Computed tomography scans have become vital, even lifesaving, medical imaging for diagnosing and monitoring health conditions. But they do expose patients to ionizing radiation at levels linked to higher risks of cancer. In a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers tried to estimate what those higher risks are exactly—and although the estimates come with uncertainty, they may seem startling.

Based on data from 93 million CT scans performed on 62 million people in 2023, the researchers estimated that the CT scans would lead to 103,000 future cancers. To put that in context, those 103,000 cancers would account for about 5 percent of cancers diagnosed each year, based on the current cancer rates and the current usage of CT scans. And the estimate puts CT scans on par with alcohol consumption and obesity in terms of risk factors for developing cancer.

The most common types of cancers estimated to be a result of CT scans were lung cancer and colon cancer—two cancers that are becoming more common in younger people for reasons experts do not fully understand. The types of CT scans linked to the greatest number of cancers were abdomen and pelvis CT scans.

The study’s authors—led by epidemiology and biostatistics researchers at the University of California, San Francisco—concluded that doctors should use CT scans when they can be justified and at optimized doses to balance the risks and benefits.

“CT is frequently lifesaving, yet its potential harms are often overlooked, and even very small cancer risks will lead to a significant number of future cancers given the tremendous volume of CT use in the United States,” they write. Since 2007, use of CT scans has increased 35 percent, an increase not entirely explained by population growth, they note

Outside experts agreed that CT scans should be used judiciously. But, they highlighted that there is much uncertainty in the modeling, which tried to assess absorbed doses in different organs and the increased risk of site-specific cancer. While some large studies have found links between CT scans in children and young adults and increased risks of blood and brain cancers, the risks for adults have largely been extrapolated from studies on Japanese atomic bomb survivors or people with occupational radiation exposures.

Uncertainty and balancing

“The estimates, while based on the best models available to the authors, are indirect, so there is considerable uncertainty about the estimates,” Stephen Duffy, emeritus professor of Cancer Screening at Queen Mary University of London, said in a statement. “Thus, I would say to patients that if you are recommended to have a CT scan, it would be wise to do so.”

Duffy also highlighted that in the context of a person’s overall risk of cancer, CT scans don’t move the needle much. There were a little over 100,000 cancers linked to 93 million scans. “This amounts to around a 0.1 percent increase in cancer risk over the patient’s lifetime per CT examination,” he said. The lifetime risk of cancer in the US population is around 40 percent. Thus, the additional risk from CT scans “is small.” Overall, when a CT scan is deemed necessary, the “likely benefit in diagnosis and subsequent treatment of disease outweighs the very small increase in cancer risk.”

Doreen Lau, a cancer biology expert at Brunel University of London, agreed: “The findings don’t mean that people should avoid CT scans when recommended by a doctor. In most cases, the benefit of detecting or ruling out serious illness far outweighs the very small risk of harm.”

Still, the rise in CT scans in recent years may suggest that doctors could cut back on their use. In an accompanying editorial, Ilana Richman of Yale University and Mitchell Katz of NYC Health and Hospitals discussed ways that doctors could make sure they’re balancing risks and benefits before using CT scans, including using diagnostic algorithms and offering alternative imaging options, such as ultrasounds and magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs).

“As with all complex problems, there will be no simple solution,” they write. But, “educating clinicians about avoiding low-value testing and, in circumstances where alternatives are readily available, involving patients in the decision to do a CT scan may help shift culture and practice.”

Measles is an extremely contagious disease. It’s also extremely preventable. There’s a vaccine. It’s highly effective.

For decades it has made measles outbreaks in the U.S. relatively rare, and measles deaths rarer still. But the U.S. has now seen more than 700 measles cases this year, and 3 deaths so far with active outbreaks across six states.

The federal response is under scrutiny because Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has made a career spreading false information about vaccines.

What are this administration’s views on vaccines, and what do they mean for what is already one of the worst U.S. measles outbreaks this century.

