Kids’ Hemophilia Drugs a Big Part of State Medicaid Spending

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Treatment costs for one childhood illness, hemophilia, may use up a big chunk of a state’s Medicaid budget, a new study out of California shows.

The researchers found that treatments for hemophilia — a rare, inherited disorder in which blood does not clot normally — accounted for the largest share of spending on outpatient drugs among publicly insured children in California with serious chronic illnesses.

The study “underscores the potential effect of new, expensive but [effective] pharmaceuticals on public insurance programs for children with chronic illness,” wrote a group led by Sonja Swenson of Stanford University.

Her team published the findings July 28 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers tracked 2010-2012 data from more than 34,300 publicly insured children and young adults under the age of 21 in California with serious chronic health problems.

Overall, outpatient pharmacy costs totaled almost $476 million, or 20 percent of total health care costs.

Costs per child for the study period varied widely: From just 16 cents for one patient to nearly a whopping $57 million for drugs for another, unnamed patient. Swenson said her team was “shocked” by the latter amount.

Hemophilia treatment took a big share of outpatient drug costs: 42 percent of spending, according to the study.

One type of therapy, called antihemophilic factor, accounted for 98 percent of spending on children with hemophilia, or 41 percent of total pharmacy spending — even though children treated with antihemophilic factor accounted for just 0.4 percent of all the children in the study.

Antihemophilic factor is a protein that is essential to normal blood clotting and is lacking or deficient in persons having hemophilia A, the authors explained.

The average per-child cost for antihemophilic factor was about $1.3 million over the time span covered by the study.

The next largest percentage of spending was just over 9 percent for central nervous system drugs, with an average amount of $1,869 per child, the researchers reported.

Swenson’s group believes that “antihemophilic factor is highly [effective] and essential in caring for children with hemophilia, putting pressure on public programs” to figure out ways to bring costs down.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about hemophilia.





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Experimental Treatment Uses Nitric Oxide for Acne

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — There’s no shortage of products out there that claim to treat the pimples that so often plague teen skin, but your body may already be making an effective treatment that just needs a little tweaking from science, a new study suggests.

The treatment is nitric oxide, a substance produced and used throughout the human body. But, nitric oxide’s benefits are usually short-lived, researchers explained.

And, that’s where science comes in. By slowing the release of nitric oxide using tiny substances (nanoparticles), researchers were able to kill the bacteria associated with acne. The nanoparticles also inhibited the inflammation that causes the large, painful pimples associated with inflammatory acne.

The study was published recently in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

“Our understanding of acne has changed dramatically in the last 15-20 years,” study co-author Dr. Adam Friedman, an associate professor of dermatology at George Washington University in Washington D.C., said in a university news release.

“Inflammation is really the driving force behind all types of acne. In this paper, we provide an effective a way to kill the bacterium that serves as a stimulus for acne without using an antibiotic, and demonstrate the means by which nitric oxide inhibits newly recognized pathways central to the formation of a pimple, present in the skin even before you can see the acne,” he explained.

This study focused on a pathway, involving what is called an inflammasome, responsible for activating the inflammatory process in acne.

“Many current medications focus only on one or two part of this process,” Friedman said. “By killing the bacterium and blocking multiple components of the inflammasome, this approach may lead to better treatment options for acne sufferers, and possibly treatments for other inflammatory skin conditions.”

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about acne.





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Many Older Americans Feel Prepared for Aging

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Most older Americans feel they are prepared for the process of aging, but many have concerns about maintaining their physical and mental health as they get older, a new survey finds.

The 2015 United States of Aging Survey of 1,000 adults 60 and older found that 86 percent felt prepared overall for the process of aging, and 42 percent said they are “very prepared” to age.

Forty percent said they are most concerned about maintaining their physical health, while more than one-third were concerned about maintaining their mental health and their memory as they get older.

More than two-thirds of respondents said the keys to good health include a healthy diet, having a good attitude and getting enough sleep. Fifty-eight percent said they had not changed residences in more than 20 years, and three-quarters said they intend to live in their current home for the rest of their lives.

