Dodging Dengue In The US
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Dengue On The Rise
We wrote recently about dengue outbreaks in the Americas, with Puerto Rico declaring an epidemic. Cases are now being reported in Florida too, and are likely to spread, so it’s good to be prepared, if your climate is of the “warm and humid” kind.
If you want to catch up on the news first, here you go:
- UN health agency cites tenfold increase in reported cases of dengue over the last generation
- Puerto Rico has declared an epidemic following a spike in dengue cases
- Dengue fever confirmed in Florida Keys as US on watch for rise in mosquito illness
Note: dengue is far from unheard of in Florida, but the rising average temperatures in each year mean that each year stands a good chance of seeing more cases than the previous. It’s been climbing since at least 2017, took a dip during the time of COVID restrictions keeping people at home more, and then for the more recent years has been climbing again since.
What actually is it?
Dengue is a viral, mosquito-borne disease, characterized by fever, vomiting, muscle pain, and a rash, in about 1 in 4 cases.
Which can sound like “you’ll know if you have it”, but in fact it’s usually asymptomatic for a week or more after infection, so, watch out!
What next, if those symptoms appear?
The good news is: the fever will usually last less than a week
The bad news is: a day or so after that the fever subsided, the more serious symptoms are likely to start—if they’re going to.
If you’re unlucky enough to be one of the 1 in 20 who get the serious symptoms, then you can expect abdominal cramps, repeat vomiting, bleeding from various orifices (you may not get them all, but all are possible), and (hardly surprising, given the previous items) “extreme fatigue and restlessness”.
If you get those symptoms, then definitely get to an ER as soon as possible, as dengue can become life-threatening within hours of such.
Read more: CDC | Symptoms of Dengue and Testing
While there is not a treatment for dengue per se, the Emergency Room will be better able to manage your symptoms and thus keep you alive long enough for them to pass.
If you’d like much more detail (on symptoms, seriousness, at-risk demographics, and prognosis) than what the CDC offers, then…
Read more: BMJ | Dengue Fever
Ok, so how do we dodge the dengue?
It sounds flippant to say “don’t get bitten”, but that’s it. However, there are tips are not getting bitten:
- Use mosquito-repellent, but it has to contain >20% DEET, so check labels
- Use mosquito nets where possible (doors, windows, etc, and the classic bed-tent net is not a bad idea either)
- Wear clothing that covers your skin, especially during the day—it can be light clothing; it doesn’t need to be a HazMat suit! But it does need to reduce the area of attack to reduce the risk of bites.
- Limit standing water around your home—anything that can hold even a small amount of standing water is a potential mosquito-breeding ground. Yes, even if it’s a crack in your driveway or a potted bromeliad.
Further reading
You might also like to check out:
Stickers and wristbands aren’t a reliable way to prevent mosquito bites. Here’s why
…and in case dengue wasn’t bad enough:
Mosquitoes can spread the flesh-eating Buruli ulcer. Here’s how you can protect yourself
Take care!
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Marathons in Mid- and Later-Life
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
We had several requests pertaining to veganism, meatless mondays, and substitutions in recipes—so we’re going to cover those on a different day!
As for questions we’re answering today…
Q: Is there any data on immediate and long term effects of running marathons in one’s forties?
An interesting and very specific question! We didn’t find an overabundance of studies specifically for the short- and long-term effects of marathon-running in one’s 40s, but we did find a couple of relevant ones:
The first looked at marathon-runners of various ages, and found that…
- there are virtually no relevant running time differences (p<0.01) per age in marathon finishers from 20 to 55 years
- the majority of middle-aged and elderly athletes have training histories of less than seven years of running
From which they concluded:
❝The present findings strengthen the concept that considers aging as a biological process that can be considerably speeded up or slowed down by multiple lifestyle related factors.❞
See the study: Performance, training and lifestyle parameters of marathon runners aged 20–80 years: results of the PACE-study
The other looked specifically at the impact of running on cartilage, controlled for age (45 and under vs 46 and older) and activity level (marathon-runners vs sedentary people).
