Health Updates

By Bracha Kolman

Back to Square One?

Studies show hand washing has returned to pre-pandemic levels

During the COVID-19 days, we got used to the “wash your hands” mantra—and to washing our hands too. A June 2020 study by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans said they were lathering up twice as often as they did in 2019.

But what’s happening now? It seems we’ve all quickly reverted to our old habits.

It only took four months for doctors, nurses, techs, and cleaning staff at hospitals to drop back to a 51.5% daily handwashing compliance rate, according to a recent study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

And a nationally representative survey done in January found that only 57% of Americans said they were washing their hands six or more times a day—such as after using the bathroom, before eating, or after returning from a trip outside the home.

That’s a significant drop from the 78% of people who said they were washing hands frequently when the survey was conducted in the early days of the pandemic.

With our own handwashing guidelines in place as frum Yidden, we’ll be maintaining our 100% compliance even when this pandemic becomes a distant memory, but it seems the antibacterial soaps are taking a backseat sooner than we could have imagined.

More Hours for Better Cognition

Sleeping too little in middle age may increase dementia risk

The research, published in Nature Communications, followed nearly 8,000 people in Britain for about 25 years, beginning when they were 50 years old. It found that those who consistently reported sleeping six hours or less on an average weeknight were about 30% more likely than people who regularly got seven hours sleep (defined as “normal” sleep in the study) to be diagnosed with dementia nearly three decades later.

Drawing on medical records and other data from a prominent study of British civil servants called Whitehall II, which began in the mid-1980s, the researchers tracked how many hours 7,959 participants said they slept in reports filed six times between 1985 and 2016. By the end of the study, 521 people had been diagnosed with dementia at an average age of 77.

“The study found a modest, but I would say somewhat important association of short sleep and dementia risk,” says Pamela Lutsey, an associate professor of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the research. “Short sleep is very common and because of that, even if it’s modestly associated with dementia risk, it can be important at a societal level. Short sleep is something that we have control over, something that you can change.”

Ice for Sore Muscles? That’s a No-No

Icing alters the molecular environment inside injured muscles in detrimental ways, slowing healing.

Nearly as common as water bottles at the gym, ice packs are routinely strapped onto aching limbs after grueling exercise or possible injuries. When we reach for that ice pack, the reasoning makes sense: ice numbs the affected area, dulling pain, and keeps swelling and inflammation at bay, which many athletes believe helps their aching muscles heal more rapidly.

But, in recent years, exercise scientists have started throwing cold water on the supposed benefits of icing. In a 2011 study, for example, people who iced a torn calf muscle felt just as much leg pain later as those who left their sore leg alone, and they were unable to return to work or other activities any sooner. And a sobering 2015 study of weight training found that men who regularly applied ice packs after workouts developed less muscular strength, size, and endurance than those who recovered without ice.

But little has been known about how icing really affects sore, damaged muscles at a microscopic level. What happens deep within those tissues when we ice them, and how do any molecular changes there affect and possibly impede the muscles’ recovery? So, for the new study, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at Kobe University in Japan and other institutions, who long had been interested in muscle physiology, gathered 40 young, healthy male mice.

Then, using electrical stimulation of the animals’ lower legs to contract their calf muscles repeatedly, they simulated, in effect, a prolonged, exhausting, and ultimately muscle-ripping leg day at the gym. Rodents’ muscles, like ours, are made up of fibers that stretch and contract with any movement. Overload those fibers during unfamiliar or exceptionally strenuous activities and you damage them. After healing, the affected muscles and their fibers should grow stronger and be better able to withstand those same forces the next time you work out.

But it was the healing process itself that interested the researchers, and whether icing would affect it. So they gathered muscle samples from some animals immediately after their simulated exertions and then strapped tiny ice packs onto the legs of about half of the mice, while leaving the rest unchilled.

Looking at the mouse leg muscles, the researchers saw clear evidence of damage to many of the muscles’ fibers. They also noted, in the tissue that had not been iced, a rapid muster of pro-inflammatory cells. Within hours, these cells began busily removing cellular debris, until, by the third day after the contractions, most of the damaged fibers had been cleared away. At that point, anti-inflammatory cells showed up, together with specialized muscle cells that rebuild tissue, and by the end of two weeks, these muscles appeared fully healed.

Not so in the iced muscles, where recovery seemed markedly delayed. It took seven days in these tissues to reach the same levels of pro-inflammatory cells as on day three in the unchilled muscle, with both the clearance of debris and arrival of anti-inflammatory cells similarly slowed.

Even after two weeks, the iced muscles showed lingering molecular signs of tissue damage and incomplete healing.

“In our experimental situation, icing retards healthy inflammatory responses,” said Dr. Takamitsu Arakawa, a professor of medicine at Kobe University Graduate School of Health Sciences, who oversaw the new study. But, as Dr. Arakawa pointed out, the experimental model simulated serious muscle damage, such as a strain or tear, and not simple soreness or fatigue. In future studies, Dr. Arakawa and his colleagues plan to study gentler muscle damage in animals and people.

But for now, Dr. Arakawa said, his study’s findings suggest that damaged, aching muscles know how to heal themselves, and our best response is to chill out and leave the ice packs in the cooler.

Tip 10

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Well Spent

Living Healthy on a Budget

Wilting summer fruits in your produce drawer? Don’t get rid of them just yet. Here are three ways to repurpose those plums and peaches for maximum usage of these delicious little treats.

1. Throw them into a blender with other fruits, milk, and a dash of honey for a refreshing breakfast or snack. 2. Preheat oven to 425°F. Slice fruits and drizzle with honey. Bake uncovered for about 25 minutes. Enjoy warm or cold. 3. Grill them at your next barbecue!