The coolest thing on social media these days may be celebrities and regular folks plunging into frigid water or taking ice baths.

The touted benefits include improved mood, more energy, weight loss and reduced inflammation, but the science supporting some of those claims is lukewarm.

Kim Kardashian posted her foray on Instagram. Harry Styles has tweeted about his dips. Kristen Bell says her plunges are “brutal” but mentally uplifting. And Lizzo claims ice plunges reduce inflammation and make her body feel better.

Here’s what medical evidence, experts and fans say about the practice, which dates back centuries.

The mind

You might call Dan O’Conor an amateur authority on cold water immersion. Since June 2020, the 55-year-old Chicago man has plunged into Lake Michigan almost daily, including on frigid winter mornings when he has to shovel through the ice.

“The endorphin rush … is an incredible way to wake up and just kind of shock the body and get the engine going,” O’Conor said on a recent morning when the air temperature was a frosty 23 degrees (minus-5 Celsius). Endorphins are “feel good” hormones released in response to pain, stress, exercise and other activities.

With the lake temperature 34 degrees (1 Celsius), the bare-chested O’Conor did a running jump from the snow-covered shore to launch a forward flip into the icy gray water.

His first plunge came early in the pandemic, when he went on a bourbon bender and his annoyed wife told him to “go jump in the lake.” The water felt good that June day. The world was in a coronavirus funk, O’Conor says, and that made him want to continue. As the water grew colder with the seasons, the psychological effect was even greater, he said.

“My mental health is a lot stronger, a lot brighter. I found some Zen down here coming down and jumping into the lake and shocking that body,” O’Conor said.

Dr. Will Cronenwett, chief of psychiatry at Northwestern University’s Feinberg medical school, tried cold-water immersion once, years ago while visiting Scandinavian friends on a Baltic island. After a sauna, he jumped into the ice-cold water for a few minutes and had what he called an intense and invigorating experience.

“It felt like I was being stabbed with hundreds of millions of really small electrical needles,” he said. “I felt like I was strong and powerful and could do anything.”

But Cronenwett says studying cold water immersion with a gold-standard randomized controlled trial is challenging because devising a placebo for cold plunges could be difficult.

There are a few theories on how it affects the psyche.

Cronenwett says cold water immersion stimulates the part of the nervous system that controls the resting or relaxation state. That may enhance feelings of well-being.

It also stimulates the part of the nervous system that regulates fight-or-flight stress response. Doing it on a regular basis may dampen that response, which could in turn help people feel better able to handle other stresses in their lives, although that is not proven, he said.

“You have to conquer your own trepidation. You have to muster the courage to do it,” he said. “And when you finally do it, you feel like you’ve accomplished something meaningful. You’ve achieved a goal.”

Czech researchers found that cold water plunging can increase blood concentrations of dopamine — another so-called happy hormone made in the brain — by 250%. High amounts have been linked with paranoia and aggression, noted physiologist James Mercer, a professor emeritus at the Arctic University of Norway who co-authored a recent scientific review of cold water immersion studies.

The heart

Cold water immersion raises blood pressure and increases stress on the heart. Studies have shown this is safe for healthy people and the effects are only temporary.

But it can be dangerous for people with heart trouble, sometimes leading to life-threatening irregular heartbeats, Cronenwett said. People with heart conditions or a family history of early heart disease should consult a physician before plunging, he said.

Metabolism

Repeated cold-water immersions during winter months have been shown to improve how the body responds to insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar levels, Mercer noted. This might help reduce risks for diabetes or keep the disease under better control in people already affected, although more studies are needed to prove that.

Cold water immersion also activates brown fat — tissue that helps keep the body warm and helps it control blood sugar and insulin levels. It also helps the body burn calories, which has prompted research into whether cold water immersion is an effective way to lose weight. The evidence so far is inconclusive.

Immune system

Anecdotal research suggests that people who routinely swim in chilly water get fewer colds, and there’s evidence that it can increase levels of certain white blood cells and other infection-fighting substances. Whether an occasional dunk in ice water can produce the same effect is unclear.

Among the biggest unanswered questions: How cold does water have to be to achieve any health benefits? And will a quick dunk have the same effect as a long swim?