The study had the people, of various ages and habitual activity levels, run for 30 minutes, and measured their knee cartilage thickness (using MRI) before and after running.
They found that regardless of age or habitual activity level, running compressed the cartilage tissue to a similar extent. From this, it can be concluded that neither age nor marathon-running result in long-term changes to cartilage response to running.
Or in lay terms: there’s no reason that marathon-running at 40 should ruin your knees (unless you are doing something wrong).
That may or may not have been a concern you have, but it’s what the study looked at, so hey, it’s information.
Here’s the study: Functional cartilage MRI T2 mapping: evaluating the effect of age and training on knee cartilage response to running
Q: Information on [e-word] dysfunction for those who have negative reactions to [the most common medications]?
When it comes to that particular issue, one or more of these three factors are often involved:
- Hormones
- Circulation
- Psychology
The most common drugs (that we can’t name here) work on the circulation side of things—specifically, by increasing the localized blood pressure. The exact mechanism of this drug action is interesting, albeit beyond the scope of a quick answer here today. On the other hand, the way that they work can cause adverse blood-pressure-related side effects for some people; perhaps you’re one of them.
To take matters into your own hands, so to speak, you can address each of those three things we just mentioned:
Hormones
Ask your doctor (or a reputable phlebotomy service) for a hormone test. If your free/serum testosterone levels are low (which becomes increasingly common in men over the age of 45), they may prescribe something—such as testosterone shots—specifically for that.
This way, it treats the underlying cause, rather than offering a workaround like those common pills whose names we can’t mention here.
Circulation
Look after your heart health; eat for your heart health, and exercise regularly!
Cold showers/baths also work wonders for vascular tone—which is precisely what you need in this matter. By rapidly changing temperatures (such as by turning off the hot water for the last couple of minutes of your shower, or by plunging into a cold bath), your blood vessels will get practice at constricting and maintaining that constriction as necessary.
Psychology
[E-word] dysfunction can also have a psychological basis. Unfortunately, this can also then be self-reinforcing, if recalling previous difficulties causes you to get distracted/insecure and lose the moment. One of the best things you can do to get out of this catch-22 situation is to not worry about it in the moment. Depending on what you and your partner(s) like to do in bed, there are plenty of other equally respectable options, so just switch track!
Having a conversation about this in advance will probably be helpful, so that everyone’s on the same page of the script in that eventuality, and it becomes “no big deal”. Without that conversation, misunderstandings and insecurities could arise for your partner(s) as well as yourself (“aren’t I desirable enough?” etc).
So, to recap, we recommend:
- Have your hormones checked
- Look after your circulation
- Make the decision to have fun!
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Brown Rice Protein: Strengths & Weaknesses
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝I had a friend mention that recent research showed Brown Rice Protein Powder can be bad for you, possibly impacting your nutrient absorption. Is this true? I’ve been using it given it’s one of the few plant-based proteins with a full essential amino acid profile!❞
Firstly: we couldn’t find anything to corroborate the “brown rice protein powder [adversely] impacts nutrient absorption” idea, but we suspect that the reason for this belief is: brown rice (not brown rice protein powder) contains phytic acid, which is something of an antinutrient, in that it indeed reduces absorption of various other nutrients.
However, two things are important to note here:
- the phytic acid is found in whole grains, not in protein isolates as found in brown rice protein powder. The protein isolates contain protein… Isolated. No phytates!
- even in the case of eating whole grain rice, the phytic acid content is greatly reduced by two things: soaking and heating (especially if those two things are combined) ← doing this the way described results in bioavailability of nutrients that’s even better than if there were just no phytic acid, albeit it requires you having the time to soak, and do so at temperature.
tl;dr = no, it’s not true, unless there truly is some groundbreaking new research we couldn’t find—it was almost certainly a case of an understandable confusion about phytic acid.
Your question does give us one other thing to mention though:
Brown rice indeed technically contains all 9 essential amino acids, but it’s very low in several of them, most notably lysine.
However, if you use our Tasty Versatile Rice Recipe, the chia seeds we added to the rice have 100x the lysine that brown rice does, and the black pepper also boosts nutrient absorption.
