Breakthrough med fights food allergies
Milk, eggs, wheat, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, fish and shellfish account for 90 percent of the cases of food allergies that around 19 million people, including
5.5 million kids, in the U.S. contend with. Severe allergic responses send folks to the emergency room 33,000 times a year and around
150 adults and children die from an anaphylactic reaction that triggers low blood pressure, respiratory distress, a weak and rapid pulse, gastrointestinal woes, dizziness and fainting.
So, it’s great news that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of a medication to help anyone age 1 and older mute their food allergy if they accidentally ingest the culprit — and, in many cases, make it possible to eat a small amount of the once-risky food.
Stanford researchers published a study in the
New England Journal of Medicine that found that regular injections of the drug, omalizumab, for 16 weeks could protect youngsters and adults from severe allergic responses to food, such as difficulty breathing. It also benefited folks with more than one food allergy (40 percent of kids and 46 percent of adults are allergic to multiple foods).
Be mindful of yoga
Over the past 15 years, UCLA Health researchers have been exploring an interesting way to reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. They’ve been looking at the beneficial effect of yoga, compared to standard memory-enhancement training. Their recent study, published in Translational Psychiatry recruited 60 women ages 50 and older who had been through menopause and reported memory issues and cerebrovascular risk factors. They wanted to see if 12 weeks of Kundalini yoga sessions (it focuses on meditation and breathing) could improve cognition and memory better than 12 weekly memory-enhancement training sessions, which use exercises such as creating stories to remember items on a list.
The researchers took blood samples to evaluate inflammation and look at gene expression of markers related to aging, and they did MRIS at 12 and 24 weeks. They found that the Kundalini yoga participants had measurable improvements in memory, less decline in brain matter, increased neural connectivity in the hippocampus (where stress-related memories are managed), an increase in anti-inflammatory and anti-aging molecules and fewer aging and inflammation-associated biomarkers.