Your Apple Watch can now alert you if you’re showing signs of hypertension—a new feature cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Sept. 11.

The feature does not diagnose high blood pressure or take blood pressure readings. Instead, it relies on the watch’s optical heart sensor to analyze how the blood vessels contract and expand in response to the heart’s pumping. Over time, the data collected can reveal signs of hypertension and trigger an alert. Users can see a report generated by the data and consult their doctor for further evaluation.

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The hypertension feature will soon be available on all Apple Watch Series 9 models and Apple Watch Ultra 2 models—plus their newer versions—in more than 150 countries.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), about half of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, and a significant proportion of them don’t know they have the condition. Only about a quarter are keeping their blood pressure under c..

In December, a scientific committee concluded two years of intensive research on what Americans should be eating by saying that there was not enough research to recommend people drink any other type of milk than fat-free (skim) or low-fat (1% or 2%). Whole milk contains high amounts of saturated fat, and research has found that saturated fat raises cholesterol and is linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular problems.

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But the Trump Administration—and some scientists—disagree with this assessment. In its Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Strategy Report released Sept. 9, the administration says it wants to “remove restrictions on whole milk sales in schools,” which would allow districts to offer full-fat dairy options, and that the departments will “eliminate mandatory reduced-fat requirements in federal nutrition programs to allow consumer choice.”

In a press conference on Sept. 9, administration officials doubled down on their embrace of whole ..

The Brief September 11, 2025The killing of Charlie Kirk and the political violence haunting America, the deadly ‘kissing bug’ disease spreading across the U.S., and morePodcast ID – Short Length: 06b5be44-7705-4cf8-b669-b88c247d7809
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Millions of people around the world are estimated to have Chagas disease, a potentially fatal, parasitic illness that can lie dormant for years after the initial infection.

Some 280,000 people in the U.S. are among them, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the disease is not officially considered endemic to the country like it is in 21 others in the Americas. Public health experts argued in a report published in this month’s issue of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Emerging Infectious Diseases journal that it should be.

“Increasing evidence” of the parasites that cause Chagas disease “challenges that n..

The next time you get a blood test, X-ray, mammogram, or colonoscopy, there’s a good chance an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm will first interpret the results even before your doctor has seen it.

Over the course of just a few years, AI has spread rapidly into hospitals and clinics around the world. More than 1,000 health-related AI tools have been authorized for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and more than 2 in 3 physicians say they use AI to some degree, according to a recent survey by the American Medical Association. The potential is extraordinary. AI—particularly in the form of AI agents that can reason, adapt, and act on their own—can lighten doctors’ workloads by drafting patient notes and chart summaries, support precision medicine through more targeted therapies, and flag subtle abnormalities in scans and slides that a human eye might miss. It can speed discovery of drugs and drug targets through new processes, such as AI-driven protein structure p..

When George Thurston leaves his cottage in the woods of Waccabuc, N.Y., to head for work, a pollution monitor clipped to his belt—called an AirBeam—shows pristine air quality. As he takes the train through the suburbs, the device’s digits rise, meaning more pollution. By the time he gets to his office in Manhattan, they’re even higher.

“It’s important to know your exposure profile to protect against everyday cumulative risk,” says Thurston, professor of medicine and population health at NYU’s School of Medicine.

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Compared to other toxins in the environment like plasticizers and pesticides, outdoor air pollution is the most harmful type based on current evidence causing millions of deaths per year. Using an air quality index (AQI) is one way to tell how polluted the air you’re breathing is. Many AQIs—from the readouts on Thurston’s gadget to ones based on gold-standard detection stations built by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—have been devel..