Because your brown rice protein powder is a rice protein powder and not simply rice, it’s possible that they’ve tweaked it to overcome rice’s amino acid deficiencies. But, if you’re looking for a plant-based protein powder that is definitely a complete protein, soy is a very good option assuming you’re not allergic to that:
Amino Acid Compositions Of Soy Protein Isolate
If you’re wondering where to get it, you can see examples of them next to each other on Amazon here:
Brown Rice Protein Powder | Soy Protein Isolate Powder
Enjoy!
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Hearing loss is twice as common in Australia’s lowest income groups, our research shows
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Around one in six Australians has some form of hearing loss, ranging from mild to complete hearing loss. That figure is expected to grow to one in four by 2050, due in a large part to the country’s ageing population.
Hearing loss affects communication and social engagement and limits educational and employment opportunities. Effective treatment for hearing loss is available in the form of communication training (for example, lipreading and auditory training), hearing aids and other devices.
But the uptake of treatment is low. In Australia, publicly subsidised hearing care is available predominantly only to children, young people and retirement-age people on a pension. Adults of working age are mostly not eligible for hearing health care under the government’s Hearing Services Program.
Our recent study published in the journal Ear and Hearing showed, for the first time, that working-age Australians from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are at much greater risk of hearing loss than those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
We believe the lack of socially subsidised hearing care for adults of working age results in poor detection and care for hearing loss among people from disadvantaged backgrounds. This in turn exacerbates social inequalities.
Population data shows hearing inequality
We analysed a large data set called the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey that collects information on various aspects of people’s lives, including health and hearing loss.
Using a HILDA sub-sample of 10,719 working-age Australians, we evaluated whether self-reported hearing loss was more common among people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than for those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds between 2008 and 2018.
Relying on self-reported hearing data instead of information from hearing tests is one limitation of our paper. However, self-reported hearing tends to underestimate actual rates of hearing impairment, so the hearing loss rates we reported are likely an underestimate.
We also wanted to find out whether people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to develop hearing loss in the long run.
Hearing care is publicly subsidised for children.
mady70/ShutterstockWe found people in the lowest income groups were more than twice as likely to have hearing loss than those in the highest income groups. Further, hearing loss was 1.5 times as common among people living in the most deprived neighbourhoods than in the most affluent areas.
For people reporting no hearing loss at the beginning of the study, after 11 years of follow up, those from a more deprived socioeconomic background were much more likely to develop hearing loss. For example, a lack of post secondary education was associated with a more than 1.5 times increased risk of developing hearing loss compared to those who achieved a bachelor’s degree or above.
Overall, men were more likely to have hearing loss than women. As seen in the figure below, this gap is largest for people of low socioeconomic status.
Why are disadvantaged groups more likely to experience hearing loss?
There are several possible reasons hearing loss is more common among people from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Noise exposure is one of the biggest risks for hearing loss and people from low socioeconomic backgrounds may be more likely to be exposed to damaging levels of noise in jobs in mining, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture.
Lifestyle factors which may be more prevalent in lower socioeconomic communities such as smoking, unhealthy diet, and a lack of regular exercise are also related to the risk of hearing loss.
Finally, people with lower incomes may face challenges in accessing timely hearing care, alongside competing health needs, which could lead to missed identification of treatable ear disease.
Why does this disparity in hearing loss matter?
We like to think of Australia as an egalitarian society – the land of the fair go. But nearly half of people in Australia with hearing loss are of working age and mostly ineligible for publicly funded hearing services.
Hearing aids with a private hearing care provider cost from around A$1,000 up to more than $4,000 for higher-end devices. Most people need two hearing aids.
Hearing loss might be more common in low income groups because they’re exposed to more noise at work.
Dmitry Kalinovsky/ShutterstockLack of access to affordable hearing care for working-age adults on low incomes comes with an economic as well as a social cost.
Previous economic analysis estimated hearing loss was responsible for financial costs of around $20 billion in 2019–20 in Australia. The largest component of these costs was productivity losses (unemployment, under-employment and Jobseeker social security payment costs) among working-age adults.
