Category: 8. Health

By Jen Christensen, CNN

(CNN) — Edward Mowery lived with excruciating pain for years: Picture being put into a hot frying pan, he said, and then someone holding you down on that pan forever. The fiery, shooting pain got so bad that he quit his job, stopped playing sports and had to abandon his beloved death metal band just as the group was taking off.

“At one point, I didn’t have any feeling in my arms or hands or anything,” said Mowery, 55, who lives in New Mexico. “I couldn’t put one note on a guitar, much less play like I do.”

But everything changed when doctors tried a cutting-edge approach to pain management. If they can refine the technique to make it less intrusive and demonstrate that it works on others, doctors think this technique could radically transform the way people manage debilitating and otherwise untreatable chronic pain — no opioids or pain blockers required.

“The state of the art right now for picking a medication for an individual patient is trial and error” when it comes to pain, said Dr. Prasad Shirvalkar, a neurologist at the University of California San Francisco. “Trying to be your own guinea pig, that’s essentially what we’re doing right now in pain medicine.” Finding something more precise that could stop a pain signal in the brain before it could be felt in the body would be a huge shift.

An estimated 50 million adults in the United States experience chronic pain, defined as lasting for more than three months. Of them, about 8.5% are like Mowery, living with chronic pain that interferes with day-to-day life, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Years of agony

Mowery says he was a rambunctious kid and got injured a lot while skiing and playing soccer.

Altogether he says he’s had 34 surgeries, including 11 painful knee surgeries, as well as foot, back and neck surgeries. The bigger problem, though, started with a part of his body that hadn’t even been injured.

About a week after a routine knee replacement in 2009, his right foot started to feel like it was on fire.

He spoke with “all kind of doctors, trying to figure out what was going on,” but nobody could explain the pain. Some didn’t even believe that he was in pain, assuming he was an opioid addict looking for pills. “That’s the one thing, when they put me on all these meds, I wasn’t addicted to all the meds, I was addicted to getting rid of the pain,” he said.

For eight long years, he said, doctors couldn’t figure out what was causing the pain. But in 2017, when his foot turned purple and black, he went to a pain specialist in Albuquerque who took one look and told him he had complex regional pain syndrome, or CRPS.

CRPS is a kind of neurological pain, often in the extremities, that can develop after a surgery, stroke, injury or heart attack that is out of proportion to the severity of an initial injury. It can make blood vessels dilate or constrict, leading to skin discoloration, swelling and temperature changes.

Mowery says doctors explained that when the acute pain from his knee went away, his brain essentially missed that feeling.

“Because I’d been in pain for so long, my brain was so used to being in pain that it said, ‘Oh, you need to have this back,’ ” he said. “Manufactured pain from the brain with no stimulus. It’s unreal.”

Doctors put him on a variety of pain medications, including morphine and oxycodone, that he didn’t like because he felt so out of it. At one point, he took 17 pills a day, but nothing worked for long. Always athletic, Mowery ended up relying on a walker or a wheelchair to get around.

“It’s really depressing. You would think they’d call CRPS the suicide disease,” Mowery said. “A lot of times, I was sitting there just going, ‘what am I going to do? There’s nothing out there for me.’ “

He spent years searching the internet for clinical trials and finally found one at the University of California San Francisco. The description of the research seemed vague but he filled out the questionnaire anyway and, within 40 minutes, he said, he got a message urgently asking him to come to San Francisco.

Relief from his years of agony would soon come after doctors persuaded him to let them drill several holes in his head.

‘These are people that have been failed’

Shirvalkar says he has long wanted to solve the puzzle that is pain. He had success treating neurological conditions but less success treating their chronic pain.

“There are people that have been failed by all available therapies. They’ve tried over 25 different medications. They have had multiple injections and nerve blocks.
They’ve even had spinal cord stimulators or peripheral stimulators, and nothing can alleviate their suffering,” Shirvalkar said. “We started appreciating that the brain must be generating or perpetuating these pain signals in a person. So the question becomes, how can we identify what these signals are and really try to suppress or short-circuit them?”