“There is no answer to ‘the colder the better,'” Mercer said. “Also, it depends on the type of response you are looking at. For example, some occur very quickly, like changes in blood pressure. … Others, such as the formation of brown fat, take much longer.”

O’Conor plunges year-round, but he says winter dunks are the best for “mental clarity,” even if they sometimes last only 30 seconds.

On those icy mornings, he is “blocking everything else out and knowing that I got to get in the water, and then more importantly, get out of the water.”
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SpaceX is a big step closer to sending its giant Starship spacecraft into orbit, completing an engine-firing test at the launch pad on Thursday.

Thirty-one of the 33 first-stage booster engines ignited simultaneously for about 10 seconds in south Texas. The team turned off one engine before sending the firing command and another engine shut down _ “but still enough engines to reach orbit!” tweeted SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

Musk estimates Starship’s first orbital test flight could occur as soon as March, if the test analyses and remaining preparations go well.

The booster remained anchored to the pad as planned during the test. There were no signs of major damage to the launch tower.

NASA is counting on Starship to ferry astronauts to the surface of the moon in a few years, linking up with its Orion capsule in lunar orbit. Further down the road, Musk wants to use the mammoth Starships to send crowds to Mars.

Only the first-stage Super Heavy booster, standing 230 feet (69 meters) tall, was used for Thursday’s test. The futuristic second stage _ the part that will actually land on the moon and Mars _ was in the hangar being prepped for flight.

Altogether, Starship towers 394 feet (120 meters), making it the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. It’s capable of generating 17 million pounds of liftoff thrust, almost double that of NASA’s moon rocket that sent an empty capsule to the moon and back late last year.

SpaceX fired up to 14 Starship engines last fall and completed a fueling test at the pad last month.

Flocks of birds scattered as Starship’s engines came alive and sent thick dark plumes of smoke across the Starship launch complex, dubbed Starbase. It’s located at the southernmost tip of Texas near the village of Boca Chica, close to the Mexican border.
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The two Sudanese women thought they had malaria and were taking their medication, but things took a dire turn. Both complained of a splitting headache and fever that didn’t respond to the antimalaria treatment.

By the time she was diagnosed with dengue fever, Raqiya Abdsalam was unconscious.

“Soon after they examined me, I fell into a coma,” she said, recounting her ordeal some three months ago. Both women have since recovered and are at home in the city of El Obeid in the central province of North Kordofan.

For decades, Sudan’s underfunded public health sector has struggled to effectively diagnose or treat patients as significant government spending went to its vast security services. A recent spike in mosquito-borne diseases — such as dengue fever and malaria — has underscored the fragility of the African country’s health system, boding ill for future challenges driven by climate change.

Sudan’s best-equipped hospitals are concentrated in the capital, Khartoum, leaving those from far-flung provinces reliant on aid projects. But many of those have disappeared.

In October 2021, Sudan’s leading military figure, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, led a coup that derailed the country’s short-lived democratic transition. The move spurred a sharp reduction in aid, with the U.N Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reporting that funding levels fell to less than 50% of required needs for both 2021 and 2022.

Burhan with his ruling generals and several other political forces pledged in December to install a new civilian government. But political wrangling is impeding a final deal, and it remains unclear when — and if — donor funding will return to previous levels.

In late fall, a young doctor at a North Kordofan hospital thought that what she was seeing was a new malaria outbreak. Patients arriving at her hospital had malaria-like symptoms — high fever, body fatigue and a migraine-like headache.

But after blood samples were sent to a laboratory in Khartoum for testing, a worrisome picture emerged. Some of the patients did have malaria, which is caused by a parasite, but others had dengue fever — similar in symptoms but caused by a virus. If severe and untreated, dengue fever can lead to organ failure and death.

The young physician said the hospital lacked the facilities to deal with the outbreak. “Patients had to either lie on the floor or bring their own beds to the hospital,’’ she said.

While malaria is common across central and southern Sudan, large dengue outbreaks are rare. But last fall and winter, dengue fever spread to 12 of the country’s 18 provinces, killing at least 36 people and infecting more than 5,200, according to Sudan’s Ministry of Health. However, the actual numbers are likely higher, given the limitations on testing.

