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It’s not unusual to fast before a medical test to avoid skewing the results. But Dr. Zoë Gottlieb’s patients often skip meals for a different reason.Gottlieb, a gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, specializes in treating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), an umbrella term for conditions involving chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, specifically Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. People with IBD have “unreliable bowel habits,” meaning they may need to use the bathroom frequently or urgently, Gottlieb says. So when a patient doesn’t eat before their appointment, it can be a sign that they’re afraid they’ll be caught without a restroom when they need one, she says.That fear is warranted in the U...

When medical treatments or vaccines are hard to get, it's usually because of too much demand and not enough supply. But in the case of COVID-19 vaccines for kids, it’s the other way around: low demand for the shot is tanking supply.While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone ages six months and older get vaccinated against COVID-19, parents are finding it hard to track down kid-sized doses. Usually, they would rely on their pediatricians for all childhood vaccines, but many are not stocking the latest COVID-19 shot.Why not? And how can you secure a shot for your tot?Stocking the shot is now financially risky for pediatriciansWhen the COVID-19 vaccine was first authorized for kids, it was during the public health emergency, so the federal government boug...

February 15, 2024 3:43 PM ESTNEW YORK — Lyme disease cases in the U.S. jumped nearly 70% in 2022, which health officials say is not due to a major increase of new infections but instead a change in reporting requirements.Reported cases surpassed 62,000 in 2022, after averaging about 37,000 a year from 2017 through 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Thursday. Numbers for 2023 will be released later this year.Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne infection in the U.S., occurring mostly in the Northeast, Midwest and mid-Atlantic states.Read More: What Happened to the Lyme Disease Vaccine?An estimated 476,000 Americans are diagnosed with it each year, but only a fraction are officially reported.Traditionally, health departments received positive...

As employees and employers adjust to new working conditions, including more flexible remote or hybrid schedules, they are also prioritizing something else that hasn’t traditionally been part of the workplace environment: mental health.In a new poll conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), researchers found encouraging signs that workers and their managers are more comfortable addressing mental health issues such as burnout and stress. But there are still gaps when it comes to creating a supportive mental-health environment in the workplace.More than 2,000 people, including executives, completed the survey. All worked at companies with at least 100 employees. The participants answered questions about how comfortable they felt bringing up mental-health issues at work, wha...