Help is coming for many people with medical debt on their credit reports. Starting Friday, the three major U.S. credit reporting companies will stop counting paid medical debt on the reports that banks, potential landlords and others use to judge creditworthiness. The companies also will start giving people a year to resolve delinquent medical debt that has been sent to collections before reporting it — up from six months previously. Next year, the companies also will stop counting unpaid medical debt under at least $500. Read More: No Income. Major Medical Bills. What Life Is Like for Millions of Americans Facing Financial Ruin Because of the Pandemic The companies say these moves will wipe out nearly 70% of the medical debt listed on consumer credit reports. Patient advocates call that a huge advance. But they question whether medical debt should be on credit reports at all, given that many see it as a poor indicator of whether someone is trustworthy for a loan or rent. “These aren’t people who bought shoes they couldn’t afford,” said Amanda Dunker, of the nonprofit Community Service Society of New York. “They went to a doctor because they were sick or needed help with an injury.” Brooke Davis had about $1,300 in medical debt from a breast cancer scare that lingered for years on her credit report. The 48-year-old McDonough, Georgia, resident said that made it difficult to rent an apartment, and she needed a co-signer for a car loan. “You can’t get anything, you can’t even get a credit card if you have bad credit,” she said. The non-profit RIP Medical Debt relieved Davis’s debt last fall. But more health problems and the loss of a job have pushed Davis back into debt. She’s currently stuck with a swollen knee for which she can’t see her doctor. “I don’t have the money to really go for my knee right now, so I’ve just been suffering with it,” she said. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has said its research shows mortgages and credit cards are better predictors than medical bills of whether someone will repay a debt. The agency, which monitors banks, lenders and other financial institutions, has noted that people often don’t have time to shop for the best price when they seek care and may have little control over the progress of a serious illness. Medical billing errors can wind up on credit reports. And patients are sometimes unsure about what they owe or whether an insurer will eventually pay it. The agency said earlier this year it estimates that 58% of the debt in collections and on credit records is from medical bills, and past-due medical debt is more prevalent among Black and Hispanic people. The bureau is trying to determine whether unpaid medical bills should be included on credit reports. John McNamara, an assistant director with the bureau, declined to estimate when the agency might make a decision. It could propose a rule, after hearing from all sides on the issue, that would end the practice. Credit reporting companies also are considering whether medical debt should remain on the reports, said Justin Hakes, a vice president with the Consumer Data Industry Association. The three national credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — announced the medical debt changes in March, after the bureau said it would hold those companies accountable for the accuracy of their reports. Patient advocates said those changes will help a lot of people. Read More: Without Roe v. Wade, U.S. Maternal Mortality Rates May Get Even Worse The wait in reporting delinquent debt will give patients time to figure out how to resolve a bill, noted Chi Chi Wu, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “It gives more breathing room to deal with the insurance company or your provider,” Wu said. “Everybody has a story about that.” Much of the medical debt that landed on Melina Oien’s credit report several years ago was for bills that were under $500. The Tacoma, Washington, resident said she was living in an expensive place, Hawaii, where her former husband was stationed for the military. They were getting care for a daughter who had health issues that included a rare condition that affected her metabolism. “We would zero out our checking account with living expenses every month,” she said. “When you are counting out $5 for gas until the next payday, how do you pay a $30 bill?” A severance package from the military eventually helped them pay their medical debt a few years ago. Oien said her credit score jumped about 70 points just from that. But before that happened, they had to deal with higher interest rates on any loans they took out, and they could only get a mortgage after her sister gave them money to pay down some debt. “It was embarrassing, it was very stressful,” said Oien, who now works as a patient advocate. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. 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The United States is a surprisingly dangerous place to be pregnant. The U.S. maternal mortality rate—nearly 24 deaths per 100,000 live births, as of 2020—is far higher than in comparable developed nations, and research shows it has gotten worse in recent years, not better. Maternal death rates are particularly high among Black women, at 55 deaths per 100,000 births compared to 19 deaths per 100,000 births among white women. Experts fear these numbers will only get worse now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion and triggering an array of state-level bans that place limits on reproductive health care. “Even a low-risk pregnancy and birth has higher risks to a mother than a termination,” says Michelle Drew, a family nurse practitioner and midwife who is the executive director of the Ubuntu Black Family Wellness Collective, a Delaware-based nonprofit. When you consider “forced gestation and forced birth, with a pregnancy that may not be well-timed or desired or that may be high-risk,” Drew says, the stakes only grow higher. One 2021 study estimated that, if the U.S. banned abortion outright, the overall number of pregnancy-related deaths would rise by more than 20% in subsequent years, with a 33% increase among Black women. That estimate doesn’t apply exactly to the present day, since