Acute pain, like when someone stubs a toe, affects the brain differently from chronic pain, he said.

“I think of chronic pain as a fire alarm. The alarm is helpful for acute pain. We want to be able to know when there’s an emergency,” he said. “In chronic pain, it’s as if the fire alarm is going off, but we can’t identify the fire.”

When pain becomes chronic, it rewires the brain.

“It starts to take on these other dimensions that include mood and motivation and involve attention and memory, and so we really have to address the cognitive aspect of it,” Shirvalkar said. “It tells me that when someone has developed chronic pain, treating it with a single drug or injection or some monotherapy probably isn’t going to work.”

With the help of a $7.56 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Shirvalkar and a team at UCSF have been exploring deep brain stimulation, a technology sometimes used with people who have Parkinson’s disease, to treat pain conditions like Mowery’s.

With Parkinson’s, doctors implant electrodes in the brain that produce electrical impulses to disrupt the abnormal signals that cause tremors, stiffness and slow movement. Shirvalkar wondered if they could also use the a version of the device to redirect or suppress the brain’s pain signals to the body.

There were a few challenges with this approach. The device sends signals around the clock in someone who has Parkinson’s, but Shirvalkar thought a constant signal wouldn’t work for chronic pain because the brain can become acclimated to the impulses and essentially override them.

Another challenge was figuring out what part of the brain was sending pain signals.
There’s no one central location that does this, and it could be different in different people.

Yet another challenge would be to quickly sense when the brain was about to send out a pain signal – or even anticipate it – and shut it down quickly.

The team used computational models and AI to essentially detect a biomarker that could track how severe a person’s chronic pain would be, similar to how an A1C level can tell whether someone has diabetes and how severe it is.

But to learn whether deep brain stimulation could work for pain, the team first had to persuade Mowery that he should have another surgery. He was reluctant to have another procedure. This trial would require three.

‘I feel like I owe him my life’

It took Mowery about 18 months to decide the trial was right for him – time in which the worsening pain essentially wore him down.

In the first surgery, doctors would map Mowery’s brain to determine where the pain came from. Another surgery would remove the temporary probes from the first procedure. A final procedure placed permanent probes in the correct areas.

For the first part of the trial, Mowery spent 10 days in the hospital while doctors created a grid of more than 100 points on his head to try to find different circuits or certain activation for pain by watching and stimulating his brain. Even with eight- to 10-hour days probing his brain, it wasn’t until day five or six that the researchers had their “eureka moment.”

“All of a sudden, Ed says, ‘Wow, my pain just washed off of me,’ ” Shirvalkar said. “I was blown away. I didn’t know what to say.”

Concerned that it could be the placebo effect, the doctors kept testing to make sure they had the right targets. Shirvalkar quickly became confident that they had picked the right areas when Mowery immediately felt the pain in his feet, legs and lower back dissipate.

“When it comes to actually understanding what’s driving someone’s chronic pain, we say there’s no pain center, right? But it tells us if chronic pain is this complex lock, it tells us that yes, that there is a key to be found. So it gives us hope.”

Much more research will be done to see if this technology can work for everyone or whether there would be even better technology that would be less invasive.

In August, Shirvalkar and his team published the results of their tests of this technique on six people. The team followed the patients for 22 months and were even able to randomize the trial so some got the stimulation and some did not. Those who got stimulation reported a reduction in pain of about 60%, while the placebo group got no such relief.

Mowery has resumed his normal daily activities, including playing his guitar. He can monitor what’s going on in his brain with an iPad app and just has to periodically charge the device that sends the signals to his brain.

He’s not totally pain-free, he says: He’ll have a bad day sometimes, but it’s infrequent.

He says Shirvalkar’s work changed his life.

