In the observational study, released Thursday ahead of being presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology conference, researchers found GLP-1s may modestly reduce the risk of 14 obesity-related cancers, especially colorectal cancer, when compared to a different type of medication often used to treat diabetes, known as dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DDP-4) inhibitors, which don’t have the same weight loss effect.

“Patients who took GLP-1 receptor agonists had a 7% lower risk of developing an obesity-related cancer and an 8% lower risk of death from any cause compared to those who took a DDP-4 inhibitor,” the authors noted. 

The study looked at 170,030 adults with obesity and diabetes from 43 health system in the United States. 

While the difference between the two treatments was not statistically significant for men, the study found women treated with GLP-1s had an 8% lower risk of obesity-related cancer and a 20% lower risk of all causes of death compared to those treated with DDP-4 inhibitors.

The authors of the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health‘s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, said they hope to continue their research longer than four years and with those who do not have diabetes. 

“I see many patients with obesity, and given the clear link between cancer and obesity, defining the clinical role of GLP-1 medications in cancer prevention is important,” Dr. Robin Zon, American Society of Clinical Oncology president, said in a news release. “Though this trial does not establish causation, it hints that these drugs might have a preventative effect. Future research is needed to validate these findings, including in patients who do not have diabetes.”

An American Cancer Society study, published last year in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, found more than 40% of all cancer fatalities among adults age 30 and over in the United States could be linked to lifestyle risks that could be changed, including smoking, excess body weight, alcohol consumption, physical inactivity and diet.

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A week later, Abraham woke up in the middle of the night and tried to stand. She collapsed to the floor, struggling to breathe. Her husband took her to an area hospital, where Abraham was taken to the ICU and intubated. The ventilator helped her breathe but left her unable to speak. 

Doctors didn’t know what was causing her symptoms. Two days after being admitted, she was transferred to UC San Diego Health, a larger hospital. That’s where she met Dr. Jared Rosen, then a medical student on an ICU rotation.

While Abraham was in the ICU, doctors suggested multiple diagnoses, but none fit. Even scarier than the lack of answers was her continued intubation. She was unable to speak or eat. She was fighting paralysis that left her unable to move much of her body. Her neck was so weak that she couldn’t raise her head without it flopping like a newborn baby’s, Rosen said.

“I was very aware of what was going on,” Abraham told CBS News. “It was beyond the worst experience I could have ever imagined myself being in.”

Abraham said the only thing that helped relieve her anxiety during this time was the long hours Rosen would spend at her bedside, doing his best to keep her spirits up. As a medical student, he had fewer responsibilities than other members of her care team and was able to spend more time with Abraham. They also worked to develop communication methods Abraham could use. 

After several weeks, Abraham’s symptoms began to improve. She was taken off the ventilator. After a month, she was released from the ICU. But doctors were still no closer to understanding what had caused her paralysis. 

“There was no official label or term for what I was having. The fear of not knowing was terrifying,” Abraham said. 

Diagnosing a rare form of an unusual condition 

After being discharged from the ICU, Abraham still had weakness that left her unable to lift her right arm and made eating difficult, so she spent time in inpatient physical therapy. Even after that, she needed outpatient follow-up, as well as more specialized care like swallowing and voice therapy. She battled severe anxiety and depression. At times, she felt so overwhelmed that she considered taking her own life. 

One night, she searched for Rosen online and found his email address. Abraham wrote and asked if he remembered her. When he responded and said that he did, it “brought tears” to her eyes and “sparked some level of joy” that helped her have hope. 

That hope carried her through the next several months.

Finally, four months after her symptoms began, Abraham was diagnosed with a form of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological disorder where the fibers around the nerves deteriorate and cause paralysis. In most cases, the paralysis starts in the legs and works its way upwards, according to Dr. Kiril Kiprovski, a neurologist and director of the Division of Neuromuscular Medicine at NYU Langone. Abraham had contracted the condition’s even rarer pharyngeal-cervical-brachial variant, which attacks the muscles in the diaphragm and throat. 

