Media Coverage
The work done by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine faculty members (and even some students) is regularly highlighted in newspapers, online media outlets and more. Below you’ll find links to articles and videos of Feinberg in the news.
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The New York Times
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It’s Time for a Reality Check on Eggs
Eggs contain vitamins B, E and D, and they’re low in saturated fat. “You get high protein for low calories,” said Bethany Doerfler, a researcher and dietitian at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. They also contain nutrients that are beneficial for your eyes and bones, Ms. Heller said.
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TODAY
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How does the top-rated TLC eating plan help lower your cholesterol?
Ranked as fifth best overall in the U.S. News and World Report’s annual ranking of popular eating plan, the TLC (therapeutic lifestyle changes), which was devised by the National Institutes of Health to help people lower their LDL cholesterol levels, is more of a program than a diet plan. It offers an eating plan, but also recommends other lifestyle modifications including 30 minutes of activity each day and weight management in an 80-page booklet available online. The program focuses on how changing eating habits might help lower “bad” cholesterol. The dietary part of the program emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and fish, while advising the avoidance of saturated and trans-fats. One thing people don’t understand is that the more you eat something, such as sugar, the more you will crave it, Van Horn says. “So the more frequently the average consumer goes for fruits or vegetables or whole grain products the more they will crave them,” says Linda Van Horn, PhD, RD, professor emeritus of nutrition at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The eating plan suggests avoiding foods high in sodium, sugar, trans fats and saturated fats. One good thing about the TLC is that it doesn’t suggest completely avoiding any foods, says Van Horn. “What people fail to recognize is that by ignoring certain foods in the diet, they are doing themselves a disservice nutritionally as well as metabolically,” Van Horn says.
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The Washington Post
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Can tech help you reset your internal clock? Here’s what to consider.
Devices might be able to reset circadian clocks the right way, but scientists say users should take all promises with a grain of salt. Circadian rhythms guide the body through the 24-hour cycle. They tell us when it’s time to eat and sleep, and when it’s time to get up and start a new day. Ideally, humans get enough blue light from going outdoors, but on a dark day, especially when you’re stuck indoors, tech could help make up for a blue light gap, says Phyllis Zee, MD, PhD, director of Northwestern University’s Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine and professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She recommends circadian lighting systems, in which many smart lights are installed throughout a home. They create a semblance of natural blue light during the day, then shift later on to longer-wavelength lighting that resembles amber sunsets that cue our bodies to prepare for sleep. “That will allow us to remain more stably entrained to the light-dark cycle,” Zee says.
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Yahoo! News
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As weight loss drugs soar in popularity, many who could benefit can’t get them
Demand for weight loss drugs as soared over the last year, to the point that semaglutide has been in short supply at pharmacies nationwide. Doctors who treat obese patients are increasingly frustrated that the people who really need the injection medications aren’t getting them. Ozempic, which is approved for people with diabetes but is prescribed off-label for weight loss, and Wegovy, which is approved for weight loss, can carry price tags of more than $1,000 a month. Neither drug is covered for weight loss by most insurance plans. “A majority of my patients can’t afford to pay $1,300 a month, especially for a medication that they need to be on long term,” said Dr. Veronica Johnson, an obesity specialist at Northwestern Medicine and assistant professor of general internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “As a Black woman and treating patients who look like me, knowing that a lot of Black women struggle with the disease of obesity, I, unfortunately, can’t treat a lot of my patients the best way that I would like to.”
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Reuters
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Health Rounds: New vaccine design may improve effectiveness
Conventionally, antigens and adjuvants are blended together, and it is impossible to predict how much of each component will reach each immune cell.
“The blended mish-mosh works to some extent,” but effectiveness can be improved by organizing vaccine components in specific ways, said Chad Mirkin, director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University and co-founder of biotech startup Flashpoint Therapeutics.
