How to train your immune system; reddit: the best we can do for IBD self-care?; placebo pills help migraines, even when patients know – Morning Medical Update

How to train your immune system

Older adults who have spent decades doing endurance exercise may not just have stronger muscles and hearts — their immune systems appear to be fitter, too. A new study in Scientific Reports found that “natural killer” (NK) cells from endurance-trained adults in their 60s were more metabolically efficient, less inflammatory and more resilient to stress than those from sedentary peers. Even when researchers blocked key immune signaling pathways with propranolol and rapamycin, NK cells from trained individuals maintained function, while untrained cells showed exhaustion.

Reddit: The best we can do for IBD self-care?

Researchers from Michigan Medicine analyzed hundreds of Reddit posts from users with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis to better understand how patients manage inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) outside the clinic. Published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the study reviewed 659 online posts from IBD-specific subreddits and identified common themes including symptom tracking, medication management and stress coping. The report found that Reddit serves as both a practical and emotional support tool for patients but also reveals gaps in available clinical self-management resources.

“There are no widely available evidence-based programs to comprehensively support patients with IBD in the day-to-day management of their disease,” said senior author Shirley Cohen-Mekelburg, M.D., M.S.

Placebo pills help migraines — even when patients know

In a new JAMA Network Open study, German researchers found that open-label placebos — pills patients know contain no active ingredient — may still benefit people living with migraine. In the randomized clinical trial of 120 adults, participants taking open-label placebos alongside usual care did not experience fewer headache or migraine days, but they reported meaningful improvements in quality of life, reduced pain-related disability and greater overall well-being compared with those receiving usual care alone. The 3-month regimen was well tolerated, with few side effects. Investigators say that while open-label placebos do not appear to alter objective measures like headache frequency, they may safely enhance subjective outcomes for migraine patients seeking nonpharmacologic options.