first opinion
Is ultra-processed food the tobacco of the 21st century?
DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
Oncologist Nicholas DeVito says yes. Ultra-processed foods — which include packaged meals, snacks, candies, sodas and more — are more relevant to his work treating cancer than one might think. An estimated 40% of cancers in the U.S. are caused by risk factors that can be changed like using tobacco products, a sedentary lifestyle, and consuming ultra-processed food.
In a First Opinion essay, DeVito argues that, just like tobacco before it, ultra-processed foods have flooded onto our shelves due to a lack of regulation. And just like increased tobacco use over the 20th century was linked to lung cancer, these foods have emerged as a potential cause for gastrointestinal cancers. Read more.
climate change
Airport workers rally to protest dangerous heat conditions
Airport workers in Charlotte, N.C. and Phoenix held rallies yesterday to demand better workplace protections from extreme heat, including easy access to water, cool break rooms, and training on heat illness. Last summer was the hottest the northern hemisphere has seen in 2,000 years, and this year is already predicted to break records again.
"Workers like me have been risking our lives every day in brutal conditions, and we're quite literally sick and tired," Cecilia Ortiz, a passenger service agent at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, said in a press release.
Extreme heat can have serious detrimental health effects, especially when it comes to cardiovascular health. Earlier this summer, the Biden administration proposed a new rule for the country's first-ever federal regulations around heat safety at work. The rule would require employers to evaluate heat risk, develop prevention plans for excessive heat, and to ensure workers have access to cool water and paid rest breaks.
dementia
Study: Getting shingles could increase risk of cognitive decline
It's likely that you and just about everybody you know have either had chickenpox before or received the vaccine. Shingles is a reactivation of the same virus that causes chickenpox, which stays in your body, and can cause painful rashes. But the infection might be more than an unpleasant experience. A study published yesterday in Alzheimer's Research & Therapy found that getting shingles was associated with about 20% higher long-term risk for subjective cognitive decline (when someone's memory gets worse or they are getting confused more often).
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital analyzed survey data from almost 150,000 people to assess the connection. It's the first large study to look at shingles and the risk of subjective cognitive decline, the authors note. While previous research has shown mixed evidence on a link between shingles and dementia, the authors write that this may be due to study designs that used insurance claims or administrative diagnostic data, which only includes people who received medical attention for their shingles.
The authors don't know exactly how the virus might be linked to cognition. The study also found that men (not women) who had gotten shingles and carry the APOE4 gene, a risk factor for dementia, had an even higher risk.
cancer
The Biden Cancer Moonshot's next target is surgery
The president and first lady spoke in New Orleans at Tulane University in New Orleans yesterday, announcing $150 million dollars in ARPA-H awards to develop technologies that will improve cancer surgeries. Tulane University is one of the first eight grantees to receive one of these awards, and the funding will go towards the creation of methods that will allow surgeons to determine if a cancer surgery successfully removed all of a tumor in real time.
"There are no good technologies that can help determine during the surgery whether it has been successful, but rather days later when it is already too late to change the surgery," J. Quincy Brown, a biomedical engineer at Tulane University, said in the moonshot announcement in New Orleans. "We should at least be able to give surgeons and patients the peace of mind and positive health benefits of a successful surgery every time. That's the goal our team is working towards."
This program will also require the new technology to be deployed in rural hospitals at the end of the project, Brown added during his remarks. "So, we can't build a million-dollar device," he said.
— Angus Chen
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