Month: September 2020

Lauren Wittering suffers from a condition called mast cell activation syndrome. (Image supplied SWNS)A woman has become allergic to all foods and even certain smells can cause her to suffer a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction. Lauren Wittering, 20, from Kettering, Northamptonshire, suffers from a condition known as mast cell activation syndrome, or MCAS, where a person’s mast cells (which are responsible for allergic reactions) are overly triggered by unusual substances, resulting in allergic reactions and anaphylaxis (a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction). “I loved food so much and now I can’t even be near it - just the smell of food will send me into anaphylaxis,” she explains. “If I come into contact with something I am allergic to, hives will quickly ...

You're staring at a screen right now. And chances are, you don't know the #1 thing you can do to protect your eyes while doing so. That's why we wrote this. The truth is that the power is within your sights—diet, lifestyle choices and good eye hygiene have a lot to do with preserving vision as we age. Eat This, Not That! Health asked top eye experts about the unexpected ways we might be damaging our vision every day. Here's what they said you should focus on. Read on, and to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had Coronavirus. 1 You're Getting Too Much Sun young african american woman smiling and looking up"Regardless of where we live or the time of year, sun overexposure is an ever-present danger to our eye health," says Trevor Elmqu...

This page is updated regularly. Since the new coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December, the infectious respiratory disease COVID-19 has spread rapidly within China and to neighboring countries and beyond. The first confirmed coronavirus cases outside China occurred on Jan. 20, in Japan, Thailand and South Korea. On Jan. 21, the first case in the U.S. was identified in Washington state. On Jan. 24, the first two European cases were confirmed in France. By Feb. 1, eight European nations had confirmed cases of COVID-19, and a month later that count had risen to 24 countries with at least 2,200 cases, most of them in Italy. On March 11...

"Before Covid, I was a 59-year-old, relatively healthy man," said the broadband technician from Denver. "If I had to say where I'm at now, I'd say about 50% of where I was, but when I first went home, I was at 20%." He credits much of his progress to the "motivation and education" gleaned from a new program for post-Covid patients at the University of Colorado, one of a small but growing number of clinics aimed at treating and studying those who have had the unpredictable disease caused by this coronavirus. As the US general election nears, much attention is focused on daily infection numbers or the climbing death toll, but another measure matters: Patients who survive but continue to wrestle with a range of physical or mental effects, including lung damage, heart or neurological concerns,...

In a U.S. pandemic response dominated by missteps, the effort to develop vaccines to prevent Covid-19 has so far been a triumph. Vaccines against the coronavirus that causes the disease are now racing through giant clinical trials as a result. It’s a terrible irony, then, that the Trump administration’s statements have resulted in an erosion of public trust, with the percent of Americans who tell pollsters they would take a Covid-19 vaccine dropping and experts worrying the president could compel the Food and Drug Administration to approve a vaccine before one is ready. (Spoiler: No vaccine will likely be ready by Election Day.)  “When the the president comes out and says, ‘by a very special day, we might have a vaccine,’ the whole thing blows up,” Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown School...

A new experimental treatment reportedly tricks cancer cells into self-destructing, without the use of any drugs, providing new hope for winning the war on many different types of the disease. The treatment involves a nanoparticle coated in an amino acid called L-phenylalanine. The chemical is not naturally produced in the body but is instead absorbed from meat and dairy produce that humans consume.  L-phenylalanine is the perfect bait as it is one of the main amino acids cancer cells require to grow and spread throughout the human body, wreaking havoc in the process. The novel new treatment has proven incredibly successful on mice. The secret is the nanoparticle Nanoscopic phenylalanine Porous Amino Acid Mimic, or Nano-pPAAM for short. Nano-pPAAM triggers overproduction o...