Author: Beth Mole

After 20 years, UK health experts have updated their recommendations for alcohol consumption—and it’s likely the new rules won’t sit well with many Britons.

The tougher guidelines, released this week, advise men and women to drink no more than 14 alcohol units a week, which equates to six pints of beer, seven glasses of wine, or about half a bottle of whisky. While that doesn’t change anything for women, past recommendations had set limits for men at about nine glasses of wine or beer a week. In releasing the change, health officials there warned that Britons should reduce their drinking and that any amount of alcohol could be harmful to health, including increasing risks of cancer.

The recommendations say that even moderate drinking is linked to “increased risk of breast cancer, violence, drowning, and injuries from falls and motor vehicle crashes.”

‘The freeze-dried poop method’ might not sound like a weight-loss strategy that would catch on, but—as some researchers are now testing—it may be an effective way to slim down.

In a randomized, controlled clinical trial starting this year, researchers will test out such a fecal formula for the treatment of obesity. They’ll also try to glean critical details about the human microbiome and its role in our health and metabolism. The trial, led by Elaine Yu, an assistant professor and clinical researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, will involve taking fecal samples from lean, healthy donors then freeze-drying the stool, putting a gram or two into capsules, and giving them to 20 obese patients.

Such poop-packed pills, which are designed to replace a person’s intestinal microbes with those from a donor via their feces, have proven effective at treating tenacious gut infections. This has led researchers to ponder whether the transplants could remedy other health problems, including obesity and metabolic disorders. A few animal studies and some anecdotal data in humans suggests the answer is yes—and Yu hopes to get a final answer with the upcoming trial.

People suffering from type 1 diabetes may soon be able to ditch constant finger pricks and manual insulin injections—if they have a smartphone on hand, that is.

Combined with a tiny sensor and wearable insulin pump, a smartphone can stand in for a pancreas, automatically monitoring blood-sugar levels and delivering insulin as needed, researchers report. The system, backed by a $12.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, will enter two final phases of international trials this year.

“We’ve been working on this specific artificial pancreas as it’s called since 2006,” lead researcher Boris Kovatchev, director of the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology, told Ars. And 10 years ago, Kovatchev said, the common wisdom in the field was that such an external system would never work. “We show that it’s not only possible, but it can run on a smartphone.”

The federal government’s dietary guidelines, updated every five years, just received its regularly scheduled refresh.

The big takeaways largely stand in the revised version, released jointly Thursday by the Agriculture and Health and Human Services Departments. Generally, people should load their diet with “vegetables, fruits, grains, low-fat and fat-free dairy, lean meats and other protein foods and oils, while limiting saturated fats, trans fats, added sugars and sodium.”

But there are some interesting changes to chew on, too. These include a notable ditching of a specific limit on cholesterol—what some might say is a win for the egg industry (and egg lovers)—plus sterner warnings about added sugar in the diet. For the first time, the guidelines also call out adolescent and adult males for eating too much protein and give a definitive nod of approval to moderate coffee drinking— that is, three-to-five 8-ounce cups a day.

Despite receiving fiery comments from Martin Shkreli, former CEO of the infamous Turing Pharmaceuticals and struggling KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, RZA has no hard feelings towards the beleaguered Wu-Tang Clan fan.

Reports last month revealed that Shkreli had purchased the sole copy of the Wu-Tang album, Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, for $2 million. But after Shkreli’s arrest on charges of securities fraud, RZA, the de facto leader of the Wu-Tang, appeared to distance the group from Shkreli.

The move quickly drew scorn from the former-CEO. In an exclusive interview with HipHopDX, Shkreli said: “If I hand you $2 million, fucking show me some respect. At least have the decency to say nothing or ‘no comment.’” He went on to imply during the interview that the comments could spark a violent feud.

Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., the Denver-based chain staggering from a string of food-borne illness outbreaks at its restaurants, is under federal criminal investigation for a norovirus outbreak at one of its California locations.