abortion is expected to remain available in about half of U.S. states even without Roe. But research clearly suggests that when abortion access increases, maternal deaths go down—and vice versa. That said, in the U.S., the impacts differ significantly between demographics. After abortion was legalized in the U.S., culminating with the Supreme Court’s original Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, maternal mortality among women of color in the U.S. dropped by more than 30%, while there was a limited effect among white women, according to a study posted as a preprint last year. Almost all of the decline was due to fewer abortion-related deaths among women of color, says co-author Lauren Hoehn-Velasco, an assistant professor of economics at Georgia State University—suggesting that, before abortion was broadly legal in the U.S., many women of color resorted to unsafe methods for ending an unwanted pregnancy. “I don’t know that we can say exactly how things will look going forward,” Hoehn-Velasco says, noting that advances like abortion pills can now help provide safe access even in states where abortion is restricted. Even with advances like medication abortion available, there is still a link between abortion access and maternal mortality in the U.S. As of 2017, states with restrictive abortion policies, such as gestational age limitations or pre-procedure waiting periods, had an average maternal mortality rate of 28.5 deaths per 100,000 births, compared to an average rate of 15.7 in states that protected abortion access, according to a 2021 study published in the journal Contraception. A separate study from the same year, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found a similar trend: states with significant restrictions on abortion care recorded a 7% increase in total maternal mortality from 2015 to 2018. There are a number of possible reasons for this dynamic. States with strict abortion policies tend to also be those that have not expanded Medicaid and have lower numbers of practicing medical professionals, both of which can make it harder for people to access good health care. “Incidentally, they also happen to be states that have large populations of families living in poverty and especially large populations who are people of color, who are earning low wages,” Drew says. Socioeconomic factors like these are closely linked to risk factors, like having underlying health conditions and inadequate access to prenatal care, that increase the chances of pregnancy complications. A 2020 report from health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield found that rates of pregnancy and birth complications among commercially insured women in the U.S. rose from 2014 to 2018, in part because more people entered pregnancy with pre-existing health problems. The report also found that a third of women had fewer than the 10 recommended prenatal medical appointments during pregnancy—and of those who didn’t, nearly a quarter had childbirth complications. Dr. Mark Hoofnagle, a trauma surgeon at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a co-author on the Contraception study, notes that abortion clinics often provide many forms of reproductive health care, so policies that make it harder for these facilities to survive can have trickle-down effects. “Planned Parenthood does way more than just abortions,” Hoofnagle says. “When you attack the clinics in general, you’re aggravating an existing inequity.” The vast majority of people who undergo a pregnancy do not experience life-threatening issues; there were 861 maternal deaths in the U.S. in 2020 and about 3.6 million births. But particularly for people who enter pregnancy with existing health problems, “carrying a pregnancy to term is so much riskier than having an abortion in this country,” says Dovile Vilda, a research assistant professor who studies maternal and child health at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and a co-author of the American Journal of Public Health study. Without Roe, and with many people unable to travel out of state to get an abortion, more individuals “will be forced to carry unwanted and high-risk pregnancies to term even if their health and lives are in danger,” she says. The risks of that situation aren’t hypothetical. For a 2015 study, researchers tracked a group of about 850 women who sought abortions at U.S. facilities. Some were turned away because they were past gestational age limits in their states, which ranged from as few as 10 weeks to more than 20 weeks of pregnancy. About 6% of the individuals who were denied abortions and gave birth went on to report a potentially life-threatening complication, such as hemorrhaging or eclampsia, compared to about 1% of people who got an abortion near their state’s gestational age limit and about 0.4% of those who got a first-trimester abortion. One woman died after being turned away by an abortion clinic and giving birth. At this point, Vilda says, the research is clear: making abortions harder to get means more women and babies will get sick and die. “We have enough data and we have enough research and we have enough evidence,” she says. “What we truly need now is political will.” from https://ift.tt/EQSx15Y Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
There’s a curious logic to environmentalism. We praise, in most cases, those who make incremental lifestyle adjustments to support environmental causes: turning off the lights before leaving your home or driving an electric vehicle is seen as a meaningful—albeit small—step, even if you don’t give up electricity for good. No one would shame you for not cooking your dinner with a fire from flint.
