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The final puff: Can New Zealand quit smoking for good?
Smoking kills. Ayesha Verrall has seen it up close. As a young resident physician in New Zealand’s public hospitals in the 2000s, Verrall watched smokers come into the emergency ward every night, struggling to breathe with their damaged lungs. Later, as an infectious disease specialist, she saw how smoking exacerbated illness in individuals diagnosed with tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. She would tell them: “The best thing you can do to promote your health, other than take the pills, is to quit smoking.” Verrall is still urging citizens to give up cigarettes—no longer just one by one, but by the thousands. As New...
Source: ScienceNOW - December 9, 2022 Category: Science Source Type: news

Don’t shrug off shingles
If you had chickenpox as a kid, there is a good chance you may develop shingles later in life. “In fact, one in three is predicted to get shingles during their lifetime,” says Dr. Anne Louise Oaklander, director of the Nerve Unit at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. The same varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox also causes shingles. After the telltale spots of chickenpox vanish, the virus lies dormant in your nerve cells near the spinal cord and brain. When your immunity weakens from normal aging or from illnesses or medications, the virus can re-emerge. It then travels along a nerve to trigge...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - February 18, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Matthew Solan Tags: Healthy Aging Infectious diseases Vaccines Source Type: news