There are health benefits in “stopping to smell the roses,” writes Dr. Samuel Mathis. A recent study found that individuals who sat in a garden landscape and smelled the plants had lower heart rates and improved autonomic nervous system responses to stressful stimuli, he writes.

“While previous studies have analyzed how one or a few non-medical factors impact our health, Americans often face multiple barriers leading to different levels of health risks that are not yet well-understood,” says UTMB’s Dr. Suresh Bhavnani. A new study from Bhavnani and colleagues uses artificial intelligence to uncover how such nonmedical factors occur together across patients and their risks for outcomes.

H5N1, the avian influenzas virus known to decimate wildfowl in Asia and Europe, is jumping into mammals in North America, write Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in their latest Medical Discovery News column. The overall concern is the spread to humans and the start of a pandemic, the write.

At the second edition of the Model of Care Forum in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, UTMB’s Wayne Keathley stressed the urgent need to “strengthen prevention efforts by fostering healthier lifestyles such as proper nutrition, regular physical activity, mental health awareness, smoking cessation, and encouraging routine medical checkups.”

Dr. Victor S. Sierpina quotes Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his column about cultivating love and compassion: “… be a reservoir of joy, an oasis of peace, a pool of serenity that can ripple out to all those around you.”

"Now it looks like we have new strains of virus that may escape some of the immunity associated with the other strains of viruses that could exacerbate the epidemics among animals and wildlife," UTMB’s Dr. Gregory Gray tells Reuters after a new strain of bird flu has been detected in U.S. dairy cattle. This news was also reported in VOA, Dairy Herd Management, AgWeek, and other national and international outlets.

The answer to why we don’t vaccinate against avian flu in the U.S. lies in a combination of science, economics, and global trade policies, write Drs. Megan Berman and Richard Rupp in their latest Vaccine Smarts column.

“Alcohol is woven into the fabric of many cultures, and from college parties to family gatherings, it's hard to avoid," UTMB’s Dr. Christine Kley tells Parade for a story on how alcohol causes inflammation.

“If you can understand how these drugs are accessing the brain and where they are acting, then potentially that could guide future drug development to be able to better target these regions,” UTMB’s Dr. Kevin Williams tells Men’s Health for this story on how the popular weight loss drug Ozempic can affect the brain.

Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel explore how animals can act as reservoirs for viruses and other infectious microbes in their latest Medical Discovery News column.