Author Archives: Robert Preidt | HealthDay News

Add greater risk of kidney and bladder cancer to the long list of why a lifetime of sitting on the sofa isn’t good for your health, a new study suggests.

Summer beckons, and with those sunny skies comes a warning to protect yourself from skin cancer.

“Skin cancer, like all types of cancer, is capable of destroying healthy tissue and spreading to distant body sites,” said Dr. C. Blake Phillips, a fellow in the University of Alabama at Birmingham department of dermatology.

Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s important to take steps to prevent it and to recognize the early signs.

Fatigue and mood changes are the most common symptoms that occur before children develop migraines, a new study finds.

Climate change may increase people’s exposure to an outdoor fungus that can damage airway cells, leading to a rise in asthma and allergy symptoms, a new study contends.

Scary pit vipers may need an image upgrade: Their venom might end up helping human heart patients, research suggests.

Frequent pot smokers might be dooming themselves to diseased gums, a new study suggests.

“It is well known that frequent tobacco use can increase the risk of periodontal [gum] disease, but it was surprising to see that recreational cannabis [pot] users may also be at risk,” said study lead author Jaffer Shariff. He is a postdoctoral resident in periodontology at Columbia University School of Dental Medicine.

For the study, Shariff’s team analyzed data from nearly 2,000 Americans. Of those, 27 percent reported the use of cannabis (marijuana, hashish or hash oil) one or more times for at least 12 months.

Loneliness may rob you of your sleep, British researchers report.

In the study, more than 2,200 18- and 19-year-olds in England and Wales provided information about their loneliness levels and sleeping patterns.

Between 25 percent and 30 percent of the participants said they felt lonely sometimes, and another 5 percent said they frequently felt lonely.

There’s delicious news for chocolate lovers: New research suggests the sweet might help keep a common and dangerous form of irregular heartbeat at bay.

The study of more than 55,000 people in Denmark found that those who favored chocolate tended to have a lower risk of atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat that raises stroke risk.

Colon cancer guidelines now recommend a colonoscopy every 10 years, beginning at age 50 for people at average risk for the disease.

But a new study finds that older black Americans are far more likely than whites to develop a colon cancer in the decade-long gap between these screenings.