Providing affordable hearing care for all Australians
Lack of affordable hearing care for working-age adults from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may significantly exacerbate the impact of hearing loss among deprived communities and worsen social inequalities.
Recently, the federal government has been considering extending publicly subsidised hearing services to lower income working age Australians. We believe reforming the current government Hearing Services Program and expanding eligibility to this group could not only promote a more inclusive, fairer and healthier society but may also yield overall cost savings by reducing lost productivity.
All Australians should have access to affordable hearing care to have sufficient functional hearing to achieve their potential in life. That’s the land of the fair go.
Mohammad Nure Alam, PhD Candidate in Economics, Macquarie University; Kompal Sinha, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Macquarie University, and Piers Dawes, Professor, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Best morning routine?
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You’ve Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers!
Q: Best morning routine?
A: The best morning routine is whatever makes you feel most ready to take on your day!
This one’s going to vary a lot—one person’s morning run could be another person’s morning coffee and newspaper, for example.
In a nutshell, though, ask yourself these questions:
- How long does it take me to fully wake up in the morning, and what helps or hinders that?
- When I get out of bed, what do I really need before I can take on my day?
- If I could have the perfect morning, what would it look like?
- What can evening me do, to look after morning me’s best interests? (Semi-prepare breakfast ready? Lay out clothes ready? Running shoes? To-Do list?)
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How does cancer spread to other parts of the body?
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All cancers begin in a single organ or tissue, such as the lungs or skin. When these cancers are confined in their original organ or tissue, they are generally more treatable.
But a cancer that spreads is much more dangerous, as the organs it spreads to may be vital organs. A skin cancer, for example, might spread to the brain.
This new growth makes the cancer much more challenging to treat, as it can be difficult to find all the new tumours. If a cancer can invade different organs or tissues, it can quickly become lethal.
When cancer spreads in this way, it’s called metastasis. Metastasis is responsible for the majority (67%) of cancer deaths.
Cells are supposed to stick to surrounding tissue
Our bodies are made up of trillions of tiny cells. To keep us healthy, our bodies are constantly replacing old or damaged cells.
Each cell has a specific job and a set of instructions (DNA) that tells it what to do. However, sometimes DNA can get damaged.
This damage might change the instructions. A cell might now multiply uncontrollably, or lose a property known as adherence. This refers to how sticky a cell is, and how well it can cling to other surrounding cells and stay where it’s supposed to be.
If a cancer cell loses its adherence, it can break off from the original tumour and travel through the bloodstream or lymphatic system to almost anywhere. This is how metastasis happens.
Many of these travelling cancer cells will die, but some will settle in a new location and begin to form new cancers.
Some cells settle in a new location.
Scipro/ShutterstockParticular cancers are more likely to metastasise to particular organs that help support their growth. Breast cancers commonly metastasise to the bones, liver, and lungs, while skin cancers like melanomas are more likely to end up in the brain and heart.
Unlike cancers which form in solid organs or tissues, blood cancers like leukaemia already move freely through the bloodstream, but can escape to settle in other organs like the liver or brain.
When do cancers metastasise?
The longer a cancer grows, the more likely it is to metastasise. If not caught early, a patient’s cancer may have metastasised even before it’s initially diagnosed.
Metastasis can also occur after cancer treatment. This happens when cancer cells are dormant during treatment – drugs may not “see” those cells. These invisible cells can remain hidden in the body, only to wake up and begin growing into a new cancer months or even years later.
For patients who already have cancer metastases at diagnosis, identifying the location of the original tumour – called the “primary site” – is important. A cancer that began in the breast but has spread to the liver will probably still behave like a breast cancer, and so will respond best to an anti-breast cancer therapy, and not anti-liver cancer therapy.
As metastases can sometimes grow faster than the original tumour, it’s not always easy to tell which tumour came first. These cancers are called “cancers of unknown primary” and are the 11th most commonly diagnosed cancers in Australia.
One way to improve the treatment of metastatic cancer is to improve our ways of detecting and identifying cancers, to ensure patients receive the most effective drugs for their cancer type.