The survey also included 150 professionals who support seniors, such as doctors, pharmacists, senior care specialists and credit union managers. They were less sure that older adults could maintain their quality of life.

While 43 percent of older respondents felt very confident they would be able to afford health care costs as they age, 62 percent of professionals were not confident that older adults can afford these costs.

Only 47 percent of older adults and 37 percent of professionals felt their communities were doing enough to prepare for the needs of retiring baby boomers.

The top aging-related concerns cited by the professionals included protecting seniors from financial scams, providing them with affordable housing, and memory loss.

“Both older adults and the professionals who support them offered strong but conflicting opinions on the top challenges older Americans face as they age,” Dr. Rhonda Randall, chief medical officer of UnitedHealthcare Retiree Solutions, said in a news release from the company.

“The findings remind us of how valuable these different perspectives are and the importance of addressing many concerns simultaneously to ensure we all fully support the rapidly growing senior population,” she added.

Each day, more than 10,000 American baby boomers turn 65, according to the news release.

The survey was conducted by the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, the National Council on Aging, and UnitedHealthcare.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers advice about healthy aging.





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The Surprising Facts About Tonight’s Blue Moon

Photo: Getty Images

Photo: Getty Images

Tonight, if you look up in the sky, you’ll find a rare sightone that occurs “once in a blue moon.”

As in, you’ll see an actual blue moon, which is (colloquially at least) when a second full moon occurs within the same calendar month. This occurs roughly every 2.7 years, according to Space.comhence the famous phrase. The last time we earthlings got to witness what’s known as a blue moon was August 2012, and the next time won’t be until January 2018.

Despite what the name suggests, the moon won’t be changing color. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the color of the moon will likely appear to be pale grey and white, just like the one you’re used to seeing on any other night.

RELATED: Could a Full Moon Keep You Up at Night?

It used to be that a “blue moon” meant “the third full moon in a season that contained four of them,” Space.com reports. The reason the definition changed to our current understanding of the term was all the result of a misunderstanding, according to NASA. In the 1940s a magazine called Sky & Telescope misunderstood the definition, printing an article that stated the “second [full moon] in a month, so I interpret it, is called Blue Moon.”

Further complicating things, a moon that appears blue in color does actually happen. NASA explains that the moon can look blue to us if say, a major volcanic eruption occurs and blasts a ton of particles in the air. Forest fires can cause it, too. Who knew?

Today’s blue moon actually rose this morning at 6:43 EDT, but let’s face it, most of us missed it. So make sure to look for it tonight. And if you can’t see it, the Slooh Community Observatory will be streaming it online at 8:30 EDT.

While the moon may not look all that different, you’ll be witnessing an event that only happens…well, once in a blue moon. And on top of that you might even notice a few weird body effects.

RELATED: 4 Strange Ways the Moon Might Affect Our Bodies




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More Progress Needed To Get Stroke Patients Rapid Care

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Stroke victims still aren’t getting treated soon enough, a new study suggests.

Treating strokes quickly is critical, because the more time that elapses, the less effective stroke treatment may be, the researchers explained.

A number of factors have reduced the time it takes stroke patients to get treatment. These include greater public awareness, better emergency dispatch procedures and improvements in hospital stroke units, the researchers said. But, delays in transporting stroke patients from regional hospitals to comprehensive stroke centers are still common, the team found.

“Stroke requires a multi-disciplinary team that engages in a nuanced chain of events leading to treatment, and efficient and prompt patient transport via emergency medical services [EMS] is a significant link in the process,” study author Dr. Michael Froehler, neurointerventionalist at the Cerebrovascular Program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said in a Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery news release.

“Within the broader stroke community, we’ve definitely made progress in our systems of care that ensure an increasing number of patients receive treatment as quickly as possible. But we need to do more,” he added.

