A study of more than 41,000 U.S. nurses found that daily consumption of two or more sugar-sweetened beverages was linked to double the risk of developing bowel cancer before the age of 50.

High amounts of sugar is associated with risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and obesity, both risk factors for bowel cancer. The longitudinal study asked nurses to report what they had eaten and drank during their teenage years, and the study found that each daily serving of a sweetened drink was linked to a 16% higher risk of developing cancer. Those nurses who had two or more drinks as teens had a 32% greater chance of developing bowel cancer by 50.

Prize Consumers

It's not the hamburger and fries that makes those meals happy. A small study looked at 28 fast food commercials that aired between February 2019 and January 2020 — almost all of which were for McDonald's Happy Meals — and found that 27 of them contained premiums, such as toys and incentives.

In fact, more than half of the words and nearly 60% of the visuals focused on the premiums rather than actual food. This finding suggests that companies are violating guidelines that say fast food companies cannot emphasize premiums over product because young children can't easily tell the difference.

Body of Knowledge

The biggest molecule in the human body is chromosome 1, which contains approximately 10 billion atoms. The human body is comprised of 7, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (seven octillion) atoms, give or take.

Get Me That, Stat!

Wholesale drug prices increased nearly 17% for 79 brand-name drugs between 2015 and 2020. Pharma companies say those increases do not affect patients' out-of-pocket costs, but a new study suggests that's only partially true.

Overall out-of-pocket spending increased 3.5%, but it varied by type of insurance. Patients with fixed copayments — about half of consumers — were largely unaffected by price increases, but drug costs rose 15% for those with deductibles and coinsurance.

Stories for the Waiting Room

Banging one's head against the wall burns 150 calories per hour but doing so may also explain why you're in the waiting room to see a doctor about a possible concussion.

Doc Talk

Happiness Set-point — An individual's baseline level of happiness around which moods fluctuate, which is determined largely by genetics. After reacting to positive or negative life changes, people tend to return to their happiness set-point.

Phobia of the Week

Katsaridaphobia: Fear of cockroaches.

Observation

"It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet." — American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

Medical History

This week in 1992, a 35-year-old man at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center became the world's first recipient of a baboon liver transplant. The patient was dying from hepatitis B. The patient subsequently died from a brain hemorrhage 71 days after the liver transplant, but the field of xenotransplantation (cross-species transplantation) survived, though most focus is upon the use of living cells or tissues rather than whole organs.

Ig Nobel Apprised

The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. It's a look at real science that's hard to take seriously and even harder to ignore.

In 1999, the Ig Nobel Prize in managed health care went to three inventors for their "apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force" (US Patent 3,216,423). The invention involved strapping the woman to a circular table, then rotating it a high speed.

Med School

Q: Which of the following were NOT, at some time, deemed to be medically therapeutic and incorporated into treatments: cigarettes, methamphetamines, heroin, Kellogg's corn flakes, tapeworms, sitting inside rotting whale carcasses, radium, arsenic, mercury, crocodile dung, tobacco smoke enemas and paste made from dead mice?

A: All were treatments until folks wised up or died in sufficient numbers. Sitting inside a whale carcass was supposed to relieve rheumatism. Mercury and arsenic both treated syphilis. Crocodile dung prevented unwanted pregnancies. Dead mice paste relieved toothaches.

Curtain Calls

Bobby Leach was an American stunt performer who gained notoriety after surviving a fall over Niagara Falls in 1911. He died 15 years later after a botched amputation of an infected broken leg after he slipped on an orange peel.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: stevepb at Pixabay