The Guinness Book of World Records proclaimed the Carolina Reaper, bred by Ed Currie in Fort Mill, South Carolina, to be the hottest pepper in the world in November of 2013. Scientists measure the concentration of the chemical compound capsaicin — the component that produces the “hot” in hot peppers — in peppers and in other spicy foods. The higher the concentration, the higher the heat units on what’s called the Scoville scale....
Perhaps because she was vaccinated and boosted, her initial symptoms were relatively mild — a slight cough and scratchy throat. “Then, almost overnight, I developed a dry, painful cough that got progressively worse,” says Searight. It got so bad that her internist gave her a prescription for a cough suppressant with codeine so she could sleep. For four days, she was knocked out by a sore throat that became severe, headache, and that hacking cough....
The grueling hours that came with working at the Middle Eastern–inspired cafe in Warwickshire, England, and constantly needing to test the food she prepared already made her symptoms difficult to control. But facing income loss and unemployment exacerbated her abdominal pain and diarrhea. “The stress of the pandemic triggered my IBS symptoms, and then when I lost my job, that caused more stress, which led to more flare-ups,” Dyulgerova, 24, says....
Journaling can identify patterns that help match Crohn’s disease symptoms — diarrhea, rectal bleeding, cramps, weight loss, fever, flatulence — with triggers and exacerbating factors. It can also provide information on how well a treatment is working, among other things. The more details you can provide your doctor about the onset, severity, and duration of your Crohn’s disease symptoms, the better they can determine the right treatment plan for you, says Jenny Sauk, MD, a gastroenterologist and associate clinical professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles....
Psoriasis develops when the immune system misfires and causes skin cells to grow too rapidly, accumulating in layers and forming itchy, discolored plaques. With psoriatic arthritis, the immune system attacks joints and connective tissue, causing them to become swollen and painful. Psoriatic Arthritis and Psoriasis: Which Comes First? People with psoriatic arthritis almost always have psoriasis first, says Francis C. Luk, MD, a rheumatologist at Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina....
And there are also other factors, such as feeling stressed from COVID-19-related changes to work, school, and home life, that can contribute to different eating patterns. But just because we’re more likely to lean toward hunkering down with mugs of hot chocolate and bottomless bowls of chili or cheesy pasta from late fall to spring doesn’t mean we should. After all, diet choices can affect not only our weight but our mood as well....
For the study, researchers followed 1,742 patients with IBD and a control group of 17,420 individuals for up to 16 years, starting when they were 61 years old on average and free of dementia. By the end of the study, 5.5 percent of people with IBD and 1.4 percent of individuals in the control group developed dementia. In addition, people with IBD developed dementia roughly seven years earlier than individuals without IBD, at an average age of 76 and 83, respectively....
Previously, the common terminology was “complementary and alternative medicine,” and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other academic groups have shifted toward the use of “integrative” and “complementary health” approaches and therapies instead. “To be safe, it’s best if you can coordinate your care with a doctor who is trained in conventional medicine techniques and is also very knowledgeable about other therapies, or works with someone who is,” Dr....
In a case report published in April 2020 in The New England Journal of Medicine, the authors outline five cases of a large-vessel stroke in individuals under age 50 who had been diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, the infection caused by the coronavirus. It’s rare for someone under 50 years old to have a stroke, says Robert Stevens, MD, an intensive care physician and the associate director of the Johns Hopkins Neurocritical Care Precision Medicine Center of Excellence in Baltimore, who was not involved in this paper....
In children, a treatment known as exclusive enteral nutrition, or EEN, is considered the first line therapy to treat Crohn’s. It is a short-term treatment program involving a fully liquid diet meant to induce remission. EEN is not typically used to treat adults with Crohn’s, and more research is needed to determine its effectiveness in this population, says Arielle Leben, a registered dietitian at NYU Langone Health’s Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center in New York City....
It’s true that the human body needs sodium, as it’s a necessary electrolyte, according to the MedlinePlus, a mineral that regulates your body’s fluid balance and helps ensure proper muscle and nerve function. Problem is, 89 percent of adults get too much, according to an article published in July 2020 in the American Journal of Hypertension. When sodium excretion levels rise, the risk for high blood pressure increases, and so do your chances of developing heart disease, notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)....