“The way it detected pain, the way it turns off pain, the way I’m getting off all these medications, I feel like I owe him my life,” Mowery said.

Mowery felt so much better that, in June, he accompanied Shirvalkar to Washington to testify before Congress’ Neuroscience Caucus about the impact of the NIH BRAIN Initiative on addiction research and on this pain treatment alternative.

Shirvalkar is concerned about future funding amid the current political environment and other funding cuts at the NIH.

“NIH funding is always a concern. Fortunately, we’re doing OK for the time being,” Shirvalkar said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Mowery hopes that his experience will provide enough of an example so people can see the possibilities of such medical research.

“I have been called a medical astronaut before, and my sister is an actual astronaut, and she finds that funny,” Mowery said. “It’s a miracle.”

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Researchers have discovered that brain cancer cells reprogram their sugar metabolism, a vulnerability that can be exploited in mice to impede tumor growth and enhance therapeutic outcomes.

Glioblastomas are the most aggressive type of malignant brain tumor, and patients diagnosed with this condition typically survive only one to two years.

Within these tumors, ordinary brain cells change their behavior, multiplying quickly and spreading into nearby tissue. Unlike healthy brain cells, the cancerous cells process nutrients in a fundamentally different way.

In a recent study published in Nature, scientists at the University of Michigan, including experts from the Rogel Cancer Center, the Department of Neurosurgery, and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, investigated how glioblastoma cells metabolize glucose.

Their findings revealed that these tumors rely on distinct nutrient pathways compared to normal brain tissue, offering new insight into potential treatment strategies.

“We altered the diet in mouse models and were able significantly slow down and block the growth of these tumors,” said co-senior author Daniel Wahl, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of radiation oncology.

“Our study may help create new treatment opportunities for patients in the near future.”

Conventional treatments consist of surgery followed by radiation therapy and chemotherapy. However, the tumors eventually return and become resistant to treatment.

Previously, researchers have shown that resistance is due to metabolic rewiring within cancer cells.

Cancer cells in the brain use sugars differently compared to healthy cells

Metabolism is the process by which our bodies break down molecules like carbohydrates and proteins so that our cells can either use them or build new molecules.

Although both brain and cancer cells depend on sugar, the team wanted to see if they use sugar differently.

They injected small amounts of labelled sugar into mice and, importantly, into patients with brain tumors to follow how it is used.

“To really understand these brain cancers and improve treatments for patients, we needed to do the hard work of studying the tumors in patients themselves, not just in the lab,” said co-senior author Wajd Al-Holou, M.D., a brain tumor neurosurgeon who co-directs the Michigan Multidisciplinary Brain Tumor Clinic.

Although both normal tissues and tumor cells used a lot of sugar, they used it for different purposes.

“It’s a metabolic fork in the road,” said Andrew Scott, Ph.D., a research scholar in Wahl’s lab.

“The brain channels sugar into energy production and neurotransmitters for thinking and health, but tumors redirect sugar to make materials for more cancer cells.”

The team found that healthy tissues used sugars to generate energy and make chemicals that allow the brain to function properly.

Glioblastomas, on the other hand, turned off those processes and instead converted sugar into molecules like nucleotides—the building blocks of DNA and RNA—that helped them grow and invade the surrounding tissues.

Amino-acid restricted diets can improve treatment outcomes in mice

The researchers also noticed other important differences.

The normal brain used sugar to make amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. However, brain cancers seemed to turn this pathway off and instead scavenged these amino acids from the blood.

This finding led the researchers to consider whether lowering the levels of certain amino acids in the blood could affect brain cancer without affecting the normal brain.

They tested whether mice that were fed an amino acid-restricted diet had better treatment outcomes.

“When we got rid of the amino acids serine and glycine in the mice, their response to radiation and chemotherapy was better and the tumors were smaller than the control mice that were fed serine,” said co-senior author Deepak Nagrath, Ph.D. professor of biomedical engineering.