The variant is “very difficult to diagnose,” Kiprovski said. There’s no one test to determine if a person has Guillain-Barré syndrome or any of its variants, so doctors rely on clinical presentations. But they may not be familiar with the condition, Kiprovski said, because of its rarity. One person per 78,000 is diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome annually, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Only about 3% of those patients are diagnosed with the pharyngeal-cervical-brachial variant, researchers have found. 

People diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome or a variant of it tend to improve on their own, as Abraham did, Kiprovski said. Once Abraham was diagnosed, she was able to start receiving intravenous immunoglobulin treatment, where donor antibodies are given to a patient to strengthen their immune system. 

“It takes time”  

Abraham continued her slow recovery. Having a name for what was happening to her helped her accept the laborious process. 

“I had to accept in my own head that this is going to be something that’s just going to take time,” Abraham said. “And that’s how neuro diseases work. It takes time for your body to regenerate and heal.” 

Six years later, Abraham still has neuromuscular weakness, but can go about much more of her daily routine. She is back at work, where her voiceless experience in the ICU informs her interactions with patients whose speech has been compromised. She spends as much time as possible in the gym, working to strengthen her body. She also stayed in touch with Rosen, who is now finishing a fellowship in critical care medicine at the University of California’s Davis Medical Center. He told CBS News that Abraham’s case inspired him to study that area of medicine. 

Abraham’s recovery hasn’t just been physical. She started attending a support group for people who have trauma after time in the ICU. The experience has helped her recover from the fear of those weeks on a ventilator. She has worked to raise awareness for the benefits of such groups. She also wrote a memoir detailing her experience. 

“There’s so much more to recovery than just getting strong again,” Abraham said. 

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In the study, published Wednesday in Nature, Stanford University researchers found a “robust increase in excess mortality” following tropical cyclones in the United States between 1930 and 2015. The authors also observed the increase in deaths persists for about 15 years after each weather event.

Tropical cyclones are defined in the study as both hurricanes and tropical storms. 

“In any given month, people are dying earlier than they would have if the storm hadn’t hit their community,” senior study author Solomon Hsiang, a professor of environmental social sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, said in a news release. “A big storm will hit, and there’s all these cascades of effects where cities are rebuilding or households are displaced or social networks are broken. These cascades have serious consequences for public health.”

An average U.S. tropical cyclone indirectly causes 7,000 to 11,000 excess deaths, Hsiang and lead study author Rachel Young estimate.

Health outcomes among infants less than a year old, people aged 1 to 44 and the Black population were especially affected, according to the study. 

“These are infants born years after a tropical cyclone, so they couldn’t have even experienced the event themselves in utero,” Young said. “This points to a longer-term economic and maternal health story, where mothers might not have as many resources even years after a disaster than they would have in a world where they never experienced a tropical cyclone.”

Researchers estimate the current tropical cyclone climate of the contiguous United States imposes an annual burden of around 55,280 to 88,080 excess deaths. One average U.S. tropical cyclone indirectly causes 7,000 to 11,000 excess deaths, they estimate. 

“These findings point to (tropical cyclones) as an important and understudied contributor to health in the United States, particularly for young or Black populations,” the authors note.

The study did not explore why exactly these storms seem to drive excess deaths in the years following a major storm, but the authors shared a few hypotheses, including the impact of economic disruption, heightened physical and mental stress and changes in the natural environment.

“With climate change, we expect that tropical cyclones are going to potentially become more hazardous, more damaging, and they’re going to change who they hit,” Young said. 

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That’s why when she was prompted to reach out to an old contact at an event run by her local chamber of commerce, she figured it would be the perfect opportunity to reconnect. Still, she was nervous. A lot of time had passed. Did her friend still want to talk? Would she shut her down? 

Brownell recalled one of her favorite mottos: “The answer to every question you don’t ask is no.” She sent the message: “Hey, let’s get together soon … I think about you a lot.” By the time the workshop ended, she already had a response: “Yes, me too. Let’s still do it.”

