Welcome to your weekly roundup of all the health news you may have missed. Bird flu continues to dominate the headlines after one in five pasteurized milk samples were found to contain traces of the virus. Health officials continue to maintain that pasteurized milk is still safe to drink, however. According to our latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll, 52% of American adults still drink some type of milk at least occasionally, and the majority of them overwhelmingly prefer cow’s milk over plant-based alternatives.
This week, the USDA announced plans to limit added sugars in school lunches. Meanwhile, a new study found that many nursing home residents are not up to date on their COVID vaccines, while researchers have found that having a female physician is associated with a lower risk of death and hospital readmission rates.
Want to get your weekend off to a healthier start? Here are four takeaways we learned this week.
Take the stairs
New research presented at ESC Preventive Cardiology 2024 says that climbing stairs is linked to a longer life. The research, which combined nine studies for a total of 480,479 participants, found that stair climbing was associated with a 24% reduced risk of dying from any cause and a 39% lower likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease.
Get outdoors
New research from Cornell University reveals that spending time in nature can be good for your overall well-being. The study, which analyzed data from over 1,200 participants in the “Midlife in the U.S.” survey, found that those who reported more frequent positive experiences in nature had reduced inflammation markers, even after accounting for other factors like demographics and health behaviors.
Think about those thank-yous
New research from the University of Florida suggests that workplace leaders who internalize the gratitude they receive from family members feel more motivated to engage in empowering behavior toward their employees at work. The study suggests that expressing gratitude within families can not only strengthen the bonds at home but also positively affect the work experiences of their loved ones.
Understand why you might be slowing down
Why do we move slower as we age? The answer is simple: A new study from the University of Colorado Boulder found that it takes more energy for older adults to complete tasks when compared with younger people. Researchers used a simple video-game-like task to see how different age groups reached for targets on a screen and discovered that older adults changed how they moved to save energy, even when reaching for small rewards. This matters because it may help doctors diagnose and treat conditions like Parkinson’s disease more effectively in the future.