In conducting the study, researchers recorded the amount of time it took to transfer 70 patients from hospitals that were not equipped to handle all levels of stroke to major stroke centers. Over the course of one year, they found transfer times ranged between 46 and 133 minutes. Those times were longer than it would have taken to drive the distance between the facilities, the researchers noted.

Stroke is the number one cause of disability and the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, the researchers said. Stroke cost about $54 billion in health care expenses and lost productivity in 2010 alone. Disability-related health care expenses resulting from strokes also cost $74 billion each year, they noted.

The findings were presented this week at the annual meeting of the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery in San Francisco. Findings from meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they’ve been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The American Stroke Association provides more information on stroke treatment.





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Mountain Biker Survives After Neck Impaled by Tree Branch

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, July 31, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A day out mountain biking went terribly wrong for one middle-aged man in New Mexico: He ended up with a tree branch impaled in his neck.

Fortunately for the unnamed man, he had the good sense to leave the branch where it was and quickly seek help, according to a new case study published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The 40-year-old, who was in good health, initially set off on his mountain bike to ride an off-road trail in New Mexico.

At some point during the ride, he fell from the bike onto a tree branch, which got lodged in his neck. The tree branch — roughly three-quarters of an inch in diameter — lodged more than half an inch deep into the left side of his neck, his doctors said.

Attending physician Dr. Lev Deriy, an assistant professor in the department of anesthesiology and critical care at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, believes the “patient was definitely lucky considering the location of injury.”

“The neck has quite a few vital organs, like the trachea, carotid artery, jugular vein and nerves just a few millimeters from the skin surface.” Damage to any “could cause a quick death from massive bleeding and/or airway compromise,” Deriy said.

“On the other hand, the patient’s actions played a significant role in the positive outcome in this case,” he noted. “After he fell and the wooden branch stuck deep in his neck, he decided not to take it out, rode his bike to his car, and drove to the nearest hospital, which was 20 miles away.”

Doctors in the ER also left the branch in place. It was removed during surgery, and the man had a full recovery.

Bikers should be aware that mountain bikes and bikes designed for use on paved roads have differing safety concerns. For example, according to a study led by Dr. Derek Roberts of the University of Calgary — and published in the Canadian Journal of Surgery — most street cycling accidents result from being struck by a car.

By contrast, off-road mountain bike accidents involve some sort of loss of control causing a fall off a cliff, a pathway or an embankment, the Canadian authors wrote.

In the case of Deriy and Gerstein’s patient, ER physicians noted that the impaling branch had not caused any vascular damage or injury to the man’s airway passages, and that the patient’s decision to leave the branch in place probably prevented significant blood loss.

“In fact,” noted Deriy, “it was left in place by emergency room doctors and removed only by the surgeon in operating room after general anesthesia was induced and the patient’s airways were secured.”

“I think the patient’s ability to clearly analyze this potentially very dangerous situation and take the best course of actions in order to help himself makes this case especially unique,” he said.

Dr. Rodney Baker, clinical director of the division of emergency medicine at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, agreed, “This type of injury is actually pretty uncommon.”

“In my years in practice I’ve only seen one similar type of incident,” he noted. “So it’s really hard to predict with 100 percent certainty what the best course of action would be in a case as unusual as this.

“But yes, it is true that the trauma literature would support that a patient impaled in this kind of situation should not, if possible, try to remove the impaling object. Not doing so was probably helpful in arriving at a good outcome,” Baker said.

More information

There’s more on mountain bike safety from the U.S. Forest Service.





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What Drives Trophy Hunters Like Walter Palmer?

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Photo: Courtesy of Science of Us/Brian Orford

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When this week began, chances are high that you’d never heard of Cecil the lion, the beloved big cat of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. But by now, you’ve likely heard of his death. Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist, paid about $55,000 for the (illegal) privilege of lion-hunting — though, after two days of tracking Cecil, it in the end wasn’t much of a hunt: Palmer and his guides reportedly used bait to lure the 13-year-old lion a half-mile outside of the protected park area. There, Palmer shot the animal with a bow and arrow, inflicting a severe wound that would lead to the animal’s death. The New York Times reports that Palmer had planned to mount Cecil’s head upon returning home.

