This Smart Skin Patch Can Tell You if You’re Getting Too Much Sun

Photo: courtesy of La Roche-Posay

You know that you’ve got to protect your skin from the sun’s penetrating rays, but have you ever wondered how much sun exposure you’re actually getting? Thanks to a clever new product from the beauty giant L’Oreal, you’ll soon be able to measure your sun exposure with the help of a high-tech sensor called My UV Patch.

The company—more commonly known for its makeup products—unveiled its foray in wearable tech today at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The patch looks almost like a band-aid, and contains photosensitive dyes that change color when exposed to the sun’s skin-damaging ultraviolet (UV) rays, according to a press release. The stick-on is stretchy, disposable, and can be placed anywhere on the body for up to five days.

RELATED: 7 Simple Steps for Head-to-Toe Sun Protection

Wearers can then upload a photo of their patch to the My UV Patch app, and get feedback about exactly how much UV exposure their skin received. The idea is that people can use the information to inform the level of sun protection they need.

The company plans to include the patch free with any purchase of La Roche-Posay brand sunscreens later this year.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1TFeDTD

Some Women Face Geographic Barriers to Breast Reconstruction

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Long distances to treatment centers are a significant obstacle for some women seeking breast reconstruction after a mastectomy, a new study finds.

“While greater patient awareness and insurance coverage have contributed to greater breast reconstruction rates in the United States, geographic barriers to access this service remain, particularly to academic centers,” wrote the study’s authors, led by Dr. Evan Matros from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

The researchers used the National Cancer Database to examine the association between breast reconstruction and the travel distance of more than 1 million American women who had a mastectomy between 1998 and 2011.

During this time period, the overall rate of immediate breast reconstruction jumped from about 11 percent to more than 32 percent, the investigators found.

The upward trend may reflect the Women’s Health and Cancer Rights Act of 1998, which requires insurance companies to pay for breast reconstruction after mastectomy, the researchers suggested. Implant-based reconstructions increased the most, but breast reconstructions involving patients’ own tissue also rose, the study found.

The researchers found that treatment travel distances for patients having breast reconstruction increased from 1998 to 2011, but the same was not true for women who didn’t have the surgery.

The findings were published in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

“Patients who underwent mastectomy with immediate reconstruction had to travel significantly greater distances than patients who did not undergo reconstruction,” the study authors wrote in a journal news release.

“The greater distance traveled by women undergoing breast reconstruction, as compared to mastectomy without reconstruction, suggests the presence of a geographic disparity,” they concluded.

Roughly 14 percent of the women who traveled less than 20 miles underwent reconstruction, compared to almost one-quarter of the women traveling between 100 and 200 miles, the study found.

Women treated at academic hospitals were most likely to undergo breast reconstruction. The study revealed 26 percent of these women had the procedure, compared to 20 percent treated at comprehensive community hospitals and 10 percent treated at community hospitals.

The average travel distance for women treated at both types of community hospitals was about 20 miles, but women treated at academic hospitals traveled an average of 47 miles, the researchers found.

Travel distance for women who underwent reconstruction with their own tissue at high-volume hospitals more than doubled over the study period to 53 miles. The study authors said this reflects the concentration of specialized centers in metropolitan areas.

The researchers suggested that more needs to be done to eliminate the barriers preventing women from accessing breast reconstruction after mastectomy. “Greater numbers of plastic surgeons, especially in community [hospitals], would be one method of addressing this inequality,” they wrote.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about breast reconstruction after mastectomy.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1POuHDv

Antibody May Lower Rejection Rates After Stem Cell Transplant in Leukemia Patients

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — People with acute leukemia who were given antibody therapy before a stem cell transplant fared better than those who didn’t receive the treatment, a small study found.

Stem cell transplantation allows doctors to give higher doses of cancer-killing chemotherapy, according to the American Cancer Society. However, the odds of the body rejecting the transplanted stem cells are very high — a condition called graft-versus-host disease, the study authors explained.

