Архив рубрики: Здоровье Америка

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., President Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, speaks with a raspy quiver in his voice. That’s because he has spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological condition that causes the muscles affecting the vocal cords to spasm.

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Kennedy has previously spoken about the way the condition affects his life. He “can’t stand” his voice, he told the Los Angeles Times last year. “I feel sorry for the people who have to listen to me,” he said in a phone interview with the outlet. “My voice doesn’t really get tired. It just sounds terrible. But the injury is neurological, so actually the more I use the voice the stronger it tends to get.”

Here’s what to know about how common spasmodic dysphonia is, what causes it, and how it’s treated.

What is spasmodic dysphonia?

Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a rare disorder that causes involuntary movements of the voice box, says Saul Frankford, an assistant professor in t..

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was grilled by Senators in his first confirmation hearing for Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday, during which he struggled to convince lawmakers that he is not “anti-vaccine” and appeared unfamiliar with key aspects of healthcare insurance programs and other policies he would oversee.

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Appearing before the Senate Finance Committee, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the nation’s leading health agency insisted that he has been mistakenly labeled as anti-vaccine, despite his past remarks where he spread misinformation about the safety and effectiveness of immunization. “I am pro-safety,” said Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer who ran as a Democrat and then independent candidate in the 2024 presidential election before endorsing Trump.

“All of my kids are vaccinated,” he said. “I’ve written many books on vaccines. My first book in 2014, the first line of it is, ‘I am not anti-vaccine’ and the las..

A yearlong outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City, Kansas area has taken local experts aback, even if it does not appear to be the largest outbreak of the disease in U.S. history as a state health official claimed last week.

“We would expect to see a handful of cases every year,” said Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Kansas Health System. But the high case counts in this outbreak were a “stark warning,” he said.

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The outbreak has killed two people since it started in January 2024, Kansas state health department spokeswoman Jill Bronaugh said. Health officials in Kansas say there is no threat to the general public.

What is tuberculosis?

TB is caused by bacteria that lives in the people’s lungs and spreads through the air when they talk, cough or sing. It is very infectious, but only spreads when a person has symptoms.

Once it infects a person, TB can take two forms. In “active” TB, the person has a long-stan..

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. starts the first of two days of confirmation hearings on Wednesday, it won’t be just a big moment for the former environmental lawyer and presidential candidate. It will also be a breakthrough event for the once-fringe anti-vaccine movement, as Senators weigh allowing one of its most high-profile boosters to head the nation’s top health agency.

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Vaccines prevent tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases of disease each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Medical experts are concerned that those gains are in jeopardy. The percentage of Americans who consider childhood vaccines important has declined in the past two decades. According to polling from Gallup released last year, about 40% of Americans say it is extremely important for parents to have their children vaccinated. That is down from 58% in 2019 and 64% in 2001.

For decades, Kennedy has been one of the most well-known anti-vaxers..

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will face questioning by Senators from both parties on Wednesday and Thursday, in one of the most anticipated confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s Administration.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy would head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees many of the country’s health agencies, from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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His nomination is already stirring fierce debate on both sides of the political aisle. Kennedy, 71, is one of Trump’s more controversial Cabinet nominees. Known for his anti-vaccine views, Kennedy has sparked backlash and outrage from the science and medical communities for spreading disinformation. In addition to repeating the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism—despite years of research proving that vaccines are both safe and effective—he has also accused the FDA of “aggressive suppression” of raw m..

The tide has largely turned against alcohol. Drinking, at least in moderation, was once seen as a harmless—or even healthy—indulgence that could strengthen your heart and even lengthen your lifespan. But in many scientific circles, consuming virtually any amount of alcohol is now seen as toxic.

On Jan. 3, outgoing Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an advisory warning that alcohol consumption raises the risk of at least seven types of cancer. Shortly afterward, a second federal report warned that people who consume more than nine drinks per week have a one in 100 chance of dying from their habit, due to alcohol’s links to a range of health problems.

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Increasingly, reports like these conclude there is no safe level of drinking. Even moderate consumption—no more than one alcoholic beverage per day for women, and no more than two per day for men—comes with dangers, and the situation snowballs the more a person sips.

But alcohol is an ancient and nat..

Extreme temperatures — mostly heat — are projected to kill as many as 2.3 million people in Europe by the end of the century unless countries get better at reducing carbon pollution and adapting to hotter conditions, a new study says.

Currently, cold temperatures kill more people in Europe than heat by large margins. But a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used climate simulations of different scenarios and looked at death rates in 854 cities. They found as it warms cold deaths lessen slowly, but heat deaths soar rapidly.

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With few reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases and little adaptation like air conditioning and cooling centers, Italy, southern Spain and Greece should see massive increases in the rate of heat deaths due to climate change. On the flip side, much of Scandinavia and the United Kingdom will see fewer temperature-related deaths, mostly due to moderating cold temperatures, the study in Monday’s journal N..

NEW YORK — U.S. public health officials have been told to stop working with the World Health Organization, effective immediately.

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official, John Nkengasong, sent a memo to senior leaders at the agency on Sunday night telling them that all staff who work with the WHO must immediately stop their collaborations and “await further guidance.”

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Experts said the sudden stoppage was a surprise and would set back work on investigating and trying to stop outbreaks of Marburg virus and mpox in Africa, as well as brewing global threats. It also comes as health authorities around the world are monitoring bird flu outbreaks among U.S. livestock.

The Associated Press viewed a copy of Nkengasong’s memo, which said the stop-work policy applied to “all CDC staff engaging with WHO through technical working groups, coordinating centers, advisory boards, cooperative agreements or other means—in person or virtual.” It also..

Since COVID-19 first took off, political leaders, infectious disease specialists, and the lay public have debated its origins. Eventually, two hypotheses emerged: Either the virus crossed over from animals to humans in a wet market in Wuhan—the city in which the disease first appeared—or it leaked from a Chinese lab, likely the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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The truth is still unknown. But on Jan. 25, 2025, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) weighed in, saying in a statement to reporters that the virus is “more likely” to have come from a lab than a natural reservoir like a bat or other animal at the wet market. The conclusion did not come from new evidence—merely a fresh look at existing data—and the agency has “low confidence” in the findings, suggesting the analysis is based on incomplete data. Accordingly, the CIA said it would “continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open source information that could change CIA..

One of the many indignities of being a patient is that you won’t always be taken seriously. Perhaps the most frustrating—and startlingly common—experience is being told your medical symptoms, which have nothing to do with mental health, are anxiety.

Steph Fowler can tick off a long list of conditions she was initially told were anxiety or otherwise all in her head: endometriosis, a stomach infection from H.pylori, insomnia, and mast cell activation syndrome. She was sent for a full neuropsychiatric evaluation before her doctors eventually diagnosed her with Long COVID. Figuring out what was really going on “is such a mixed bag,” she says. “It’s a combination of relief that somebody knows I’m not making it up, and that I can trust myself. Anger and frustration also come in, plus the grief of knowing it could have been different.”

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Fowler, 43, a therapist in Chicago, has now shifted her practice to supporting clients who live with chronic and misunderst..