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NPR
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Scant obesity training in medical school leaves docs ill-prepared to help patients
Obesity training in medicine is still relatively unusual. Obesity affects so many people — 42% of Americans — and is linked to more than 200 other chronic conditions and major causes of death, from heart and kidney disease to diabetes. Its impact on patients and their health care is hard to overstate. And yet, even as scientific understanding of the disease evolves rapidly, doctors are taught very little about the causes of obesity in medical school, and even less about how to counsel or help those who have it. One 2020 survey found medical schools spend, on average, 10 hours on obesity education. That’s insufficient, given the wide-reaching impact obesity has across the medical profession, says Dr. Robert Kushner, a professor of medicine and medical education at Northwestern University and co-author of the survey. He says the problem also perpetuates itself: “There aren’t a lot of people trained in obesity,” he says, and “if you weren’t trained in medical school and you didn’t take it upon yourself to learn about it, you’re not going to be in a position to be an informed, expert faculty member.” As a result of the training deficit, health care providers themselves often perpetuate weight stigma or misconceptions about how best to treat patients who have it.
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TODAY
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Obesity may cause changes in the brain similar to Alzheimer’s, according to a new study
Being overweight in midlife has been linked to greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, and a new study shows that brain changes in obese people mirror some of those with Alzheimer’s. However, the research and science isn’t entirely clear. One limitation in the research is that it doesn’t directly report on what people are eating, just that they’re obese, said Linda Van Horn, PhD, RD, chief of nutrition at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved with the study. “Given that, it leaves a lot of room for speculation and hypothesis generation,” Van Horn said. “Intuitively, you would think it would have an impact on various organs including the brain.” While the hope is that weight loss could stop or reduce the brain degeneration, “we, unfortunately, are discovering more and more that there are certain points of no return,” Van Horn said.
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NPR
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Wegovy works. But here’s what happens if you can’t afford to keep taking the drug
“This hormone is telling your brain, I’m full, I don’t need to eat anymore,” explains Dr. Robert Kushner of Northwestern University, who treats Yolanda Hamilton. Kushner also serves on a Novo Nordisk medical advisory board, for which he receives an honorarium.
“What the pharmaceutical companies have done is taken this hormone that is naturally occurring and restructured it into a drug,” he explains. So, it’s not a surprise that when people stop taking the medicine, they start to feel hungrier, he says.
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New York Times
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The Sneaky Allure of a Detox
On social media, diet enthusiasts claim that a sludge of papaya seeds can fight off parasites. Every year, the wellness world hawks “cleanses,” often liquid diets that mainly consist of vegetable and fruit juices. A day or three (or eight) of drinking all your meals, and you’ll purge any toxins from your body, cleanse manufacturers say. Your skin will clear; your stomach will shrink. You will feel, more or less, pure. But there is scant evidence to back any of these claims. “There’s no major research done on most of the cleanses that are out there,” Dr. Melinda Ring, an integrative medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine, said. However, some people do say that they feel better while on a cleanse — that they sleep better, have more energy or think more clearly. Nutrition experts say that people who try cleanses may report positive benefits in the short term — but not because of the specific slush they’re drinking.
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ABC 7 Chicago
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15-year-old boy performs life-saving CPR on mom after sudden cardiac arrest
According to the American Heart Association, roughly every 40 seconds, someone in this country has a heart attack. And heart disease is the number one killer for both men and women in the U.S. But, the CDC found that only about 56% of women are aware of that. Kristen Walenga is a survivor of sudden cardiac arrest. She collapsed in 2019 while at home with her children. Her 15-year-old son saved her life. Walenga said she didn’t even know her son had learned CPR while in middle school. Now, she’s working to make sure others know how to perform this life-saving procedure. Mercedes Carnethon, PhD is the president of the American Heart Association Chicago Metropolitan Board and vice chair of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “The risk factors for heart disease for women and men are very similar. We often are very aware of the genetic component. But, an even larger component is our lifestyle behaviors. Smoking is one of the leading, modifiable behavioral risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Inactivity, short sleep or poor quality sleep and a poor diet. All of those contribute to the development of risk factors such obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes. And those combine to be the reasons why we see cardiovascular disease in women and men,” Carnethon said.
