Many people in recent years have adopted vegetarian and vegan diets. Studies have also shown how there are multiple health benefits to adopting a vegan diet. A 2023 study published in Cureus shows that following a vegan diet reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver, and immune system impairments. However, giving up on meat can be a major task. You are essentially cutting out a major source of nutrients, but one thing that may push you towards a more plant-based diet could be skin health and the benefits of it. It can be hard to give up meat all at once, especially when there are holidays and cookouts. Instead of eating meat all the time, you can try eating more vegetables and plant-based proteins. This change can help you feel better and might even help you avoid getting sick.

How Does It Impact Your Skin?

Most of the meat that we consume today is processed, thus eating that can make your skin break out. According to Premier Dermatology this is because these meats have antibiotics and hormones that can mess with your body's hormones xxx. Red meat and chicken have something called leucine, which makes your skin produce more oil. Processed meats also have sodium nitrates, which can break down the stuff that keeps your skin firm and young. Plus, the salt in processed meats can dry out your skin. Experts say that when you stop eating meat and start eating plant-based foods, your skin can get clearer. This is because your body starts to clean out all the bad stuff.

A study from 2022 in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics notes that if you don't eat the right foods, your skin can get thick. It can take longer for cuts to heal, and you can get skin problems. Plant-based foods have things called polyphenols, carotenoids, and vitamins that help your skin stay healthy. Eating lots of vegetables, olive oil, and beans can make your skin look younger and have fewer wrinkles. However, eating a lot of meat, refined grains, snacks, sugary drinks, coffee, and alcohol can make your skin wrinkle more.

Improved Overall Health and Reduced Inflammation

WebMD says that eating less red and processed meat can make you healthier. These kinds of meat can cause your body to get inflamed, which means it gets irritated and swollen inside. This inflammation can lead to diseases. When you eat foods with lots of fiber, like fruits and vegetables, instead of meat, it helps the good bacteria in your stomach. This bacterium helps you digest food and stay healthy. Also, fiber helps your body get rid of waste and toxins, which keeps your colon clean. So, eating less meat can help your body fight inflammation and keep your gut healthy.

These foods help protect your skin from damage. After a while, you should see that your skin looks healthier and clearer. Eating the right kinds of plant-based foods is the key.

Taking care of a sick person is a taxing job not many people can fullfill. Patients with mental health issues like dementia require specialized care and not everyone is equipped to handle these situations. Many times, people with dementia have emotional outbursts, difficulty communicating as well as doing normal lifestyle activities. Caring for people with dementia requires a team of people, sometimes 24/7 care with rotations for staff, so that the patient is not left unattended for an extended period of time. However, does this extensive routine affect the caregiver’s health? A new study has found concerning future implications for dementia caregivers.

Caring for someone with dementia might put caregivers at higher risk for their own brain aging and future dementia, a new study suggests. This is largely due to certain lifestyle factors.

Caregivers' Hidden Risk

A recent report from the Public Health Center of Excellence on Dementia Caregiving, released on June 12, found that nearly 3 out of 5 dementia caregivers (59%) have at least one risk factor that increases their chances of developing dementia over time. Even more concerning, about 1 in 4 (24%) have two or more of these risk factors.

Matthew Baumgart, senior vice president of health policy for the Alzheimer's Association, called this analysis a "wake-up call." He noted that caregivers are often so focused on their loved ones that they neglect their own health. This highlights a critical need for public health strategies to support these vulnerable individuals.

Key Risk Factors Identified

Researchers analyzed health data from caregivers across 47 states in 2021 and 2022. They found that caregivers were more likely than the average person to have five things that aren't good for brain health:

Smoking

Caregivers were 30% more likely to smoke. Smoking is bad for your overall health, including your brain.

High Blood Pressure

They were 27% more likely to have high blood pressure. High blood pressure can damage blood vessels, including those in the brain.

Poor Sleep

21% more likely to say they didn't sleep well. Not getting enough good sleep can affect how your brain works and ages.

Diabetes

They had a 12% higher chance of having diabetes. Diabetes can lead to problems with blood flow and brain function.

Obesity

Caregivers were 8% more likely to be overweight or obese. Being overweight is linked to many health problems, including some that affect the brain.

Interestingly, there was one good piece of news: caregivers were actually less likely to be inactive (meaning they moved around more) compared to others. This might be because looking after someone with dementia often involves a lot of moving around.

Younger Caregivers Face Greater Vulnerability

This part focuses on younger caregivers, and the news isn't great for them. The study found that younger people who care for someone with dementia are at an even higher risk.

• 40% more likely to have many of these risk factors at once, compared to other people their age.
• 86% more likely to smoke. That's a huge difference!
• 46% more likely to have high blood pressure.
• 29% more likely to get less than six hours of sleep each night compared to their friends who aren't caregivers.

The researchers explained that knowing which groups of caregivers are most at risk, public health officials can better plan and offer help. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, they can create specific programs and resources for the groups that need it most.

A parasite that causes malaria is halted by sickle cells and makes people who carry the sickle cell trait more resistant to the disease. This is why sickle cell trait also occurs more in people who live in tropical and sub-tropical regions where cases of malaria were or still is common.

It comes from the copy of an abnormal sickle or the HBB gene and one copy of the normal HBB gene. The gene is an evolutionary response to malaria, where humans begin to develop an abnormal HBB gene and pass it onto to the next generation.

