Climate change has resulted in more extreme weather, including hotter, longer heat waves, which in turn have elevated the danger to people's health, especially those with chronic illnesses.

Researchers looked at how to prevent premature deaths attributed to higher temperatures by examining heat and mortality records in 93 European cities.

Using various modeling systems, they determined that planting more trees could cut deaths from extreme heat by one-third. Specifically, based on 2015 data, the researchers said doubling the current average tree coverage in cities to 30% could have prevented 2,644 of 6,700 deaths by lowering temperatures.

Body of Knowledge

A newborn baby expels the equivalent of its own body weight in poop every 60 hours.

Get Me That, Stat!

Almost 1 in 3 adults and 1 in 4 children in the U.S. have at least one allergy, from annoying seasonal allergies that elicit weepy eyes and sneezes to eczema rashes to life-threatening food allergies, reports the CDC.

Mark Your Calendar

May is awareness month for arthritis, lupus, hepatitis, celiac disease, strokes, high blood pressure, preeclampsia, cystic fibrosis and better hearing. THAT'S BETTER HEARING.

Counts

57: Percentage of polled Americans who favored a ban on all tobacco products

Source: CDC

Stories for the Waiting Room

If you got a bivalent booster as a follow-up to the original COVID-19 vaccines, here's some good news. A pair of independent studies found that bivalent boosters targeting the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and later BA.4/5 strains were performing well, outdoing the original vaccine and holding up against subvariants now spreading across the country.

In related news, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recently endorsed a plan to move all COVID-19 vaccines to the booster formulation in the hopes of creating a single annual COVID-19 shot for most Americans.

Doc Talk

Lignans: Antioxidant chemicals found in seeds like flax and sesame, plus some fruits, vegetables and grains

Phobia of the Week

Dextrophobia: Fear of objects to the right of the body (the opposite is sinistrophobia)

Best Medicine

First older guy: "I don't do drugs anymore."

Second older guy: "Why?"

First older guy: "I find that I get the same effect just standing up really fast."

Observation

"God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference." — Writer Ron Sims

Medical History

This week in 1968, Dr. Denton Cooley of the Texas Heart Institute performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States on Everett Thomas, whose heart was damaged from rheumatic heart disease. Thomas lived for 204 days with the heart donated from a 15-year-old girl. One year later, Cooley became the first heart surgeon to implant an artificial heart in a person.

Sum Body

Here are nine diseases that keep epidemiologists up at night, according to NPR. These are highly infectious diseases that can be transmitted to humans by animal or insect hosts or human-to-human. Most produce severe symptoms and are often deadly. Most also have pandemic potential and limited treatments.

If we're unlucky enough, one or more may become familiar.

1. Nipah virus

2. Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever

3. Lassa fever

4. Rift Valley fever

5. Zika

6. Ebola and Marburg virus disease

7. MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome

8. SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome

9. Disease X (this is the disease yet unknown, just like COVID-19 was a few years ago)

Curtain Calls

In 2012, an 88-year-old woman who had suffered a stroke was admitted into a hospital in Rio de Janeiro. During treatment, a nursing technician injected soup into the woman's vein instead of into her feeding tube. She died 12 hours later. Hospital officials conceded the injected soup was a mistake, but they claimed it was not the cause of death.

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: AlainAudet at Pixabay