“It’s been like a weight lifted off my heart,” Brownell told CBS News. “It feels stupid that I waited so long.”

Brownell’s experience is not uncommon. People are surprisingly reluctant to reach out to old friends, a new Nature report found, despite the proven benefits of social connection. 

“People don’t understand how powerful our relationships are with other people,” said GenWell founder Pete Bombaci, who spoke at the event Brownell attended.

Lara Aknin and Gillian Sandstrom, the two researchers who led the Nature study, originally set out to examine what situations would prompt people to reach out to old friends. Their hunch was people might be more inclined to message old contacts on specific occasions, like birthdays, or the start of the New Year. 

What they found stunned them. “We thought that would work, but in turn, we realized just nobody wanted to reach out to old friends,” Aknin said.

While people were interested and even willing to reach out, they were hesitant to make the first move. They worried whether their old friend would have time for the connection, or if they would have anything to talk about. But the biggest barrier, the researchers found, was fear the friend wouldn’t want to hear from them.

“I think it does kind of boil down to fear of rejection, fear of the other person not really being interested,” said Sandstrom.

It was difficult to pin down where this reluctance stemmed from, but one possible explanation the researchers came up with was that old friends may feel like strangers, especially as more time passes. In one of their studies, they found people were no more willing to reach out to an old friend than they were to talk to a stranger.

Sandstrom said a useful way to look at old friends could be “strangers with history.” We may feel like we don’t know them, but we have shared experiences to fall back on.

The researchers tried multiple tactics to encourage participants to get over the hump of sending a message. “We thought that we could rationalize people into giving this a try,” said Aknin. “I was repeatedly surprised by how difficult this was to encourage [people].”

The only thing that seemed to work was asking participants to send a few warm up messages to current friends. People who did this were more likely to reach out to old friends than those who did not.

“Practicing the behavior involved in reaching out to others reminded people of how simple it is to send a message and how enjoyable it can be to connect,” Aknin and Sandstrom wrote in an article for Scientific American.

Bombaci’s advice for those who need a little nudge: Remember there is no long-term commitment. He also recommended setting up a recurring meeting on your calendar with the person you want to see.

“What the research shows is if we do this more frequently, we gain confidence, and when we gain confidence, that allows us to build more connection,” he said.

While Aknin and Sandstrom didn’t explicitly study the role of social media in staying connected, they told CBS News  they thought online platforms could both hurt and help attempts to rekindle old friendships.

One of their findings was participants were more likely to reach out to someone if they had some working memory of who they are, and what’s going on in their lives. 

“Social media pages at least keep us abreast of what’s going on in people’s lives,” said Aknin. “I can imagine before, it was out of sight, out of mind.”

Aknin said while social media offers a channel for reconnection, it can also create a “misabused perception” we’re more in touch than we actually are. 

“Digital technology is critically important, but what we need to help people understand is it can’t be the only connection that you make,” said Bombaci.

Regardless of the medium, what it really boils down to is not being afraid to make the first move, the researchers said. 

“People kind of hope that the other person will reach out to them,” said Sandstrom. “So maybe this is a reminder that someone’s got to go first, but why not you?”

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“It’s not a fun task to clean for most people,” said Pateras, author of “A Dirty Guide to a Clean Home,” in an appearance Wednesday on CBS Mornings. “I want it to be fun and enjoyable, and I want you to just get it done.”

Pateras also takes a judgment-free approach to cleaning, telling CBS News’ Gayle King it’s OK to have a junk drawer in your home. 

“You’re going to make your space happy for you — it doesn’t have to be Instagram. That isn’t what the goal is. It’s what works for you,” she said.

Part of making things work for you? Maximizing your space. 

“If you are short on space, which a lot of people are — especially if you’re living in the city, if you’re living in an apartment — there are a couple of really inexpensive, easy space-saving hacks,” she said. 

