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Sometime on Saturday morning, Brett Favre will do a small favor for an old friend and former backup, stepping up to deliver a pep talk to Doug Pederson’s Eagles before Super Bowl LII. But it’s the dangerous side of football that preoccupies Favre the most these days. “I cringe,” he said, “when I see video, or I’m driving and I see little kids out playing, and they’re all decked out in their football gear and the helmet looks like it’s three times bigger than they are. It’s kind of funny, but it’s not as funny now as it was years ago, because of what we know now. I just cringe seeing a fragile little boy get tackled and the people ooh and ahh and they just don’t know. Or they don’t care. It’s just so scary.” (Boren, 2/1)

Two types of bacteria commonly found in the gut work together to fuel the growth of colon tumors, researchers reported on Thursday. Their study, published in the journal Science, describes what may be a hidden cause of colon cancer, the third most common cancer in the United States. The research also adds to growing evidence that gut bacteria modify the body’s immune system in unexpected and sometimes deadly ways. (Kolata, 2/1)

When Sarah Jay had her first seizure, she was in her mid-20s and working a high-stress job at a call center in Springfield, Mo. "I was going to go on break," she says. "I was heading towards the bathroom and then I fell and passed out." An ambulance took Jay to the hospital but doctors there couldn't find anything wrong. Jay figured it was a one-time thing. Then a week later, she had another seizure. And that kept happening once or twice a week. "So I was put on short-term disability for my work to try to figure out what was going on," says Jay, who's now 29. (Hamilton, 2/1)

When the French dairy giant Lactalis began recalling baby formula, Ségolène Noviant thought she was safe. The milk she had been feeding her 5-month-old son wasn’t on the list. Then her son, Noan, was rushed to the emergency room with a fever, diarrhea and internal bleeding. His formula was tainted with salmonella — and a broad range of other Lactalis powdered milk products still on the shelves were at risk, too. (Alderman, 2/1)

[Reisa] Sperling is director of the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She's forging ahead studying the treatment of amyloid plaques and is urging people at risk of Alzheimer's to enroll in clinical trials, because she believes the key may lie in catching the disease much earlier. (Mullins and Joliocoeur, 2/1)

Shirline Burbanks is one of the 6.5 million Americans suffering from congestive heart failure (CHF). Recently, she checked herself in to the Tulane Medical Center in New Orleans, complaining of shortness of breath. But unlike most other CHF patients in the U.S., within hours of her admittance, Burbanks was met at her bedside with an offer: to sign up for cooking classes. (Nargi, 2/1)