By treating patients first with animal-derived antibodies, called antihuman T-lymphocyte immune globulin (ATG), the researchers were able to lower the threat of rejection in patients.

“Graft-versus-host disease is the most serious complication after stem cell transplantation,” said lead researcher Dr. Francesca Bonifazi, from the Institute of Hematology at Bologna University in Italy.

“Using [ATG] reduces the risk of complications of stem cell transplants without increasing the risk of leukemia recurrence and infections,” she added.

After an average follow-up of two years, 32 percent of the patients given ATG had chronic graft-versus-host disease. But, almost 69 percent of patients who weren’t given ATG had graft-versus-host disease, Bonifazi said.

“Stem cell transplantation is a curative option for several blood diseases and for acute leukemia in particular, which represents the most frequent indication for transplant,” she said.

“The risk of severe complications that can be life-threatening or severely affect the quality of life can be significantly reduced without decreasing transplant efficacy,” Bonifazi said.

The findings was published Jan. 7 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study included 168 leukemia patients treated at 27 different centers. The volunteers were randomly assigned to receive ATG or not.

At two years, the survival rate was similar in patients who received ATG or didn’t. But, the rate of survival in which they were free from chronic graft-versus-host disease and cancer recurrence was significantly better among patients given the antibody — 37 percent versus 17 percent, the researchers found.

“Here, by using [ATG] prior to transplant, we show that the risk of chronic graft-versus-host disease is significantly reduced without an increase of cancer relapse,” said study co-author Dr. Nicolaus Kroger. He is director of the department of stem cell transplantation at University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.

Lee Greenberger is chief scientific officer for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, based in White Plains, N.Y. Commenting on the new research, he said that “chronic graft-versus-host disease, which can occur after transplantation for the treatment of leukemia, continues to be a major limitation to conventional transplantation therapy. This study demonstrates that this antibody appears to significantly reduce the incidence of chronic graft-versus-host disease, and may improve the quality of life without a negligible effect on survival.”

Greenberger added that “this advance, coupled with previous studies and other ongoing trials with this antibody in transplant, may be of significant benefit to patients with blood cancer in need of a bone marrow transplant.”

More information

Visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute for more on leukemia.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1POuHDo

Hard Lessons Learned From the Ebola Fight

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has been a human tragedy of terrible proportion, leaving 11,315 dead since it began in March 2014.

But the epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — the largest Ebola outbreak in history — also has provided a unique opportunity to study what had been a rare virus, potentially arming researchers with the know-how to protect people against future outbreaks.

A trio of papers in the Jan. 7 New England Journal of Medicine reveal some of what has been learned about the virus, which has sickened more than 28,000 people:

• Women infected with Ebola had a higher survival rate than men, raising questions about what caused this advantage.
• An anti-malaria drug used when doctors ran out of their usual medication wound up reducing patients’ risk of death by more than 30 percent.
• The much-hyped strategy of using blood plasma from Ebola survivors to help treat future patients appears to be a bust, offering no significant survival advantage to those who received transfusions.

“The thing these three papers have in common is that they’re really showing there’s a concerted effort to conduct research on Ebola, and there’s a major opportunity to learn more — so much more — about Ebola than we ever could prior to the outbreak in West Africa,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an Ebola expert and senior associate at the UPMC Center for Health Security, in Baltimore.

In the first paper, members of the World Health Organization’s Ebola Response Team found that women were less likely to die than men from Ebola infection.

About 63 percent of women died compared with 67 percent of men, even though both genders had a similar risk of contracting the virus, researchers reported.

The WHO team ruled out age, the severity of symptoms and the time it took for the patient to be hospitalized as factors that might explain the advantage women had over men, said Christl Donnelly, a team member and a professor of statistical epidemiology at Imperial College London in England.

“We were not able to identify what drove the observed difference,” Donnelly said.

“It does show there may be some interaction with gender and Ebola,” Adalja said. “We know that females do face infectious disease differently than males. There are genetic and hormonal differences that could be at play and will give us more of an understanding of who lives and dies with Ebola.”