Here’s what she shared:

Put more than one item per hanger

“You can use shower rings to hang just about anything on a hanger,” Pateras said. “You could hang 10 tank tops, scarves, belts.” King chimed in another idea: “Ties!”

Pateras said this avoids cluttering your closet with a bunch of baskets or taking up drawer space for accessories.

Optimize your vertical space

“Take a soda tab, put it onto your hanger and then you can hang another hanger,” she explains, demonstrating how this stacked hanger trick allows you to save on horizontal space in your closet. “That way you can use the space vertically.”

If you have a thicker hanger, you can also just use a shower ring instead of a soda tab, she said. 

Don’t hang up your hoodies

Opting to fold bulkier items can help clear up space.

“If you don’t have the luxury of hanging up your hoodies, I’m going to show you a fold (that) is also fantastic for travel,” she said. “It’s super easy.”

After placing the hoodie facedown, you fold each arm in then fold it three times from the bottom hem to the top, where the hood is. Then, you can invert the hood over the rest of the folded hoodie to make it easy to pack or store away without coming undone. 

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Munn, 43, said she’d had both a normal mammogram and a negative test for cancer genes she took in February 2023. Then her doctor calculated her breast cancer risk assessment score.

The assessment “looked at factors like my age, familial breast cancer history, and the fact that I had my first child after the age of 30,” Munn wrote in a post on social media, and it indicated her lifetime risk was 37%. 

“Because of that score, I was sent to get an MRI, which led to an ultrasound, which then led to a biopsy,” she explained. “The biopsy showed I had Luminal B cancer in both breasts. Luminal B is an aggressive, fast moving cancer.” She underwent a double mastectomy 30 days after the biopsy.

If her doctor didn’t decide to conduct a risk assessment for breast cancer, Munn said the cancer wouldn’t have been found until her next scheduled mammogram.

“The fact that she did saved my life,” said Munn. She encouraged other women to learn their scores.

Dr. Elisa Port, chief of breast surgery at Mt. Sinai Health System in New York, who was not involved with Munn’s care, says there are a few different risk models available, all of which act as a survey to determine a person’s risk level. The Gail Model and Tyrer-Cuzick risk model are two examples.

“You can go online and do this,” Port said on “CBS Mornings” Thursday. “It asks you a number of different questions.”

The questions include things like: 

Current ageHeight and weightFamily historyAt what age a woman started her periodIf and when the woman has given birthWhether or not the patient had a breast biopsy and what it showed

“If you have a score, for example, that’s greater than a 20% lifetime risk of breast cancer, you may be eligible to include MRIs in your screening in addition to potentially mammograms and ultrasounds,” Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a breast oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told CBS News.

Port says reproductive factors have less of an effect overall than the other factors at pushing your risk higher. A big one to be aware of? Family history.

“(The risk assessment tool) is very helpful to spit out a quantifiable number, but most women should know already if they have a family history of breast cancer, they’re at higher risk than the average,” she said. 

For most women, the average risk of getting breast cancer in their lifetime is about 10% to 12%, Port says. For the general population, mammograms should start at age 40, according to recommended guidelines. For those at higher risk, doctors may suggest starting earlier.

“On the other, far end of the spectrum are women who carry genetic predisposition, and their risk is about 60% to 80%. That’s the highest risk,” Port said.

But she points out, “we’re all at risk,” noting that 85% to 90% of women who get breast cancer have no family history. 

“Women say, ‘I didn’t think to do these general screening tests because I didn’t think I was at risk.’ But even the average woman’s risk with no other risk factors is 10% to 12% over her lifetime,” Port said. “That’s enough to be doing the appropriate screening tests.”

The overall takeaway from Munn sharing her story: Know your risk, Port urges.

“Whether that’s going online by yourself or going to a doctor who can run this algorithm for you. Those things will all give you a better idea of what you should be doing to be proactive about your health,” she said.

