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Anonymous Cow Testing Urged to Stop Bird Flu’s Silent Spread 

Bird flu in US cows raises mutation and human transmission concerns. Economic risks deter testing, hindering tracking efforts.

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United States: Recently, it was reported that public health officials are trying to understand better bird flu expansion in cows, which also spills over to humans working in dairy farms. 

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According to the reports, many farmers refrain from taking tests of their own, and they are worried about the economic loss that they might have to bear if their cattle are found to be positive for the infection. Health experts also have lingering concerns that the deadly virus could mutate to make humans a much bigger risk. 

As per the former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha, “We have to find ways of getting more data in a way that protects farmers and, of course, farm workers,” as Axios reported. 

Anonymous Cow Testing Urged to Stop Bird Flu's Silent Spread. Credit | The New York Times
Anonymous Cow Testing Urged to Stop Bird Flu’s Silent Spread. Credit | The New York Times

Need for proper farm testing 

Jha is a member of a small group of public health officials who believe that universities with established relationships with agriculture must pursue to provide testing facilities. 

Jha also confirmed that results coming from individual farms would be anonymized and sent to the US Department of Agriculture (DEA) to give them a picture of the disease spread and the extent to which mutations have taken place. 

As per the experts, the idea is to be vigilant about the infection spread and address it at the source. 

Megan Ranney, the dean of the Yale School of Public Health, said while mentioning it would be on a par with improved wastewater surveillance, “That’s a very rough surveillance tool. Better than what we have right now, but not sufficient,” as Axios reported. 

Infection extent among cattle 

According to USDA data, 140 heads have been lying across twelve states, where cases of H5N1 infection have been reported since March. 

However, as experts state, the actual spread is likely to be on a larger scale, as many warm owners refused to test their cattle. 

However, the prevalence is thought to be higher because many farmers are refusing to test, as Axios reported. 

Jha, who is the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, also mentioned that tests coming out positive would be “financially ruinous” for farms and individual workers, and “It’s not really clear for them what’s why they should engage in this. And I’m very sympathetic to that.” 

Efforts by health officials to prevent the spread 

According to the USDA, it is partnering with states to test farms voluntarily, and a federal order also requires testing of dairy cows before they can cross state lines. 

The federal government also initiated programs to compensate the farmers for losses and expenses in relation to bird flu surveillance. 

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Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! 

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Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! Credit | Adobe Stock

United States: As experts note, if one skips a workout or stays up late, his/her brain might still be paying for it even two weeks from now. 

The team of researchers from Aalto University and the University of Oulu in Finland have presented how our lifelong daily behaviors influence brain connectivity and how they remain remodeled throughout our lifespan, thus providing valuable grounds for understanding neural plasticity. 

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Researchers are now very specific that the ways our brains communicate also change, rather than staying the same over a long time, in response to recent experiences over a long extended time period. 

Moreover, they also rejected several principles of brain function stability and opened the consciousness of the influence of human daily habits on the neural network, studyfinds.org reported. 

The particular experimental design of this study was examined in one subject over the span of five months and reported in PLOS Biology. 

Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! Credit | Adobe Stock

Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! Credit | Adobe Stock

By acquiring a brain image every few days and integrating it with data donated by wearables and smartphones, the researchers were able to assess how such pre-mentioned variables as sleep quality, physical activity, mood, and even heart rate variability affect the connectivity of the brain. 

Further details of the analysis 

The participant, Ana Triana, was also the main researcher in the study and received thirty scans over fifteen weeks. 

Each scan involved four different tasks: simple attention task, working memory task, resting state, and then execution of watching the movie.  

This variation helped the researchers to trace how various types of brain activities changed along with everyday perceptions. 

At the same time, monitoring devices of her sleep/wake cycle, physical movements, and data about her heart and breathing rates were collected. 

The mobile application is used to capture the moods and events of each day. This integration of brain scans and actigraphy gave us an extremely high-resolution picture of how daily experience and brain activity were related, studyfinds.org reported. 

The study revealed two distinct patterns of brain response: A brief wave, which lasts for a period of up to seven days, and a long-term wave, which can go up to fifteen days. 

