Архив рубрики: Здоровье Америка

Twenty-four years ago, the surgeon Santiago Horgan performed the first robotically assisted gastric-bypass surgery in the world, a major medical breakthrough. Now Horgan is working with a new tool that he argues could be even more transformative in operating rooms: the Apple Vision Pro.

Over the last month, Horgan and other surgeons at the University of California, San Diego have performed more than 20 minimally invasive operations while wearing Apple’s mixed-reality headsets. Apple released the headsets to the public in February, and they’ve largely been a commercial flop. But practitioners in some industries, including architecture and medicine, have been testing how they might serve particular needs.

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Horgan says that wearing headsets during surgeries has improved his effectiveness while lowering his risk of injury—and could have an enormous impact on hospitals across the country, especially those without the means to afford specialty equipment. ..

Beans are finally having their main-character moment—promoted from taco or chili accouterments to the starring role in salad bowls.

TikTok creator Violet Witchel, 24, popularized the “dense bean salad” earlier this year, and the concept has gone viral, embraced by meal-preppers and dietitians alike for its simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and nutritional punch. To make one, mix up the bean(s) of your choice, along with veggies, cheese, and a tasty dressing—no lettuce necessary. Witchel remembers thinking, “Oh, it’s dense” after filling up a bowl, which led to the catchy if curious name. “They have a little bit of everything you need,” she says. “You pretty much immediately feel full—and stay full.”

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These days, Witchel answers to “dense bean girl” and fields messages from dozens of internet strangers a day telling her the salad changed their life. She was recently recognized while out at a bar, and the woman she met referred to Witchel’s fiance as “Mr…

If there are two words Dr. James Findling, an endocrinologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin, dreads hearing, they’re probably “adrenal fatigue.”

Some of his patients recite claims they’ve read on social media: that adrenal fatigue happens when the adrenal glands, which produce the stress hormone cortisol, can’t keep up with the amount of stress they’re facing and underperform, leading to a long list of symptoms. But the mainstream medical community disagrees. “Adrenal fatigue is an illogical and illegitimate diagnosis that has no scientific basis,” Findling says, and endocrinologists are “fed up” that the idea hasn’t gone away.

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The Endocrine Society, of which Findling is a member, agrees that adrenal fatigue is not a legitimate medical diagnosis, and researchers have debunked the concept in studies. But the term persists on social media and among some alternative-medicine practitioners, so people continue to think they have it. “It takes a lot..

Have you ever slept a full eight hours but awakened feeling as tired as if you had pulled an all-nighter? If so, you may have experienced what’s known as unrefreshing sleep.

Unrefreshing sleep, also known as non-restorative sleep, is exactly what it sounds like: sleep that doesn’t recharge the body and brain enough to help you feel well-rested. People who experience it “feel just as tired as they were before they went to sleep,” says Thomas Roth, founder of the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Health in Michigan.

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Here’s what to know about unrefreshing sleep, and what to do if you experience it.

What is unrefreshing sleep, exactly?

People with insomnia struggle to fall or stay asleep and are often painfully aware of how long they’ve spent lying in bed wide awake. That’s not necessarily the case with unrefreshing sleep. Sufferers may wake up feeling fatigued even if they fell asleep quickly and didn’t get up at all during the night—i..

Growing up in Scotland, Nigel Brockton envisioned one day becoming a marine biologist. But after battling a rare and deadly cancer twice before finishing college, he turned to cancer research, determined to help others reduce their risk.

He was ahead of his time. Back then in the early 1990s, despite the American Cancer Society focusing on cancer prevention, many people thought that people got cancer mainly because of inherited genes and bad luck, like being struck like lightning, Brockton says. Non-scientists may still think that way, but research is painting a different picture: about 40% of all cancers could be thwarted by mitigating certain risk factors, especially through a healthier lifestyle.