Palmer has since expressed his regret over killing Cecil, claiming in a statement to the Star-Tribune on Tuesday that he did not realize that what he had done was not legal, or that Cecil was a famous and well-loved lion, or that the animal was the subject of an ongoing research project with Oxford University. But his words suggest that if Cecil hadn’t been famous, Palmer would regret nothing. He is, after all, a member of Safari Club International, a nonprofit “hunters’ rights” organization; the Safari Club website has a list of Palmer’s 43 kills, which include, among other things, a polar bear.

The question, then, is why? What motivates Palmer and other trophy hunters, as they’re called, to fly thousands of miles and spend tens of thousands of dollars, all for the sake of killing an animal like Cecil? The answer is complex, but, largely, it can be thought of as a demonstration of power and prestige, says Amy Fitzgerald, a sociologist at the University of Windsor.

In 2003, Fitzgerald and Linda Kalof of Michigan State published research in the sociology journal Visual Studies in which they analyzed 792 “hero shots” — the post-kill photo of hunter and prey — published in 14 popular hunting magazines. Most of the shots, Fitzgerald recalls, seemed to be arranged to show the hunter’s dominance over the animal. “The hunter tended to be pictured above standing or sitting above the animals, which clearly demonstrated the power dynamic that was going on there,” Fitzgerald said. In the vast majority of photos she and Kalof examined, the animal had been cleaned up, blood scrubbed away and wounds carefully hidden from view, making the animal look almost alive — as if the hunter had somehow tamed this giant, wild creature into submission. “It seems like, with the large animals, they were positioning them as though they were alive as a way to confirm the contest that had gone on — that this was a large virile animal that had to be taken down,” Fitzgerald said.

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Photo: Courtesy of Science of Us

A show of power via dominance over the animal kingdom is, of course, nothing new. “This is something that goes back to antiquity, when kings had fake hunts with captured lions released just to be shot from a chariot by the waiting king,” Kalof said in an email to Science of Us. These “hunts” were done in front of an audience, which was a way of publicly declaring and validating the king’s power, Kalof noted, adding that “the trophy hunt of today is similarly a display of power and control by wealthy men.” Indeed, what Kalof describes sounds similar to today’s so-called “canned hunting,” which takes place in an enclosed area in order to increase the likelihood that some rich — and, often, American — tourist will nab a kill. (Noted fans of the canned hunt include Donald Trump’s two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.)

Michael Gurven, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, studies hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon and notes that, both in cultures where hunting is necessary for survival and in those where it is not, the skill certainly attracts attention, though for wildly different reasons. “There’s the element of conspicuous consumption,” Gurven said. “I study people who hunt for food because they have no other choice. And here is someone paying $50,000 — which, as an annual income, that would be well above the poverty line — to have the opportunity to put himself in potential danger in order to kill a lion.”

Another huge part of the draw for trophy hunters, of course, is the thrill, or the element of danger. But in Palmer’s specific case, this, too, ties back to the wealth element, Gurven argued. “When you’re paying $55,000 for something, it’s probably a sign that — if it’s not necessarily illegal, certainly the animal you’re hunting is rare,” Gurven said. “If you think about the danger of the actual hunt — sure, the animal itself is dangerous.” But with Cecil, at least, the lion’s familiarity with humans likely made him an easy target, Louis Muller, chairman of Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides Association, told the Telegraph. “But the potential illegality of it — I think that makes it dangerous for a different reason,” Gurven said. “How do you smuggle the head or whatever he was going to take back to the U.S.? Getting that animal head on the wall is another signal of strength.” (Of course, there are plenty of trophy hunters who pursue the sport they love legally — he’s not talking about them here, just this one specific case of the lion and the dentist.)