Kennedy publicly promised he would support vaccines. Dr. Peter Marks, who was forced out as the nation’s top vaccine regulator says his department isn’t doing enough.

When people are young, if they are fortunate enough to enjoy good health, they get to move their bodies with carefree abandon — running, jumping, bending, dancing, twisting — in pursuit of whatever activity they are engaged in.

But if they are lucky enough to get older, life intervenes: Free time becomes more limited, and interests, responsibilities, habits and behavior all change. Many people abandon the playground and learn to sit — in a classroom, at the office, in front of the TV, in a car.

Then at some point, many notice they have grown stiffer, and maybe it hurts to do this movement or that one, or they can no longer move in all the ways they want to. And people often attribute the aches and pains to simply getting older — but is the change inevitable?

“The one thing that doesn’t have to change over the whole lifespan is your range of motion,” Dr. Kelly Starrett, a physical therapist and former professional athlete, told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on his podcast, Chasing Life.

Quantifying mobility has been, excuse the pun, a moving target. “Every physician on the planet, every physical therapist, every chiropractic physician, all agree about what the body should be able to do. We’ve said, here’s what blood pressure is, and everyone knows that. Here’s what (body) temperature is, and everyone knows that. We started to become very sophisticated about understanding some aspects of our physiology, but not range of motion,” Starrett said.

“What ended up happening is we created this definition of (mobility): Do you have access to your native range of motion? Can you control it? And, when we improve those things, did what matters to you improve?” he asked.

Starrett’s most recent book, coauthored with his wife, Juliet Starrett, is “Built To Move: The 10 Essential Habits To Help You Move Freely and Live Fully.” It addresses mobility: measuring it (with 10 tests) and, equally important, regaining it in small increments that don’t take up all your time.

“How do we simplify the process so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming?” he asked. “I’m not giving a busy working mother another listicle.”

Why should you care about range of motion and mobility when the couch is so comfy and many of your needs and wants are only a mouse click away? Because mobility is associated with longevity, Starrett said.

He noted that falling is a big predictor of injury and decline in people age 65 and older.

“If I don’t have access to balance or range of motion, I can’t solve as many movement problems. And losing your balance is a movement problem,” he said. “Getting up and down and being independent is a movement problem. Being able to rise from a chair while you’re holding your baby or your cat, or holding a cup of coffee and a book is just a movement problem.”

As you get older, your body is more likely to “throw an error,” Starrett said. It’s a matter of use it or lose it.

“If I want to have a joint and tendons that act like joints and tendons my whole life, I better use that joint and I better load those tendons,” he said. “Otherwise, they’re not going to be available to me as readily.”

Muscles and tissues are like obedient dogs, he said. “They always adapt. At no age do you stop healing. At no age do you lose the ability to reclaim range of motion. It’s going to be a little slower than when you were 15 — that’s true. But the bottom line is your body is always going to adapt.”

What can you do to easily retain or regain some of your mobility? Starrett has five tips.

Get your body into different shapes

People mostly move from lying down to sitting in a chair to walking around a bit, Starrett noted. “Modern environments don’t really ask much of the movement language of our bodies. Most people are only using a few words that their bodies could write,” he said.

“The first thing we should be thinking about is, ‘Well, how do I increase my exposure to more movement language?’” he said.

“One of the easiest ways, for example, that we think would foundationally change society is if people sat on the ground in the evening, for 20 or 30 minutes while they were watching TV, while they’re reading a book,” he said. “And that could be leaning up against the couch; it doesn’t have to be in a strict lotus.”

Getting into and out of that cross-legged position will also expose you to different movements, especially in the hips and knees. The practice can also tell you a bit about your ability to move freely and effortlessly.

“Being able to get up and down from a cross-legged position is an excellent predictor of all-cause morbidity and all-cause mortality because … it says a lot about how you are interacting and adapting to your environment,” he said.

And if you need to fidget, fidget — because that will also get your body into additional interesting positions, he said, such as kneeling or squatting.