But the logic breaks down when animals are involved. Reducing meat consumption, without fully going vegan, is seen as a compromise, a slightly shameful cop-out. “Meatless Monday” is often accused of sloganeering, and “humane slaughter” is considered an oxymoron. But interestingly enough, the feelings between the accuser and the accused tend to be mutual: even those who have drastically cut their meat consumption—say, to once a year—often can’t shake a sense of complicity themselves. Many vegetarians harbor a lingering sense of guilt for not being vegan. The reducetarian movement and its leader, Brian Kateman, aim to change that. Inadequate labelsThe Reducetarian Foundation stresses the value of “the small changes in personal and institutional behavior that collectively result in a significant difference in the world.” Kateman, a Staten Island native, grew up with the standard meat-heavy American diet. But in 2010, when he was a junior in college, he was exposed to the philosopher Peter Singer’s views on animal welfare, he became aware of the ethical and environmental consequences of eating animals. However, even as Kateman’s meat consumption was nearing zero, others around him were alert less to his ethical commitment than to violations thereof. He remembers one Thanksgiving when he, as a gesture to honor his family’s tradition, took a slice of turkey, only to be immediately teased by his sister: “I thought you were a vegetarian, Brian?” Kateman stopped calling himself a vegetarian, but other labels—like “cheating vegetarian” and “lazy vegan”—were defined in terms of negativity. Neutral terms like “semi-vegetarian,” “mostly vegetarian,” and “flexitarian” didn’t quite cut it because they were, in Kateman’s words, “static,” and did not propel further efforts to reduce meat, ideally to zero. Worse still, terms like “mostly vegetarian” set too high a bar that most people find it hard to aspire to. Such phrases could mentally fatigue people before they made any changes. Then, in 2014, Kateman was having his weekly lunch with his friend Tyler Alterman when Alterman, upon seeing that Kateman had brought a chicken salad, asked the now familiar question: “Aren’t you a vegetarian?” Alterman’s tone, however, was neither accusatory nor sarcastic but cautiously inquisitive: Alterman had also been reducing meat but found the existing labels inadequate. After many rounds of brainstorming, the duo came up with a term at once positive and inclusive: reducetarian. Read More: How China Could Change the World by Taking Meat Off the Menu What is the reducetarian movement?As he explains in his 2014 TED talk, Kateman observed that most people find it difficult to go 100% vegan or vegetarian, but their efforts to reduce meat or dairy products aren’t appreciated because existing labels are “all or nothing.” Even those who decide to eat meat very infrequently would be ridiculed for calling themselves a “vegetarian.” As a result, many give up the effort to reduce meat altogether. One style of eating, the flexitarian diet, allows eating meat and dairy products while eating mostly plant-based meals. So how’s a reducetarian different from a flexitarian? “A flexitarian is someone who primarily eats plant-based foods with the occasional inclusion of animal products. You can think of them as mostly vegan or vegetarian,” Kateman told me. “‘Reducetarian’ is an umbrella term. But it primarily describes someone who eats way too many animal products and made a decision to cut back.” (Kateman, who has degrees in evolutionary biology and conservation biology, does not have a background in medicine or nutrition.) Let us assume, for example, there is a person who eats 200 pounds of meat every year, which is still below the average annual meat consumption in the U.S. Cutting back meat by 10%—eating 180 pounds a year—makes the person a reducetarian. “Those people have made an incredible step to cut back on the amount of animal products that they consume,” Kateman says. “But they are absolutely not flexitarian, because flexitarians primarily eat plant-based foods.” Under this definition, vegetarians and vegans are reducetarians—they reduced their meat consumption to zero. To amplify this message, the Reducetarian Foundation, founded in 2015, does advocacy work like fundraising and outreach activities; creates contents spread via various channels, including influential thought leaders and college campus clubs; and organizes an annual conference. The research arm of the foundation conducts publicly available studies on how the message can be effectively delivered. The essay collection The Reducetarian Solution, published by Kateman in 2017, showed that the idea has attracted an unlikely mix of thinkers. What is notable about the book is not just its impressive roster of contributors and endorsements—Jeffrey Sachs, Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins—but their political and philosophical non-alignment. It’s rare to see a marketing guru (Seth Godin), an environmental writer-cum-activist (Bill McKibben), a self-described libertarian (Michael Shermer), and a writer of feminist critical theory (Carol J. Adams) in a single book arguing for the same cause. Benefits of the reducetarian movementFrom a planet perspective, the first order effect is greater when one person, who used to eat 200 pounds of meat, reduces consumption by half—again, still by no means a vegetarian—than when five people eating 10 pounds of meat go fully vegan. It’s simple math, really: 100 pounds are a higher number than 50 pounds. On an individual level, plant-based diets offer a wealth of health benefits, such as preventing heart diseases, decreasing total cholesterol, and reducing the risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. How much time it takes to see salubrious effects of plant-based diets is different from one symptom to another and from person to person. According to Dr. Benjamin P. Ha—a physician based in Southern California who co-authored Nutritional Update for Physicians: Plant-Based Diets—some improvements can be seen within days. “If you are truly going with a 100% whole-food, plant-based diet—with no animal protein, no dairy, very little processed foods—you can see tremendous improvement in your cholesterol just in 10 days,” Ha says, taking cholesterol as an example that a lot of patients worry about. “If you do a pre-test of baseline cholesterol, then eat a plant-based diet for 10 days, and do a post-test, often you’ll see a 20%, 30%, 40% reduction in baseline cholesterol.” Importantly, Ha emphasized that being a vegetarian isn’t synonymous with embracing a plant-based diet. He noticed among his patients that there’s much confusion about what plant-based nutrition means. “People come to me and say, ‘Well, I’m going to start eating soy hotdogs.’ Unfortunately, that’s not going to benefit your health any more than what you’re eating now,” Ha says. “It’s not about being a vegan or vegetarian. It’s really about eating unprocessed, plant-based, whole foods.” Moreover, curbing animal agriculture can alleviate the water crisis—a pound of beef needs nearly 40 times more water than starchy vegetables—and the prevalent exploitation of factory farm workers. It’s estimated that more than 70 billion land animals are slaughtered every year for food, and some quick math tells us that the number of animals killed every 10 hours equals the total number of deaths from World War II (which happened over six years). Meat consumption also damages biodiversity. All in all, it’s good for you, good for other humans, clearly good for animals being slaughtered for meat, and even good for animals that aren’t being slaughtered for meat. Read More: Vegan Documentarian Tells the Inside Story of the Lab-Grown Meat Industry Challenges of the reducetarian movementOver the years, the vehemency of the opposition was often as strong as the supporting voices. Once, at an animal rights conference, Kateman saw a sign that read, “Brian Kateman speaking at an animal rights conference is like Donald Trump speaking at a women’s rights conference.” Still, Kateman chooses to avoid coalition-building by choosing one side; rather, he carefully maintains a careful alliance between opposing sides. The unwavering credo of the reducetarian movement may well be “inclusivity” of different philosophical views. Many times during his keynote speeches at the Reducetarian Summit—an annual conference for supporters of the reducetarian movement—Kateman has warned against Freud’s idea of the narcissism of small difference—how similar ideas that strive for the same goal (namely, reducing meat consumption) can lead to the most fierce divisiveness. While Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition and food studies at N.Y.U., commends the movement’s inclusivity—encompassing vegan, vegetarian, and just eat-less-meat approaches—she also points to the way in which it could be a pitfall. “Social movements are not famous for inclusivity. Participants with the more extreme ideological positions tend to exclude centrists. So framing this movement as centrist may appear as a strength, but it has an inherent weakness in political non-viability,” Nestle told me. “The reducetarian movement calls for common ground among meat-eaters and non-meat-eaters. That alone is asking for a lot.” The unusual mix of attendees at the 4th Reducetarian Summit, which took place in San Francisco in May after two years of hiatus, attests to this value. Among them: a registered Republican state senator, card-carrying Democrats, representatives from non-profit organizations, and scientists from multinational corporations like Danone, all rooting for the same cause. In person, Kateman is neither self-serious nor evangelical. He would be the first to admit that eating less meat is not a new concept; however, Kateman’s nomenclatural recast framed an existing idea into a movement. There’s no shortage of signs that paint a hopeful cultural seismograph for the plant-based future of food: the public’s interest in plant-based meat is rapidly growing, and sales of plant-based foods are climbing every year. Perhaps those incremental changes distill the heart of the reducetarian movement: small seismic waves of our individual choices can bring about a long overdue earthquake. from https://ift.tt/5bH6n7N Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ COVID-19 poses health risks during pregnancy for everyone involved. Pregnant people are at higher risk for severe disease, and the chances of negative outcomes for mother and baby—such as preeclampsia, preterm birth, and stillbirth—increase with infection. However, pregnant people were excluded from the original vaccine trials, so when the vaccines first became available, many soon-to-be-mothers were unsure about taking them. Thousands of pregnant people have now been vaccinated in the U.S., and an abundance of data show that getting vaccinated during pregnancy is safe and protective for both mothers and babies, giving babies anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and, according to a study published in June, a 69% lower chance of being hospitalized with the disease in their first 6 months of life. Now, research published in the journal Nature Communications on June 28 shows that getting the COVID-19 vaccine during any of the three trimesters of pregnancy confers measurable benefits to the mother and child, and there may be ways to optimize protection based on when the shots are given. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital analyzed the anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies of 158 women who were vaccinated during their pregnancies. Most received either Pfizer-BioNTech’s or Moderna’s vaccine, which both generated a superior immune response compared to Johnson & Johnson-Janssen’s shot. Those who were vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine during either the first or third trimesters had the strongest immune responses to vaccination. Antibody levels generated during second-trimester vaccination were somewhat weaker, which may be because pregnant people’s immune systems are more active during the first and third trimesters, and therefore may generate a greater response to the vaccine, says Dr. Andrea Edlow, a maternal fetal medicine specialist and physician scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who co-authored the study. The researchers also tested the levels of antibodies in women’s umbilical cords at birth, a measure that suggests how well mothers are able to transfer protection to their fetuses. They found that the transfer of antibodies from mother to baby was most efficient during the first and third trimesters, which suggests that babies whose mothers are vaccinated early in their pregnancies receive vaccine-derived COVID-19 antibodies right away. However, the absolute number of antibodies transferred was highest if the mother was vaccinated during the second or third