Heya,

I'm very noise sensitive, which is mainly an issue at night when I try to sleep.
I've been told I should get custom-made earplugs, as those over-the-counter don't really do anything for me.

Does anyone have experience with this? As I'm having trouble finding good resources.
I also live in a country without good quality products of just about anything, so I've been thinking of getting like the shape of my ear scanned here, and then sending it to a place in Europe that would create these earplugs for me.

Thanks for any help!

More Americans are injecting themselves with unapproved chemicals that are pitched as ways to build muscle, rejuvenate skin and extend life, the latest example of the nation’s fascination with alternative therapies and wellness hacks.

Behind the trend is the surging popularity of GLP-1 weight loss medications, a class of so-called peptides approved to help users quickly shed pounds.

But the peptides being promoted by influencers, celebrities and wellness gurus are different: Many have never been approved for human use and much of their purported evidence comes from studies in rats and other animals. Several peptides, such as BPC-157 and TB-500, are banned by international sports authorities as doping substances.

Researchers say they finally understand the connection between the autoimmune disease and Epstein-Barr virus.

One of the most common viruses in the world could be the cause of lupus, an autoimmune disease with wide-ranging symptoms, according to a study published Wednesday.

Until now, lupus was somewhat mysterious: No single root cause of the disease had been found, and there is no designated treatment for it. 

The research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, suggests that Epstein-Barr virus — which 95% of people acquire at some point in life — could cause lupus by driving the body to attack its own healthy cells.

Poor diet, inactivity and obesity believed to have caused hypertension for millions of under-19s around the world

The rate of children and teenagers living with high blood pressure globally has nearly doubled because of a toxic combination of unhealthy diets, mass inactivity and soaring levels of obesity, according to the largest review of its kind.

Experts said 114 million children who have developed hypertension even before reaching adulthood were facing potentially deadly and lifelong harm, including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and a myriad of serious health complications.

The prevalence of high blood pressure in children and teenagers under 19 has increased to 6.2%, rising from 3.2% in the space of just 20 years. The findings, based on a meta analysis of data from 96 studies involving more than 400,000 children across 21 countries, were published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health journal.

Doctors step up after US health department suspended its flu vaccine campaign following Trump’s election

As flu season begins in the US, following the deadliest flu outbreak in children outside of a pandemic since record-keeping began in 2004, pediatricians are taking the lead on vaccine messaging.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not plan to resume its “wild to mild” flu vaccination campaign, which was halted in the midst of the record-breaking flu season.

Even as places such as Australia and Japan report severe flu seasons, there has also been a drop in global virus samples shared with the US, which help scientists understand which viruses and variants are circulating and how they are mutating.

Taking acetaminophen during pregnancy is not clearly linked to autism or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, a new review finds.

The topic has been in the headlines since September when Donald Trump warned that acetaminophen use in pregnancy was "associated with a very increased risk of autism" and the president advised pregnant women, "Don't take Tylenol."

At the time, federal officials cited an August 2025 meta-analysis from researchers at Mt. Sinai, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Heath, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and UMass Lowell that found prenatal exposure to acetaminophen may be associated with an increase in rates of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and ADHD, in children.

Baby formula maker ByHeart is recalling all of its products amid an outbreak of infant botulism likely tied to its powdered formula.

Since August, 15 cases have been reported across 12 states, nearly all among babies between 16 days and around 5 months old, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

After the FDA announced Saturday that it was investigating the outbreak and its link to ByHeart's organic Whole Nutrition Infant Formula, the company recalled two lots of the product. ByHeart then expanded the recall Tuesday to include all batches of the formula, both in cans and "anywhere packs" — small, sealed pouches.

Exclusive: ‘Deep-rooted injustices’ affect billions of people due to location of wells, pipelines and other infrastructure

A quarter of the world’s population lives within three miles (5km) of operational fossil fuel projects, potentially threatening the health of more than 2 billion people as well as critical ecosystems, according to first-of-its-kind research.

A damning new report by Amnesty International, shared exclusively with the Guardian, found that more than 18,300 oil, gas and coal sites are currently distributed across 170 countries worldwide, occupying a vast area of the Earth’s surface.

Proximity to drilling wells, processing plants, pipelines and other fossil fuel facilities elevates the risk of cancer, respiratory conditions, heart disease, premature birth and death, as well as posing grave threats to water supplies and air quality, and degrades land.

Bird flu cases are on the rise across the country as wild flocks migrate south for the winter, mingling with domestic poultry farms and backyard birds as they go.

As of Nov. 7, bird flu has been confirmed in 67 flocks across the country in the last 30 days, leading to the deaths of 3.72 million birds across commercial and backyard flocks.

That’s a sharp rise from August, when just 60,000 birds were affected, according to USDA data.

The virus has ebbed and flowed since the USDA first confirmed the arrival of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in a commercial flock in February 2022.

However, this time around, we have less insight than before, thanks to staffing cuts at federal labs, rule changes that restrict who government scientists can communicate with and the ongoing federal government shutdown.

About 1 in every 8 U.S. teenagers and young adults turns to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for mental health advice, a new study says.

AI bots offer a cheap and immediate ear for younger people's concerns, worries and woes, researchers wrote in JAMA Network Open. However, it's not clear that these programs are up to the challenge, researchers warned.

"There are few standardized benchmarks for evaluating mental health advice offered by AI chatbots, and there is limited transparency about the datasets that are used to train these large language models," investigator Jonathan Cantor said in a news release. He's a senior policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.

The new study follows on a report that OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to delusions and suicide, according to The Associated Press.

The Food and Drug Administration says it is removing the black box safety warnings from all hormone therapy creams, pills and other treatments prescribed to ease the symptoms of menopause and perimenopause.

The prominent warnings said these therapies could raise the risks for some cancers, dementia, heart attacks and strokes. That, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary told CBS News' Norah O'Donnell, scared women from using drugs that could in fact improve their health.

Drinking caffeinated coffee is safe for people with atrial fibrillation and may help protect against recurrence of the disorder, a new study finds.

More than 10 million Americans live with atrial fibrillation, or A-fib, a common heart disorder that causes heart palpitations and can lead to heart failure, blood clots and stroke. Doctors have long tried to understand whether caffeine — which can increase heart rate and blood pressure — appears to trigger episodes that feel like a fluttering or thumping in the chest and cause dizziness or breathlessness.

“There is no standard advice for atrial fibrillation and caffeine,” said Dr. Gregory Marcus, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the DECAF (Does Eliminating Coffee Avoid Fibrillation?) study. “It is very common for me to encounter patients who have stopped drinking caffeinated coffee only because their physician has told them to do so because of their atrial fibrillation.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/38196518

"Only the young can fully exploit the human body's potential. To wait is too late."

A single infusion of an experimental gene-editing drug appears safe and effective for cutting cholesterol, possibly for life, according to a small early study released Saturday.

The study, which involved 15 volunteers, found one infusion of a drug that uses the CRISPR gene-editing technique could safely reduce cholesterol, as well as levels of harmful triglycerides, by about half.

"Rather than a lifetime worth of medicine, we have the potential to give people a cure," said Dr. Luke Laffin, a preventative cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who helped conduct the study. "It's very exciting."

The results of the study were presented Saturday at the American Heart Association's annual meeting and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.