Infectious Disease expert Dr. Renuga Vivekanandan joins us for a preview of what to expect this season. Topics covered:
- Viruses
- Influenza
- COVID-19
- RSV
- West Nile
- MPox
- Vaccines

Guest: Dr. Renuga Vivekanandan, infectious Disease expert and Division VP and CMO Physician Enterprise - Midwest, Professor, Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs, Creighton University School of Medicine.

Back by popular demand, our mythbusting team takes looks at two new health topics making headlines and compares popular beliefs to the latest evidence:

1. Is exercise as effective as other treatments to help depression?
   • Meta-analysis: https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-075847
2. Do tattoos cause lymphoma?
   • Study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00228-1/fulltext
   • Plus a discussion on correlation vs. causation

Guest: Dr. Ankita Sagar
System Vice President for Clinical Standards and Variation Reduction, Physician Enterprise and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, Creighton University

Previous Myth-Busting Episodes
Are full body, preventative scans helpful or harmful for healthy individuals?
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903646/15388164

Fasting and Statins: Do statins cause muscle aches and is it necessary to fast before labs?
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903646/13919434

Water Consumption and Vegetarian Diets: How much water do we really need and are vegetarian or vegan diets truly healthy?
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903646/14691788

Components of social connection are associated with mortality, but research examining their independent and combined effects in the same dataset is lacking. That has now changed thanks to a recent study published in BMC Medicine. We're joined by the primary author of that study to discuss the results and to get his perspective on social connectivity, loneliness and isolation and the impact on mortality.

Discussed:
Subjective and objective types of social connection
Analysis of more than 458,000 participants with full data from the UK Biobank cohort linked to mortality registers
What types of loneliness and social isolation are linked to a higher risk of death
Potential implications for screening
Guest: study author and Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow Dr. Hamish Foster

References:
Study: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-023-03055-7

Surgeon General Advisory: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
Surgeon General Report on Social Connection: www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-social-connection-general.pdf