trimester, which may mean that babies whose mothers were vaccinated later in pregnancy were offered more protection—likely because mothers’ COVID-19 immunity waned over time. Overall, this evidence points to the third trimester as the optimal time to get a COVID-19 booster, Edlow says. (The third trimester is also when the CDC recommends pregnant people get the Tdap vaccine for whooping cough in order to give babies the highest levels of protection after birth.) Edlow says that while it’s important for unvaccinated women to get vaccinated as soon as possible, the study shows how to maximize the benefits for both mother and fetus. “If I were an unvaccinated pregnant person, I would definitely get vaccinated in the first trimester. But I would also probably use the opportunity then to be boosted in the third trimester,” says Edlow. (However, she emphasizes that during the pandemic, the priority is getting vaccinated as soon as possible, no matter what trimester you’re in.) The study was kept small so that scientists could use in-depth methods to analyze the quality of the antibody production, but its size means that it can’t give a complete picture of how vaccines work in pregnant women, Edlow says. However, now that scientists have accumulated a wealth of data showing that vaccination is safe and effective in pregnant people, studies like this can help scientists fine-tune their understanding of how COVID-19 antibodies and immunity work during pregnancy. In the long term, this research may inform future recommendations for COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy. “We can say with confidence to pregnant individuals at this point, it’s safe to be vaccinated in pregnancy, it doesn’t cause an increased risk of miscarriage, it doesn’t cause birth defects,” says Edlow. “It does protect the mother against severe disease and death, and it does protect against pregnancy complications.” The results of this study do not directly apply to pregnant people who are already fully vaccinated and boosted, as they were not included in the study. The CDC also does not currently recommend a second booster shot to most people who are pregnant, unless they are immunocompromised. But Edlow said that she suspects the guidance will change over time, as periodic boosting for COVID-19 is expected to become more routine. Vaccination rates among pregnant people have increased over time since the shots first became available, as more data showing the benefits have been published. As the charts below show, the vaccine gap between pregnant and non-pregnant people has closed over the last year. However, women who are pregnant or trying to become pregnant are less likely to have received a booster shot than other women.
If they choose to get boosted during their pregnancy, says Edlow, these women might have an opportunity to further protect themselves and their babies during the first months of life. (More research is needed to know for sure; the study did not include people who had received booster shots.) The CDC recommends that pregnant people get a booster shot when they are eligible, and Edlow says that doing so after 20 weeks of pregnancy may maximize protection for the baby. However, Edlow adds that mothers should also weigh their individual risk of severe illness when deciding whether to get a booster sooner—since a mother’s health is a top priority during pregnancy. “The important message for pregnant people is: by protecting yourself, you’re doing the best thing that you can do to protect your baby,” she says. from https://ift.tt/7jQKmDR Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (Washington) — U.S. health officials said Wednesday they have agreed to purchase another 105 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in anticipation of a fall booster campaign. The $3.2 billion deal announced by the Biden administration comes as federal scientists consider how to update the vaccines to better protect Americans from the rapidly evolving virus. Federal officials said the purchase agreement includes the option to purchase a total of 300 million doses, including a mix of doses for both adults and children. The first shots would be delivered by early fall, pending a decision by the Food and Drug Administration to authorize new versions of the shots. A decision is expected from the FDA in the coming days following a Tuesday meeting in which outside advisers recommended modifying the vaccines to better target the Omicron variant. The current vaccines retain strong protection against hospitalization and death, but their ability to block infection dropped markedly when Omicron appeared. It’s not yet clear who would be offered a tweaked booster—they might be urged only for older adults or those at high risk from the virus. But once the FDA decides on the recipe change, Pfizer and competitor Moderna will have to seek authorization for the appropriately updated doses, time for health authorities to settle on a fall strategy. Wednesday’s announcement came as Congress remained gridlocked over billions in funding requested by the Biden administration to purchase additional vaccines, tests and drugs to fight the pandemic. House and Senate lawmakers have been wrangling for weeks over how to resolve the stalemate. Funding for the latest Pfizer purchase comes from reallocated money from earlier COVID-19 relief packages, officials said. from https://ift.tt/lbaViZp Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (Geneva) — The number of new coronavirus cases rose by 18% in the last week, with more than 4.1 million cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization. The U.N. health agency said in its latest weekly report on the pandemic that the worldwide number of deaths remained relatively similar to the week before, at about 8,500. COVID-related deaths increased in three regions: the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Americas. The biggest weekly rise in new COVID-19 cases was seen in the Middle East, where they increased by 47%, according to the report released late Wednesday. Infections rose by about 32% in Europe and Southeast Asia, and by about 14% in the Americas, WHO said. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said cases were on the rise in 110 countries, mostly driven by the Omicron variants BA.4 and BA.5. “This pandemic is changing, but it’s not over,” Tedros said this week during a press briefing. He said the ability to track COVID-19’s genetic evolution was “under threat” as countries relaxed surveillance and genetic sequencing efforts, warning that would make it more difficult to catch emerging and potentially dangerous new variants. Read More: Which COVID-19 Vaccine Should Your Young Kid Get? That Depends, Doctors Say He called for countries to immunize their most vulnerable populations, including health workers and people over 60, saying that hundreds of millions remain unvaccinated and at risk of severe disease and death. Tedros said that while more than 1.2 billion COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally, the average immunization rate in poor countries is about 13%. “If rich countries are vaccinating children from as young as 6 months old and planning to do further rounds of vaccination, it is incomprehensible to suggest that lower-income countries should not vaccinate and boost their most at risk (people),” he said. According to figures compiled by Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance, fewer than half of the 2.1 billion vaccines promised to poorer countries by the Group of Seven large economies have been delivered. Earlier this month, the United States authorized COVID-19 vaccines for infants and preschoolers, rolling out a national immunization plan targeting 18 million of the youngest children. American regulators also recommended that some adults get updated boosters in the fall that match the latest coronavirus variants. from https://ift.tt/EKGVJPh Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ V is for vaccine. Elmo got a COVID-19 vaccine Tuesday, according to Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind “Sesame Street.” Read more: A Parent’s Guide to COVID-19 Vaccines for Kids In a public service announcement posted to YouTube, the beloved 3-and-a-half-year-old “Sesame Street” star talked with his dad about what it was like to get the shot. “There was a little pinch, but it was OK,” Elmo said in the video. Elmo’s dad said he had a lot of questions for the pediatrician, who assured him that vaccinations are safe and effective for children. Read more: Which COVID-19 Vaccine Should Your Young Kid Get? That Depends, Doctors Say “Was it safe? Was it the right decision?′ I talked to our pediatrician so I could make the right choice,” Louie said in the PSA. “I learned that Elmo getting vaccinated is the best way to keep himself, our friends, neighbors and everyone else healthy and enjoying the things they love.” COVID-19 vaccinations for the youngest Americans started last week. That means U.S. kids under 5 — roughly 18 million youngsters — are eligible for the shots. U.S. regulators authorized shots from Moderna and Pfizer. The Moderna vaccine is two doses and the Pfizer shot is three. Read more: My Toddlers Already Had COVID-19. I’m Still Getting Them Vaccinated Right Away Last November, Big Bird got vaccinated — sparking criticism from some conservative politicians. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, called it “government propaganda.” The CDC advises vaccination even for those who already had COVID-19 to protect against reinfection, and says it is OK to get other vaccines at the same time. from https://ift.tt/xfGgjTR Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ After Jewell Singletary was diagnosed with lupus, she developed rheumatoid arthritis as well—a common pairing, since both are autoimmune conditions—and had to use a cane to navigate her college campus. When she graduated, the now 38-year-old New Jersey resident decided to be more focused on supporting her health, in an effort to maintain her mobility as she began her career. She started in the kitchen. First to be tossed were sugary drinks, fried foods, and highly processed options, she says. Once she eliminated them, it didn’t take long before she could discard one more important item: her cane. “My mobility improved dramatically just from these dietary changes,” she says. “I haven’t needed to use a cane since, and that progress made me realize how much switching my eating could do.” A few years later, she tried cutting dairy products and felt another health boost, followed by cutting red meat and pork products. Recently she’s tried reducing her consumption of gluten, and she reports she’s already feeling some positive effects, like more overall energy. “Dietary habits can absolutely help you manage lupus in a much better way, and some research suggests it may even help reduce your risk of developing lupus if it runs in your family,” says Dr. Diane Kamen, a professor of medicine in the division of rheumatology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina and a member of the medical-scientific advisory council for Lupus Foundation of America. “At this point, lupus is not curable, but it is manageable, and a big part of how to do that is through lifestyle habits like exercise, sleep, stress management, and diet.” Read More: The 7 Best Foods for Fighting Inflammation What the research saysThere isn’t a “lupus diet” that’s recommended for those who have the condition, but as Singletary found, food can have a major impact on symptoms like fatigue, as well as inflammation-related effects like painful, stiff joints. For some, dietary changes may affect other issues like frequent headaches, anxiety, and skin irritation, and researchers are digging into the connection. According to a 2021 study in the journal Lupus Science & Medicine, a type of dietary fiber known as resistant starch may have an impact on lupus by boosting the effectiveness of the gut microbiome, which is the community of bacteria and other organisms in the gastrointestinal tract. This fiber feeds the good bacteria in the gut, which in turn support the immune system and reduce lupus-related symptoms as well as risk of a condition called antiphospholipid syndrome—an effect of lupus that may cause blood clots. Resistant starch is found in foods like oats, barley, beans, peas, plantains, and lentils. In a 2020 study