Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTG2R-BDFM5/

Repeated exposure to fatty foods like bacon and burgers drives your liver cells into survival mode to help them endure metabolic stress. That transition also sets them on a path to become cancerous in years to come.

Researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School now report this frightening transformation in the journal Cell following their studies in a mouse model and in human liver cells using sophisticated single cell RNA sequencing. Mature liver cells, hepatocytes, that are exposed to a high-fat diet become stressed and gradually abandon their normal metabolic and detoxification functions. They revert to a primitive, stem-like state that helps them survive inflammation and fat overload but makes them vulnerable to malignant, cancerous, transformation.

The investigators observed this cell transition occurred in both the mouse and the human cells. Nearly all the mice fed the high fat diet ultimately developed liver cancer.

So take heed. Now is the time to moderate your intake of fried and excessively fatty foods. Your liver will love you for it, and your loved ones will enjoy your company far longer.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/12/251225035344.htm

https://cell.com/cell/retrieve/pii/S0092867425013662?_returnURL=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867425013662?showall=true

#liver #highfat #cancer

A Widely-Used Painkiller May Harm Your Heart

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTG1ZG6D_ja/

Tramadol is an opioid often prescribed for chronic pain and restless legs. Now, a comprehensive Danish review, published in the BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine journal, shows that tramadol carries a significant risk of heart-related problems including coronary artery disease with chest pain and eventual heart failure.

The review analyzed 19 clinical trials that studied 6,506 participants with chronic neuropathic, osteoarthritic, low back, and fibromyalgic pain. The data demonstrates that tramadol doubles the risk of cardiovascular damage compared with placebo therapy. Worse still, tramadol fails to have a consistent, significant effect on perceived chronic pain.

The bottom line. If you are taking tramadol for chronic pain, you should discuss with your medical team a shift to a non-opioid. At the same time, know that chronic pain is best controlled by not only analgesics but also non-medicinal therapy including physical therapy, exercise, and counseling.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/12/251225080723.htm

https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2025/09/26/bmjebm-2025-114101

#tramadol #pain #heartattack #heartfailure

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTG02axD6Lt/

It is truly disgusting that some disreputable companies are peddling supplements that claim to cure infertility. Some boast that they can improve your IVF success rate while others even claim to guarantee pregnancy.

The FDA issues this warning and adds that these bogus, unproven products waste precious time, drain finances, delay effective medical care, and in some cases cause illness or injury. The red flags in the advertising pitches for these supplements include claims that sound too good to be true, promises of rapid pregnancy regardless of medical history, and headlines like “miracle cure,” “scientific breakthrough,” or “one product does it all.”

While the FDA is issuing cease and desist warnings to these merchants of lies, it want you avoid being fooled, ripped off, disappointed, and misled.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251219/FDA-warns-against-fake-treatments-for-infertility.aspx

#infertility #fda #supplements #fraud

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTG0KhoDI5s/

Whether you smoke cigarettes, vape, use nicotine pouches, or chew gum, the nicotine entering your body damages your heart and blood vessel tissues. Worse yet, nicotine consumption is surging, especially among teens and young adults.

A newly published expert consensus report from the European Society of Cardiology, appearing in the European Heart Journal, delivers this disturbing message. The report’s authors include cardiologists from Germany, Italy, the UK, and the US.

Multiple studies demonstrate that nicotine raises blood pressure, damages blood vessels, and increases heart disease risk. The damage occurs even in the absence of smoke, tar, and combustion toxins. The report also warns that secondhand exposure to vape and heated tobacco aerosols harms blood vessels.

One other warning. Nicotine is exceptionally addictive, and vaping, chewing. The use of pouches often act as gateways to compulsive use rather than cessation.