For more ideas on getting your body into different shapes, you can watch short instructional videos on Starrett’s The Ready State YouTube channel.

Hang from a bar 3 minutes a day

If you’re experiencing aches and pains in your shoulders, neck or back, Starrett has a fix. “I want you to hang for three minutes a day,” he said.

You can hang in many different ways, he said — by grabbing the edge of a sink or a doorframe or, better yet, a pull-up bar — just get your arms above your head and stretch a bit. Even the yoga pose “downward-facing dog” counts as hang time, he added.

“That would fundamentally change your posture, change your neck pain, change your breath, change your shoulders, make it so you’re more durable. I mean, that is a foundational posture,” he said.

“Go to the airport and watch people in the (body) scanner,” he said. “You’ll see why we have that as a test (in the book), because people literally … cannot put their arms over their head anymore.”

Walk more (for a surprising reason)

To keep stiffness at bay and maintain your mobility, Starrett advises everyone to do plenty of walking every day.

“If I could give everyone in my family a pill that reduced all-cause mortality and morbidity by 51% — that’s walking 8,000 steps a day,” he said.

“If you want your bones and tendons and ligaments and perceptive systems to work, you have to physically load them,” he said. “Right now, we’re seeing an epidemic of osteoporosis, osteopenia, sarcopenia — people are losing muscle, losing bone. That’s because this body is an adaptation machine, and if you stress it, it adapts, and if you don’t stress it, it adapts (in an undesirable way).” Walking loads our bones, our connective tissue, our tendons and our musculature.

Additionally, walking helps the body decongest and clear waste, Starrett said.

“Your body makes about 3 to 4 liters of lymphatic fluid every day,” he explained. “And the lymph system is the sewage system of the body: all of the broken-down cellular material, all of the waste, all the proteins that are too big to come in through your capillaries, all go out through your lymphatic system.

“What we need to do is appreciate that that sewage system of the body has been bootstrapped through our muscle system,” he said. “And so, if we want to decongest, move the waste along, then we have to keep moving.”

It also happens that as congested tissues get stiff, they don’t heal as well, he said. By decongesting our tissues, we get improved blood flow, which is also good for the brain.

Play more

Exercise doesn’t need to be all work.

“We started to treat the health of the body as like some onerous task,” said Starrett, noting that play has been lost in our modern lives. “When’s the last time you did a sport or jumped into a dance class?

“One of my favorite tools that I use even for my elite athletes (are videos by) Caleb Marshall, who is The Fitness Marshall,” he said. “We use (his free three-minute dance routines) to warm up, to have fun, to laugh. And what it does is it gets me moving in a novel way. It gets me interacting with my friends. It’s super fun.”

Starrett also carries around a flying disc in his backpack so wherever he and his wife go, they can have spontaneous play during a moment of free time.

“Play could be a continuum,” he said. “Going for a walk with your friends in the evening — I’m going to call it play. Exploring your neighborhood on a hike could be play. Humans are best when we’re playing. And that will solve a lot of movement problems.”

Don’t neglect the basics

For robust physical movement, Starrett advised a balanced diet with enough protein and fruits and vegetables.

Starrett recommended aiming for 800 grams of fruits and vegetables a day. “That could be frozen, that could be fresh, that could be beans, that could be potatoes, that could be fruits and vegetables — not just kale,” he said. “It’s about fiber and micronutrients. I need you to have all the vitamins and minerals on board so that you can have healthy tissues.”

And he recommends at minimum getting 0.7 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight. “It’s about, ‘Hey, I want to have enough protein on board to be able to build muscle and build bone.’”

And don’t forget sleep.

“You’ve got to sleep,” Starrett said. “There’s not a single study in the world that says you can get by with less than seven hours of sleep. So, we look at seven as our sort of minimum threshold.”

“When I work with people who are in chronic pain, who want to change their body composition, learn a skill, heal an injury, we start with their sleep,” he said.

CINCINNATI (WKRC) – A new study found that heavy drinkers are at higher risk of brain injury, specifically brain lesions.

