Dr. Steve: New Flu Spray
& Coffee Can Be Bad For Diabetics

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7:00am Segment Info:
If the thought of getting a needle makes you queasy, and that's kept you away from getting your flu shot. There may be help on the way. Researchers in Korea are developing a vaccine that gets placed under the tongue. This study was performed in mice and found that two doses of influenza vaccine under the tongue of mice primed their immune systems to fight the flu. The next step is to try the vaccine in people.

Isn't there a flu vaccine that's a spray?

There is, but that's a live, although weakened form of influenza so it's not recommended for everyone. The sublingual vaccine worked whether it was live or inactivated. Also, some people feel discomfort even from the nasal spray vaccine. But besides convenience, researchers say sublingual vaccination appears to disseminate immunity to a broader range of organs than the classical routes of injecting or ingesting vaccines, and this could make it extremely easy to perform mass vaccinations against respiratory infections, including bird flu, which is an emerging concern.

In other news, that morning cup of coffee could be trouble for diabetics.

This is a small study of only 10 people so i wouldn't get too crazy about it, but a new report finds that blood sugar levels rose by 8 percent when these patients took pills filled with the level of caffeine found in four cups of coffee. So it may be possible that having too much caffeine can increase your blood sugar levels and may be a concern for type two diabetics... Making it more difficult for them to get their blood sugar under control. It's interesting because on one hand researchers say the antioxidants in coffee are good for diabetics, but at the same time caffeine may disrupt the body's ability to process sugar.

How reliable is this research? There are a couple of factors that leave me with more questions than answers.

First, this is an extremely small group of patients, 10. Second, it looks at effects over one day, rather than over the long term, and finally the effects of caffeine in capsules cannot be directly translated to effects of caffeinated coffee, as studies have previously found less pronounced effects of caffeinated coffee on blood glucose levels as compared with caffeine in isolation. The solution if you’re diabetic is to keep your coffee consumption at a moderate level or check your blood sugar to see if you're sensitive to it.

8:00am Segment Info:
If you snore, it may do more that just annoy your partner.

A new study from South Korea finds it may contribute to chronic bronchitis. The report looked at over 42-hundred people and found those who snored six to seven nights a week were 68 percent more likely to develop chronic bronchitis than those who said they never snored. The incidence of chronic bronchitis was 25% greater for people who snored five times a week or less.

What's the connection between snoring and bronchitis?

They're not sure. It could have something to do with inflammation. Bronchitis is inflammation of the air passages within the lungs. There are a couple of theories. One is that the vibrations caused by snoring lead to inflammation in the airways. The other is that the inflammation comes first, causes the snoring which then leads to sleep apnea, and we know that there is an association between sleep apnea and inflammation. So that could be the key.

In other news, there may be a physical explanation for why some people are morning people and others are night owls.

We would all have to be morning people otherwise we wouldn't survive on this shift, whichever you are, it all comes down to your own internal body clock, which researchers say is tied to your genes.

European scientists studied skin cells from 11 morning people and 17 night owls and found that overall. The skin cells reflected the individual's preferences. They did a test where they made patients' skin cells glow, in test tubes, in time with their natural circadian rhythm. The skin cells from the morning people faded a little earlier than the night people's skin cells.

So does this whole thing boil down to biology?

Not completely. By looking at all these different cells the researchers discovered that there was a wide range of circadian rhythms or internal clocks and that means that a person's behavior like staying up at night or waking up early can make them a night person or a day person. In other words, many people have the ability to switch and become one or the other.