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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WebMD
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Why Uncertainty Makes Us So Anxious, and How to Deal With It
Uncertainty can leave you worried, scared, and angry. And that’s natural. It’s also stressful, but experts say you can learn to deal with all the what-ifs and reduce that stress. Fear of the unknown underlies anxiety, psychologists say. Our brain views uncertainty as danger since there’s no way to know what’s coming up. “Our ancestors needed to be cautious about being in unpredictable situations in order to stay safe,” said Jacqueline K. Gollan, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “But in today’s world, this response can be overwhelming as we face all types of uncertainty.” Gollan tells anxious patients: “The anxiety response isn’t a sign of something wrong with you. It’s actually your brain acting like it’s supposed to.” The key, she said, is “learning to work with the natural responses rather than fighting them.’’ To build your tolerance: Learn what you can control, calmly assess risk, and avoid imagining worst-case scenarios.
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Fox 32 Chicago
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Northwestern study tests if wearables can cut AFib patients’ need for blood thinners
Can wearable technology help patients with an irregular heartbeat and change how they live with it? Northwestern University is trying to find out — and they may need your help. Angelina Brown knows all too well what it’s like to have an irregular heartbeat. Her atrial fibrillation, or AFib, has required her to take blood thinners for years. Northwestern Medicine researchers want to talk to thousands of patients like her. “There’s a lot of excitement around this trial. This is the largest trial where we’re using consumer grade electronic devices to personalize medical care,” said Rod Passman, MD. Passman and his team at Northwestern Medicine’s Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute want to know if a wearable – like an Apple Watch – can help reduce the need for blood thinners. “We’re looking for patients who are taking a blood thinner today and they may have very infrequent episodes of atrial fibrillation (AFib) either on their own, because they’ve changed their lifestyle, or they’ve been put on medication, or had a procedure like ablation, and now their AFib is gone. Currently, those patients still take blood thinners for the rest of their lives. So we’re offering patients the opportunity to stop their blood thinners in a tightly-controlled setting and see if we can personalize their care instead of treating everyone the same, where everyone takes the same dose of the same blood thinners for the rest of their lives. We’re wondering if there are some patients where we can simply target the therapy only during a high-risk period,” said Passman.
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ABC News
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A common blood test for ovarian cancer is more likely to fall short for Black and Native American women
A common blood test for ovarian cancer is more likely to fall short for Black and Native American women, according to a new study. In 2022, more than 13,000 people died from ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer may not be as prevalent as breast cancer, but it is more deadly. The likelihood of survival for someone diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago is 91%. For ovarian cancer, that survival rate decreases to 50%. The poor survival rate of ovarian cancer can be due to delayed diagnosis, according to Melissa Simon, MD, MPH, an OB-GYN at Northwestern Medicine, who is not associated with the study. One of the challenges of diagnosing ovarian cancer are the vague symptoms, which include nausea, feeling bloated, early satiety, and abdominal distension, according to Simon. Simon agree more research in diverse populations is needed to determine better markers for ovarian cancer. “We need research to represent our population,” said Simon.
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US News & World Report
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Study Finds Better Way For Smartwatches to Track Health
Folks frequently use their smartwatches to monitor their daily step count, aiming to get enough physical activity to improve their health. But smartwatches are tracking another measure of health that could prove even more important, a new study suggests. Smartwatches also capture a person’s average daily heart rate, and dividing that by their daily number of steps provides a more reliable measure of a person’s heart fitness than either number on its own. “The metric we developed looks at how the heart responds to exercise, rather than exercise itself,” lead researcher Zhanlin Chen, a medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a news release. “It’s a more meaningful metric because it gets at the core issue of capturing the heart’s capacity to adjust under stress as physical activity fluctuates throughout the day,” he added. “Our metric is a first attempt at capturing that with a wearable device.” For this new study, researchers analyzed data from nearly 7,000 American adults who provided Fitbit data and their electronic health records to an National Institutes of Health research program. Results also showed that elevated heart rate per step was more strongly associated with heart disease diagnoses than either daily heart rate or step count alone, researchers said. Based on these findings, researchers said that heart rate per step could be used to identify people who might benefit from more heart health screening, or from exercises that would improve their heart function. The metric is simple enough that people can calculate it on their own, Chen said, or it could potentially be included in smartwatch apps.
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Yahoo! News
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8 natural ways to lower your blood sugar, from yoga to apple cider vinegar
Blood sugar was once considered something people only focused on when they had diabetes. But the explosion in popularity of medications that affect blood sugar, like Ozempic and Wegovy, along with over-the-counter blood glucose monitors, has raised general awareness of the role blood sugar plays in several areas of health. If you’re one of the 38.4 million Americans with diabetes, it’s understandable that blood sugar management be a big part of your life. But doctors say that it’s important to pursue natural ways to manage your blood sugar, even if you’re on medication. One of the best ways to naturally lower your blood sugar is ramping up your fiber intake. “Fiber-rich foods will help with glucose spikes after meals,” Anthony Pick, , clinical assistant professor of endocrinology at Northwestern Medicine, tells Yahoo Life. That’s because your body can’t absorb or break down fiber, he explains. Some supplements may help to lower your blood sugar, with Pick recommending berberine, myo-inositol, alpha-lipoic acid, cinnamon powder and chromium as options to consider.
