Архив рубрики: Здоровье Америка

When Shari Leid was a teenager heading off to college, she proudly opted for a vanity plate on her Mazda 323 hatchback that was a shortened version of one of her most-deployed words: “whatever.”

Now, decades later, she has a different view of how dismissive it is to shut down a conversation with such a casually snide remark. It is, she’s found, the single word that can break even the strongest bonds—one she’s had to teach herself to stifle in the interest of maintaining healthy relationships.

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The problem with ‘whatever’

“Whatever” is a “fighting word,” says Leid, a friendship expert who’s the author of books including The 50/50 Friendship Flow—and it’s an immature one at that. “People stop and notice it,” she says. “It’s in-your-face, and there’s something that feels demeaning to it.”

Brushing off a conversation with “whatever” immediately escalates the tension in the conversation, whether you’re talking to a friend, family member, or the customer-..

No one wants to be the person who can’t stop coughing. Not only is it uncomfortable on your throat, but it also draws angry stares from others in elevators, subway cars, and restaurants—especially during respiratory virus season.

Why do some coughs seem to take forever to resolve? A pulmonologist and an otolaryngologist explain the causes of a chronic cough and what you can do about it.

Defining chronic cough

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In order to know what’s behind a constant cough, it helps to first keep track of how long you’ve had it. And there are specific timeframes that make a cough chronic or not.

An acute or fleeting cough lasts for up to three weeks, explains Dr. Natalie Earl, an otolaryngologist at the Centers for Advanced ENT Care—Feldman ENT Division in Maryland and Washington, D.C. These short-lived coughs are usually related to a virus you caught and will resolve on their own, she says.

Read More: What to Eat When You’re Sick

On the other hand, a persistent..

Erin Massey is busy in her day job as a scientist at a biotech company. But recently, she’s had another job, too: trying to convince her insurer, Cigna, to pay for a medication that she needs for her insomnia.

Premera, Massey’s previous insurer through another employer, covered the medication, and her doctor has deemed it medically necessary and has filled out numerous forms saying so. But Cigna repeatedly denied her requests for the insurance company to cover the medication, Quviviq, she says.

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Massey estimates that she spends 8-10 hours a week working on getting the medication covered: talking to Cigna representatives, filling out forms, writing appeals, and otherwise researching how to convince Cigna that the medication is essential for her health. Her experience is not unusual: in total, Americans spend at least 12 million hours a week calling their health insurance company, according to a Gallup poll.

They do this because of the complicated na..

As more doctors and patients turn to the latest weight-loss drugs, researchers are trying to figure out which drug is right for which patient—and at what point in their weight-loss journey.

Key to making those decisions is how effective the drugs are and which side effects people might experience while taking them.

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the European Congress on Obesity provides some of those answers. Researchers report on a head-to-head trial comparing Wegovy (semaglutide), made by Novo Nordisk, to Zepbound (tirzepatide), made by Eil Lilly. The initial findings were released in Dec. by Eli Lilly, who funded the study. The current report includes more details on how the two drugs affected waist circumference and other measures, as well as their side effects.

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Among the 751 people randomly assigned to receive weekly injections of either the maximum dose of Wegovy or the maximum dose of Zepbound fo..

A nose that won’t stop running isn’t just annoying; it can affect your quality of life. “If you’ve got a runny nose that you constantly have to sniff up or use a tissue—that has a significant impact on the way you feel throughout the entire day,” says Dr. William Reisacher, an otolaryngologist (also known as an ear, nose, and throat doctor, or ENT) specializing in allergies at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

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There’s a medical definition for a nose that runs like a faucet. Persistent or chronic rhinitis is a runny nose that lasts longer than 12 weeks, says Dr. Natalie Earl, an otolaryngologist at the Centers for Advanced ENT Care—Feldman ENT Division in Maryland and Washington, D.C. The condition is also called chronic rhinorrhea.