‘‘Most hospitals outside of Khartoum are not connected to the Ministry of Health database,’’ said Alaaeldin Awad Mohamed Nogoud, a liver and transplant surgeon who is also a prominent pro-democracy activist.

The World Health Organization says several factors enabled the dengue outbreak, including the absence of disease surveillance infrastructure and heavy flooding in autumn. The stagnant water allowed mosquitoes to breed and fueled the spread of the disease.

Health experts also fear that growing mosquito migration, induced by climate change, could spur new surges in dengue fever, among other tropical diseases typically found beyond Sudan’s southern borders. The Aedes aegypti, a long-legged mosquito growing in number across Sudan that can carry the dengue virus, is causing particular concern.

According to Anne Wilson, an epidemiologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, containing illnesses spread by the Aedes aegypti is difficult because it mostly bites during the day, rendering insecticide-treated nets, similar to mosquito nets for beds, less effective.

Sudan’s public hospitals are state-run, but patients often still pay for drugs and tests. Hospitals in rural areas are the most depleted, stocked with little more than metal-frame beds and doctors.

In North Kordofan — the site of the recent dengue outbreak — some believe the virus went unchecked for months due to a widespread lack of blood testing equipment. Abdsalam and Amany Adris, the two women from El Obeid, said several doctors had told them they had malaria before they were correctly diagnosed.

After the Ministry of Health officially recognized the outbreak in November, officials say free testing and treatment were made available to dengue fever patients. And by January, North Kordofan was declared free of dengue fever.

But even after that announcement, the young doctor from the province said she was treating suspected cases. Few patients can afford to pay for the blood tests themselves, however, she added.

Both Nogoud and the young physician said widespread shortages are forcing physicians to go to black market for basic medicines, such as paracetamol IV drips to treat fever.

For years, Sudan has been in an economic crisis with annual inflation topping 100% on most months. Since 2018, the Sudanese pound has lost over 95% of its value against the dollar, making it difficult to buy pharmaceuticals or medical equipment from abroad.

By the end of last year, Sudan’s National Medical Supplies Fund — the body tasked with procuring pharmaceuticals — said the availability of cancer drugs stood at 48% of needed levels, and other emergency medication was at 68%. Doctors, working with little pay and in difficult conditions, have regularly gone on strike.

Critics accuse the country’s leaders of not putting more funds towards the health sector. The federal budget for 2021, listed on the government’s website, said the country’s health ministry would receive less than half of what would be allocated to the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, the country’s largest paramilitary group. The military spokesperson did not respond to AP’s request for comment.

With few resources, the Health Ministry has turned to short videos on social media, encouraging people in a catchy song to cover standing water sources and install netting on windows.

Few see this as a long-term solution.

“The whole country is in a state of chaos,” said Nada Fadul, an infectious diseases physician and associate of the Sudanese non-governmental organization NexGen.

“Health care might not become the priority for survival,” Fadul added.
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A single-injection antiviral treatment for newly infected COVID-19 patients reduced the risk of hospitalization by half in a large-scale clinical trial, a study published Wednesday said.

Stanford University professor Jeffrey Glenn, co-author of the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said the new drug “showed profound benefits for vaccinated and unvaccinated people alike.”

While the number of Americans dying daily of the disease caused by a coronavirus has fallen to about 500, treatments for COVID-19 remain limited. One of the most common — Paxlovid, made by Pfizer — involves taking 30 pills over five days.

The new treatment involves a single dose of pegylated interferon lambda, a synthetic version of a naturally occurring protein that infected cells secrete to defend against viral infection.

“What it does is it binds receptors on the surfaces of cells that activate our own antiviral defense mechanisms,” said Glenn, a professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology who heads the Stanford Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness Initiative.

“So if a virus has infected the cell, it will turn on processes that aim to destroy the virus’s replication,” he said. “It will also send signals to neighboring cells to warn them viruses are on their way and get ready to defend yourself.”

Receptors for interferon lambda are primarily in the linings of the lungs, airways and intestine — the main places COVID-19 strikes.

“We’re turning on these antiviral mechanisms in the cells, the lung, where the infection is happening,” Glenn said.

The phase three trial of the drug, conducted from June 2021 to February 2022, involved nearly 2,000 patients with COVID symptoms in Brazil and Canada, about 85 percent of whom had been vaccinated.

