Public Health

A new study shows that smokers who switch to nicotine vapor alternatives (e.g. e-cigarettes or iQOS) may be better able to stay smoke-free in the long term - even if they didn't set out to quit smoking.  And that even people who didn't want to stop smoking have eventually quit because they found vaping more enjoyable.  E-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is the addictive component of cigarettes also, but it's toxic chemicals in smoke that cause the harms of smoking. That is why e-cigarettes have caught on as an aid to help people quit smoking for good, whereas patches and gums are…

Between 1999-2016, young adults had substantially higher deaths from cirrhosis in 49 of 50 U.S. states. The deaths linked to the end stages of liver damage jumped by 65 percent with alcohol a major cause in adults age 25-34. The data published in BMJ shows young adults experienced the highest average annual increase in cirrhosis deaths -- about 10.5 percent each year and driven entirely by alcohol-related liver disease, the authors say. Researchers studied the trends in liver deaths due to cirrhosis by examining death certificates compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and…

Intermittent fasting - fasting every other day - is guaranteed to lose weight in the short term, because it's a crash diet.  But like lots of other fad diets, the people selling books about it are basing their speculation on animal models and an unrealistic amount of optimism. In biological reality, intermittent fasting impairs the action of sugar-regulating hormone, insulin, which may increase diabetes risk. Findings presented in the spring at at the European Society of Endocrinology annual meeting, suggest that fasting-based diets may be associated with long-term health risks and…

Like many Americans, like many people in all rich nations, New Yorkers somehow still have a lot of be depressed about. And they are getting obese. And not sleeping enough. In 2006, New York declared if they just banned trans fats, diabetes would go down, but rates actually went up, and outside the wealthy white demographic it has remained high.  Yet New Yorkers think they are healthy. New analyses based on physical examinations, laboratory testing, and interviews with more than 1,500 residents -- a sample population picked to represent every adult, gender, and race in the city's five…

There has been recent concern about the impact of vaping flavors on young people but the numbers are fuzzy. The US FDA has rightly cracked down on companies flagrantly violating copyright in packaging but cartoon characters don't lead young people to vaping. Instead, former smokers note, young people who experiment with it but don't already smoke often just want to seem cool, and there is nothing cool about bubble gum flavor. Instead, they argue, flavors are primarily for existing smokers who want to quit. They get the nicotine, they get some of the habitual mechanism of smoking, but not the…

Physicians who work in small, independent primary care practices, offices with five or fewer physicians, report dramatically lower levels of burnout than the national average, according to survey results published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. The findings indicate that the independence and sense of autonomy that doctors have in small practices may provide some protection against symptoms of burnout. Whether that feeling of autonomy will last as health care becomes more centralized is another issue, but for now 13.5 percent reporting being burned out in…

A survey sent to 1,500 pediatricians, most practicing physicians for more than 15 years and nearly all in primary care, found that 74 percent of the responding pediatricians did not approve of spanking and 78 percent thought spanking never or seldom improved children’s behavior. Pediatricians have changed dramatically in the last few decades. Only 20 percent are in the American Academy of Pediatrics and that has started politicking on the Second Amendment, illegal immigration, and numerous other political issues. As it has become more political, pediatrician views inside and outside of…

If you added Vitamin C to Pepsi, you know what you would have? Orange juice.  There is nothing wrong with orange juice (public relations manufactured health halo aside), just like there is nothing wrong with Pepsi, they should both be treats. Unfortunately, for the U.S., the richest country in the world, no food need ever be a treat, they can all be purchased every day. And that is bad for kids.  Given that, why is a nutritional epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) only worried about added sugar? Too much sugar is too much, regardless of the source…

One way to manage chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) is to abandon existing guidelines and screen all people born between 1945 and 1975 for the disease, according to a new paper.  Chronic HCV is a major public health problem in Canada with serious health effects leading to premature death. In 2013, about 252,000 Canadians were infected with HCV. People born between 1945 and 1975 have the highest rates of HCV, although an estimated 70% of this group have not been tested.  The guideline, created by the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver, is aimed at physicians and other…

Worldwide healthcare access and quality improved remarkably from 2000-2016 but there are unsurprising disparities between wealthy and poor countries - and countries like the United States which showed high quality but varying levels of access before the federal government took control of medical access with the controversial Obamacare law passed by Democrats. Some poor countries do quite well, but that highlights limitations of the analysis. Countries with lower abortion rates, like the United States, will show more deaths in childhood or from difficult pregnancies, than countries like Cuba,…