigan Public and KFF Health News that patient care at its hospitals across the nation was compromised in the fallout of the cyberattack over the past several weeks. Clinicians working for hospitals in three states described harrowing lapses, including delayed or lost lab results, medication errors, and an absence of routine safety checks via technology to prevent potentially fatal mistakes.

A popular obesity drug may help treat a dangerous disorder in which people struggle to breathe while they sleep, a new study finds.

Tirzepatide, the medication in the weight loss drug Zepbound and also the diabetes treatment Mounjaro, appeared to reduce the severity of sleep apnea along with reducing weight and improving blood pressure and other health measures in patients with obesity who took the drug for a year.

Eli Lilly and Co., the drug’s maker who paid for the research, has asked the Food and Drug Administration to expand use of the drug to treat moderate to severe sleep apnea, in which people stop and start breathing during sleep, a spokesperson said Friday. A decision is expected by the end of the year.

But an outside expert cautioned in an editorial that more research will be needed to tell if the drug can be used as “a sole treatment” for obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when tissue in the throat relaxes and collapses during sleep, fully or partially blocking the airway. It affects an estimated 20 million Americans and can cause short-term issues such as snoring, brain fog and daytime sleepiness but also severe long-term issues such as heart disease, dementia and early death.

I went in the sun Thursday around 90°F temperature and didn't put on sunscreen. Now I'm kind of feeling pretty bad.

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In lieu of standalone clinics offering abortions, or telehealth appointments where patients get abortion medication by mail, family doctors are offering an abortion option in a familiar setting.

This trend of primary care integrating medication or procedural abortions, usually in early pregnancy, is growing in states where abortion is legal. While there is little data on how common this is becoming, NPR heard from primary care doctors across the country who said they are expanding their practices to provide abortion care.

“There's no reason for this care to be siloed,” says Arnold, who is very public about her offerings, which include abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy and gender-affirming care. “I don't feel like it's any different than my management of diabetes or chronic pain or endometriosis — this is just a routine part of my day.”