Lifeboat Foundation

Obesity, characterized as an abnormally high, unhealthy amount of body fat, has become a common disease throughout the United States. Individuals with obesity often develop a variety of other health conditions, known as comorbidities, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and arthritis.

Obese individuals also remain at an elevated risk of some types of cancer. The risk of developing specific subtypes of breast (particularly in postmenopausal women), colorectal, endometrial, esophageal, kidney, pancreatic, and gallbladder cancers increases with obesity.

Recent medical and technological advances have led to surgical procedures that can result in significant weight loss. Bariatric surgery promotes weight loss by surgically altering the body’s digestive processes. Various types of bariatric surgery focus on different components of the digestive system. Some procedures surgically reduce the stomach size so the patient will feel full sooner and may eat less. Other strategies target the small intestine, altering how the body absorbs food and nutrients.

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The National Institute of Health (NIH) estimates that COPD currently affects over 15 million individuals in the US. What’s even more worrisome is that many others could have the condition but don’t know about it yet.

Following your gut. Losing your appetite. A gutsy move. Though we often consider the gut as merely a digestive tool, these common expressions reflect the central role the gut plays in a much wider range of essential functions.

The entire digestive tract is lined by the enteric nervous system (ENS), a vast network of millions of neurons and glial cells—the two primary cell types also found in the central nervous system. While often called the second brain, the ENS not only generates the same neurotransmitters but actually predates the evolution of the central nervous system in the brain.

The functions of the ENS are crucial to life and extend far beyond digestion, as it regulates immunity, gut secretions, and enables complex, bi-directional communication between the gut and the brain. This is why a happy gut co-exists with a happy brain, and why digestive issues can lead to changes in mood and behavior.

Most children receiving radiation therapy for cancer can hold still without anesthesia if they watch videos during the treatment, a study of a technique developed at Stanford Medicine found.

Scientists investigating the possible health effects of microplastics have uncovered some disturbing initial results in an experiment based on mice.

When old and young rodents drank microscopic fragments of plastic suspended in their water over the course of three weeks, researchers at the University of Rhode Island found traces of the pollutants had accumulated in every organ of the tiny mammal’s body, including the brain.

The presence of these microplastics was also accompanied by behavioral changes akin to dementia in humans, as well as changes to immune markers in the liver and brain.

A machine-learning algorithm demonstrated the capability to process data that exceeds a computer’s available memory by identifying a massive data set’s key features and dividing them into manageable batches that don’t choke computer hardware. Developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the algorithm set a world record for factorizing huge data sets during a test run on Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Summit, the world’s fifth-fastest supercomputer.

Equally efficient on laptops and supercomputers, the highly scalable algorithm solves hardware bottlenecks that prevent processing information from data-rich applications in cancer research, satellite imagery, social media networks, national security science and earthquake research, to name just a few.

“We developed an ‘out-of-memory’ implementation of the non-negative matrix factorization method that allows you to factorize larger data sets than previously possible on a given hardware,” said Ismael Boureima, a computational physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Boureima is first author of the paper in The Journal of Supercomputing on the record-breaking algorithm.

Besides recognizing cancer signatures, liquid biopsy technologies are informing treatment decisions and predicting patient outcomes.

Congestive heart failure (also called heart failure) is a serious condition in which the heart doesn’t pump blood as efficiently as it should. Despite its name, heart failure doesn’t mean that the heart has literally failed or is about to stop working. Rather, it means that the heart muscle has become less able to contract over time or has a mechanical problem that limits its ability to fill with blood. As a result, it can’t keep up with the body’s demand, and blood returns to the heart faster than it can be pumped out—it becomes congested, or backed up. This pumping problem means that not enough oxygen-rich blood can get to the body’s other organs.

The body tries to compensate in different ways. The heart beats faster to take less time for refilling after it contracts—but over the long run, less blood circulates, and the extra effort can cause heart palpitations. The heart also enlarges a bit to make room for the blood. The lungs fill with fluid, causing shortness of breath. The kidneys, when they don’t receive enough blood, begin to retain water and sodium, which can lead to kidney failure. With or without treatment, heart failure is often and typically progressive, meaning it gradually gets worse.

More than 5 million people in the United States have congestive heart failure. It’s the most common diagnosis in hospitalized patients over age 65. One in nine deaths has heart failure as a contributing cause.

We don’t treat Isla’s vision loss as a sad circumstance or as something that is broken in her. It’s so important for us that she knows her vision impairment is not something that makes her less than. If anything, it makes her a stronger, more amazing person, and we couldn’t be prouder of who she is.

Vision impairment is the only symptom she displays of this disease, and we are fighting with everything we have to ensure it stays this way. We were told on diagnosis day that that day was the healthiest Isla would ever be, and that she was at her peak; two years later, and she has continued to defy that, Stockdale added.

The family believes that Isla’s incredible development is a result of the medication, called Miglustat, which she has been taking since November 2022.