The argument trophy hunters themselves often give is that killing the animals is an unlikely act of charity, and that the massive amounts of money tourists fork over helps to fund conservation efforts. Cecil’s death has reignited debate over that argument, but some major mainstream organizations have previously backed it, including the World Wildlife Fund. In a 2009 profile of Palmer in the New York Times, the curator of a bow-hunting club called Pope and Young explains that, yes, part of the draw is the “personal achievement” factor. But there’s another part to it, Glen Hisey explained. “It is a way of honoring that animal for all time,” he told the Times. Put differently, it’s a way of immersing yourself in nature in a way that modern life doesn’t always allow. As the conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold once noted (as quoted in the magazine Montana Outdoors), “Poets sing and hunters scale the mountains primarily for one and the same reason — the thrill to beauty. Critics write and hunters outwit their game for one and the same reason — to reduce that beauty to possession.”

More from Science of Us:

How to Speak Cat

Why Lonely People Stay Lonely

What Happens When Rich People Marry Poor People

I Spent Thousands to Keep My Sick Cat Alive. I Don’t Think I’d Do It Again.

A New Study Explains Why You and Your 7th-Grade Best Friend Drifted Apart

How to Recover from an All-Nighter

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11 Beauty Products From the ’90s That Have Stood the Test of Time

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

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It’s always fun to mock the ridiculous beauty trends we loved in the ’90s (feathered bangs, anyone?), but the Last Great Decade deserves some more respect. Despite all the tacky neon packaging and a seriously unhealthy fascination with glitter, the ’90s was actually a rather simple time. It was about using scientific advancements to find solutions to everyday problems, like frizzy hair or oily skin. Like Vanilla Ice once famously said, “If there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it.”

Not surprisingly, many of the beauty products that were popular in the ’90s have endured as timeless staples that still hold up today. When I started this article I was planning to feature only five products, but there were just too many good ones to choose from. As they say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right?

Aveeno Soothing Bath Treatment

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

Whenever my skin is feeling a little dry and irritated, I draw myself a warm bath and sprinkle in this dermatologist-recommended colloidal oatmeal mix — just like I did as a child. Except sans rubber ducky this time.

$6.19; Amazon

Biore Deep Cleansing Pore Strips

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

Remember when your worst nightmare was forgetting to take off your Biore Pore Strips before talking to your crush? A lot has changed since then, but these powerful blackhead-removing adhesive strips have not — in fact, they might be even better than they used to be.

$7.19; Amazon

CK One

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

There’s a reason everyone fell in love with CK One back in the day: because it smells like what being a teenager feels like. So break out your Cranberries CD and spray yourself silly until it feels like 1994 all over again…

$49; Sephora

Clinique Facial Soap with Dish

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

It was the summer of 1995 and I was 11 years old. My roommate at ballet camp (yes, that’s a thing) had a face soap she swore by and was nice enough to let me try it out. This was my first introduction to Clinique and I’ve been a loyal customer ever since.

$14; Sephora

Jergens Daily Moisturizer

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

There’s not much you can rely on in this world — except for Jergens body lotion. It was a staple in my house growing up in the ’90s, and to this day it remains one of my go-to fixes for dry skin.

$5.64; Amazon

Caboodles

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

Truth: the Caboodle is one of the most practical inventions of our time. I remember toting my sticker-clad Caboodle everywhere, just in case I needed a quick touchup or an emergency bobby pin. I wouldn’t recommend opting for the same sparkly one you owned as a tween, but if you wanted to go old school, I certainly wouldn’t judge.

$13.99; Target

Aqua Net Professional Hair Spray

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

I still have flashbacks of my dance teachers spraying me with Aqua Net until my hair felt like a helmet. And I mean that in the best possible way. To this day, nothing keeps the flyaways under control like this oldie but goodie. And with slicked-back hair currently back in fashion, a bottle of this stuff could really go a long way.

$8.33; Amazon

Dove White Beauty Bar

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

“We only use Dove,” I remember my mom saying when I begged for the latest candy-scented mall concoction all my friends were using. Now I finally understand why — this bar is basically the LBD of soaps.