Since then, the coffee chain has been looking to repeat that success with other seasonal creations in its limited-time-only fall menu. This year’s drink focuses on another piece of iconic fall produce, the apple. But the Apple Crisp Macchiato, as delicious as it sounds, bears about as much resemblance to an apple nutritionally as the PSL does to pumpkin — which is to say, very little. The ACM (even the abbreviation isn’t as catchy as PSL) is offered hot or iced, and its base is espresso and steamed whole milk, although it can be customized with low-fat, nonfat, or nondairy milk....
“When I first left for college, I suddenly started to get allergies so severe that I lost my voice for a week,” says the Houston Astros’ star-pitcher. “I was a mess,” he adds. “I experienced all of the staple symptoms of allergies — nasal congestion, watery eyes, sneezing, and itching.” Over the years, seasonal allergies have affected other areas of Verlander’s life. Before his wedding last May, Verlander’s fiancée (now wife), supermodel Kate Upton, told Martha Stewart Weddings that despite her love of flowers, they had to include an alternative decorative element in their wedding....
“Any time you make a big change to your diet, there’s the chance it will affect your gastrointestinal health,” says John Riopelle, DO, a gastroenterologist for Kaiser Permanente in Lone Tree, Colorado. Given the standard American diet is high in carbohydrates, switching to a keto diet puts you at the opposite end of the spectrum. Based on a typical keto diet food list, this approach is high in fat (70 to 80 percent), moderate in protein, and very low in carbs — many people stick to 20 to 50 grams (g) daily....
Jesse Cochran, a senior at the University of Iowa and research assistant in the E. Dale Abel Laboratory, where the study was conducted, and his colleagues were originally studying how the keto diet fares as a treatment for heart failure in mice. But they soon realized that female and male mice were responding differently to the low-carb, high-fat diet. “We went back and repeated the experiments to evaluate the reproducibility of this response,” says Cochran, the lead investigator....
Increasing the intensity and frequency of your exercise routine is one way to lose body fat and trim your trouble spots, but it’s not the only way. You can also burn more fat through a metabolic state called ketosis, which is the mechanism behind many low-carb diets, including the ketogenic diet and the Atkins diet. Understanding what ketosis is and learning how to achieve this state can help you whip your body into shape....
The study, dubbed CheckMate 9ER, showed that, for advanced kidney cancer, the combination of Opdivo (nivolumab), an immunotherapy drug, and Cabometyx (cabozantinib), an angiogenesis (blood vessel growth) inhibitor, led to improved outcomes compared with the current standard of care treatment, Sutent (sunitinib). The benefits were seen across many types of patients, including those of different ages and genders, with different levels of expression of PD-L1 (a biomarker that indicates how sensitive a tumor is to some immunotherapy drugs), and those in whom the cancer had spread to the bone....
Here’s what you should know about how much magnesium you need every day, where to get it, and when you should think about taking magnesium supplements. As an ionic or “charged” particle, magnesium is an important electrolyte that supports optimal nerve and muscle function, including involuntary muscles like the heart. It may help lower blood pressure. In fact, one study found that participants who received additional magnesium through a supplement of about 300 milligrams (mg) per day for three months increased their blood levels of the mineral and reduced their systolic blood pressure (the top reading of a blood pressure reading) by two points and diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number on that reading) by 1....
Naegleria fowleri, commonly called a “brain-eating amoeba,” is a microscopic single-celled free-living amoeba that can causes an infection of the brain called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). PAM destroys brain tissue and causes severe brain swelling and death in most cases. “Fortunately, PAM is quite rare,” says William Schaffner, MD, professor of medicine, in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee....
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Diabetes Prevention Program, losing 5 to 10 percent of your weight in six months can help improve blood sugar, blood pressure, and blood cholesterol. In the study, among overweight and obese people with prediabetes who achieved 5 percent or more weight loss initially, the percentage who kept the weight off over time was greater among those taking metformin — a medication that helps control high blood sugar and can aid weight loss — than those who made intensive lifestyle changes....