The post Olivia Munn says a breast cancer risk assessment tool helped lead to her diagnosis. Experts explain what to know. appeared first on My Blog.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Tuesday against the effectiveness of the ingredient found in popular versions of Sudafed, Dayquil and other medications sold on pharmacy shelves.

“Modern studies, when well conducted, are not showing any improvement in congestion with phenylephrine,” said Dr. Mark Dykewicz, an allergy specialist at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

The FDA assembled its outside advisers to take another look at phenylephrine, which became the main drug in over-the-counter decongestants when medicines with an older ingredient — pseudoephedrine — were moved behind pharmacy counters. A 2006 law had forced the move because pseudoephedrine can be illegally processed into methamphetamine.

Those original versions of Sudafed and other medicines remain available without a prescription, but they account for about one-fifth of the $2.2 billion market for oral decongestants. Phenylephrine versions — sometimes labeled “PE” on packaging — make up the rest.

If the FDA follows through on the panel’s recommendations, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer and other drugmakers could be required to pull their oral medications containing phenylephrine from store shelves. That would likely force consumers to switch to the behind-the-counter versions of the pills or to nasal sprays and drops that contain phenylephrine, which are not under review.

This week’s two-day meeting was prompted by researchers at the University of Florida, who petitioned the FDA to remove phenylephrine products based on recent studies showing they failed to outperform placebo pills in patients with cold and allergy congestion. The same researchers also challenged the drug’s effectiveness in 2007, but the FDA allowed the products to remain on the market pending additional research.

That was also the recommendation of FDA’s outside experts at the time, who met for a similar meeting on the drug in 2007.

This time, the 16 members of the FDA panel unanimously agreed that current evidence doesn’t show a benefit for the drug.

“I feel this drug in this oral dose should have been removed from the market a long time ago,” said Jennifer Schwartzott, the patient representative on the panel. “Patients require and deserve medications that treat their symptoms safely and effectively and I don’t believe that this medication does that.”

The advisers essentially backed the conclusions of an FDA scientific review published ahead of this week’s meeting, which found numerous flaws with the 1960s and 1970s studies originally used to support phenylephrine’s approval. The studies were “extremely small” and used statistical and research techniques no longer accepted by the agency, regulators said.

“The bottom line is that none of the original studies stand up to modern standards of study design or conduct,” said Dr. Peter Starke, the agency’s lead medical reviewer.

Additionally, three larger, rigorously conducted studies published since 2016 showed no difference between phenylephrine medications and placebos for relieving congestion. Those studies were conducted by Merck and Johnson & Johnson and enrolled hundreds of patients.

A trade group representing nonprescription drugmakers, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, argued that the new studies had limitations and that consumers should continue to have “easy access” to phenylephrine.

Like many other over-the-counter ingredients, phenylephrine was essentially grandfathered into use during a sweeping FDA review begun in the 1972. It has been sold in various forms for more than 75 years, predating the agency’s own regulations on drug effectiveness.

“Any time a product has been on the market that long, it’s human nature to make assumptions about what we think we know about the product,” said Dr. Theresa Michele, who leads the FDA’s office of nonprescription drugs.

But FDA reviewers said their latest assessment reflects new testing insights into how quickly phenylephrine is metabolized when taken by mouth, leaving only trace levels that reach nasal passages to relieve congestion. The drug appears more effective when applied directly to the nose, in sprays and drops.

There’s unlikely to be any immediate impact from Tuesday’s panel vote, which is not binding.

The group’s negative opinion opens the door for the FDA to pull phenylephrine from a federal list of decongestants deemed effective for over-the-counter pills and liquids. The FDA said removing the products would eliminate “unnecessary costs and delay in care of taking a drug that has no benefit.”

The FDA’s nasal decongestants drug list, or monograph, has not been updated since 1995. The process for changing a monograph has traditionally taken years or decades, requiring multiple rounds of review and public comment. But a 2020 law passed by Congress streamlines the process, which should allow the FDA to accelerate the publication of new standards, doses and labeling for nonprescription ingredients.