$7.19; Amazon

Aussie 3 Minute Miracle Moist Deep Conditioner

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

I can clearly recall being a little kid and standing in the shower counting to 180, beyond excited to rinse and feel my silky, smooth hair between my fingers. Nothing tamed my South Florida frizz quite like Aussie’s classic conditioner. And the best part? It still gets the job done. All together now: 1… 2… 3…

$2.97; Amazon

Clean & Clear Oil-Absorbing Sheets

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

When this product first hit the market I remember thinking it was the best invention EVER. I mean, pocket-sized pieces of paper that soak up your oil? Brilliant. Just because you’re not in high school anymore doesn’t mean you’ve stopped suffering from the occasional (read: frequent) bout of forehead perspiration. As the commercial says, these little sheets will keep you “clean, clear, and under control.”

$8.98; Amazon

John Frieda Frizz Ease Original 6 Effects Serum

Photo: Courtesy of MIMI; Art: Courtesy of Elysia Berman

This cult classic serum changed my life in 6th grade. I started using it after a boy in school asked why my hair looked so crazy (somehow we’re still friends). I made a mad dash to the bathroom and realized that by “crazy” he actually meant frizzy. So I went home that day, coated my hair with a few pumps of the good stuff, and returned to school a new woman.

$6.19; Amazon

This story originally appeared on MIMIChatter.com

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The Science of Why You Crave Comfort Food

Photo: Getty Images

Photo: Getty Images

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In mid-July, I was visiting my hometown in Minnesota when I happened upon the unmistakable scent of something deep-fried. I was at a concert, and no matter how off-brand a dietary choice of corn dogs and cheese curds may be for a health writer, I went for it. How could I not? I spent two thoroughly enjoyable summers during college working at the Minnesota State Fair, and that experience continues to make corn-and-grease-dipped hot dogs not only appetizing but somehow irresistible, too.

Summer is the season for nostalgic eating: Hot days in the park call for a trip to the ice cream truck, concerts call for corn dogs, baseball games call for hotdogs and beer, ice-cold movie theaters call for popcorn. And it’s not just me. Researchers suggest that when we associate foods with happy memories, the effects are profound, impacting how good we think foods taste as well as how good those foods make us feel.

It makes intuitive sense that positive experiences with a given food could influence our craving for it later on, but recent research also suggests something else is at play, too: comfort foods remind us of our social ties, which means they may help us feel less lonesome when we feel isolated. In a recent July 2015 study, Jordan Troisi, an assistant professor of psychology at Sewanee, The University of The South, and his colleagues found that people with strong relationships preferred the taste of comfort food when they experienced feelings of social isolation.

“Comfort food seems to be something people associate very significantly with close relationships,” says Troisi. “This probably comes about by individuals coming to associate a particular food item with members of their family, social gatherings, and people taking care of them, which is why we see a lot of comfort foods [that are] traditional meals or things had at a party.”

Of course, what counts as comfort food is different person to person. When Troisi has asked people write about an experience they’ve had with a comfort food, essays have ranged from soup to kimchi. “It’s not just that ice cream, for instance, is really tasty. It’s that someone has developed a really significant meaning behind the idea of ice cream due to their relationships with others, and that’s what is triggering this effect,” he says.

Even the smell of a meaningful dish can elicit feelings of belonging, some research suggests. In a February 2015 study, Virginia Commonwealth University researcher Chelsea Reid and her colleagues had 160 people smell 12 different scents, including apple pie, cotton candy and baby powder and rate the extent to which the scent was familiar, arousing, autobiographically relevant, and the extent to which it elicited nostalgia. “Nostalgia can be evoked in different ways, but scents may be particularly likely to evoke nostalgia due to the strong link between scents and memory. The smell of pumpkin pie might bring all those holidays with family flooding back, or the smell of a familiar perfume might arouse memories with your partner,” says Reid.

