Eating fast without chewing much would result in obesity among elementary school students, a Japanese research team has found.
It has already been known that fast-eating adults with poor chewing performance are prone to obesity. But little known was a relation between eating habits and masticatory performance among children.
Japan’s parliament on Wednesday enacted a bill that will allow people to pick up over-the-counter drugs at convenience stores and other outlets without pharmacists. The bill to revise the pharmaceuticals and medical devices law was approved at a plenary meeting of the House of Councilors, the upper chamber of the Diet, the country’s parliament, following its passage through the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, last month. The revised law will require consumers to listen to explanations from pharmacists online before purchases. It will take effect by around spring 2027. The government expects the new system to be used also in areas with few pharmacies, such as remote islands and mountainous areas.
Japan’s Emperor Emeritus Akihito has been diagnosed with silent myocardial ischemia, a condition of an asymptomatic patient whose blood flow from the coronary arteries to the heart muscle is reduced due to excessive exercise, the Imperial Household Agency said Saturday.
As the number of people struggling with insomnia and insufficient sleep increases, the Japanese Society of Sleep Research has submitted a formal request to the government to add “Sleep Disorders” to the names of medical departments. They envision combining this term with existing department names, such as “Sleep Disorder Internal Medicine,” and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is now considering the proposal.
People suffering from motion sickness may be able to prevent their symptoms from developing just by listening to a minute of special sound, a Japanese research team said. The research found a sound at 100 hertz stimulates the inner ear and helps to reduce motion sickness by improving balance, the team said, while current preventive measures are largely limited to taking medicines.
The National Federation of Health Insurance Societies, or Kenporen, said Wednesday that the average premium rate at corporate health insurance societies in Japan is expected to hit a record high of 9.34 pct in fiscal 2025. The rate is projected to rise 0.03 percentage point from the previous year ended in March, affected by higher contributions to the medical care services for the elderly, according to the group of health insurance societies for employees of large corporations and their families.
The number of new cases of acute respiratory infection, or ARI, reported at some 3,000 designated medical institutions across Japan was 181,270 in the week through April 13, a national institute said Tuesday. According to the Japan Institute for Health Security, the number of ARI patients per medical institution in the reporting week stood at 49.39. By prefecture, Tochigi logged the highest figure, at 94.13, and Kochi posted the lowest figure, at 27.37. The number of ARI patients will be released every Tuesday, and the overview of the ARI situation in Japan will be updated every Friday.
Japan’s health ministry has started monitoring acute respiratory infections, including cold symptoms, under the infectious diseases control law to detect unknown illnesses promptly. The measure, based on the lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic, allows the ministry to keep an eye on a wide range of infectious diseases to spot unknown illnesses.
As many as 49.2 pct of needy households with infants have experienced an inability to buy disposable diapers due to economic reasons, according to a survey by international nongovernmental organization Save the Children Japan.
An inability to buy baby formula has been experienced by 39.6 pct.
According to the survey, conducted online between June and August last year, 74.6 pct of respondents said they changed diapers less often when they couldn’t buy diapers, while an inability to buy powdered milk led 41.1 pct to feed babies with diluted formula and 27.9 pct to use less of it.
Exposure to secondhand smoke during pregnancy increases by about 2.3 times the risk of placental abruption, a condition in which part of the placenta separates from the uterine wall before childbirth, according to a study conducted by a team from Japan’s Tohoku University. It found that pregnant women exposed to secondhand smoke for four to seven days a week and at least an hour a day had 2.34 times the risk of suffering placental abruption compared with those who were not. The risk was 2.21 times higher among pregnant women who smoked at least 11 cigarettes per day compared with nonsmokers.
Barrier Free Japan