Superagers
Most of us know someone in their 80s whose memory remains sharp, their movements lithe and agile, their minds as sound as someone half their age. Colloquially, they are known as superagers.
A new study identified a few key traits that might for the superior memory skills of the much older. Superagers were found to have more gray matter in the brain linked to memory and movement while showing fewer biomarkers of neurodegenerative disease.
They also physically moved more quickly and had lower rates of anxiety and depression.
Whether it was physical activity that ed for mental acuity or vice versa remains unknown.
Dead on arrival
Maternal deaths during pregnancy or in the year after childbirth are on average 10 times higher in the United States than in similar countries. The rate is more than 20 times higher for Black and Indigenous people. And a recent JAMA study said maternal mortality more than doubled from 1999 to 2019.
Those numbers, though, may soon disappear, but not in a useful way. Public health experts say some states, which are responsible for collecting the data, are pulling back, often for political reasons.
Body of knowledge
Beard hairs are the fastest-growing hairs on the human body. If uncut over an average lifetime, such a beard would reach almost 30 feet.
Get me that. Stat!
Officially, the COVID-19 public health emergency ended in May, as did the freeze on removing people from Medicaid coverage. During the pandemic, Medicaid enrollment grew by 18 million; experts estimate a similar number might lose coverage as some states unwind their programs.
Leading the way is Florida, which has disenrolled almost 250,000 residents, followed by Arkansas, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Arizona. The primary reason cited is cost, now that extra federal funding has expired.
Stories for the waiting room
Sometimes people declare that getting healthy will be their top priority after retirement. How well that works out can be a matter of location. According to WalletHub, here are the top 10 states most favorable to retirement (based on affordability, quality of life and health care) and the 10 worst.
Top 10: Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Wyoming, Delaware, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Minnesota, Idaho and North Dakota.
Bottom 10, with last being worst: Arkansas, Maryland, Washington, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Oklahoma, Mississippi, New Jersey and Kentucky.
Note: Kentucky comes in last in part to ranking 46th overall in health care, in part because it ranks second in the nation among smoking adults (23.5 percent).
Doc talk
Mania of the week
Food for thought
From 2017 through 2019, there were 800 documented restaurant-related outbreaks of foodborne illness in the United States, mostly from norovirus and salmonella, according to the CDC.
Here’s the more alarming metric: A sick worker was involved in 4 out of 10 outbreaks. They should have stayed home, but fewer than half of the restaurants affected offered paid sick leave to employees and only 1 in 6 had a written policy to prevent contamination, such as listing symptoms to report or whom to inform.
Best medicine
I’ll be ill if you remove the apostrophe.
Observation
“Getting fit is all about mind over matter. I don’t mind, so it doesn’t matter.”
Medical history
This week in 1968, pioneering transplant surgeon Michael E. DeBakey and colleagues performed the first simultaneous multiorgan transplant from one donor to four recipients. Two kidneys, one lobe of a lung and the heart were removed from a 20-year-old woman who had died from a gunshot and transplanted into four men at Methodist Hospital in Houston.
The surgery, which began within eight hours of the woman’s death, was performed by five teams totaling more than 60 physicians, nurses and persons. The heart, lung lobe and two kidneys were transplanted into men ages 50, 39, 41 and 22 respectively.
Sum body
The top 10 cosmetic surgery procedures in 2023:
1. Liposuction
2. Breast augmentation
3. Botox and fillers
4. Tummy tuck
5. Rhinoplasty (nose job)
6. Face-lift
7. Blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery)
8. Lip lift
9. Hair transplant
10. Labiaplasty
Med school
Q: What is the formation of new blood vessels called?
a) Pathogenesis
b) Morphogenesis
c) Angiogenesis
d) Osteogenesis
A: c) Angiogenesis
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.
