A web-based calculator that helps middle-aged women predict their risks of conditions that become more likely with age has been developed by public health, medical and computer science experts from throughout the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Led by physician John Robbins of UC Davis Health, the team’s risk-prediction calculator is unique in that it accounts...
Health
The Womb Isn’t Sterile – Healthy Babies Are Born with Bacteria and Fungi in Their Guts
For the last hundred years, scientists have believed that humans develop in a womb that remains sterile and completely isolated from the collection of bacteria, fungi and viruses that make us sick when we emerge into the outside world. This theory was largely based on the fact that it was very difficult to grow live...
How a Person Vapes, Not Just What a Person Vapes, Could Also Play a Big Role in Vaping Harm
In the wake of six deaths and 380 cases of confirmed and probable lung disease across the U.S., the Trump administration has called for banning most flavored e-cigarettes because of their huge appeal to young people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking closely at the different flavored nicotine juices and other substances...
Study Show That Drinking Tea Improves Brain Health
A recent study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) revealed that regular tea drinkers have better organized brain regions – and this is associated with healthy cognitive function – compared to non-tea drinkers. The research team made this discovery after examining neuroimaging data of 36 older adults. “Our results offer the...
Repeated Periods of Poverty Accelerate the Aging Process
Genetics, lifestyle and environment are all factors that somehow influence when and how we all age. But the financial situation is also important. Now, researchers from the Center for Healthy Aging and the Department of Public Health have found that four or more years with an income below the relative poverty threshold during adult life...
Analysis: How Your Beloved Hospital Helps To Drive Up Health Care Costs
As voters fume about the high cost of health care, politicians have been targeting two well-deserved villains: pharmaceutical companies, whose prices have risen more than inflation, and insurers, who pay their executives millions in salaries while raising premiums and deductibles. Although the Democratic presidential candidates have devoted copious airtime to debating health care, many of the country’s leading...
California Tries Again To Make Medication Abortions Available At Its Colleges
When Jessy Rosales was a sophomore at the University of California-Riverside, she had a boyfriend and was taking birth control pills. Then, out of nowhere, she started feeling sick. “I just thought it was the stomach flu,” she said. “It turns out I was pregnant.” Rosales was sure she was not ready to have a...
Medical Marijuana Laws Impact Use Among Sexual Minorities Differently Than Heterosexuals
Bisexual women had higher rates of past-year and daily marijuana use compared to heterosexual women, according to a study just published at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Gay/lesbian women were also more likely to report daily marijuana use and past year medical marijuana use than heterosexual women. While previous research has explored the...
In the Largest Study of Its Kind, No Evidence That Testosterone Reduces Cognitive Empathy
It’s long been known that autism is far more prevalent in males than in females. What hasn’t been understood is why. “Of course, the primary suspect when we have something that is sharply differentiated by sex is testosterone,” says Gideon Nave, an assistant professor of marketing in Penn’s Wharton School. Yet a new study led...
Pregnant Women of Color Experience Disempowerment by Health Care Providers
A new study finds that women of color perceive their interactions with doctors, nurses and midwives as being misleading, with information being “packaged” in such a way as to disempower them by limiting maternity healthcare choices for themselves and their children. “Given the significant birth-related disparities faced by women of color, particularly black women, this...