Based on their measurements in mice, the team also built mathematical models that can track how glucose is being used in different pathways, which can help identify other drug targets.

Co-senior author Costas Lyssiotis, Ph.D., professor of molecular and integrative physiology, compared metabolic pathways to roads and drugs to roadblocks.

Dropping a roadblock on a fast highway with a lot of traffic will have a greater effect than blocking a country road with a lower speed limit and only a few cars.

Similarly, in a normal brain, the uptake of the amino acid serine from the blood is like a slow country road.

But brain cancer is like a busy freeway, giving researchers the opportunity to selectively target the cancer.

The team is working on opening clinical trials soon to test whether specialized diets that limit blood serine levels can also help glioblastoma patients.

“This is a multidisciplinary effort from across the university,” Wahl said.

“It is a study that no individual investigator could do on their own and I’m grateful to be part of a team that works together to make important discoveries that can improve treatments for our patients.”

Reference: “Rewiring of cortical glucose metabolism fuels human brain cancer growth” by Andrew J. Scott, Anjali Mittal, Baharan Meghdadi, Alexandra O’Brien, Justine Bailleul, Palavalasa Sravya, Abhinav Achreja, Weihua Zhou, Jie Xu, Angelica Lin, Kari Wilder-Romans, Ningning Liang, Ayesha U. Kothari, Navyateja Korimerla, Donna M. Edwards, Zhe Wu, Jiane Feng, Sophia Su, Li Zhang, Peter Sajjakulnukit, Anthony C. Andren, Junyoung O. Park, Johanna ten Hoeve, Vijay Tarnal, Kimberly A. Redic, Nathan R. Qi, Joshua L. Fischer, Ethan Yang, Michael S. Regan, Sylwia A. Stopka, Gerard Baquer, Krithika Suresh, Jann N. Sarkaria, Theodore S. Lawrence, Sriram Venneti, Nathalie Y. R. Agar, Erina Vlashi, Costas A. Lyssiotis, Wajd N. Al-Holou, Deepak Nagrath and Daniel R. Wahl, 3 September 2025, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09460-7

Funding/disclosures: Scott was supported by the National Cancer Institute (K99CA300923; F32CA260735). Wahl was supported by NCI (K08CA234416; R37CA258346), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS129123), Damon Runyon Cancer Foundation, Sontag Foundation, Ivy Glioblastoma Foundation, Forbes Institute for Cancer Discovery, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation and Chad Tough Defeat DIPG foundation. Wahl and Lawrence were supported by NCI P50CA269022. Nagrath was supported by NCI (R01CA271369). Wu, Feng and Qi were supported by NIDDK MMPC-Live (1U2CDK135066). Zhou was supported by University of Michigan Medical School’s Pandemic Research Recovery grant (U083054). Al-Holou was supported by NINDS (K08NS12827101), American Cancer Society (CSDG-23-1031584-01-MM), and American Brain Tumor Association. Palavalasa was supported by American Cancer Society (PF-23-1077428-01-MM). Venneti was supported by NINDS (R01NS110572 and R01NS127799) and NCI (R01CA261926). Vlashi and Bailleul were supported by NCI (CA251872 and CA251872-S1). Bailleul was supported by a UCLA JCCC Fellowship Award. Park was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R35GM143127). Sarkaria was supported by Mayo Clinic and the William H. Donner Professorship.  Agar was supported by the Daniel E. Ponton Fund, National Brain Tumor Society, Mass Life Sciences Center, and NCI(U54CA283114).