The postmortem study looked at over 1,700 people who died at around the age of 75 for signs of brain injury.

The study found that heavy drinkers (classified as someone who drinks eight or more alcoholic beverages per week) had a much higher chance of developing brain injuries. Most notably, they had a 133% higher chance to develop a brain lesion than non-drinkers.

The risk wasn’t isolated to the heavy drinkers alone, however, as former heavy drinkers still had an 89% higher risk, while moderate drinkers had a 60% higher risk.

“I think these are compelling results that link heavy alcohol consumption with lasting impacts on the brain,” said Dr. Leana Wen, CNN‘s wellness expert, previous Baltimore health commissioner, and emergency physician. “It’s especially telling that former heavy drinkers have evidence of sustained damage, although halting that heavy drinking does appear to lower risk.”

Despite the alarming discovery, Wen said that the severity of the study should still be taken in proportion.

“There are caveats to this study,” Wen said. “It is important to point out that these findings are associations that are suggestive, rather than proof of cause and effect.”

Scientists have bioengineered Spirulina to produce active vitamin B12, previously found only in animal products, offering a sustainable, carbon-neutral alternative to meat and dairy.

New research published in Discover Food highlights a breakthrough in biotechnology led by Dr. Asaf Tzachor, Founder and Academic Director of the Aviram Sustainability and Climate Program at Reichman University. Alongside researchers from Iceland, Denmark, and Austria, Dr. Tzachor has successfully cultivated photosynthetically controlled Spirulina that produces carbon-neutral, nutrient-rich biomass containing biologically active vitamin B12 — at levels comparable to those found in beef.

This marks the first time biologically active vitamin B12 has been identified in Spirulina, a significant advancement with global health implications. Vitamin B12 deficiency affects more than a billion people worldwide. Currently, the primary dietary sources of this essential micronutrient (recommended at 2.4 µg/day) are meat and dairy products — which come with substantial environmental costs. This new method offers a sustainable, plant-based alternative that could help combat B12 deficiency while reducing reliance on animal agriculture.

Although Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis), a type of blue-green algae, has long been considered a healthier and more sustainable alternative to meat and dairy, its traditional form contains mostly pseudo-vitamin B12, a compound that is not bioavailable to humans. This has limited its effectiveness in addressing vitamin B12 deficiencies and has prevented it from serving as a complete nutritional substitute for beef in human diets.

A Multinational Collaboration and Technological Innovation

In a pioneering exploratory study, an international team of researchers from Reichman University, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Ruppin Academic Center, Danish Technological Institute, and MATIS, Iceland, sought to overcome this challenge.

The team evaluated a biotechnology system developed by VAXA Technologies in Iceland, focusing on its engineering components, inputs (such as energy), and outputs, including biomass composition.

The system employs photonic management (modified light conditions) to enhance active vitamin B12 production in Spirulina, along with other bioactive compounds with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immune-boosting properties. This innovative approach yielded carbon-neutral, nutritious biomass containing biologically active vitamin B12 at levels comparable to beef (1.64 µg/100g in PCS vs. 0.7–1.5 μg/100g in beef).

A Sustainable Alternative to Animal Products

Dr. Asaf Tzachor, explains, “the findings demonstrate that photosynthetically controlled Spirulina can produce desirable levels of active vitamin B12, offering a sustainable alternative to traditional animal-source foods.”

The study also explores production scale-up scenarios with profound implications for global nutrition. By reallocating electricity from heavy industry, Iceland could produce 277,950 tonnes of Spirulina biomass annually. This output translates to approximately 4555 grams of active vitamin B12 per year, meeting the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for over 13.8 million children aged 1–3. More ambitious scenarios suggest the potential to meet the RDA for over 26.5 million children aged 1–3, and over 50 million children aged 0–6 months.

This breakthrough marks a significant step towards addressing global vitamin B12 deficiency sustainably, reducing reliance on environmentally taxing meat and dairy production.