The research team noted that male Ebola patients tended to take about a half-day longer to get to the hospital, which could increase the risk they would transmit the disease to someone else.

The second paper, by a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) team, presents the results of what Adalja called a “natural clinical trial” for an anti-malarial drug combo called artesunate-amodiaquine.

Suspected Ebola patients receive treatment for both Ebola and malaria, Adalja said. Patients often are suffering from both diseases, but sometimes patients have malaria that resembles Ebola.

In August 2014, at the peak of the epidemic in Liberia, the Doctors Without Borders team ran out of its first-line anti-malarial medication, artemether-lumefantrine, said study lead author Dr. Iza Ciglenecki.

Patients admitted during this period were given another commonly used anti-malarial drug, artesunate-amodiaquine, said Ciglenecki, project manager of the organization’s Initiative for Innovations.

“This situation, in many ways, resembles random allocation of anti-malarial drugs, as it was only determined by the time when the patient came to the treatment center and not by clinicians’ preferences nor patients’ characteristics,” Ciglenecki added.

It turned out that patients given artesunate-amodiaquine treatment were 31 percent less likely to die than those who received the usual treatment, doctors learned.

The results can be read in one of two ways, Adalja said. It could be that artesunate-amodiaquine is somehow effective against Ebola, particularly given that amodiaquine has been shown to have anti-Ebola virus activity in laboratory studies.

But it also could be that the first-line drug, artemether-lumefantrine, is more dangerous than previously thought. “As of now, people maybe shouldn’t be using that first-line drug, and should be moving to this other drug,” Adalja said.

The third study focused on the practice of treating new Ebola patients with plasma drawn from survivors, in hopes that the plasma contains antibodies that would boost their immune response.

Several of the Ebola patients treated in the United States received these transfusions, and some suspected the plasma might have accounted for the fact that most U.S. patients survived.

But after controlling for other factors, researchers concluded that 84 patients who received the plasma got no benefit over others who didn’t get a transfusion.

“They didn’t show a benefit, which was something people sort of expected based on earlier data,” Adalja said.

More information

For more on Ebola, visit the World Health Organization.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1POuHn2

Blood Test May Help Rule Out Pregnancy Complication: Study

By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A new blood test might help doctors identify pregnant women who are unlikely to develop a dangerous complication called pre-eclampsia, despite having suspicious signs or symptoms.

That’s the finding of a study in the Jan. 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Experts said that if the results are confirmed by further research, the test could go a long way in ruling out pre-eclampsia in women with suspected cases.

That’s important because right now, women with possible pre-eclampsia are usually hospitalized for close monitoring, said Dr. Ellen Seely, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

A reliable test that could spare women that hospital stay would have a “substantial impact,” said Seely, who wrote an editorial published with the study.

Anywhere from 2 percent to 8 percent of pregnant women develop pre-eclampsia, according to the March of Dimes.

The condition, which occurs after the 20th week of pregnancy, is marked by high blood pressure and other signs that a woman’s organs — such as the kidneys and liver — aren’t functioning properly. Symptoms can include protein in the urine, as well as severe headaches and vision problems.

Detecting pre-eclampsia early is “essential,” because it carries serious risks for mothers and babies, said Dr. Stefan Verlohren, senior researcher on the new study and a consultant in maternal/fetal medicine at Charite University Medicine, in Berlin, Germany.

Pre-eclampsia can lead to preterm delivery and low birth weight. It also raises a woman’s risk of seizures and coma, and placental abruption — where the placenta separates from the uterus, sometimes causing life-threatening bleeding.

The problem, Verlohren said, is that it can be difficult to know when a woman is developing pre-eclampsia. For example, women who show elevated blood pressure later in pregnancy could be in the early stages of pre-eclampsia, or they could have isolated high blood pressure.

So his team looked at whether a blood test could help predict whether women with suspected pre-eclampsia would be diagnosed with the disorder in the next week.

The test measures the ratio of two proteins in the blood. One, called sFlt-1, inhibits new blood vessels from forming; the other, known as PlGF, encourages blood vessel formation. Studies have shown that women with pre-eclampsia tend to have high levels of sFlt-1, but relatively low levels of PlGF — a sign of compromised blood flow to the placenta.

