Rhia's Kitchen : October 2019

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Guy Fieri loves people dressing as him for Halloween

Guy Fieri loves people dressing as him for Halloween

We’re rolling out the best of the best Fieri costumes.

Ex-Starbucks regional manager sues company claiming discrimination against white people: reports

Ex-Starbucks regional manager sues company claiming discrimination against white people: reports

A former Starbucks regional manager whose territory included a Philadelphia location where two black men were arrested last year after they sat down in the store without ordering anything is suing the company for allegedly discriminating against white people, according to reports.

McDonald's apologizes for 'Sundae Bloody Sundae' Halloween promotion

McDonald's apologizes for 'Sundae Bloody Sundae' Halloween promotion

It’s probably not a good idea to use tragedies to sell ice cream.

McDonald's may expand breakfast menu to include chicken sandwich: report

McDonald's may expand breakfast menu to include chicken sandwich: report

All aboard the chicken sandwich bandwagon!

New story in Health from Time: Heart Failure Is Killing More Americans. Can the Health Care System Keep Up?

A rapidly aging U.S. population, as well as high rates of obesity and diabetes, are causing more people to die from heart failure and other heart problems, according to a new report published in JAMA Cardiology. That’s bad news not only for patients, but also for the U.S. health care system.

Heart disease remains the leading killer of Americans, but improvements in public health and medicine over the last few decades have driven cardiovascular mortality rates way down. In recent years, however, that progress has slowed, and declines in heart disease mortality have been more modest. Some studies even suggest cardiovascular death rates are rising among younger adults, due in part to widespread obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

The new study, which drew on data from death certificates filed from 2011 to 2017, points to another reason heart health may be at risk: The U.S. population is simply getting older. The study points out that the 65-and-older population in the U.S. grew by almost 23% from 2011 to 2017 (compared to 2% growth for the under-65 population).

Age is one of the top risk factors for cardiovascular issues and, despite the worrying increases in heart problems among younger people, adults older than 65 still account for the vast majority of heart disease deaths in the U.S. While the heart disease mortality rate dropped slightly from 2011 to 2017, it wasn’t enough to compensate for significant growth in the aging population, according to the paper. As a result, the total number of deaths associated with heart disease actually rose by 8.5% from 2011 to 2017.

Heart failure—which occurs when the heart can’t pump enough blood—appears to be the most pressing concern, according to the report. From 2011 to 2017, the heart failure mortality rate increased by almost 21%, translating to a 38% increase in the number of deaths attributed to the condition. In 2017, more than 350,000 death certificates listed heart failure as either the primary or contributing cause of death, according to the paper.

Those increases could spell trouble for America’s already overburdened health care system, which will only become more strained in the coming years. With the U.S. population only getting older—the 65-and-over population is expected to grow by 44% from 2017 to 2030—the health care system needs to focus on heart disease detection and prevention as well as treatment, the study authors write.

Studies show that regular physical activity; eating a balanced, plant-heavy diet; avoiding smoking and heavy drinking; staying social; and limiting stress can all protect your heart health, ideally stopping problems before they start.

New story in Health from Time: Measles Makes Your Immune System Forget How to Fight Other Diseases

Not so long ago, coming down with measles was seen almost as a rite of passage. Before measles vaccination began in the U.S. in the early 1960s, millions of Americans, many of them children, contracted the virus each year—forcing them to weather a flu-like illness and telltale skin rash, but also bestowing lifelong immunity. As a result, some Americans still view measles as relatively harmless—which, in addition to a dangerous uprising of anti-vaccine sentiment, has led some parents to decline shots for their children, contributing to a resurgence of preventable illness in the U.S. and overseas.

A pair of related studies published in Science and Science Immunology, however, busts the myth that measles isn’t dangerous. In addition to being a serious disease in its own right, measles can also virtually wipe out a person’s immune system, leaving them with “immune amnesia” that makes them more susceptible to other diseases, according to the research.

Doctors have long known that measles predisposes sufferers to other illnesses. Measles can lead to serious complications like neurological damage, but many of the approximately 110,000 global measles-related deaths each year actually come from concurrent infections like pneumonia. The new studies are among the first to demonstrate why that happens.

“Every time we see a pathogen, our immune system recognizes this pathogen, builds immunity to it and then stores it in the form of immune memory,” explains Velislava Petrova, a postdoctoral fellow in immunogenetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the U.K. and first author of the report published in Science Immunology. The measles virus, however, seems to attack these memory cells, effectively leaving sufferers with an immune system that no longer remembers the pathogens to which it has already built up immunity, and thus an impaired ability to fight them off.

Petrova and her colleagues conducted their research in a part of the Netherlands with very low measles vaccination rates. They analyzed blood samples from a group of 26 children ages 4 to 17 who were unvaccinated and had never had measles—meaning they could develop the infection organically—both when they were healthy, and again after a measles outbreak in the community. They also used three unvaccinated children who did not develop measles as a control group.

Blood sample testing revealed the children who had recovered from measles had the right number of white blood cells, crucial to mounting an immune response and fighting off disease. But sequencing revealed that the types of white blood cells weren’t right. “Our immune cells recover back to normal numbers [after getting measles],” Petrova says, “but they are no longer the same memory cells.”

In the related Science study, researchers analyzed the kids’ antibody activity before and after measles infection, and found that, two months after recovery, they had lost up to 73% of their antibody diversity.

Not only did the virus wipe out memory cells, it also replaced them with new cells that provide immunity against future measles infection, Petrova says. So, while people who come down with measles are protected from future bouts of that virus, they seem to be left unprotected from other, previously known pathogens and ill-equipped to respond to new ones.

The researchers confirmed that finding by infecting flu-vaccinated ferrets with a measles-like illness. After suffering from measles, the animals no longer had immunity against the flu, and experienced more severe flu symptoms, compared to animals that had the flu before contracting measles.

Measles “makes our immune system more baby-like,” Petrova says. “Babies are more vulnerable to infections because their immune system is still maturing. That’s what measles does.”

Future research, Petrova says, will focus on learning how, exactly, measles—”an immunological paradox”—manages this feat. The answer may lie in the virus’ ability to infiltrate and alter bone marrow, the body’s reservoir for immune cells, she says.

More research may be needed, but Petrova emphasizes that there’s plenty of evidence to support measles vaccination now. “Measles is not as harmless of a disease as many people think. The disease itself is a dangerous,” she says. “But what this study shows is vaccination is really important not only to protect us from the disease itself, but also to protect us from other diseases.”

10 Awesome Baking Projects to Conquer This Weekend!

10 Weekend Baking Projects for a Lazy Afternoon

Making dessert isn’t often something we have time for during our busy weeks, right?

But when the weekend rolls around, we have a little more time to stretch out in the kitchen and take on a baking project.

Whether it’s fancy cookies or cheesecake, a meringue pie you’ll love, or gooey-sweet cinnamon rolls, there’s something here to inspire you to crank up the oven!