Results of the study

One of the interesting outcomes was a strong connection between heart rate variability – which is a measure of the heart’s adaptability – and brain connectivity while resting. 

It shows that activities that affect our body’s relaxation response, like stress management ways, can shape our brain wiring even when we’re not actively concentrating on a task. 

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US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese – What’s Going On? 

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US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese - What's Going On? Credit | USA TODAY

United States: Obesity remains a huge problem for Americans as far as their health is concerned. New data received by the governments indicate severe obesity, a condition that involves storing far too much fat in the body, has risen to a great extent in the last decade. 

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About 40 percent of the population in the US is obese, according to a 2021-2023 survey of about 6,000 people. 

Overall, 9 percent of those polled said they were suffering from severe obesity, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Moreover, women were nearly two times as likely as men to report severe obesity. 

The general obesity rate looked to have decreased in comparison to what was observed in the 2017-2020 survey. However, it was not considered as a statistically significant change. 

US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese - What's Going On? Credit | USA TODAY

US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese – What’s Going On? Credit | USA TODAY

That is, the numbers are small enough that there exists a probability that the rates did not fall at all. 

What more are the experts stating? 

Dr. Samuel Emmerich conducted the latest study for CDC as a public health officer. He said it is still early to determine its impact on the disease, including new obesity treatments, which include weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound. 

What they found is that the combined obesity estimate of the United States in the last decade has not considerably altered.  

According to Emmerich, “We simply can’t see down to that detailed level to prescription medication use and compare that to changes in obesity prevalence.”  

The prevalence of severe obesity increased from nearly eight percent in the study between 2013 and 2014 to nearly 10 percent in the most recent study. 

Prior to that, obesity rates had risen rapidly in the US since the 1990s, according to US federal research. 

Obesity and severe obesity are expressed in terms of BMI, which is calculated with the help of height and weight. The above BMI indicates that a person is obese, as per the Food and Drugs Administration. 

Super obesity is defined as the condition when the person’s BMI is 40 or more. 

Solveig Cunningham is a professor of global health at Emory University who is interested in obesity. 

“Seeing increases in severe obesity is even more alarming because that’s the level of obesity that’s most highly associated with some of the highest levels of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and lower quality of life,” Cunningham added. 

Cunningham also added that it is not apparent why severe obesity rates were higher among women. 

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Is Fluoride in Water Really Safe? Study Raises Serious Health Concerns

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United States: Recent reports about potential health risks and whether fluoride benefits are as big as once believed have prompted scrutiny of a public health practice – adding fluoride to water supplies. 

This is because, as with some questions, the safety of the practice and new data raise questions about the value of fluoride. 

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Adding fluoride to tap water produces only a slight benefit in reducing tooth decay in children’s baby teeth, a new report from the Cochrane Collaboration, an independent group reviewing scientific research, finds. 

It is found that adding fluoride to tap water is a slight benefit, leading to slightly fewer cavities in children’s baby teeth, CNN Health reported. 

More about the finding 

Research done before 1975 had large benefits; children living in areas with fluoride added to their water averaged about one fewer primary teeth affected by decay than those of children living in areas without water fluoridation. 

Those findings don’t apply to more current populations with increased access to other sources of fluoride and lower levels of dental disease at baseline. 

Since the 1970s, fluoride-containing toothpaste has been widely available and is more often used. 

According to the new report published this week, fluoride in water was tied to a difference in decay of only about a quarter of a tooth, on average, in more recent studies. 

The federal judge, last month had asked the US Environmental Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water in response to concerns that fluoride may affect young children’s intellectual development, CNN Health reported. 

In light of concerns about fluoride’s possible effect on young children’s intellectual development, a federal judge last month ordered that the EPA further regulate fluoride in drinking water. 

Some foods and groundwater have fluoride, a mineral. It can help protect tooth enamel, which can erode with acids produced by plaque, bacteria, sugar, and other acids found in your mouth. 

The USA began adding fluoride to public water systems in 1945. 

Now, almost three-quarters of the US population, about two hundred and nine million people, are served by drinking water systems that have been fluoridated, according to data from the CDC. 

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