Verlohren’s team used blood samples from more than 1,000 women who were between the 24th and 37th week of pregnancy, all of whom had suspected pre-eclampsia.

Each woman had at least one sign or symptom of the complication, but did not meet the criteria doctors use to definitively diagnose it, Verlohren said.

In a first group, of 500 women, the researchers found that a test result of 38 appeared to be the key cutoff number. They then validated that in another 550 patients.

It turned out that women with a test result of 38 or lower remained free of pre-eclampsia for the next week more than 99 percent of the time, the investigators found.

“This is a test that can tell a woman she’s extremely unlikely to develop pre-eclampsia in the next week,” Seely said.

But what it can’t do, she added, is predict which women will develop the complication. Only about 37 percent of study patients with a result higher than 38 developed pre-eclampsia in the next four weeks.

It’s also unclear how exactly the test should be used in the real world. “This study does not address the question of how to use it in practice,” Seely said.

For one, it reliably ruled out pre-eclampsia, but only for the next week. Seely said it’s not known whether the test would continue to perform as well if a woman were retested after a week.

Verlohren said a clinical trial is underway in the United Kingdom to see whether the test — with its one-week prediction — can reduce unnecessary hospital stays for pre-eclampsia monitoring.

The test’s manufacturer, Roche Diagnostics, funded the new study, and Verlohren and several co-researchers have financial ties to the company.

If the test can help many women avoid the hospital, the benefits would be significant, Seely said.

“Hospitalization takes women away from their families, including any children they have at home,” she pointed out. “The stress is substantial. If that can be avoided it would have a big impact on their quality of life.”

More information

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has more on pre-eclampsia and high blood pressure.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1TFeEH3

1 in 10 Medicaid Recipients Gets Drugs to Quit Smoking

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Roughly one in 10 U.S. smokers using Medicaid insurance gets medications to help quit smoking, with a wide variation between states, a new study finds.

Under the Affordable Care Act, state Medicaid programs must cover at least some counseling and approved therapies such as nicotine gum and anti-smoking drugs such as bupropion (Zyban, Wellbutrin) and varenicline (Chantix). The drugs ease withdrawal symptoms and reduce cravings for cigarettes, the researchers said.

But even if people on Medicaid who smoke want to quit, states don’t always help. State Medicaid programs may prevent them from getting anti-smoking drugs through policies such as high cost-sharing or prior authorization requirements, said researchers at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

The study found that in 2013, the use of anti-smoking drugs by smokers with Medicaid coverage ranged from less than 1 percent in Texas to about 30 percent in Minnesota. Other states in the top five to provide anti-smoking drugs were Arizona, New Hampshire, Oregon and Utah. Other states in the bottom five were Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi and Rhode Island, the researchers said.

“These data show that most Medicaid programs could do much more to help smokers quit,” said lead author Leighton Ku, professor and interim chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at George Washington’s School of Public Health.

“Data from the [U.S.] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that medical treatments for smoking-related diseases will cost the Medicaid program about $75 billion in 2016, but we spend less than one-quarter of 1 percent of that amount to help smokers quit,” Ku said in a university news release.

Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease in the United States. About one-third of adults with Medicaid coverage smoke, about twice as many as in the general population, the researchers noted.

“Every state Medicaid program, working with public health departments and others, could make smoking cessation a higher priority to improve health and to lower health care costs,” Ku said.

The study was published in the January issue of the journal Health Affairs.

More information

The American Cancer Society offers a guide to quitting smoking.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1TF86bq

Psych Therapies May Have Long-Term Benefits for Irritable Bowel Patients

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Doctors have long known that psychological therapies such as relaxation and hypnosis can temporarily ease the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). But, new research suggests they could also offer long-term benefits.

IBS is a gastrointestinal disorder that affects up to 16 percent of the U.S. population. It causes chronic abdominal pain, discomfort, bloating, diarrhea or constipation. There’s currently no cure, but dietary changes, medication and psychological interventions can provide symptom relief, the study authors noted.

