Health news: Treating long COVID symptoms, the relationship between asthma treatments and obesity, and more | Health

Occupational therapy or low-impact exercise might be the key to relieving long-haul COVID symptoms like extreme fatigue, breathlessness and brain fog, a pair of new studies from Ireland suggest.

The studies reflect two different — in some ways, opposite — approaches to dealing with symptoms that tend to plague long COVID patients.

One study taught long COVID patients through a four-week occupational therapy program how to better manage their fatigue, with an emphasis on energy planning, stress management and sleep hygiene.

Vegetarian diets are a healthy choice for growing kids — though they may slightly raise the odds of youngsters being underweight, a new study suggests.

The study, of nearly 9,000 young children, found that those on vegetarian diets were, on average, of similar weight and height as their peers who ate meat. They were also on par when it came to blood levels of iron and vitamin D — which could potentially be harder to get on a diet free of meat, fish and, sometimes, dairy products.

Black Americans are as likely to get multiple sclerosis (MS) as their white counterparts, but rates are much lower among Hispanic and Asian Americans, new research shows.

The findings refute the long-held belief that MS is rare in Black people, according to the study authors. The findings were published online April 27 in the journal Neurology.

School mental health (MH) service use increased among adolescents in 2019 compared with previous years, according to a research letter published online May 2 in JAMA Pediatrics.

Adam S. Wilk, Ph.D., from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues evaluated whether school MH service use increased among U.S. adolescents (aged 12 to 17 years) in 2019. The analysis included data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2009 to 2019; 165,686 adolescents).