A total of 931 newly infected COVID patients were given a single injection of interferon lambda, while 1,018 participants were given a placebo.

The risk of COVID-19–related hospitalization or death from any cause was 47 percent lower in the interferon group than in the placebo group, according to the researchers.

Twenty-five of the 931 people who received the injection within seven days of exhibiting COVID symptoms were hospitalized, compared with 57 of the 1,018 who received the placebo.

Vaccinated patients treated with interferon lambda experienced a 51 percent reduction in hospitalization relative to the placebo group.

There was an 89 percent reduction in hospitalization among unvaccinated patients treated within the first three days of the onset of COVID symptoms compared with the placebo group.

Developed for hepatitis D

Glenn said interferon lambda proved effective against all COVID variants tested, including omicron, and side effects in the group receiving the injections were no greater than among the placebo recipients.

Glenn is the founder of a small biotechnology company called Eiger Biopharmaceuticals that acquired interferon lambda to develop drugs for the hepatitis delta virus.

“When COVID came, I said this would be the perfect drug for COVID,” said Glenn, who left the Palo Alto company but remains on the board of directors and is an equity holder.

Eiger sought an emergency use authorization for interferon lambda from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for COVID treatment last year, but it was not granted.

That was “very frustrating,” Glenn said, though he was hopeful that publication of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine “will help encourage regulators here and around the world to find a way to get lambda into patients as soon as possible.”
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Whether out-of-the-box thinking or a sign of desperation, scientists on Wednesday proposed the regular transport of moon dust to a point between Earth and Sun to temper the ravages of global warming. 

Ideas for filtering solar radiation to keep Earth from overheating have been kicking around for decades, ranging from giant space-based screens to churning out reflective white clouds. 

But the persistent failure to draw down planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions has pushed once-fanciful geoengineering schemes toward center stage in climate policy, investment and research. 

Blocking 1%-2% of the Sun’s rays is all it would take to lower Earth’s surface by a degree or two Celsius, roughly the amount it has warmed over the last century. 

The solar radiation technique with the most traction so far is the 24/7 injection of billions of shiny sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere. 

So-called stratospheric aerosol injection would be cheap, and scientists know it works because major volcanic eruptions basically do the same thing. When Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines blew its top in 1991, it lowered temperatures in the northern hemisphere by about 0.5 Celsius for nearly a year. 

But there are serious potential side-effects, including the disruption of rain patterns upon which millions depend for growing food.  

However, a new study in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Climate explores the possibility of using moon dust as a solar shield. 

A team of astronomers applied methods used to track planet formation around distant stars — a messy process that kicks up vast quantities of space dust — to Earth’s moon. 

Computer simulations showed that putting lunar dust at a gravitational sweet spot between Earth and Sun “blocked out a lot of sunlight with a little amount of mass,” said lead author Ben Bromley, a professor of physics at the University of Utah. 

‘Balancing marbles’ 

The scientists tested several scenarios involving different particle properties and quantities in different orbits, looking for the one that would throw the most shade. 

Moon dust worked best. The quantities needed, they said, would require the equivalent of a major mining operation on Earth. 

The authors stressed that their study was designed to calculate potential impact, not logistical feasibility. 

“We aren’t experts in climate change or rocket science,” said co-author Benjamin Bromley, a professor at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 

“We were just exploring different kinds of dust on a variety of orbits to see how effective this approach might be,” he added. “We don’t want to miss a game changer for such a critical problem.” 

Experts not involved in the study praised its methodology but doubted whether it would actually work. 

“Placing moon dust at the gravity midpoint between Earth and Sun, can indeed reflect heat,” said University of Edinburgh professor Stuart Haszeldine. 

“But this is like trying to balance marbles on a football — within a week most dust has spun out of stable orbit.” 

For Joanna Haigh, an emeritus professor of atmospherics at Imperial College London, the study is a distraction. 

The main problem, she said, “is the suggestion that the implementation of such schemes will solve the climate crisis whereas it just gives polluters an excuse not to act.” 
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The small distant world called Quaoar, named after a god of creation in Native American mythology, is producing some surprises for astronomers as it orbits beyond Pluto in the frigid outer reaches of our solar system.

