Sorry, Your Fitness Tracker Is Probably Useless and other top stories.

• Sorry, Your Fitness Tracker Is Probably Useless

  

  (Reuters Health) - For young adults on a long-term healthy diet and exercise program, tracking activity with a wearable device may not lead to additional weight loss, according to a new study. Over 24 months, people who used wearable activity trackers lost 2.4 kilograms (5.29 pounds) less than a group on a similar program but using a website to track their progress. “We should not simply tell everyone to go and buy an activity monitor and that it will help them to lose weight,” said lead author ..

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• Smoking leaves chemical traces on DNA

  

  A man taps ashes off his cigarette into an ashtray filled with cigarette butts on a table in Ljubljana Thomson Reuters By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - Tobacco smoke leaves its mark on DNA by changing a chemical code on the DNA molecule that can sometimes change gene activity, according to a new study. Some of these molecular changes revert to their original state when a smoker quits, but others persist in the long term, the researchers found. Experts have known..

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• Smoking Tied to Shorter Survival With ALS

  

  By Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay Reporter (HealthDay) WEDNESDAY, Sept. 21, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Smoking may speed progression of Lou Gehrig's disease and shorten the lives of those with the fatal illness, new research suggests. Also known as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), the disease damages nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. These cells control many vital muscle functions, including speaking, swallowing and breathing. Though no cure for ALS has been found, sc..

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• FDA launches mobile app competition to aid opioid abuse epidemic

  

  Federal health officials are asking the public for mobile app designs that would help connect opioid abusers to carriers of the prescription drug naloxone, which can help reverse overdose. In 2014, 2 million Americans were dependent on opioids and 28,000 died of opioid overdose, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched the 2016 Naloxone App Competition on Monday to recruit “computer programmers, public health adv..

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• Blue Bell recalls ice cream for Listeria; blames supplier

  

  Within days of heralding their products' return to grocery stores in three states, officials with Blue Bell Creameries LP quietly recalled two flavors of cookie dough ice cream from 10 states because of Listeria concerns. Discovered to have had ...

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• Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan Pledge Billions To Fight All Disease

  

  Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan on Wednesday pledged more than $3 billion toward a plan to “cure, prevent or manage all disease within our children’s lifetime.” Speaking through tears at a San Francisco event to announce the initiative, Chan said she hoped to spare parents the pain she had seen while delivering difficult news as a pediatrician. Beck Diefenbach / Reuters “In those moments and in many others we’re at the limit of what we understand about t..

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• At UN, global leaders commit to act on antimicrobial resistance

  

  21 September Globalization is a ‘fact of life’ says Austrian Minister in UN General Assembly speech At UN, Honduran President reports on country’s efforts to recover from myriad impacts of financial crisis Effective border controls make Australia successful 'immigration nation,' Prime Minister tells UN At UN, West African leaders cite terrorism as singular challenge to global peace and development Despite progress on Global Goals, Bangladesh faces ‘new wave of terrorism,’ Prime Minister tells U..

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• Pediatricians Say Codeine Is Not Safe For Children

  

  Codeine is not safe to give to kids. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement this week urging parents and doctors to stop giving children under the age of 18 both prescription and over-the-counter medications that include codeine, such as cough syrup and pain relievers.  “People have this very false misconception about codeine, thinking that it’s safer than other opioids,” Dr. Joseph Tobias, one of the study’s lead authors, told The Huffington Post. “Our whole push for writing this..

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