@keya Patients with pain should receive compassionate, safe, and effective pain care. We want clinicians and patients to have the information they need to weigh the benefits of different approaches to pain care, with the goal of helping people reduce their pain and improve their quality of life

Even as you read this, your body is working to maintain balance – and not just in the "don't fall over" sense. Hordes of chemical reactions are happening inside you, producing energy, processing waste, and keeping you healthy. Along the way, your body is releasing signals about your well-being. Wearable technology can reveal some of those signals, like heart rate or sleep cycles. Many more important clues about your health are evident in the blood. The problem: Most people don't like to be stuck by a needle. (Just ask anyone with diabetes who's had to prick their finger a dozen times a day.)

Intermittent calorie restriction offers only modest advantages over a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet (LCHF) for treating nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), researchers say. The intermittent diet offers more benefit for liver stiffness and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and might be easier to maintain, said Magnus Holmer, MD, head of the Hepatology Unit at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

Clinicians may soon have a tool that provides more accurate prognoses for individuals diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The prediction model incorporates eight factors significantly associated with a composite endpoint of noninvasive ventilation for more than 23 hours per day, tracheostomy, or death. Improved timing of clinical interventions and stratifying of participants in future clinical trials are additional goals of the study, which included 11,475 patients with ALS across nine European countries. The goal is for "medical doctors to provide predictions of survival for individual patients with ALS at the day of diagnosis. Before the development of our model, estimates of survival were mainly based on survival times in groups of patients," study investigator Henk-Jan Westeneng, MD, from the Brain Centre Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Centre, Utrecht, the Netherlands, told Medscape Medical News.

@priyam Suboptimal vitamin D levels during infancy, lifestyle changes, nutritional changes, and living at higher latitudes have emerged as explanations. In this study, 195 high-risk newborns were randomized to receive oral vitamin D supplements (400 IU/day) or placebo until 6 months of age. Researchers found that UV light exposure appears more beneficial than vitamin D supplements as an allergy prevention strategy in the critical early years of immune system development. The researchers used a novel approach of attaching a personal UV dosimeter to the infants' clothing to measure direct UV light exposure (290-380 nm). Vitamin D levels were measured at 3, 6, 12, and 30 months of age. Immune function was assessed at 6 months of age, and food allergy, eczema, and wheeze were assessed at 6, 12, and 30 months of age.

Iron deficiency anemia early in pregnancy appears to increase the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and intellectual disability (ID) in offspring. Results of a large population-based study showed the risk of ASD and ADHD in children whose mothers had anemia in early pregnancy was 44% and 37% higher, respectively, compared with those children born to mothers without early prenatal anemia. The risk of intellectual disability was highest, at 120%. Interestingly, anemia diagnosed after the 30 weeks' gestation was not associated with an increased risk for any of these conditions.

A randomized trial suggests resistance exercise promotes better sleep than other workouts among inactive adults, particularly those who are poor sleepers. Even before the pandemic and bedtime doom scrolling took hold, research showed that a third of Americans regularly get less than 7 hours of sleep. The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends aerobic exercise to improve sleep and promote cardiovascular health, yet little is known on how it compares with other types of exercise in the general population.

The origin of the term ainhum is unclear. In 1867, the term was used by da Silva Lima from Bahia, Brazil to report the first published case. The word ainhum means fissure in the language of the Nagos tribe of Brazil and may be related to ayun, the word for saw in the Lagos tribe of Nigeria. The synonym for ainhum is dactylolysis spontanea.

According to a report from the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation, 10% or less of global needs for organ transplantation were met in 2020. More than 100,000 patients are on a transplant waiting list in the United States alone. As such, news about groundbreaking animal-to-human organ transplants captured much recent attention.

Does eating dry fruit like almonds, cashew, figs, apricots, black raisins, black dates, olives, black currant, almond, pistachio, walnut, blueberries cause acne? Please provide your inputs.