New Findings On How Many Daily Steps Are Needed For Longevity Benefit

Eating meat five times or less per week is associated with lower overall cancer risk, according to a study published in the open-access journal BMC Medicine.

A natural product from the dried root of a pea-family plant, potentially combined with an enzyme inhibitor discovered in the laboratory of Professor Bruce Hammock at the University of California, Davis, may provide hope in alleviating neuroinflammation in Parkinson's disease, a team of researchers from Dalian Medical University, China, and UC Davis announced Feb 21 in Proceedings of the National of Academy of Sciences.

30-60 mins of weekly muscle-strengthening activity is linked to 10-20% lower death risk from all causes and from cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer, in particular, but no there is no conclusive evidence that more than an hour of this activity is more effective according to a recent meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. 

A wide-reaching global review has found that some of the most common pain and fever medicines might increase vulnerability to infections like COVID-19, while others may hold hope for improving our immune response.

Key findings of the clinical review:

• For pain: Morphine suppresses key cells of the immune system and increases the risk of infection, particularly after cancer surgery.
• For fever: Antipyretics – e.g. Paracetamol, Ibuprofen, Aspirin – can reduce the desirable immune response when taken for vaccination. 
• Aspirin could be an affordable and accessible therapeutic option for tuberculosis – which mainly afflicts poor countries, with beneficial results shown in animals and humans.
• Anti-inflammatory medicine indomethacin may reduce viral replication in Covid-19 but large-scale human trials are needed.