A daily cup of tea may benefit your eyesight
Having hot tea every day may reduce your risk for blindness.
Researchers have found that a daily cup reduces the risk for glaucoma, a disease in which a buildup of fluid in the eye can damage the optic nerve and lead to gradual vision loss.
The study, in The British Journal of Ophthalmology, included 1,678 participants in a larger national health survey. Using photos of the optic disc and other diagnostic techniques, they recorded instances of glaucoma in 2005 and 2006 and correlated them with reports of beverage consumption over the previous year.
After adjusting for age, body mass index, sex, ethnicity, smoking and diabetes, they found that people who drank at least a cup of hot tea a day were 74 percent less likely to have glaucoma. They found no association with soft drinks, iced tea, decaffeinated tea or with coffee, caffeinated or not.
This observational study does not prove causality, but the researchers write that tea contains phytochemicals and flavonoids with anti-inflammatory properties that may protect the optic nerve.
“If you drink hot tea, keep on doing it,” said senior author Dr. Anne L. Coleman, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But I wouldn’t switch to it if you prefer something else.”
— Nicholas Bakalar, The New York Times
Spinal-cord implant another option for pain
For millions of Americans suffering from debilitating nerve pain, a once-overlooked option has emerged as an alternative to high doses of opioids: implanted medical devices using electricity to counteract pain signals the same way noise-canceling headphones work against sound.
The approach, called neuromodulation, has gained momentum from more powerful and effective implants, combined with a national crackdown on pain pill prescriptions.
At least 50 million adults in the U.S. suffer from chronic pain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only a fraction of them would benefit from spinal-cord stimulation — about 3.6 million, according to Decisions Resources — but those are patients who are often given the highest doses of narcotics. They include people with nerve damage stemming from conditions like diabetic neuropathy and shingles, as well as surgeries.
"There is no question we are reducing the risk of opioid dependence by implanting these devices," said Timothy Deer, president of the Spine and Nerve Centers of the Virginias in Charleston, West Virginia, a hotbed of the opioid epidemic. "If we get someone before they are placed on opioids, 95 percent of the time we can reduce their need to ever go on them."
Studies show spinal-cord stimulators can reduce use of powerful pain drugs by 60 percent or more, said Deer, a clinical professor of anesthesiology.
— Michelle Fay Cortez, Bloomberg
Home remedies for sore throat don't hold up in study
Xylitol, a popular sweetener in sugarless gum, and probiotics are sometimes recommended as remedies for sore throat, but a randomized trial has found that neither works better than a placebo.
Researchers assigned 1,009 people with sore throats to one of three groups: no chewing gum, xylitol gum, or sorbitol gum without xylitol. Half of each group was also given capsules containing either probiotics (lactobacilli and bifidobacteria) or a placebo. The study is in The Canadian Medical Journal.
No matter how the researchers made comparisons — probiotic versus no probiotic; no gum versus sorbitol; no gum versus xylitol; xylitol versus sorbitol — they could find no difference in pain or swallowing problems between the groups.
Even when they looked at subgroups — children 3 to 15, people older than 15, people with high temperatures, people with various symptoms — no differences appeared.
“It’s very disappointing really,” said lead author Dr. Paul Little, a professor at the University of Southampton in England, “but once you have an established sore throat, xylitol and probiotics are not going to do any good.”
— Nicholas Bakalar, The New York Times