Correction: This story has been updated to delete an incorrect reference to Allegra. It does not contain phenylephrine.

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The observational study presented Monday at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual meeting in Boston examined data on more than 700,000 U.S. veterans and how their life expectancy shifted based on the number of healthy habits followed. 

The findings? Adopting eight healthy lifestyle habits by middle age can result in a substantially longer life than those with few or none of the habits. Those habits include: 

Being physically activeBeing free from opioid addictionNot smokingManaging stressHaving a good dietNot regularly binge drinkingHaving good sleep hygieneHaving positive social relationships

While the habits aren’t groundbreaking — you’ve likely heard health experts advise similar wellness practices — the amount of lifespan expected to be gained from them is impressive.

According to the results, men with all eight habits at age 40 are expected to live 24 years longer on average compared with those with none. Women with all eight habits are predicted to live an 21 additional years.

“We were really surprised by just how much could be gained with the adoption of one, two, three, or all eight lifestyle factors,” Xuan-Mai T. Nguyen, health science specialist at the Department of Veterans Affairs and rising fourth-year medical student at Carle Illinois College of Medicine, said in a news release. “Our research findings suggest that adopting a healthy lifestyle is important for both public health and personal wellness.”

Low physical activity, opioid use and smoking had the biggest impact on lifespan, according to the release, with a 30-45% higher risk of death during the study period.

“Stress, binge drinking, poor diet, and poor sleep hygiene were each associated with around a 20% increase in the risk of death, and a lack of positive social relationships was associated with a 5% increased risk of death,” the release added.

In terms of when to take action, “the earlier the better,” Nguyen noted, “but even if you only make a small change in your 40s, 50s, or 60s, it still is beneficial.”

That’s because adopting healthier habits at an older age can still help you live longer, researchers found, even if the life expectancy gain grew slightly smaller with age.

“It is never too late to adopt a healthy lifestyle,” Nguyen said.

This study has not yet been published by a peer-reviewed publication, but was evaluated and selected by a committee of experts to be presented at the meeting.

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In an interview with CBS News, Dr. Uma Naidoo, a nutritional psychiatrist and author of “This is Your Brain on Food,” explained the gut-brain connection and how you can support it with your diet.

“The gut and brain (connection) is really new burgeoning scientific work that’s come out over the last couple of decades — although Hippocrates eons ago spoke about it,” she says. “But what we understand is that the gut and brain arise from the exact same cells in the human embryo, so they are connected even from our early development. Then they are connected by the vagus nerve throughout our lives.”

The vagus nerve is our 10th cranial nerve, which she describes as a “text messaging system between the brain and the gut, sending messages all the time — communicating chemical messages.”

One of the things that affects these chemical messages? The food we eat.

“On days that we’re eating those healthier foods, they are nurturing and taking care of the good microbes in the gut,” Naidoo says, whereas when we eat processed and fast foods, the “bad microbes are taken care of,” upsetting the balance in the gut.

How to support the gut-brain connection through food

One of the best things you can do support your “food-mood” connection is to clean up your diet, Naidoo says, starting off with fiber. 

Naidoo explains fiber is “extremely important for the gut microbes, because that’s what helps them thrive.”

She suggests getting fiber from elements of the Mediterranean diet or a plant-rich diet with vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, legumes and healthy whole grains. 

“You can’t actually get fiber from animal sources of protein, so lean into those veggies,” she says, pointing to clean proteins as a good option and healthy fats like omega-3 fatty acids.  

If you’re plant-based, you can get a short chain omega-3s from chia seeds and flax seeds. 

The bottom line: Lean into healthy, whole foods. 

“Think about eating the whole orange — skip the store-bought orange juice, which has a ton of added sugars,” she says, adding that the “standard American diet” is shortened to “SAD” for a reason.

“Gut health” is more than a wellness buzzword, experts say. Here’s why it matters.3 things you can do to eat well for cheap

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