“August 4, 2025 — The Ensuring Access through Collaborative Health and Patient Inclusion Council (EACH/PIC) has released the findings of its new report, Patient Experience Survey: Prescription Drug Affordability and Unaffordability, which captures how patients and caregivers define and experience prescription drug affordability. The results challenge conventional cost-review frameworks by showing that focusing on the affordability of individual drugs often misses critical patient context about patients’ broader challenges. Policymakers risk overlooking the burdens that make medications inaccessible, including insurance design, cumulative healthcare costs, and complex personal circumstances.”
Specialist Physicians’ Perspectives on State PDABs: Access, Affordability, and Administrative Burden
“Key findings: Specialists report major gaps in communication between PDABs and providers. Physicians anticipate increased administrative burden and disruptions to care. Concerns emerge around treatment access, clinical autonomy, and non-medical switching. Most believe key decisions are being made without adequate clinical input”
Short, Brisk Walks Could Help You Live Longer Than Long, Slow Strolls
“The speed of your steps could make a significant difference in adding years to your life, according to a new study. Researchers led by a team from Vanderbilt University in the US analyzed the physical activity of 79,856 adults in 12 US states, comparing links between time spent walking slowly, time spent walking quickly, and eventual cause of death (where applicable) across an average follow-up period of almost 17 years.”
The One Exercise Every Woman Over 50 Should Be Doing to Stay Strong
“The stats are pretty alarming: muscle mass declines 3-8% per decade after age 30, and the rate of loss accelerates even more after age 60. The good news? It’s never too late to start moving, and resistance training in particular has been shown to increase muscle mass, improve bone density and boost metabolic health in postmenopausal women.”
Placebo effects improve sickness symptoms and drug efficacy during systemic inflammation: a randomized controlled trial in human experimental endotoxemia
“Background: Systemic inflammation triggers a wide range of sickness symptoms, including bodily discomfort and affective symptoms, which are relevant to numerous health conditions. While extensive research in the placebo field demonstrates that positive expectations can improve symptoms, it remains unclear if interventions designed to augment positive treatment expectations can alleviate sickness symptoms in the context of immunomodulatory drug therapies.”
Eating minimally processed meals doubles weight loss even when ultraprocessed foods are healthy, study finds
“People in the United Kingdom lost twice as much weight eating meals typically made at home than they did when eating store-bought ultraprocessed food considered healthy, the latest research has found. “This new study shows that even when an ultraprocessed diet meets nutritional guidelines, people will still lose more weight eating a minimally processed diet,” said coauthor Dr. Kevin Hall, a former senior investigator at the US National Institutes of Health who has conducted some of the world’s only controlled clinical trials on ultraprocessed foods.”
Understanding the importance of B vitamins for health
“Eight different vitamins make up the B complex, and they all play crucial roles in the body, such as producing energy, keeping our nervous system healthy, and supporting cell development. If eight sounds like a lot to keep track of, it might help to know that most research focuses on five in particular: thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), folate (B9), and cobalamin (B12).”
Researchers at University Hospitals and the Cleveland VA Say Long-Term Exercise Programs May Restore Neural Connections in Parkinson’s Patients
“CLEVELAND – It was the early 2000s when researchers first showed that exercise can help relieve the tremors that are common with Parkinson’s Disease. So far, researchers haven’t been able to explain how exercise helps. But they may be getting closer to an answer. A novel study conducted at University Hospitals and the VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System, through its Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center, provides clues, as it shows that long-term dynamic exercise programs might have wider restorative effects on the brain signals of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients than researchers previously thought.”
Colon Cancer and Exercise: Can Physical Activity Reprogram Genes?
“A new study led by researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah (the U) shows that regular exercise may do more than help colon cancer patients feel better—it may actually change gene activity in both tumors and surrounding fat tissue. “This is about more than fitness,” says Vicky Bandera, a PhD student at the U leading this project. “We’re seeing early indication that exercise might actually change how cancer behaves at a molecular level. This work and the necessary follow-up studies can’t happen without funding at every stage—from basic science to clinical trials and large population studies.””