“Our study is the first one that has looked at long-term effects,” said the study’s senior author, Lynn Walker, a professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville.

“We found that the moderate benefit that psychological therapies confer in the short term continue over the long term. This is significant because IBS is a chronic, intermittent condition for which there is no good medical treatment,” she said in a hospital news release.

The researchers analyzed results of 41 clinical trials involving more than 2,200 IBS patients.

The analysis found several different psychological therapies — including relaxation, hypnosis and cognitive behavioral therapy — equally beneficial in helping people change the way they think. Regardless of the length of treatment, the researchers found the effects may last at least six to 12 months after treatment ends.

Online treatments were just as effective as those conducted in person, the study, published recently in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, found.

The study’s first author, Kelsey Laird, a doctoral student in Vanderbilt’s clinical psychology program, said, “Western medicine often conceptualizes the mind as separate from the body, but IBS is a perfect example of how the two are connected.

“Gastrointestinal symptoms can increase stress and anxiety, which can increase the severity of the symptoms. This is a vicious cycle that psychological treatment can help break,” she said in the news release.

The researchers next plan to examine the effects of psychological therapies on patients’ ability to function at work, school and during other routine activities.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases provides more information on IBS.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1TF83fN

Mouse Study May Offer Clues to Mysteries of Schizophrenia

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Results of experiments with mice may help shed light on some of the harder-to-treat symptoms of schizophrenia in humans, a new study suggests.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that affects about one in every 100 adults worldwide, according to background notes with the study.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City found that the loss of certain cells in a previously unexplored area of the brain’s memory center may be linked with the disabling disease.

Specifically, the investigators said a decrease in the number of so-called inhibitory neurons in a tiny area of the hippocampus may play a role in stubborn symptoms such as social withdrawal, low levels of motivation and emotional problems.

It’s long been thought that schizophrenia originates in the hippocampus, the brain region that handles memory. Nearly every part of the hippocampus has been studied by scientists trying to learn more about schizophrenia, the study authors said.

However, a tiny region called CA2 has, for the most part, been overlooked. And, that’s where the loss of inhibitory neurons occurs, according to the study, published Jan. 6 in the journal Neuron.

Compared with normal, healthy mice, those with schizophrenia showed a significant decrease in inhibitory neurons in the CA2 region, the researchers said.

“Even the timing of the emergence of symptoms in the mice — during young adulthood — parallels the onset of schizophrenia in humans,” study co-lead author Joseph Gogos, a professor of physiology and neuroscience, said in a university news release.

Study co-author Steven Siegelbaum added, “We can now examine the effects of schizophrenia at the cellular level and at the behavioral level.” Siegelbaum is chair of the department of neuroscience at the university.

“This essentially opens up a whole new avenue for research that could lead to earlier diagnosis and more effective treatments for schizophrenia,” Siegelbaum said.

However, it’s important to note that results of animal experiments often aren’t replicated in humans.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about schizophrenia.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1VJB5MQ

Statins May Reduce Heart Risks Linked to Sleep Apnea: Study

By Tara Haelle
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2016 (HealthDay News) — A new discovery about the way sleep apnea may raise the risk of heart disease also suggests that taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs might reduce that risk, according to a new study.

Sleep apnea is a common disorder that involves irregular breathing while asleep, with oxygen intake dropping frequently for brief periods. The condition can triple a person’s risk of stroke, high blood pressure and other heart problems, said study author Dr. Sanja Jelic, an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

Statins such as Crestor (rosuvastatin) and Lipitor (atorvastatin) are already taken by millions of Americans to reduce their risk of heart disease.

“If the beneficial effects of statins on blood vessel health in patients with obstructive sleep apnea is confirmed in larger clinical trials, obstructive sleep apnea may become an indication for statin therapy,” Jelic said.