Tech transfer(s)/Conflict(s) of interest: Wahl has consulted for Agios Pharmaceuticals, Admare Pharmaceuticals, Bruker and Innocrin Pharmaceuticals. He is an inventor on patents pertaining to the treatment of patients with brain tumors (U.S. Provisional Patent Application 63/416,146, U.S. Provisional Patent Application 62/744,342, U.S. Provisional Patent Applicant 62/724,337). Scott, Nagrath, Lyssiotis, Mittal, Achreja and Meghdadi are co-inventors on U.S. Provisional Patent Application 63/416,146. In the past three years, Lyssiotis has consulted for Odyssey Therapeutics and Third Rock Ventures. Al-Holou has consulted for Servier Pharmaceuticals. Agar reports the following disclosures: key opinion leader to Bruker Daltonics, collaboration with Thermo Finnigan, service agreement with EMD Serono, service agreement with iTeos Therapeutics, and founder and board member of BondZ.

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When you eat breakfast, you’re doing more than just fueling your body. You’re also feeding your brain. Planned right, your morning meal can help you focus, stay energized and maybe even help you remember where you put your favorite water bottle. Why? “After a night of fasting, your brain is craving fuel and nutrients to help you focus and stay sharp, and skipping breakfast can leave you feeling foggy and sluggish,” says Lauren Manaker, M.S., RDN. Of course, what you eat is a critical part of the picture. But so is what you do before you take that first bite of food. And what you don’t eat matters, too. 

So, what’s the ideal breakfast formula to keep your brain on top of its game? To find out, we explored the science and talked with registered dietitians to come up with this five-step plan to keep your brain functioning at its best all day long.  

1. Hydrate Before Coffee 

“Hydration is critical for brain function, and even mild dehydration can impair your focus, mental sharpness and attention,” says Anne Danahy, M.S., RDN. The link is so strong that research has found that poor hydration may negatively impact processing speed, memory and attention.

Even though coffee contains water, drinking a glass of water first can make it easier to ensure you reach your H2O goals. How much water should you be drinking? Danahy recommends downing a glass of water before or with your coffee, and then every hour or two throughout the day. 

2. Pair Protein with Carbs 

Eating breakfast gives your brain an edge compared to skipping it. For instance, one study found that older folks who skipped breakfast just once or twice per week were more likely to perform poorly on tests of cognitive ability than regular breakfast eaters.

But the quality and nutrient mix of that breakfast also matters. While classic breakfast foods like cereal, toast, fruit or oatmeal provide carbohydrates that your brain uses for fuel, balancing carbs with protein gives your meal more staying power. “Protein helps stabilize blood sugar when eaten with carbohydrates and keeps your energy and focus steady instead of crashing mid-morning,” notes Jamie Lee McIntyre, M.S., RDN. To get the protein you need in the a.m., think cottage cheese, yogurt, low-fat milk, soy milk, eggs, smoked salmon or even tuna fish.

Don’t count out carbs entirely, though. “Your brain needs a mix of nutrients and, most importantly, glucose, to work well,” says Danahy. “If you’ve ever skipped meals and felt tired, foggy or ‘hangry,’ you’ve experienced the effects of low glucose levels on your brain.” Since our brains rely on breakfast to provide nutrients to power through the day, protein and carbohydrates are two key players that work better together.

3. Eat Berries

It’s hard to talk about a brain-healthy breakfast and not include a nod to berries. Berries are loaded with fiber, minerals, vitamins and polyphenols that all help support our brains. Their beautiful deep purple, red and blue colors come from anthocyanins. These potent antioxidants are believed to improve memory and cognitive health by increasing blood flow to the brain.

Sure, you could eat berries any time of day. But why not get a jump start at breakfast? “Toss them in with your overnight oats, add them to a smoothie or top them with Greek yogurt and a sprinkle of granola and nuts,” suggests Danahy. Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries all work. If fresh berries aren’t in season or are out of your budget, look for frozen berries, which are just as good for your body and brain. 

4. Include Eggs 

Eggs aren’t just a great source of protein. They also contain other brain-boosting nutrients, especially choline. This nutrient is crucial for supporting brain development, memory and mood, yet most of us don’t get enough of it, notes Manaker. Studies have linked higher choline intake with improved measures of cognitive performance, including faster verbal and visual memory.