that involved more than 173,000 women, high consumption of nuts and legumes reduced potential lupus risk by 41%. In research published this year that looked at symptom severity, increased vegetable consumption was linked to improvements in joint and muscle pain, and also benefited mood, fatigue, and weight management. That study found that the effects were particularly robust when the shift toward plant foods was accompanied by decreased consumption of processed food, sugar, gluten, and dairy. Other research on the impact of diet for systemic lupus erythematosus, published in 2018, notes that food choices not only show promise for managing lupus symptoms, but also play a role in lowering the risk of associated conditions for lupus, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and high cholesterol. Despite results like these, more research is needed to investigate the connections between specific foods and lupus, says Kamen. But in the meantime, for those who have the condition, making even small changes may add up to better health in the long run. Read More: What Lupus Patients Want Their Doctor to Know Top tips if you have lupusIn general, nutrition guidance for those with lupus is similar to advice that applies to everyone, Kamen says. That means more fruits and vegetables as well as whole grains, since those contain important nutrients, as well as fiber, that can help bring down inflammation and mitigate symptoms, she says. In terms of specific tips for those with lupus, here are some to consider: Make changes when you’re on corticosteroidsUse of these medications for controlling lupus symptoms is common, and it’s helpful to eat in a way that counteracts some of their known side effects, says Dana Ellis Hunnes, a registered dietitian and author of Recipe for Survival: What You Can Do to Live a Healthier and More Environmentally Friendly Life. For example, corticosteroids can cause fluid retention, and adding a salty diet to the mix can exacerbate that issue. Also, a high-protein diet is often recommended since a medication like prednisone can speed up protein breakdown, which can result in even more protein loss if a digestive issue like Crohn’s is involved. Corticosteroids decrease calcium as well, so Hunnes says that most people on these medications will need to focus on boosting that mineral in their diet, and possibly take a supplement as well. Calcium is found in foods like yogurt, milk, salmon, and broccoli. Other potential effects of the drugs include higher cholesterol and increased blood sugar, so Hunnes adds that it’s important to limit sugar and fat. Watch for food intolerance and sensitivityFood allergies are often easy to spot since they can cause a dramatic reaction, but food sensitivities may be harder to detect, according to Dr. Bindiya Gandhi, a Georgia-based functional-medicine physician. These foods may cause indigestion, tiredness, headaches, and bloating, and the biggest problem for those with lupus is that an intolerance reaction can boost inflammation, which Gandhi says may become chronic if those foods are regularly consumed. “Pay attention to how you feel right after you eat, but also hours later,” she says. “An initial inflammation response might be mild, but as your body works to digest that food, it could become more noticeable.” For instance, maybe eating eggs makes you congested, or gluten contributes to midday brain fog. If you feel this way after eating certain foods but still consume them often, your inflammation response doesn’t have time to power down, Gandhi says. That can lead to higher risk of lupus flares in the near future. Eat for better kidney healthKeep in mind that diets may have to change based on the health of certain organ systems, adds Hunnes. With lupus, the kidneys can be the most affected. If that happens, specific dietary recommendations need to be followed. Hunnes says limiting animal proteins tends to be the most advisable strategy, as well as restricting minerals like potassium, phosphorus, and sodium, since they can’t be effectively filtered by the kidneys if those organs are damaged. Speaking with a dietitian about a renal diet is helpful, as well as adding nutrient-dense foods such as berries, garlic, olive oil, bell peppers, and cabbage. Focus on your gutAlthough keeping your digestion on track is a crucial part of staying healthy for everyone, the recent research on the microbiome suggests it can be a major boon for lupus patients. “One big benefit is that a well-functioning gut can keep inflammation in check throughout the body, which is crucial for disease management,” says Erin Kenney, a Boston-based registered dietitian and author of Rewire Your Gut. Although there are probiotic supplements that support robust beneficial bacteria in your microbiome, getting what you need from food first can give you more nutrients, she says. Key tactics include focusing on a high-fiber diet, especially fruits and vegetables, as well as including more fermented foods like yogurt, pickled vegetables, kefir, kombucha, and sauerkraut. Highly processed foods, including meats such as hot dogs and bacon, have been linked to poor gut health, Kenney says, so it’s best to limit those options in your diet. Read More: Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Gut Health Tailored solutionAlthough the suggestions from doctors, researchers, and dietitians make important starting points, many people with lupus, like Singletary, have found that it really does come down to a personal level when monitoring how food affects them. Tracking food intake and seeing trends in symptom exacerbation has become an everyday activity for many who have lupus. For example, Margo Pinckney, 45, of Philadelphia, initially cut out processed foods after being diagnosed with lupus. But after several years of navigating through her symptoms and becoming more aware of how diet influenced how she felt, Pinckney kept refining her meals and snacks based on which foods caused flares in her symptoms, especially fatigue. That led to steering clear of the dairy aisle. “Cheese used to be my best friend—I would put it on everything,” she says. “However, when I began to limit and then eliminate dairy, I felt better. I