The findings were published online Jan. 6 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

In the small, laboratory study, researchers closely examined endothelial cells, which line the inside of blood vessels. They looked at endothelial cells from 76 adults with obstructive sleep apnea and 52 adults without sleep apnea. The adults were similar in terms of body fat percentage, daytime sleepiness symptoms, blood pressure and underlying health conditions.

The scientists found that a particular protein was in different places in the cells of those with sleep apnea compared to the cells of those without the disorder. The protein, called CD59, normally stays on the surface of endothelial cells to protect them from part of the body’s immune system, according to background notes with the study. But in patients with sleep apnea, the protein was often inside the cells.

A series of experiments showed that the cells pull the protein inside them when oxygen levels drop. The cells then become vulnerable to inflammation, which can contribute to high blood pressure, the researchers said.

“Chronic inflammation of the blood vessels contributes to increased cardiovascular risk, such as heart attack, stroke or heart failure, in patients with obstructive sleep apnea,” Jelic said.

How much protein the cells pulled inside them depended on how much cholesterol — the waxy, fat-like substance found in all cells of the body — was present. Statins stopped the cells from bringing the protein inside them, the investigators found.

The findings could help to connect the dots for health care experts, said Rebecca Spencer, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“This presents an explanation of how apnea and vascular risk are connected,” Spencer said. “There is some assumption that these two may be independently associated with poor health, but this study shows a mechanism that directly links apnea to vascular risk.”

Experts agreed, however, that people with sleep apnea should not seek statin prescriptions just yet since these findings were limited to the lab.

Dr. Sarah Samaan, a cardiologist at the Baylor Heart Hospital in Plano, Texas, said: “This is basic science research, not a clinical study. So we don’t know specifically what degree of reduction in heart risk statins might provide for sleep apnea patients without other risk factors. But it does provide a great launching point for new patient-centered studies on the topic.

“Although statins don’t treat sleep apnea, they may help reduce the dangerous consequences sleep apnea can have on the heart,” she added.

Possible side effects of statins can include muscle aches or liver enzyme abnormalities in about 5 percent of patients, said Samaan, who played no role in the study. More serious side effects, such as muscle breakdown related to kidney failure, are rare, she said.

The primary treatment for obstructive sleep apnea is continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), delivered through a mask worn at night, Spencer said. Weight loss and a healthy lifestyle can also help treat sleep apnea.

More information

For more about sleep disorders, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

---

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1PO38dj

Chick-fil-A Just Announced a Bold Move to Make Their Menu Healthier

Photo: Getty Images

Chick-fil-A is cleaning up their menu in 2016. On January 18^th, coleslaw will be removed from the chain’s side item offerings and replaced with a kale and broccolini salad. This marks a big shift for the chain, which has offered coleslaw for the past 49 years. It will also make Chick-fil-A the first fast food chain to offer kale nationwide, Business Insider reported.

This new item, which the chain is calling the “Superfood Side,” was created in conjunction with award-winning Atlanta-based chef, Ford Fry. The chopped kale and Broccolini salad will come with a maple vinaigrette dressing, dried sour cherries and a blend of walnuts, almonds, and pecans. It will be sold in 5 oz. and 8 oz. portions.

RELATED: What Health Pros Order at Restaurants

“The Superfood Side is not something you would expect to see at a fast food restaurant, and we’re thrilled to kick off 2016 with something that can help people stick to their New Year’s resolutions to eat healthfully. Customers who have tried it rave about having an option that’s incredibly healthy where you don’t have to sacrifice great taste,” David Farmer, vice president of the menu and development strategy for Chik-fil-A, said in a company press release.

One of the large kale salads amounts to 170 calories, compared to a whopping 360 calories in a medium coleslaw. Chik-Fil-A’s planned advertising campaign around the new side will suggest pairing it with the eight-count grilled nuggets to create a full meal for only 280 calories.

RELATED: The 9 Highest-Calorie Meals at Chain Restaurants

Will you miss the coleslaw? Worry not: to retire the item in style, Chik-fil-A released the original coleslaw recipe so fans can still make it at home.

from Health News / Tips & Trends / Celebrity Health http://ift.tt/1kMwQ5I