WEDNESDAY, Oct. 13, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The length of a woman's menstrual cycle as she nears menopause could reflect her future risk of heart disease, researchers report.Some women's menstrual cycles become longer as they approach menopause, while others' cycles remain stable. This new study found that the women whose cycle increased in length two years before menopause had better measures of vascular health than those who had stable cycles."Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer of women, and the risk significantly increases after midlife, which is why we think that menopause could contribute to this disease," said study author Samar El Khoudary, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health. "Menopause is not just...

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 13, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Urban dwellers around the globe are sweating through three times as many "extreme heat" days as their counterparts did in the 1980s, a new study suggests.The study is the latest to chart humans' growing exposure to dangerously high temperatures. Experts said it looked at what's happening in finer detail than previous research has -- and it suggests that exposure to extreme heat is more widespread than thought.By the researchers' estimates, 1.7 billion urban dwellers -- or almost one-fifth of the planet -- were exposed to a rising number of extreme heat days between 1983 and 2016.Those are the kinds of temperatures that raise the risk of heat illness even for healthy people if they are working or exercising outdoors.To the people living in...

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 13, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Older adults are more likely than younger ones to give to charity, but are more likely to support ones in their own country, an international study reveals."As countries, including the U.K., are announcing cuts to foreign aid budgets, there will be an increasing reliance on global charities," said senior author Patricia Lockwood, of the Center for Human Brain Health at the University of Birmingham in England. "Understanding the giving preferences and inclinations of different age groups could therefore be extremely important in planning campaigns and appeals," she said in a university news release.For the study, researchers in the United Kingdom and Austria gave 46,500 adults in 67 nations a hypothetical amount of money equivalent to the...

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 13, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Private insurers paid out about $156.2 billion in 2018 for U.S. patients with the 15 most common cancers.Medication was the largest expense and drugs for breast, lung, lymphoma and colon cancers accounted for the largest chunk of those costs, according to a Penn State College of Medicine study."The public often hears that the U.S. spends an inordinate amount of money on health care, but no one has quantified exactly how big that number is and how that number [is] broken down for exactly what types of services," said study author Dr. Nicholas Zaorsky. He's an assistant professor of radiation oncology and public health sciences at Penn State Cancer Institute in Hershey, Pa. "We wanted to look at what private insurances are paying for each kind...