This Is Exactly How Cold Weather Helps Your Body Burn More Calories

This time of year is filled with opportunities to pack on extra pounds. Think Christmas cookies, eggnog, lazy days when your only exercise is shuffling from the couch to the fridge … you get the idea. But if you live in a cold-weather climate, you have at least one calorie-burning weapon in your holiday arsenal: that arctic blast that hits you when you step outside. Yup, cold temperatures can boost calorie burn. We already knew this, thanks to recent studies on brown fat and the hormone irisin, both of which are…

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Getting kids to eat veggies when there’s no time for family meals

Eating meals as a family is a proven way to get kids to follow healthier diets, but there are other tricks parents can try when there’s no way to get everyone around the same table, a recent study suggests. In homes where family meals were rare, children ate more fruits and vegetables when these items were readily available and they routinely saw parents consume them too, the survey of about 2,500 teens in Minnesota found. “Interestingly, we found that in the absence of regular family meals these other parenting practices…

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Coping with ‘fear of missing out’ over the holidays

Have you heard the phrase “Fear of missing out”? It’s commonly known by its acronym, FOMO, and while many say it comes from using social media too much, you don’t have to be online for it to have an effect on your life. The fear of not staying “connected” may cause problems, said Dr. Joe Taravella, a licensed clinical psychologist at New York University Langone Medical Center’s Rusk Rehabilitation. “It can lead to cognitive distortions and that is people thinking… that they’re truly missing out on things,” he said. FOMO…

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Older women with breast cancer still left out of medical trials

Older women are still underrepresented in medical trials evaluating treatments for breast cancer, according to a new study. Of three different types of trials evaluated by researchers, only one had an increase in enrollment of older women with breast cancer between 1985 and 2012. The other two had decreases. Seeing how older people react to cancer therapies “is crucial to inform decision-making and to optimally serve patients’ medical, emotional, and functional needs,” the authors of the study write in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, online December 19. “As physicians and…

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Older women with breast cancer still left out of medical trials

Older women are still underrepresented in medical trials evaluating treatments for breast cancer, according to a new study. Of three different types of trials evaluated by researchers, only one had an increase in enrollment of older women with breast cancer between 1985 and 2012. The other two had decreases. Seeing how older people react to cancer therapies “is crucial to inform decision-making and to optimally serve patients’ medical, emotional, and functional needs,” the authors of the study write in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, online December 19. “As physicians and…

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Antibiotics sales for use in US farm animals rose in 2015, FDA reports

LOS ANGELES –  U.S. sales and distribution of antibiotics approved for use in food-producing animals increased 1 percent from 2014 to 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a report on Thursday. The report comes as scientists warn that regular use of antibiotics to promote growth and prevent illness in healthy farm animals contributes to the rise of dangerous, antibiotic-resistant “superbug” infections, which kill at least 23,000 Americans each year and pose a significant threat to global health. An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics used to fight human…

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