feel like I deal with less inflammation by paying attention to what I eat.” For Ingrid Perez-Martin, a 41-year-old lupus patient in Georgia, spicy foods are the most problematic. The longer she’s had lupus, the more challenging these have become, she says. “Foods I used to be able to eat all the time now wake me up in the middle of the night, because I have to throw up,” she adds. “There’s no food that’s worth adding more sickness or another hospitalization to my life. It’s that dramatic. I can clearly see the signs when I eat the wrong thing, so I try to be more purposeful and eat what my health requires.” Perez-Martin became so knowledgeable about healthy eating and overall wellness for her condition that she became a nutrition educator and fitness instructor. “Paying attention to how I treat my body is something I should have been doing regardless of lupus,” she says. “But now that I have the condition, I take my health more seriously than ever.” With Sheraya Weeks, a 42-year-old lupus patient in Maryland, dairy is also a problem, but she’s particularly sensitive to fast food, which makes her feel sluggish, she says. Since extreme fatigue is such a frustrating symptom for lupus patients, maintaining consistent energy is key. Weeks says that when she skips the drive-through and focuses on healthy foods instead, she simply feels better. Examples like these point toward how much diet comes down to individual reactions, Kamen says. Being able to “read” the effects of certain foods can go a long way toward personalized nutrition that can offer considerable benefits for handling lupus, including better sleep, lower inflammation, more energy, lighter mood, and better gut health. “Simply put, you can’t get into any kind of balance, whether you have lupus or not, without addressing what you’re putting into your body,” says Kamen. “Managing your health often starts on your plate.” from https://ift.tt/O2Dq6j0 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The European Union’s executive branch proposed Wednesday a ban on the sale of flavored heated tobacco products, including some vaping items, as part of its plan to fight cancer. The European Commission said its proposal comes in response to a significant increase in the volume of such products sold across the 27-nation bloc. A recent commission study showed a 10% increase in sales of heated tobacco products in more than five member nations, while heated tobacco products exceeded 2.5 % of total sales of tobacco products overall across the region. The ban would not cover all vaping devices, only those delivering heated tobacco. Many e-cigarettes only contain nicotine. Read more: It’s Too Simple to Call the Juul Ban a Public Health Triumph “With nine out of 10 lung cancers caused by tobacco, we want to make smoking as unattractive as possible to protect the health of our citizens and save lives,” said Stella Kyriakides, the commissioner for health and food Safety. According to E.U. figures, cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the bloc of 450 million residents. There are about 1.3 million cancer deaths and 3.5 million new cases per year in the E.U. An estimated 40% of E.U. citizens will face cancer at some point in their lives, with an annual economic impact estimated around 100 billion euros ($120 billion). The European Commission previously said it wanted to ensure that less than 5% of the population uses tobacco by 2040. The ban’s proposal now goes to member nations and European Parliament lawmakers for review. from https://ift.tt/TMwz1ij Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ SEOUL, South Korea — Health officials in South Korea on Wednesday approved the country’s first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine for people 18 years or older, adding another public health tool in the fight against a prolonged pandemic. In clinical trials involving some 4,000 participants in South Korea and five other countries, SK Bioscience’s two-dose SKYCovione vaccine appeared to be more effective than the broadly used AstraZeneca shots in building immunity against infections, officials at South Korea’s Food and Drug Safety Ministry said. It isn’t immediately clear how officials will administer the newly developed vaccine or how big of a role the shots will have in the next phase of the pandemic. The shots were designed for the original version of the coronavirus, not the more transmissible omicron variant that wreaked havoc in the country earlier this year. U.S. vaccine giants Pfizer and Moderna have been speeding up their development of booster shots targeting omicron and experts say it’s possible the virus could evolve again in the coming months. Read more: An FDA Panel Decides It’s Time For New COVID-19 Boosters South Korea’s mass immunization campaign has been mainly dependent on Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA shots. But officials say protein vaccines like SKYCovione, which are similar to shots used for years against the common flu and hepatitis B, could appeal to people who are hesitant to use vaccines developed with newer technologies. “The approval (of SKYCovione) internationally confirms the abilities of our companies to develop COVID-19 vaccines,” Food and Drug Safety Minister Oh Yu-kyoung said in a briefing. She said SK Bioscience is seeking an approval from the World Health Organization for its shots, which would potentially open export opportunities. South Korea has eased most of its virus restrictions after battling an omicron surge earlier this year, but some experts say the country may see another rise in infections despite a high vaccination rate because of waning immunities and the possible emergence of new variants. Read more: What to Know About the Newest, Most Contagious Omicron Subvariants The country reported 10,463 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, its first daily increase over 10,000 in 20 days. Health Ministry official Son Youngrae said during a separate briefing it’s too early to tell whether the country is facing another surge after a months-long downward trend. from https://ift.tt/pNBHiPv Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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