This report calls for urgent action including flavor bans, taxation based on nicotine content, non-seductive packaging, advertising restrictions, smoke- and aerosol-free public spaces, and stronger regulation to prevent a new wave of cardiovascular disease driven by nicotine addiction.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-vapes-pouches-shisha-cigarettes-nicotine.html

https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaf1010/8377624?login=false

#nicotine #heartattack #stroke #vaping #gum #pouches

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTGzkWGld_k/

Conventional wisdom implicates caffeine as a trigger for cardiac arrhythmias. Not so, at least for atrial fibrillation, concludes the so-called DECAF study, an acronym for Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation? Headed by cardiologists from UC-San Francisco and Australia’s University of Adelaide, this clinical trial studied 200 adults with atrial fibrillation.

Subjects were randomly assigned to drink at least one cup of caffeinated coffee or avoid caffeine entirely for six months. Those who drank coffee daily show 39% fewer AFib episodes. The investigators suggest multiple reasons for this beneficial effect: caffeine may stimulate increased physical activity, caffeine is a mild diuretic that could lower blood pressure, and coffee contains natural compounds that may reduce inflammation.

If this study is confirmed, those with a history of atrial fibrillation, rather than avoiding all caffeinated coffee intake, might benefit from moderate intake of daily “joe.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251110021046.htm

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2841253

#AF #atrialfibrillation #coffee #caffeine #arrthymias

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTGy1D9GNic/

The manner in which your eyes blink tells just how well you are listening to a speaker. A new study from psychologists at Montreal’s Concordia University, just published in the journal Trends in Hearing, reports that your blinking frequency diminishes as you focus on a given conversation.

The two separate studies involving 49 adult participants. The results show that the frequency of blinking decreases significantly as the subjects begin to hear recognizable sentences. Blinking reduction is most pronounced as individuals strain to hear the words through increasing background noise. This effect persists no matter the level of ambient light, bright, dim, or dark.

Our brains and eyelids seem to pause as we listen more intensely. This information should give you a hint about the level of interest your partner in conversation really has in what your are saying. If they are blinking up a storm, your words are likely going in one ear and out the other.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/12/251222043239.htm

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23312165251371118

#listening #blinking #interest #conversation

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTGwzXhD5MX/

Replacing the vital compound pleiotrophin, missing from the brain tissues of those with an extra 21st chromosome, shows a promise of restoring critical intellectual functionality by mending flexible synaptic connections even after neural development appears to be complete..

Neuroscientists at the University of Virginia and California’s Salk Institute made this discovery in a mouse Down Syndrome model. The researchers discovered that pleiotrophin, normally abundant during early brain development, is present at lower levels in those with Down syndrome. When they restore it in adult Down Syndrome mice using genetic engineering, critical neural function increases in the hippocampus, a key learning and memory center, and overall brain plasticity improves.

Down syndrome affects about 1 in 700 American newborns condemning them to learning and memory challenges and a higher risk of other health problems throughout life. This exciting result in a pre-clinical study challenges the long-held belief that meaningful brain repair must occur before birth and opens the door to future therapies aimed at improving quality of life for those with Down Syndrome at any stage of life.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/12/251217082505.htm

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(25)01071-X?_returnURL=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S221112472501071X?showall=true

#downsyndrome #pleiotrophin #genetherapy #intelligence

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTGwXlFDCNu/

Carrying on a conversation with a passenger or your phone while driving slows the eye movements that deliver about 90 percent of the information that you need to detect hazards. This from researchers at Japan’s Fujita Health University whose study was just published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Studied were 30 healthy adults, mean age 22 years. Measured was the elapsed time necessary for each subject to shift gaze to a critical target while actively talking, listening, or without any distraction.

The data demonstrates that only active talking causes delays in the time necessary to initiate eye movements, visualize a target, and stabilize the gaze. Listening alone does not have this effect. The researchers say the mental effort required to think and speak competes with the brain systems that control eye movement, disrupting visual processing before a driver can even recognize danger and formulate a timely reaction. Through the delays were small, the researchers warn that these delays can accumulate during real-world driving in situations involving pedestrians, road their debris, or sudden hazards. The resultant suboptimal driving performance can lead to tragic outcomes.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251226/Conversation-may-quietly-impair-the-visual-foundations-of-driving.aspx

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0333586

#driving #conversation #gaze #reaction