Basically the short of the long of it is that you should not sit or stand for longer than an hour without doing a few minutes of the opposite.

Otherwise you will start experiencing accelerating fatigue.

Places of work that require standing should prioritize letting workers sit for a couple of minutes once an hour at minimum. It retains 95% of productivity (if not boosts it when fatigue goes down), and reduces fatigue by at least half when compared to perpetual standing.

Five poultry workers from a farm in northeast Colorado have bird flu, state and federal health officials reported Sunday. Four of the cases have been confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and one is presumptively positive for H5N1, also known as avian influenza, and is pending confirmation.

The disease was contracted while working at a "commercial egg layer operation," the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in a statement Sunday.

On Friday, when only three cases were confirmed, the CDC said they worked "at a poultry facility experiencing an outbreak of the H5N1 virus that is circulating in wild birds and has been causing multistate outbreaks in dairy cows and poultry."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17587839

Hope for new treatments after researchers find spread of disease is aided by shutting down of molecules in key genes

Scientists have made a crucial DNA discovery that could help cure one of the deadliest cancers.

A team of researchers from the UK and US have found that pancreatic cancer is able to shut down molecules in one of the body’s most important genes, helping the disease to grow and spread rapidly.

Pancreatic cancer is the 12th most common cancer worldwide, with more than half a million people diagnosed every year. It has the worst survival rates of all the most common forms of the disease.

They’re marketed as healthy, “dietitian-approved” meals and delivered directly to the homes of people seriously ill from cancer, diabetes, or heart disease: a Jimmy Dean frozen sausage breakfast sandwich, biscuits and gravy, a cheeseburger.

These are among the offerings sold by an Idaho-based company, Homestyle Direct, which is paid millions of dollars each year by taxpayer-funded state Medicaid programs to deliver what the company calls medically tailored meals. The company, which advertises delivering 7.8 million meals annually, has menus catering to customers trying to manage their cancer and diabetes, as well as “heart healthy” and “renal friendly” dishes.

However, multiple nutrition experts told STAT that many of Homestyle Direct’s offerings fall far short of what they’d consider medically tailored meals, a class of foods that have been proven to help those suffering from diet-related conditions improve their health and stay out of the hospital. Most also don’t appear to meet new voluntary accreditation standards crafted by medically-tailored meal providers.

“Homestyle Direct to me doesn’t look like medically tailored meals at all — it doesn’t even look like generally healthy meals,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.

Hundreds of patients are being asked to get tested for hepatitis B and C, as well as HIV, due to the potential exposure by an anesthesiologist.

Thousands of patients who were treated at two hospitals in Portland, Oregon, are being told to get bloods tests because of an "infection control breach" linked to an anesthesiologist that may have exposed them to HIV and hepatitis B and C.

About 2,400 people who were patients of two health care providers — Providence and Legacy Health — are potentially affected and have been advised to take tests "out of an abundance of caution."

Providence Willamette Falls Medical Center in Oregon City said in a statement that about 2,200 of its patients, and two patients at Providence Portland Medical Center, have been informed.

Relatively few Americans fully endorse the idea that a fertilized egg should have the same rights as a pregnant woman. But a significant share say it describes their views at least somewhat well, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 

The new survey comes as questions grow around reproductive health access in the continued fallout from the decision by the Supreme Court to end federal abortion protections. The poll found that a solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban as a rising number support access to abortions for any reason. 

But anti-abortion advocates are increasingly pushing for broader measures that would give rights and protections to embryos and fetuses, which could have massive implications for fertility treatments and other areas of health care.

The poll suggests that when it comes to more nuanced questions about issues like in vitro fertilization, or IVF — which may be affected by the restrictive climate in some states, even though they were not previously considered as part of “abortion” — there is general support for reproductive health protections. But the poll also shows some uncertainty, as Americans are faced with situations that would not have arisen before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Cheap, counterfeit Botox given by people not trained to do facial injections, in places without a doctor on standby, became a dangerous combination that landed more than a dozen women in the hospital.

In at least one case, a woman became so ill that she had to be placed on a ventilator to help her breathe.

Seventeen women in nine states have experienced symptoms ranging from blurry vision to trouble swallowing and breathing after receiving what they thought were Botox injections to smooth fine lines and wrinkles. Thirteen were hospitalized, and several needed treatment in the intensive care unit.

Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are key part of US's high drug costs, report finds.

Firms that serve as intermediaries to negotiate and control prescription drug access in the US "wield enormous power," largely with "extraordinarily opaque" business practices, and may be "inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies" for profit, according to a searing interim report released Tuesday by the Federal Trade Commission.

Amid a national focus on America's uniquely astronomical drug costs, the FTC is taking aim at firms that largely work deep in the bowels of the country's labyrinthine health care system, well hidden from public understanding and scrutiny: pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

PBMs were initially hired by various payors—employers, health insurance companies, government health plans, and others—to manage prescription drug benefits through various plans. But PBMs have evolved over the years to also negotiate rebates from drugmakers, set reimbursements for dispensing pharmacies, and develop drug formularies (the list of drugs that a health plan covers.) While those functions alone grant PBMs a large amount of power, consolidation and integration over recent years has concentrated that power in troubling ways, according to the FTC report.

As Zyn sales soar, experts are warning about the possible risks related to the addictive product.

…

Nicotine pouches like Zyn have soared in popularity in recent years. Zyn, a Swedish brand, was acquired by Philip Morris in 2022, and in the first three months of this year, more than 131 million cans were sold, an 80% percent increase from the same time last year. Last month, a shortage of Zyn sparked outcry on social media. Other products include Rogue, Velo and On!. Most are marketed as smoke-free, spit-free and hands-free alternatives to cigarettes and other tobacco products.

“Usually when you say that something is free of something, it makes it seem less harmful,” said Tory Spindle, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. “Our concern is that, well, does that make them more appealing to someone that otherwise would have never tried any tobacco product?” 

While Spindle said nicotine pouches — which users tuck between their lip and gums and later discard — could serve as a better alternative for established tobacco users, “the challenge is, how do you make the products accessible to someone like that, while not inadvertently addicting a new wave of individuals who never would have tried nicotine?”