Biologically speaking, scent and memory are closely tied. “Psychological research has demonstrated that smells are powerfully linked to memory, and to autobiographical memory in particular,” says Reid. “The olfactory bulb, which is involved in the sense of smell, is linked to areas in the brain associated with memory and emotional experiences.”

Humans have a fundamental need to belong, says Reid, and because nostalgia often centers around personal events involving people they care about, she sees the evocation of nostalgia as one way people can obtain a sense of belonging even when the people they are close to are not close by.

So while corn dogs in the summer may not be fine dining by any standard, for me, they trigger happy memories of summers long ago—and that’s a good thing. In moderation, of course.

This article originally appeared on Time.com.




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What Is Legionnaires’ Disease? All About the Germ Causing the New York City Outbreak

Photo: Getty Images

Photo: Getty Images

 

An outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the South Bronx has killed two people and sickened dozens more, and New York City health officials are urging anyone with symptoms of the lung infection to promptly seek medical attention.

But wait, wait, wait. What is Legionnaires’ in the first place?

From 8,000 to 18,000 people are hospitalized each year in the US with Legionnaires’ disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s an infectious disease, but unlike other things like influenza and the common cold, it doesn’t spread from person to person; people catch it by inhaling mist from water systems harboring Legionella bacteria. The first known outbreak occurred in 1976, at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia, which is where the name comes from.

RELATED: 5 Ways to Tell If You Need an Antibiotic

Symptoms can show up two days to two weeks after someone is exposed, and can include fever, cough, chills, muscle aches, headache, fatigue, confusion, loss of appetite, and diarrhea.

“It is a true bacterial pneumonia. That’s why it is severe, but at the same time it doesn’t make everyone ill, and it doesn’t kill everybody,” Hassan Bencheqroun, MD, an interventional pulmonologist and critical care specialist at Pacific Pulmonary Medical Group, and an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Riverside, explained to Health. “Those that develop the pneumonia and those that die from it are those that have risk factors.”

These risk factors include:

  • Being 50 or older
  • Having a chronic lung condition such as asthma or emphysema
  • Smoking cigarettes
  • Taking medications that suppress the immune system
  • Having an immune-suppressing illness

RELATED: 10 Places With Measles or Other Outbreaks

Legionella pneumophila is the strain responsible for 90% of cases of Legionnaires’ disease. The bug lives in the condensers of large air conditioning systems, hot water tanks, whirlpool spas, cooling towers, even ornamental fountains. While low levels of the bacteria won’t lead to an outbreak, “it’s when it multiplies to the level that it would cause disease that we worry,” Dr. Bencheqroun explained.

Legionella is usually a rarer cause of pneumonia,” Belinda Ostrowsky, MD, MPH, infectious disease attending physician and director of antibiotic stewardship at Montefiore Health System in the Bronx, added in an interview with Health. “In the Bronx we can see clusters (increased number of cases) in the summer months.  Clusters can also be seen at times due to specific environmental sources.”

Investigators have honed in on cooling towers at the region’s busiest hospital and a mall/movie theater complex as the source of the current outbreak underway in the Bronx. To confirm that these structures are the outbreak source, medical sleuths must match the DNA signature of the bacteria in the towers to the bacteria that’s making people sick.

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Death rates from Legionnaires’ disease range from 5% to 30%. Some patients will get better with just a few days of intravenous antibiotics, while others may need to spend ten days to two weeks in the intensive care unit, according to Dr. Bencheqroun. “Most of these people have an incredible amount of inflammation in the lining of their lungs, so their oxygen level is very low,” he says. Some people may simply need some extra oxygen, while others may need to be on a ventilator.

The good news, Dr. Bencheqroun says, is that inexpensive, very effective drugs for treating Legionnaires’ disease are available. “We have excellent antibiotics that treat this pneumonia, and these antibiotics are not complex, third tier, only-accessible-to-the-rich kinds of antibiotics,” he said. “Most of the cases of Legionella pneumonia that we diagnose, we send home, and they restart their life with just a story to be told.”

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