Researchers said Wednesday they have detected a ring encircling Quaoar akin to the one around the planet Saturn. But the one around Quaoar defies the current understanding of where such rings can form – located much further away from it than current scientific understanding would allow.

The distance of the ring from Quaoar places it in a location where scientists believe particles should readily come together around a celestial body to form a moon rather than remain as separate components in a disk of ring material.

“This is the discovery of a ring located in a place that should not be possible,” said astronomer Bruno Morgado of the Valongo Observatory and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

Discovered in 2002, Quaoar is currently defined as a minor planet and is proposed as a dwarf planet, though it has not yet been formally given that status by the International Astronomical Union, the scientific body that determines such things.

Its diameter of about 1,110 kilometers is about a third that of Earth’s moon and half that of the dwarf planet Pluto. It has a small moon called Weywot, Quaoar’s son in mythology, with a diameter of 170 kilometers, orbiting beyond the ring.  

Inhabiting a distant region called the Kuiper belt populated by various icy bodies, Quaoar orbits about 43 times further than Earth’s distance to the sun. In comparison, Neptune, the outermost planet, orbits about 30 times further than Earth’s distance from the sun, and Pluto about 39 times further.

Quaoar’s ring was spotted using the European Space Agency’s orbiting Cheops telescope, whose primary purpose is to study planets beyond our solar system, as well as ground-based telescopes.

The ring, a clumpy disk made of ice-covered particles, is located about 4,100 kilometers away from Quaoar’s center, with a diameter of about 8,200 kilometers.

“Ring systems may be due to debris from the same formation process that originated the central body or may be due to material resulting after a collision with another body and captured by the central body. We do not have hints at the moment on how the Quaoar ring formed,” said astronomer and study co-author Isabella Pagano, director of Italian research institute INAF’s Astrophysical Observatory of Catania.

Unlike any other known ring around a celestial body, Quaoar’s is located outside what is called the Roche limit. That refers to the distance from any celestial body possessing an appreciable gravitational field within which an approaching object would be pulled apart. Material in orbit outside the Roche limit would be expected to assemble into a moon.

Saturn has the largest ring system in our solar system. The other large gas planets – Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune – all have rings, though less impressive, as do the non-planetary bodies Chariklo and Haumea. All reside inside the Roche limit.

But how can Quaoar flout this rule?

“We considered some possible explanations: a ring made of debris, resulting from a putative disruptive impact into a Quaoar moon, would survive for a very short time – but the probability to observe that is extremely low,” Pagano said.

“Another possibility is that theories for the aggregation of icy particles need to be revised, and particles might not always aggregate into larger bodies as quickly as one might expect.”
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A serpentlike robot designed by students from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, could revolutionize how NASA astronauts explore the lunar surface. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more
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Mexican police detained a medical doctor accused of using infected medicines that may have caused a mysterious meningitis outbreak in northern Durango state, after the disease killed at least 35 women in recent months.

Another 79 people have been hospitalized with signs of infection.

Police arrested the doctor who specializes in anesthesiology early Tuesday morning on charges of illegal practices including the re-use of medications at the private hospitals where he worked. The doctor’s full name was not disclosed.

Meningitis is typically associated with painful inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, often caused by a virus or in some cases bacteria or a fungal infection.

The affected patients in Durango were likely infected by fungal meningitis while having procedures in the same hospitals where the doctor worked, according to Durango state prosecutor Sonia Garza.

She told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday in the state capital that the first procedures associated with the infected patients took place last August and that many of them had been administered anesthesia for obstetric procedures.

“This specialist carried out procedures with no restraint,” said Garza, adding that he brought his own medication for patients, including unauthorized controlled drugs.

The outbreak has raised concern in both Mexico and from international bodies after the outbreak’s first death was confirmed last November.

Garza added that the detained doctor was the only physician who conducted procedures at the four hospitals where the infections have been observed. She said that he denied using his own medications at a hearing before prosecutors.

Reuters was not immediately able to request comment from the doctor, or locate his lawyer, but his son, contacted by Reuters, said his father is innocent.

“They accused my father without any evidence,” he said, declining to provide his name.

The meningitis outbreak is confined to private hospitals in the state capital, also known as Durango, according to Mexico’s health ministry.
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