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BOSTON — A Massachusetts teen who participated in a spicy tortilla chip challenge on social media died from eating a large quantity of chile pepper extract and also had a congenital heart defect, according to an autopsy report obtained by The Associated Press.Harris Wolobah, a 10th grader from the city of Worcester, died on Sept. 1, 2023, after eating the chip manufactured by Paqui. The cause of death was listed as cardiopulmonary arrest “in the setting of recent ingestion of food substance with high capsaicin concentration,” according to the autopsy from the Chief Office of the Medical Examiner.Paqui, pulled the product from store shelves shortly after Harris’ death. The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment Thursday to the Hershey Co., which owns Paqui.Read More: Why Your Diet N...

Through the ages, humans have fueled their most physically demanding efforts with meaty proteins. Ancient Greeks loaded up on red meat before Olympic contests, and medieval knights recovered from war with venison and pork. The tradition continues today, with world-record-setting weightlifters breakfasting on chicken thighs, eggs, and bacon.But experts recommend that the modern, average person eat several other foods before and after tough workouts, even if the knights may have tossed them from their castle windows.The missing ingredientsDuring exercise, blood carries the nutrients we’ve consumed to our strained muscles, where they’re absorbed. “We are what we eat,” says Keith Baar, a molecular exercise physiologist at the University of California, Davis. “And when we exercise, we’re more o...

Cases of a new group of mpox viruses are rising, potentially posing a risk to people around the world, according to health officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). So far, the cases have been centered in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and have not spread beyond Central African countries where the virus remains endemic, the CDC wrote in a report on May 16. But health officials are concerned because this group of viruses—known as clade I mpox viruses—is known to cause more severe illness than the clade II viruses responsible for the previous mpox outbreaks in 2022, which originated in Nigeria. Clade I mpox viruses have a higher fatality rate—killing anywhere from 1.4% to more than 10% of infected people—than clade II, which has a 0.1% to 3.6% mortality ...

If you’re an undocumented immigrant in Tennessee, you don’t have a lot of options when it comes to birth control. You can’t get an abortion—it’s been banned with very limited exceptions since 2022. You can’t get services from state public-health clinics, which lost federal funding with the abortion ban. The state has backfilled the funding, but a Tennessee law prohibits that money from being used for family-planning services for people without legal status. One thing you can do is reach out to a nonprofit called A Step Ahead, which will pay for you to get a long-acting reversible contraceptive (LARC), like an intrauterine device (IUD) or an implant that goes into your arm. But there’s a problem, some reproductive justice advocates say. In many regions of the state, including Memphis and N...