The "Black Disease"

The earliest documentation of sickle cell symptoms in medical texts could be found from the 1870s. However, it had not been formally identified until in 1910. when the first case was detected in the United States. The first case of sickle cell disease or SCD in the US was in 1904, when Walter Clement Noel, a 20-year-old dental student from Grenada, sought care for anemia at Chicago Presbyterian Hospital, where he met Dr James B Herrick. Dr Herrick was a cardiologist and professor of medicine and he was assigned noel who had experienced recurrent episodes of "muscular rheumatism" and "bilious attacks" over a period of 3 years.

This case was assigned to an intern Dr Ernest E Irons by Dr Herrick. Dr Ernest performed initial blood work on Noel and observed the unusual sickle-shaped red blood cells in the sample under the microscope. This is when Dr Herrick was told about it, leading to him publishing the first documented case study of SCD, titled, "Peculiar Elongated and Sickle-Shaped Red Blood Corpuscles in a Case of Severe Anemia."

However, the name, sickle cell anemia, was not coined until in 1922, by Vernon Mason. It was also the first diagnosed genetic disease and the first to be linked to the hemoglobin protein.

But, how did it gain the name "Black Disease"? This is because the disease often disproportionately affected Black Americans in the US, which caused racial bias and prevented people with sickle cell from receiving quality care.

In response to this, in the 1960s, the Black Panther Party worked to expand community-based care for education and treatment of this disease. This was part of their initiative to tackle the sickle cell, which received little to no attention because it mostly affected a large part of Black community.

While Herrick may have described the first known case in the US, SCD did exist for generations in African and Mediterranean descent, due to the regions being prone to diseases like malaria. In African medical literature, it was known as "ogbanjes", which loosely translated into "children who come and go" as the infants born with this disease had a high mortality rates. One of the first records, as is also noted by the Sickle Cell Association from Africa is from a Ghanian family in 1670.

A Groundbreaking Discovery

In 1927, scientists Hahn and Gillespie made a discovery that reshaped our understanding of blood disorders. While studying red blood cells in a low-oxygen environment saturated with carbon dioxide, they observed a curious phenomenon: the cells twisted into sickle shapes—not just in patients with sickle cell disease (SCD), but sometimes in people without any symptoms at all.

This puzzling observation hinted at an invisible carrier state and eventually led to the identification of what we now call the sickle cell trait.

Fast-forward to the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the pieces of the puzzle began falling into place. In 1949, two scientists working continents apart independently uncovered the genetic blueprint of SCD.

Col. E. A. Beet, a military physician stationed in what is now Mozambique, published his findings in an African medical journal. Around the same time, Dr. James V. Neel at the University of Michigan released a parallel study in the journal Science. Both revealed that SCD follows an autosomal recessive inheritance pattern—meaning the disease only occurs when a person inherits two copies of the mutated gene. Those with just one copy? They carried the trait, but not the illness.

Together, their work laid the foundation for our modern understanding of genetic inheritance and reshaped how we screen for and manage sickle cell disorders today.

Roughly one out of six people globally suffer with infertility according to the World Health Organization. A common issue that affects many, infertility, is a condition where a person is unable to reproduce offsprings. While the condition may be common, it can cause a lot of health problems as well as stress for people who wish to have children. To tackle this, people often opt for fertility treatment including reproductive technology called in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, could your infertility be a sign of impending health issues?

A new evidence review suggests a link between infertility in women and a heightened risk of heart problems, particularly among younger women and those undergoing fertility treatments.

Is Infertility An Early Warning for Heart Health?

Infertility may serve as an early sign for future heart health issues, according to researchers at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece. This finding was recently presented in Copenhagen, Denmark, at a joint meeting of the European Society of Pediatric Endocrinology and the European Society of Endocrinology.

Researchers looked at data from many different studies – almost 21 of them! They compared nearly 179,000 women who couldn't get pregnant with about 3.4 million women who didn't have fertility issues. What they discovered was that women who were infertile had a higher chance of facing heart issues:

• They were 17% more likely to get heart disease, which is a general term for problems with the heart itself.
• They had a 16% higher chance of having a stroke, which happens when blood flow to the brain is blocked.
• They were 14% more likely to have problems with their heart or blood vessels in general.

Elevated Risk for Younger Women and Those Undergoing Treatment

The research highlights two groups of women who face an even bigger risk. First, it's younger women. The study found that women under 40 who were infertile had a 20% higher chance of heart disease. That's a significant increase for younger individuals. Second, it also showed that women who went through fertility treatments (like IVF) had an 18% greater risk of heart problems. This suggests that either the treatments themselves or the underlying reasons for needing them could be connected to heart health.

Implications for Clinical Care

Researchers believe that because infertility might be an early sign of heart problems, doctors can use this information. They can identify women who might need extra check-ups or special strategies to prevent heart disease earlier in life. It's like giving doctors a heads-up to be more careful with these patients. She also brought up an important question: what are the long-term effects of fertility treatments on a woman's heart? This is something doctors need to consider.

Researchers want to follow women’s health over time to really understand why infertility might be linked to heart health. They hope to figure out the exact biological reasons behind this connection and identify which specific groups of women are most at risk. The ultimate goal is to use all this information to create better guidelines for preventing heart disease early on and to improve heart care for women who have had infertility.