Архив рубрики: Здоровье Америка

DALLAS — The number of people with measles in Texas increased to 146 in an outbreak that led this week to the death of an unvaccinated school-aged child, health officials said Friday.

The number of cases — Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years — increased by 22 since Tuesday. The Texas Department of State Health Services said cases span over nine counties in West Texas, including almost 100 in Gaines County, and 20 patients have been hospitalized so far.

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Read More: What to Know About the Measles Vaccine

The child who died Tuesday night in the outbreak is the first U.S. death from the highly contagious but preventable respiratory disease since 2015, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The child was treated at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, though the facility said the patient didn’t live in Lubbock County.

The virus has largely spread through rural, oil rig-dotted West Texas, with cases concentrated in a “close-knit, unde..

Considering a new workout routine? A new yoga practice? Determined to use your recumbent bike for something other than hanging your clothes? Whatever the case, it never hurts to reconsider whether your fitness program is best suited for you, given the many options all claiming to being your surest route to better health.

To make things easier, we tapped eight personal trainers for their best bits of wisdom on how to level up your workout.

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Focus on mobility first

One piece of fitness-related advice that has changed the life of Ackeem Emmons, coach at Tonal, an interactive home gym system, is the power of mobility. For years, the New York City-based personal trainer focused solely on strength and speed—his only metrics of success. “It was not until I matured, started training others, and kept getting injured that I learned to appreciate mobility,” he says. “When I started to incorporate mobility, stretching, and improving my flexibility, I saw major..

WASHINGTON — This year’s harsh flu season – the most intense in 15 years – has federal health officials trying to understand if it sparked an increase in a rare but life-threatening brain complication in children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 19,000 people have died from the flu so far this winter, including 86 children. Thursday, the CDC reported at least nine of those children experienced brain complications, and it has asked state health departments to help investigate if there are more such cases.

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Read More: ‘We Were Told Nothing.’ What to Know About the Canceled Meeting to Discuss the Next Flu Shot

There is some good news: The CDC also reported that this year’s flu shots do a pretty good job preventing hospitalization from the flu — among the 45% of Americans who got vaccinated. But it comes a day after the Trump administration added to the uncertainty roiling government health agencies by canceling a meeting of expe..

DES MOINES, Iowa — Amid a heavy police presence and hundreds of vocal protesters, Iowa lawmakers on Thursday considered an unprecedented bill that would strip the state civil rights code of protections based on gender identity, a move opponents say could expose transgender people to discrimination in numerous areas of life.

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Both the House and Senate were expected to vote on the legislation Thursday, the same day the Georgia House backed away from removing gender protections from the state’s hate crimes law, which was passed in 2020 after the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

Iowa’s bill, first introduced last week, raced through the legislative process, despite opposition from LGBTQ+ advocates who rallied at the Capitol on Monday and Tuesday.

On Thursday, opponents of the bill filed into the Capitol rotunda with signs and rainbow flags to rally before, during and after a 90-minute public hearing, shouting, “No hate in our state!” There was a heavy police pres..

New data reveal that the majority of abortions that were provided in most states in 2023 were medication abortions—a pattern that reproductive health experts say underscores the need to protect access to abortion pills.

The Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports sexual and reproductive health and rights, released on Feb. 27 an analysis of state-level data on medication abortion in 2023. Guttmacher researchers had previously found that medication abortions accounted for 63% of all abortions provided by clinicians in 2023 in states without the most restrictive policies—most states, in other words—and the data released on Thursday expanded on that finding by breaking that number down by state. A full 95% of abortions performed in Wyoming were medication abortions, and 84% of abortions in Montana were. Lowest were Washington, D.C., at 44%, and Ohio, at 46%, according to the report.

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Researchers also looked at how women were receiving medicat..

KINSHASA — Unidentified illnesses in northwestern Congo have killed more than 50 people over the past five weeks, nearly half of them within hours after they felt sick.

The outbreaks in two distant villages in Congo’s Equateur province began on Jan. 21 and include 419 cases and 53 deaths. Health officials still do not know the cause, or whether the cases in the two villages, which are separated by more than 120 miles (190 kilometers), are related. It’s also unclear how the diseases are spreading, including whether they are spreading between people.

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The first victims in one of the villages were children who ate a bat and died within 48 hours, the Africa office of the World Health Organization said this week. More infections were found in the other village, where at least some of the patients have malaria.

Outbreaks in two remote villages

Illnesses have been clustered in two remote villages in different health zones of Equateur province, which is 400..

The Mennonite population being affected by a measles outbreak in West Texas is part of a larger, loosely affiliated group of churches worldwide with varied beliefs and leadership structures—and with sometimes strained or distant relations with health officials and other public authorities.

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Who are the Mennonites?

Mennonites are part of the wider Anabaptist family of churches, which emerged in 1525 as the radical wing of the Protestant Reformation in Central Europe. Other Anabaptist branches today include the Amish, Brethren and Hutterites. Anabaptists believed that a true biblical church had to follow such principles as non-violence, unconditional forgiveness, adult baptism, church discipline, and a refusal to bear arms or swear oaths.

Early Anabaptists suffered persecution and martyrdom under Catholic and Protestant rulers in Europe, a history that still influences some groups today in their suspicion of governmental authorities, including public h..

Roll your tongue around your mouth, and you might feel a sting from a new tender spot. A tiny, unwelcome crater of pain, a red circle of fire tucked against your cheek. It feels worse with every prodding poke.

Another canker sore. What did you do to deserve this?

Maybe nothing at all. “Most times, we don’t know why they come,” says Dr. Alessandro Villa, chief of oral medicine and oral oncology at Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health South Florida. Humans have figured out the forces behind planetary motion and the Irish potato famine, yet most canker sores remain something of a mystery, even while affecting 25% of people worldwide.

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Although a single cause hasn’t been identified, we do know that these sores, also known as ulcers, can coincide with serious health problems. Here’s a guide to distinguishing a trivial canker sore from one with deeper significance, along with strategies for treatment and prevention.

Meet the common canker sore

Usual..

Remember fretting over the perfect shade of concealer to match your skin tone and cover your blemishes? Those days are over: now, there’s a new generation of blemish bandages that are practically fashion statements. You can put on a bright yellow star-shaped patch, a purple butterfly, or another whimsical shape to cover your pimples.

It’s not unusual to see people walking around with colorful acne stickers on their faces in broad daylight. Alternatively, some subtler designs do hearken back to the days at the makeup counter, coming in a range of shades that provide a better match for your skin tone.

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What’s up with these zit stickers, anyway? Do they really work?

Anatomy of a pimple patch

The technology behind pimple patches isn’t new. These patches rely on a gel-forming material called hydrocolloid that’s been a staple for wound care dating back to the 1980s, says Dr. Danilo C. Del Campo, a dermatologist at the Chicago Skin Clinic. Besides providin..

It’s impossible to predict when you’re going to die. But if you’re aiming for a long and healthy life, it pays to worry less about your genes—which you can’t change anyway—and more about your lifestyle and surroundings. That’s the conclusion of a new study in Nature Medicine that takes a broad look at the longstanding environment-vs.-heredity debate, and comes down firmly in the environment camp.

The work was based on data from more than 490,000 people, all of whom are registered with the UK Biobank, a massive collection of participants’ detailed medical histories including gene sequencing; MRIs; blood, urine, and saliva samples; family health stories; and more. Researchers used this rich data to study the influence of genetics and more than 100 environmental factors on the risk of 22 diseases that make up most of the major causes of death.

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To do that, they focused especially closely on a subset of 45,000 people whose blood samples had been subject..