Protein intake dominates fitness advice. Whether you want to build muscle, improve your fitness or watch your weight, the common advice handed out by everyone from fitness influencers to doctors is that we need more protein.

But while protein does play an essential role in maintaining our muscle mass and overall health, all this increased attention on the importance of protein in the media and fitness circles has sparked a surge in products marketed specifically for their protein content.

Some chocolate bars, ice cream, pizza, coffee, and even alcoholic beverages now market themselves as protein foods.

But our enthusiasm for protein might have gone too far. While protein is certainly important for our health, most of us don’t need these protein-enhanced foods as a regular feature in our diet.

Not to mention that this marketing may lead to a ‘halo effect’, where consumers mistakenly equate high protein content with overall nutritional value. This effect can lead to the perception of protein-rich foods being inherently nutritious – even though many may not be.

Protein is essential for maintaining muscle mass and immune function.

Nutrition guidelines recommend people aim to eat around 0.75 g of protein per kilogram of body weight. But some evidence suggests this recommendation may be an underestimate – and that the recommendation should be around 1.2 g-1.6 g per kg of body weight per day

There’s also a strong body of evidence that suggests the amount of protein we need changes depending on our health. For instance, people need to eat more protein when they’re recovering from an illness. Research also shows that older adults should be aiming for at least 1.2 g per kg of body weight in order to combat age-related muscle loss.

Athletes also need to eat a greater amount of protein to support their training and recovery. Moreover, with the rising popularity of weight-loss drugs, strategies increasingly emphasise protein intake to minimise muscle loss while losing weight.

But just because protein is good for maintaining muscle mass, that doesn’t mean more is better. In fact, it seems that even when we consume large amounts of protein, only a some of this is actually used by the body.

Most of us probably need a little more protein than current guidelines suggest, but less than is often promoted by wellness influencers on social media (with some even suggesting we need up to 3 g of protein per kg of body weight).

Ironically, the necessary amount of protein suggested by emerging evidence (1.2 g -1.6 g per kg of body weight per day) is close to what the average protein consumption already is in most western countries.

Most people can probably benefit from being more protein aware – not about how much protein they’re consuming, but about the quality and frequency of their protein choices. Ideally, we should aim to consume small amounts of protein-rich foods more often during the day.

Current evidence suggests around 20 g-30 g of protein (around a handful of a protein source) at each meal supports muscle maintenance alongside physical activity.

In an ideal world, this protein would come from whole foods (such as nuts, seeds, milk, eggs and legumes). But fortified protein products may have their space as a quick and easy snack – especially for those who may struggle to eat this much protein at each meal. It’s important to eat these foods in moderation, however.

Ultra-processed products

Supermarkets are full of “protein-enhanced” products. But while these products may contain additional protein, they may also contain additional sugars or carbohydrates.

For example, protein milk often contains double the protein of regular milk. It does this by removing water or adding dried milk.

Protein bars are another example. But depending on the brand you choose, alongside their additional protein content they may also be high in sugar.

Many protein-fortified products share another common trait: they fall into the category of ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods are commercially made products that include ingredients you wouldn’t typically find in your own kitchen.

Research shows regularly consuming ultra-processed foods is consistently linked with poorer health outcomes – such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Current discussions around ultra-processed foods suggests uncertainty regarding whether it’s the processing itself, the poor nutritional quality of these foods or the combination of both of these factors that contribute to these negative health outcomes.

Another issue with protein-enhanced products is that while they do indeed contain extra protein, some products may lack fibre, vitamins and essential minerals. A lack of fibre in modern diets is currently one of the biggest contributors to population-wide ill-health.

All foods have their place within a balanced diet. But protein is only one component of overall nutritional health. The rise in protein-fortified foods as health foods is concerning.

Protein-enhanced products are occasional foods that might support meeting protein intake, but they should not be mistaken for universally healthy foods. For people looking to reach their protein goals, choose a variety of protein sources, consider the role of convenience foods within the context of whole diet and think about other nutrients like fibre to really maximise health.