Read More: 10 Weird Symptoms That Might Be Allergies

The mucus “can be clear, runny, watery, thick, and/or colorful,” Earl says, and it usually takes medication to dry up the drainage.

That’s dif..

New moms eventually come up for air, in between bottle-feeding and changing diapers and wiping away their baby’s tears—or their own. And usually, the first adult they’ve spoken to in days will say something like: “Enjoy every moment! It goes by so fast!”

Run-of-the-mill pleasantry? Or a glaring example of toxic positivity? Try the latter. “It creates impossible pressure during an already overwhelming time,” says Brianna Paruolo, a therapist in New York City who hears about this scenario over and over again from new parents. These words, however well-intentioned—and they usually are—“can amplify feelings of inadequacy when a new mom isn’t enjoying sleep deprivation or postpartum recovery.”

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Parents who are simply trying to survive don’t have the time or energy to focus on savoring every moment, Paruolo points out, and that’s normal. Piling on the expectation of enjoyment is not helpful, she stresses.

Honorable mentions go to…

There are plenty of addi..

Not long before the 2024 election, Dr. Casey Means wrote a letter to her Good Energy newsletter subscribers with a health-related wishlist for the next Administration.

In it were priorities that echo those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services: investigating toxins in the food supply, incentivizing healthy food purchases with food stamps, replacing factory farming with regenerative farming.

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“More than anything, I would like to see our future White House rally Americans to be healthy and fit,” wrote Means, a physician who President Trump nominated on May 7 for U.S. Surgeon General. Trump discarded his first pick, Dr. Janette Neshiewat, a day before she was scheduled to appear before a Senate committee.

Means, who co-wrote the 2024 book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health with her brother Calley Means, holds many beliefs on health that mirror Kennedy’s. She writes frequently abou..

So far, 2025 has been a terrible year for global health. The Trump Administration is slashing funding to a number of international programs; closing down USAID, the government’s major aid development arm; and withdrawing U.S. membership from the World Health Organization.

But a glimmer of hope arrived on May 8, when Bill Gates, chair of the Gates Foundation, announced that he will be infusing the struggling field with most of his fortune—$200 billion, which he built after creating Microsoft—to be spent by 2045. He also plans to close down the foundation at that time.

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Since Gates and his former wife, Melinda French Gates, created the foundation 25 years ago, the organization has contributed more than $100 billion to global causes, primarily in health. The Gates Foundation helped to create two important international health organizations: GAVI, which provides the world’s children with lifesaving vaccines, and the Global Fund, which focuses on distribut..

Meet my patient Mrs. L. R. She’s 98 years young and has never suffered a day of serious illness in her long life. She was referred to me by her primary care physician to assess her heart condition because she had developed swelling in her legs, known as edema. When we first met in the clinic, I noted there was no accompanying family member, so I asked how she got to the medical center. She’d driven herself. I soon learned much more about this exceptionally vibrant, healthy lady who lives alone, has an extensive social network, and enjoys her solitude.

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Her remarkable health span isn’t shared by her family members. Her mother died at 59; her father at 64. Her two brothers died at 43 and 75. Three years prior to our meeting, her husband had died at 97. He had also been quite healthy, with a similar health span profile in contrast to his parents and siblings, who all had chronic diseases and died decades younger. Following her husband’s death, Mrs. L. R. ..

A surprising sentence post-2020: This year is unlike any other in the history of global health. With the confirmation of anti-establishment leaders Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Marty Makary, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to the U.S.’s top health positions, President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the defunding of USAID, health professionals are scrambling to understand whether their work can continue, and, if not, what will happen to patients. In a year of such upheaval, the TIME100 Health—100 people who are most influential in the world of health right now—looks a bit different.

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A lot is happening.

To select these 100 individuals, our team of health correspondents and editors, led by Emma Barker Bonomo and Mandy Oaklander and with guidance of Dr. David Agus and Arianna Huffington, spent months consulting sources and experts around the world. The result is a community of leaders—scientists, doctors, advocates, educa..