Because our bodies can’t make choline, we need to get it from foods or supplements. Just one large egg delivers 27% of your daily dose. So, “kick-start your morning with eggs by scrambling them up with veggies, making a quick avocado-and-egg toast, or by whipping up a simple omelet with your favorite fillings,” says Manaker.

5. Limit Added Sugar 

Your brain needs lots of key nutrients at breakfast. But what you skip matters, too. Even though your brain uses glucose (a simple sugar) as its preferred fuel, it’s better to get carbohydrates from fruits and whole grains rather than from added sugar. In fact, research has found a link between eating too much added sugar and poor cognitive and executive function. That includes everything from problem-solving to planning, fine motor skills and processing speed.

In addition, added sugar is digested quickly, which can lead to blood sugar spikes and dips rather than providing sustained energy. Since most of us eat too much added sugar to begin with, a sugar-heavy breakfast practically guarantees you’ll overdo it throughout the course of the day. 

Other Morning Strategies to Support Brain Health

• Get natural sunlight: Starting your day with a bit of fresh air and sunshine can provide the boost your brain needs. “Natural sunlight helps regulate your circadian rhythm, which improves sleep quality—and better sleep is essential for memory consolidation,” notes Manaker.
• Get some omega-3s: The omega-3 fats DHA and EPA are important for brain function, memory and cognitive well-being. Yet, few of us eat enough of them. The best way to get them is from fatty fish. Start your day with a slice of whole-grain toast topped with smoked salmon. Or, try some pickled herring. If you’re not much of a fish eater, McIntyre recommends adding an omega-3 supplement to your morning routine.
• Get a good night’s sleep: Sleep is necessary to remove toxins from your brain that build up during the day. “When you don’t get enough sleep or have poor sleep quality, waking up frequently at night, your brain pays the price. You’re more likely to have problems with concentrating, focus and reaction time,” says Danahy. Aim for seven to nine hours per night. 
• Move your body: Physical activity does more than benefit our bodies. It also keeps our brains happy and healthy. “Exercise increases blood flow to the brain, which can enhance focus, learning and memory,” says Manaker. “Even just 10 minutes of movement can make a difference.” If you can’t squeeze in a workout, even a quick walk can help.

Our Expert Take

“Just like every other part of your body, your brain needs a nutritious diet and a healthy lifestyle to do its job well,” says Danahy. “No single nutrient can keep your brain sharp and alert, but a healthy diet pattern [and] the way you eat over time, can help.” To start your day on the right foot, why not give your brain the nutrients it needs to perform at its very best? You can do this by hydrating with water before drinking your morning coffee, combining protein with carbohydrates, and choosing berries and eggs often. While you’re at it, try to limit added sugar, which can lead to blood sugar crashes that make it difficult to think straight. With this five-pronged plan, you’ll set yourself up for better mental clarity and focus throughout the day and support your long-term brain health to boot.

By age 40, more than half of Americans have high blood pressure, but many are unaware of it. Hypertension has long been known as the silent killer. When it’s left untreated it can be deadly. And it’s considered a silent threat since most people have no symptoms. You can’t feel the pressure in your blood vessels increasing.

New recommendations from the American Heart Association aim for early treatment, including lifestyle changes and medications, once systolic blood pressure rises above 130/80 mm Hg, (which stands for millimeters of mercury, a measure of pressure). Experts say it’s clear that the sooner you take action, the more you can protect yourself.

Hypertension is a leading cause of heart disease, which is the #1 cause of death of both men and women in the U.S. High blood pressure also increases the risk of kidney disease and dementia. And, research shows that hypertension can lead to damage in small blood vessels in the brain, which is linked to cognitive decline.

“There’s a really enormous preventive health opportunity in treating hypertension earlier,” says Dr. Jordana Cohen, a nephrologist and hypertension specialist at the University of Pennsylvania. She says millions of adults in the U.S. could benefit from medications and lifestyle changes.

