As global temperatures rise due to climate change, so, too, will cardiovascular-related deaths, according to a new, albeit narrowly focused, study.

Researchers looked at more than 15,000 cardiovascular deaths in Kuwait between 2010 and 2016. (Kuwait lays claim to the hottest day in the last 76 years: 129 degrees Fahrenheit on July 21, 2016, and it consistently boasts high average temperatures.)

Days with more extreme temperatures (greater than 109 degrees F) were associated with three times the risk of a cardiovascular death than days when the temperature was less than 94.5 degrees F. Men were more likely to be affected by the extreme temperature days, as were those ages 15 to 64.

Body of Knowledge

There are three kinds of blood vessels in the human body. Arteries transport oxygenated blood away from the heart to tissues in the body. Veins carry oxygen-depleted blood from tissues back to the heart. Capillaries, which are smaller than the width of a human hair, connect arteries to veins and allow nutrients in the blood to diffuse to the body's tissues.

Get Me That, Stat!

Children think about suicide more than their parents or caregivers suspect. A new study of nearly 8,000 children throughout the U.S. found that roughly 8 in every 100 kids who are 9 or 10 years old think about suicide or act on those ideas.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death in children 10 to 14 years old. Emergency visits and hospital stays for children who thought about or attempted suicide have doubled in the last 10 years.

The strongest risk factors are kids' psychological problems and family conflict. Another risk factor: excessive screen time.

Counts

24: Percentage decline in the rate of infections by Clostridium difficile bacteria in the U.S. between 2011 and 2017 (This is good news. C. difficile is hard to treat — hence the name — and gastrointestinal infections can be fatal.)

Source: New England Journal of Medicine

Doc Talk

Dyscopia: a mock Latin term meaning "failure to cope," as in a patient who is having a difficult time emotionally. It's a play on real Latin terms like dyspepsia (indigestion/irritability), dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) and dystrophy (wasting away).

Mania of the Week

Ludomania: the urge to gamble continually despite harmful, negative consequences or desire to stop.

Best Medicine

"Every man catches himself in the zipper of his fly once, and only once, in his lifetime." — Walt Giachini

Ig Nobel Apprised

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

In 2006, the Ig Nobel Prize in Acoustics went to a team of American researchers for seeking an explanation for why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping across a blackboard.

Counterintuitively, when researchers removed the low frequencies of the sound, leaving only the higher screechiness, listeners found the scraping to be less unpleasant.

Epitaphs

"May eternal damnation be

"Upon those in Whaling Port

"Who, without knowing me,

"Have Maliciously Vilified me.

"May the curse of God

"Be upon them and theirs." — Mary Dolencie, who died in 1985, angry at her homeowners association, Whaling Port, because neighbors had consistently complained about her feeding feral cats and pigeons

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: StockSnap at Pixabay