What increases the chances of metastasis and how can it be prevented?
If left untreated, most cancers will eventually acquire the ability to metastasise.
While there are currently no interventions that specifically prevent metastasis, cancer patients who have their tumours surgically removed may also be given chemotherapy (or other drugs) to try and weed out any hidden cancer cells still floating around.
The best way to prevent metastasis is to diagnose and treat cancers early. Cancer screening initiatives such as Australia’s cervical, bowel, and breast cancer screening programs are excellent ways to detect cancers early and reduce the chances of metastasis.
The best way to prevent cancer spreading is to diagnose and treat them early.
Peakstock/ShutterstockNew screening programs to detect cancers early are being researched for many types of cancer. Some of these are simple: CT scans of the body to look for any potential tumours, such as in England’s new lung cancer screening program.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to help examine patient scans is also possible, which might identify new patterns that suggest a cancer is present, and improve cancer detection from these programs.
More advanced screening methods are also in development. The United States government’s Cancer Moonshot program is currently funding research into blood tests that could detect many types of cancer at early stages.
One day there might even be a RAT-type test for cancer, like there is for COVID.
Will we be able to prevent metastasis in the future?
Understanding how metastasis occurs allows us to figure out new ways to prevent it. One idea is to target dormant cancer cells and prevent them from waking up.
Directly preventing metastasis with drugs is not yet possible. But there is hope that as research efforts continue to improve cancer therapies, they will also be more effective at treating metastatic cancers.
For now, early detection is the best way to ensure a patient can beat their cancer.
Sarah Diepstraten, Senior Research Officer, Blood Cells and Blood Cancer Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and John (Eddie) La Marca, Senior Resarch Officer, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Pine Bark’s Next-Level Antioxidant Properties
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Pine Bark’s Next-Level Antioxidant Properties
Pine bark extract has been used by the indigenous peoples of N. America for a very long time, to treat a variety of ailments.
This one falls into the category of “things from traditional medicine that eventually got investigated and their scientific worth noticed by people from outside of those cultures”.
Not all pine trees!
If you happen to have pine trees near you, be aware that without sufficient botanical knowledge, you could find yourself bark-harvesting from the wrong tree—but many species of pine do have these qualities.
Useful (for this purpose) pine trees include, but are not limited to:
- Pinus banksiana
- Pinus massoniana
- Pinus pinaster
- Pinus radiata
- Pinus resinosa
- Pinus strobus
…which is already a fair list, but there are dozens more that have not been studied, and/or found lacking in medicinal qualities, and/or just didn’t make our list here today.
What does it do & How does it work?
We sneakily put those two questions together today because it’s easiest to explain in one:
The Pinus family in general has powerful antioxidant qualities, and not just like blueberries or coffee (wonderful as those are).
Rather, it has:
- Phenolic acids: these are the polyphenols found in many plant foods rich in antioxidants. These are great, but they aren’t the exciting part here.
- Catechins: these aren’t classified as antioxidants, but they are flavonoids that do the same job in a slightly different way
- Procyanidins: another class of flavonoids, and this is where pine bark really comes into its own
And yes, as ever, “those three things that always seem to come together”, it having these antioxidant properties means it is also anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer:
…and anti-aging:
Pleiotropic Effects of French Maritime Pine Bark Extract to Promote Healthy Aging
…which does of course mean that it almost certainly fights age-related cognitive decline, though studies for that have been animal studies so far, such as:
- Pine Bark Polyphenolic Extract Attenuates Amyloid-β and Tau Misfolding in a Model System of Alzheimer’s Disease Neuropathology
- Neuroprotective and Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Pinus densiflora Bark Extract in Gerbil Hippocampus Following Transient Forebrain Ischemia
- Neuroprotective Effects of Korean Red Pine ( Pinus densiflora) Bark Extract and Its Phenolics
- Pine bark treatment decelerates plaque development and improves spatial memory in Alzheimer’s disease mice
Where to get it?
As ever, we don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon for your convenience; we recommend shopping around though, as prices vary a lot!
Enjoy!
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