“If you catch it early, and treat it early, you can end up with many more years of healthy life expectancy,” Cohen says, pointing to a reduced risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney damage and dementia.

The new guidelines point to decades old advice about the benefits of a low-sodium diet, which can be challenging to follow, given more than half the calories consumed in the U.S. come from ultra-processed foods, which tend to be high in salt.

The new guidelines also emphasize lifestyle strategies including exercise, limiting alcohol consumption, and stress reduction in the form of meditation, yoga, or deep breathing. For people with systolic blood pressure ( the upper number) in the 130s, the recommendation is to start with these diet and lifestyle-related changes, then move to medication if blood pressure doesn’t improve.

For people who hit the risky range of a systolic blood pressure of 140 or higher, which is considered stage 2 hypertension, evidence shows starting on high blood pressure medications is beneficial.

“For all people with a blood pressure over 140/ 90, mm Hg, we recommend beginning with two medications,” Dr. Dan Jones, chair of the guideline writing committee at the Heart Association, told NPR. Research shows one medication alone is often not enough to lower blood pressure to the optimal range, he says.

Jones says even when people are aware they have hypertension, more than half don’t manage to lower it to the normal range, which is 120 /80 mm Hg or lower. Some of the challenges include side effects of the medications and individual differences in how well the medication works, as well an unwillingness to take medicines among some people. In addition, some people struggle the everyday hurdles of making lifestyle changes. Jones points out that healthcare providers also use a risk calculator to estimate a person’s individual risk of heart disease, as part of a treatment plan.

When George Solomon was told about the risks of high blood pressure he was hesitant to take medications. “I felt fine,” he says. Then, at age 63, he had a stroke.

Solomon had retired from a career in law enforcement, and was settling into a new routine, making time for exercise and hobbies, such as splitting wood on his farm. One day in the spring of 2023, he started to feel off.

” I went upstairs to watch TV, and when I sat down in the chair, I couldn’t get back up. I had a sensation that came up across my back,” he recalls and he lost feeling in his arm and leg. An ambulance took him to Duke University Hospital, near his home, where he underwent treatment and rehab for a stroke.

He estimates that he’s now about 80% recovered, and back to exercising and working on his farm. He realizes now that he needs healthy lifestyle habits and medications to prevent another stroke.

” I feel I’m on the right path ,” he says. He’s lost weight and he’s doing more cardio and strength training. He’s sharing his story in hopes it encourages others to take action.

Medications: what’s out there, what’s coming

There are several types of medications used to treat hypertension. They include diuretics that help the body get rid of extra salt and water, ACE inhibitors that help block the production of a hormone called angiotensin II, and help relax the blood vessels and calcium channel blockers that slow down the movement of calcium into cells, which can help lower pressure.

But many people with hypertension don’t get enough reduction with current medications, and University of Pennsylvania’s Cohen says there’s a lot of interest in a new class of medication that works by targeting the hormone aldosterone, which helps regulate fluid and sodium in the body. Too much of the hormone is one cause of high blood pressure. The drug is not yet on the market, but new study results could pave the way for a new treatment option.

“In hypertension, we haven’t seen anything new that’s effective since the nineties,” Cohen says. So another tool in the toolkit for treatment could be beneficial, she says.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found the aldosterone blocking drug, known as baxdrostat, was effective in lowering blood pressure in many people who have difficulty controlling their hypertension.

The study included about 800 people who, despite taking two or three medications, still had not lowered their blood pressure to the normal range. “What we saw is that after 12 weeks of treatment, there was about a ten point improvement in blood pressure in the patients treated with baxdrostat, over the placebo effect, Dr. Jennifer Brown, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who is one of the researchers behind the study, told NPR. The study was sponsored by drugmaker Astra Zeneca, which plans to share its data with regulatory authorities by the end of the year.