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Chicago Tribune
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Conquering fear was key for Oak Forest man who overcame double cancer diagnosis
An Oak Forest resident was diagnosed in early 2023 at Northwestern Medicine with an aggressive form of bladder cancer known as muscle-invasive high-grade urothelial carcinoma after noticing blood in his urine. Just six days later he learned he also had right lung adenocarcinoma, a type of lung cancer. It’s “not common” to have two types of cancer at the same time, said Yazan Numan, MD, medical oncologist at the Northwestern Medicine St. George Cancer Institute in Orland Park. He added that 5% of patients get diagnosed with two cancers, but it’s typically those who have a family history of cancer or a genetic disposition for it. The first stage of treatment was to surgically remove the mass on the bladder followed by several weeks of chemotherapy. That treatment had limited success, so in May 2023, Joshua Meeks, MD, PhD, a urologist at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, removed his bladder and prostate. Next, it was time to treat his lung cancer, which was done with radiation and chemotherapy starting in August 2023, followed by immunotherapy treatments in early 2024. The man said staying positive – and playing mind games with himself that everything was perfect – kept him going.
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Yahoo! News
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10 Everyday Habits That Are Harming Your Longevity The Most
Living a long, healthy life is a popular goal, but it’s not easy to achieve. It’s common for folks to develop conditions like dementia and chronic pain, in addition to mobility issues and cardiovascular problems, as they age. While certain uncontrollable factors (like genetics) play a major role in many of these issues, everyday habits can also contribute to a less-than-ideal aging process. And some of the habits you probably follow every day or every week are actually getting in the way of healthy aging and a long life. One important thing to have in your life is social relationships. “We know that socialization helps with your brain and with your longevity,” said Lee Lindquist, MD, MPH, MBA, chief of geriatrics at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. The more time you spend interacting with other people, the more it can benefit your life span. “I always joke… that you need to socialize with happy people, because we all have toxic people in our lives,” she said. Toxic people can bring anxiety and sadness, which won’t help you age well. “The more socialization you can do with people that bring you joy or bring you happiness, those are things that will definitely help you age healthy and age well and improve your longevity,” Lindquist said.
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HealthDay
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Food Insecurity Tied to Incident Cardiovascular Disease Events
Food insecurity is associated with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) events, even when adjusting for sociodemographic factors, according to a study published online March 12 in JAMA Cardiology. Jenny Jia, MD, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues examined whether food insecurity is associated with incident CVD across sociodemographic factors. The analysis included 3,616 participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study. The researchers found that individuals with food insecurity were more likely to self-identify as Black and report lower educational attainment. “Food insecurity may be an important social deprivation measure in clinical assessment of CVD risk,” the authors write. “Whether interventions to reduce food insecurity programs can potentially alleviate CVD should be further studied.”
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US News & World Report
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Researchers Find a Hint at How to Delay Alzheimer’s Symptoms. Now They Have to Prove It
An experimental treatment appears to delay Alzheimer’s symptoms in some people genetically destined to get the disease in their 40s or 50s, according to new findings from ongoing research now caught up in Trump administration funding delays. The early results — a scientific first — were published Wednesday even as study participants worried that politics could cut their access to a possible lifeline. Despite the study’s small size, “it’s incredibly important,” said Northwestern University neuroscientist David Gate, PhD, who wasn’t involved with the research. NIH’s focus expanded as researchers found more potential culprits. In 2013, NIH’s National Institute on Aging funded 14 trials of possible Alzheimer’s drugs, over a third targeting amyloid. By last fall, there were 68 drug trials and about 18% targeted amyloid. Northwestern’s Gate counts himself among scientists who “think amyloid isn’t everything,” but said nothing has invalidated the amyloid hypothesis. He recently used brain tissue preserved from an old amyloid study to learn how immune cells called microglia can clear those plaques and then switch to helping the brain heal, possible clues for improving today’s modest therapies.
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WGN Chicago
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Measles prevention: How the two-dose regimen works
About 90 percent of the US population has gotten their two dose regimen to protect against measles, mumps and rubella, but increasingly, the unvaccinated have been contracting the highly contagious, deadly disease. Northwestern University and Lurie Children’s pediatric infectious disease specialist Ravi Jhaveri, MD warns that without proper coverage, storm clouds ahead have him worried. “I like to have people think about vaccines as an umbrella, and the idea is an umbrella doesn’t necessarily keep you from getting wet but it keeps you from getting soaked,” he said. “We see periodic outbreaks of measles because it’s a very highly contagious agent and even modest drops in the amount of protection amongst communities can lead to outbreaks.” Decades of research has proven the MMR vaccine is 95 percent effective after the first dose. Experts say now it is more critical than ever to know protection level and potential threat. “More than 90 percent of parents are having their kids vaccinated on time with the appropriate doses by the time their kids enter kindergarten, and so I want to make sure we recognize them for the effort they are doing,” Dr. Jhaveri said. Further, “You should talk to your doctor about making sure you have up-to-date vaccines with the current guidance and we are airing on the side of extra doses,” Jhaveri said.