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Nutrition plays a big role in this lifestyle. Brockton, a cancer epidemiologist for the nonprofit American Institute for Cancer Research, and other scientists have studied links between unhealthy eating and increased cancer risk, and nutritious substitut..

For the 16 million Americans with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), travel can be as anxiety-provoking as it is life-affirming.

The fatigue, chest tightness, congestion, and difficulty breathing that come with the chronic bronchitis or emphysema behind COPD can make the thought of travel seem overwhelming. There are so many questions: How would I handle a long flight? What do I need to bring? And how would I make my overall itinerary manageable?

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COPD may require a lot more planning, pulmonologists say, but for the majority of patients without the most severe lung disease—even those on oxygen—it’s certainly doable.

Here are the considerations doctors and COPD patients say you’ll need to keep in mind before you hit the road and while you’re away.

Check-in with your doctor

The first step is making an appointment with your pulmonologist to discuss the conditions at your destination, including altitude, air quality, and weather, as well a..

It’s been an intense election season, from a candidate’s momentous dropout to meme-generating debates to assassination attempts. And that’s just accounting for the things that did happen—not the ones that were made up but generated extensive attention, like fake celebrity endorsements, false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets, and conspiracy theories about the government’s hurricane-response efforts.

It’s anyone’s guess what else will transpire in the lead-up to Nov. 5. Yet misinformation will inevitably continue to spread—and you may encounter it in conversations with friends or family members. It can be helpful to have a plan for how to respond. “Most people who are passing along misinformation are doing it inadvertently—they heard something somewhere that they believed,” says Dan Pfeiffer, co-host of the podcast Pod Save America. “If you believe they actually want to know the truth, then you want to at least give them the opportunity to [understand] the correct information..

Forget about public restrooms: It turns out your own bathroom is teeming with viruses.

Researchers at Northwestern University studied two things that most people use everyday—their toothbrush and showerhead—to see what was living in each.

What they found was “quite surprising,” says Erica Hartmann, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern who led the study that focused on identifying virus species lurking in the bathroom. Most unexpected, she adds, was “how little we could identify that looked like something we had seen before. We found an incredible amount of diversity, which highlights how little we know and how much more we have to explore and discover.”

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But before you throw out your toothbrush or take apart your shower, keep in mind thatthe vast majority of viruses Hartmann and her team found were specific species known as bacteriophages, or viruses that almost exclusively infect bacterial cells and not human..

If you’re always on the lookout for the latest skincare gadget, you may have already tried facial rollers, sculpting wands, and dermaplaning devices. And you may be curious about the red-glowing masks that you’ve seen making the rounds on social media.

Red-light masks use low levels of light-emitting diode, or LED, to stimulate skin cells, says Dr. Jennifer Sawaya, a dermatologist at U.S. Dermatology Partners Scottsdale in Arizona. “Red light is a type of visible light that has been clinically shown to rejuvenate the skin.”

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Instagrammers and TikTokkers claim the masks—which, face it, do make you look like a character from a sci-fi film—can minimize wrinkles, smooth your complexion, and even improve acne. But these masks can be pricey, costing anywhere from $100 to thousands of dollars, and similar but stronger treatments are available at spas and dermatologists’ offices.

So, do at-home red light masks actually work? Sawaya says studies have shown ..

Despite all the recent hype from anti-aging evangelists and companies touting ways to extend life, human life expectancy is actually slowing down after accelerating in the previous century.

In a paper published in Nature Aging, researchers led by S. Jay Olshansky, professor of public health at the University of Illinois in Chicago, report that factors that have contributed to remarkable extensions of life expectancy in the 20th century are reaching the point of diminishing returns. Public-health interventions such as clean water and better sanitation and hygiene, as well as medical innovations like vaccines and advances in drug and surgical treatments, are approaching their optimal impact. For human life expectancy to extend much further beyond where it exists today, says Olshansky, entirely new strategies that focus on manipulating the biological processes of aging need to occur. And we aren’t there yet.

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A brief history of human life extension

At t..