The August outbreak occurred at a restaurant in Simi Valley and sickened 189 customers and 18 employees, according to a local health department worker who spoke with NPR. After the outbreak, local authorities reported finding meat held at improper temperatures and dirty conditions in the restaurant’s kitchen. A subpoena from a federal grand jury, disclosed Wednesday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, requires Chipotle to produce a range of documents related to the outbreak.

The US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California and the Food and Drug Administration are jointly conducting the investigation. In the SEC filing, Chipotle said it intends to fully cooperate, though it’s unclear at this point what criminal violations or charges might be pursued.

With some Fitbit devices, every beat may not get counted, according to claims in a proposed nationwide class action lawsuit filed Tuesday.

Three plaintiffs claim that their Fitbit wrist-based heart monitors, “Charge HR” and “Surge,” do not and cannot accurately measure heart rate as advertised. Those sales pitches claim that both products, which are sold for around $150 and $250, respectively, can continuously and accurately monitor heart rate, even during exercise—under tag lines such as “every beat counts.” But the lawsuit claims that the heart rate monitors, which tout “PurePulse Tracker” technology, seem particularly incapable of accurately measuring elevated heart rates, often reading dangerously underestimated rates during workouts.

In the lawsuit, plaintiff Teresa Black, of Colorado, claimed that her Charge HR device was off by 78 beats per minute (bpm) during one workout. Her personal trainer recorded her heart rate at 160 bpm, while her Fitbit read 82 bpm. “Plaintiff Black was approaching the maximum recommended heart rate for her age, and if she had continued to rely on her inaccurate PurePulse Tracker, she may well have exceeded it, thereby jeopardizing her health and safety,” the lawsuit stated.

A plague of drug violence in Mexico stands to undo gains in life expectancy from the last century, according to new research published in Health Affairs.

Life expectancy crept upward during most of the 20^th century, largely thanks to improved access to health care and quality of life. But from 2005 to 2010, the trend reversed for men and slowed for women as the number of homicides spiked.

In that time frame, the country’s homicide rate more than doubled, from 9.5 deaths in 100,000 people during 2005 to 22 in 100,000 by 2010. That cropped life expectancy of men in all 31 Mexican states and the Federal District. Across the country, average life spans dropped from 72.5 years to about 72 years in the time frame. But areas more hard-hit by drug violence saw larger drops in life expectancy. In the northern states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Durango, for instance, life expectancy fell by up to three years. For women country-wide, the upward trend in life expectancy merely slowed from 2005 to 2010. But drug violence in the northern states stunted life expectancy for women by several months.

Just imagine that the whirring noise—from drills and saws cutting into your skull—is the gentle engine-hum of a motorboat, gliding past your canoe as you float in a tranquil lake.

Those may be some of the instructions a cancer patient might hear while in a hypnotic trance during brain surgery.

The technique, which replaces general anesthetics, was used on 37 patients undergoing surgery to remove brain tumors, researchers report in the journal Neurosurgery. Though there's been little science to back up hypnotherapy, the authors conclude that their small study's success suggests hypnosis could be a viable tool to help sedate patients during delicate brain surgery.

Examining a national database of health insurance claims, researchers found that 91 percent of patients who suffered a nonfatal overdose of prescription opioid painkillers continued getting prescriptions for opioids following the overdose. And, the researchers found, overdose survivors who kept taking high dosages of an opioid—including morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone—were twice as likely to have another overdose within two years.

The findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, follow news earlier this month from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that drug overdoses, opioid overdoses in particular, have reached epidemic levels. The fact that patients surviving opioid overdoses are still being prescribed opioids is “highly concerning,” the authors of the new study wrote.

In a press release, lead author Marc LaRochelle of Boston Medical Center said that "[t]he intent of this study is not to point fingers but rather use the results to motivate physicians, policy makers and researchers to improve how we identify and treat patients at risk of opioid-related harms before they occur."