A 10 point drop in systolic blood pressure is linked to about a 20% reduction in the risk of heart attacks and strokes, and also a decreased risk of dementia.

Russian scientists have developed a new cancer vaccine that is now ready for clinical use, according to the Federal Medical and Biological Agency (FMBA). The announcement was made by FMBA head Veronika Skvortsova at the Eastern Economic Forum, as per a report by Russian news agency TASS.

The vaccine, called Enteromix, is based on mRNA technology — the same approach used in some Covid-19 vaccines. Instead of using a weakened virus, mRNA vaccines teach the body’s cells to produce proteins that trigger an immune response against cancer cells.

Read More

Skvortsova said the vaccine has completed years of research, including three years of required preclinical trials. The trials showed that the vaccine was safe even with repeated doses and was highly effective. In some cases, tumors shrank or grew more slowly by 60% to 80%, depending on the type of cancer.

Researchers also noted improved survival rates among test subjects.

The first focus for this vaccine will be colorectal cancer, which refers to the cancer of the large intestine. Work is also advancing on vaccines for glioblastoma, a fast-growing brain cancer, and certain types of melanoma (a serious skin cancer), including ocular melanoma, which affects the eye.

The announcement came during the 10th Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, which drew more than 8,400 participants from over 75 countries.

– Ends

ALSO READ: The antidote to inflammatory bowel disease is hiding in your fruit basket: Study reveals

Dr Prateek spotlighted two chronic gut conditions that are increasingly affecting children. “Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disorders (EGID) are showing a worrying upward trend. Between 1990 and 2019, pediatric IBD cases increased by nearly 23% worldwide, with the steepest rise in high-income and urban regions,” he shared.

The biggest concern is how young the child is when the symptoms first begin, as according to the gastroenterologist, almost a quarter of IBD patients are under the age of 10, and in some cases, symptoms appear even before age 6.

Particularly for the symptoms that begin from six years old, Dr Prateek called it ‘Very Early Onset-IBD’. While based on the doctor’s observation, EGID in children causes abdominal pain and feeding difficulties.

Why are the cases rising?

The biggest cause of these chronic gut issues among children is diet. Dr Prateek also highlighted environmental factors, like pollution, as other contributing causes.

He cautioned against poor diets, especially the ones which are “heavy in ultra-processed foods and refined sugars.” This is primarily because it’s connected to gut inflammation, which in turn triggers these chronic gut issues like IBD.

On the contrary, the gastroenterologist believed that traditional, fibre-rich diets, like the Mediterranean, are beneficial for health.

The environmental and other miscellaneous culprits that Dr. Prateek called out were air pollution, reduced exposure to microbes due to excessive hygiene, early antibiotic use, and cesarean delivery. They disturb the gut’s microbiome, lowering the gut’s natural defence system.

Symptoms

The initial symptoms are subtle, but paying close attention is important. The doctor revealed these symptoms for the two gut conditions:

• IBD symptoms: Blood in stool, unexplained low-grade fever, and nighttime awakenings may precede abdominal pain, urgency, and growth delays.
• EGID symptoms: EGID tends to present as chronic abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, or feeding refusal. Because signs mimic more common gastrointestinal complaints, diagnosis is often delayed for years. High clinical suspicion and early referral for endoscopic evaluation and biopsy are critical.

How to prevent and manage?

The doctor warned parents to stop downplaying their stomach aches as ‘just a stomach bug’ and instead urged them to pay attention to any stomach pain, more so if it is very frequent.

Dr Prateek advised a better prevention method. He said, “Establishing a healthy gut foundation through breastfeeding, judicious antibiotic use, and diets rich in whole foods can lower risks. For children already diagnosed, medical therapies remain the mainstay.”

For treatment, if complications arise and surgery is needed, he suggested options such as colectomy for severe ulcerative colitis, resection for Crohn’s disease, or endoscopic dilation for EGID-related strictures.

Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.