Архив рубрики: Здоровье Америка

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was building up a following with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, and becoming one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines.

Now, President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates vaccines.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Read More: Here Are the New Members of Trump’s Administration So Far

Kennedy has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. He has also pushed other conspiracy theories, such as that COVID-19 could have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, comments he later said were taken out of context. He has repeatedly brought up the Holocaust when discussing vaccines and public health mandates.

No medical intervention is risk-free. But doctors and researchers have proven that risks from disease are generally far greater than t..

The 1.5 million Americans estimated to have the autoimmune disease lupus already have plenty to manage—what with the pain, fatigue, hair loss, and heart problems the condition can cause. So, the last thing they need is to feel stigmatized or shamed because of their weight. But that’s exactly what has happened to celebrities with lupus like Selena Gomez.

In February 2023, the actor and singer shared with her social media followers that she tends to gain weight while taking certain medications to manage her condition and lose weight when she can stop taking those meds.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

This side effect is just one of several ways lupus (also called systemic lupus erythematosus) is linked to changes in weight. Here, a deeper look at that connection and how to cope.

Why lupus can cause weight gain

There are several reasons lupus is linked to rising numbers on the scale—not always due to an increase in body fat.

Sometimes, it’s fluid retention. “Fluid can accumulate in..

Merle Bombardieri learned she was a micro-celebrity in 2020, when she happened to Google her own name. Her search led her to a Reddit group of “fence sitters”—people who aren’t sure whether they want to have children—where she is a very big deal. Post after post mentions her book The Baby Decision: How to Make the Most Important Choice of Your Life and its power to help people get off the fence, one way or the other. “It’s a sort of bible,” says Christy Starr, a 36-year-old member of the Reddit community who lives in Wisconsin.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Bombardieri, a 75-year-old therapist who also coaches people about whether they should have kids, was tickled by her VIP status among a group of people young enough to be her children or even grandchildren. She joined the r/Fencesitter message board and now spends about five hours per week answering people’s questions for free. (She could easily spend even longer: once, she hosted an “ask me anything” thread, and it took her 10..

If you get a text that says “wyd”—translation: “what are you doing?”—there’s a good chance there’s one thing you’re crossing off that list: replying to the message.

According to a study published Nov. 14 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 99.3% of texters regularly use abbreviations that, in theory, could save precious typing time, like opting for “hru?” instead of asking someone how they are, or shortening “really” to “rly.” Study author David Fang, a doctoral student in behavioral marketing at Stanford University, wondered if this habit enhanced or diminished digital communication. He’s always made it a point to text in complete sentences, because he worried that otherwise, the people on the receiving end of his messages would think he was slacking off. But he wasn’t sure if his intuition was correct, so he decided to test it.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

It turns out that Fang was on to something. Abbreviations in text messages register as insincere to recipi..

H5N1 avian influenza, more commonly known as bird flu, has infected more than 100 million birds in the U.S. and almost 500 dairy cattle herds across 15 states. The virus has popped up in mammals including elephant seals, goats, foxes, and house cats.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Despite its prolific spread among animals, federal health authorities maintain that the risk to the U.S. public remains low. There have only been 46 confirmed human cases in the U.S. during the current outbreak. All but one of those people had a known exposure to affected poultry or cattle, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and all of their illnesses were mild. The CDC says there is no evidence that the virus is spreading from person to person at this time.

Recent news, however, has some people feeling uneasy. On Nov. 12, Canadian health authorities announced that an otherwise healthy teenager there who caught bird flu from an unknown source is in critical condition..

Hours after Donald Trump was elected president for the second time, Dr. Clayton Alfonso had two messages from patients seeking to replace their IUDs. Over the next few days, three women inquired about getting their tubes tied.

All of them said the election was the reason they were making these choices now.

Requests for long-term birth control and permanent sterilizations have surged across the nation since the election, doctors told The Associated Press. And companies that sell emergency contraception and abortion pills say they’re seeing significant spikes in requests from people who are stockpiling the medications — one saw a 966% increase in sales of emergency contraception from the week before in the 60 hours after the election.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“I saw this bump after the Trump election in 2016″ and after Roe vs. Wade was overturned in 2022, said Alfonso, an OB-GYN at Duke University in North Carolina. “But the patients seem more afraid this time.”

Although ant..

Even though we spend roughly a third of our lives doing it, sleep doesn’t always come easily. More than one in three adults in the U.S. don’t get enough sleep, so there’s a good chance you’ve struggled with getting a solid night’s shuteye from time to time or battled with daytime sleepiness.

We asked sleep docs for the one sleep tip that’s changed their lives. Some might surprise you.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Create a “wind-up” routine

Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND and author of the book Sharing the Covers: Every Couple’s Guide to Better Sleep, credits establishing a consistent morning, or “wind-up,” routine, with significantly improving her sleep.

“While many experts focus on the importance of having a ‘wind down’ before bed, I’ve found that how you start your day is just as crucial for setting up a successful night of sleep,” says Troxel.

Our bodies and brains function best when we follow a regular daily routine, and that starts with a regular wa..

Wannabe grandparents have always ruffled feathers by inquiring—sometimes aggressively—about the timing of their future progeny. They’re not the only ones to overstep: Casual friends, distant relatives, coworkers, and even complete strangers often feel entitled to ask couples about family planning.

Once two people get married, those in their orbit tend to become overly inquisitive: “When am I going to get some good news?” as Shula Melamed, a senior behavioral health coach at Headspace Health, puts it. “As soon as you hit one milestone, you’re expected to hit another.” And forget about rounding the corner into your 30s. “At a certain age, it becomes, ‘You better get started—your biological clock is ticking. Time is running out,’” she says. “It’s questions about your intimate life, it’s questions about your own body. It’s interesting that it’s still not taboo, because it doesn’t get more personal than that.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Generally, people mean well with these querie..

Orthopedic doctors have a bone to pick with all the people who forget they’re carrying a very important skeleton around every day. We might not be able to see our ribs or tailbone or humerus, but it’s still important to make bone health a priority—because it’s tied to every other aspect of well-being.

“Your bone health and joint health is really tied to your overall wellness and health,” says Dr. David Shau, an orthopedic surgeon and assistant professor at the Burnett School of Medicine at Texas Christian University. Consider, for example, that about 54 million Americans have osteoporosis, low bone mass, or both, and 2 million osteoporotic fractures occur annually. That number will exceed 3 million per year by 2040, researchers predict. “When that happens, you have a period of time where you have to heal and recover,” Shau says. “You can’t be active with your family. You can’t travel. You can’t exercise, so your cardiovascular health goes down, and you start seeing metabolic issues an..

In November 2022, Jillaine St. Michel was 20 weeks pregnant with her second child when an ultrasound revealed that her baby had serious developmental and genetic conditions that made it unlikely to survive the pregnancy. She and her husband were devastated, and decided that an abortion would be the most compassionate choice for their family. But they lived in Idaho at the time, which has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. The couple contacted several abortion clinics outside of the state and they were eventually able to get an appointment at a clinic in Seattle, Washington because of a cancellation.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“I didn’t feel like I was able to properly grieve our situation and our experience because we had to deal with the logistics of everything—finding a hotel room, finding a rental vehicle, paying for the procedure out-of-pocket,” St. Michel, 38, says. “In the time of one of the worst situations you can imagine, having to put on your logistics..