Health

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...

Sue Gray, 59, has been sick half her life. But it took two decades to confirm why.When Gray was 30 and living with her then-husband in the middle of the woods in upstate New York, she felt a tick on her scalp one day after taking a shower. Her former husband plucked it off with tweezers, and “that was the end of that—for that day,” Gray says.Over the next few months, however, Gray’s health began to decline. She suffered frequent respiratory infections and developed a twitch in her eye. Then, a few weeks after the twitch began, she felt the sensation of ants crawling up and down her legs, even though nothing was there. That made Gray nervous enough to book an appointment with a neurologist. Remembering her recent tick bite, Gray asked to be tested for Lyme disease—but the results came back ...

New York City will host its very first National Urban Rat Summit this fall, Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday.The summit will invite experts like academic researchers and municipal pest control managers to come together and share strategies on rodent mitigation and “advance the science of urban rat management,” the city said in a press release. Experts from across the country—including Boston, New Orleans, and Seattle—will be invited to attend the summit, which will be held on Sept. 18 and 19.“New Yorkers may not know this about me—but I hate rats, and I’m confident most of our city’s residents do as well,” Adams said in the press release. “The best way to defeat our enemy is to know our enemy. That’s why we’re holding this inaugural summit, to bring experts and leaders from across the ...

Rare but deadly blood clots tied to Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca Plc’s Covid-19 shots were caused by an autoimmune reaction that some people are predisposed to, researchers found, a discovery that they say will shape development of future vaccines.Adenovirus-based vaccines, like the J&J and AstraZeneca shots that were later pulled from the market, contain a component that, in genetically susceptible people, can trigger the production of unusually structured antibodies against a protein involved in blood clotting, scientists said Wednesday in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers plan to identify the culprit and then try to remove it using genetic engineering.Read More: How COVID-19 Vaccines and Infections Are Tweaking Our ImmunityAn extremely similar del...

Recently, I was catching up with a friend who’d just given birth to her first baby. I thought about all of the changes I’d experienced since having my 1- and 3-year-old daughters. “I feel like I’m a completely different person,” I said. As soon as the phrase came out of my mouth, I questioned it. Nearly 2 billion people in the world are mothers. Surely they didn’t all feel completely different after giving birth. Or did they?Most people are familiar with the term “mommy brain,” a phrase that describes the brain fog and forgetfulness that many pregnant women and new moms experience. But it turns out there’s way more going on than just forgetting the name of your college professor, and it’s something called matrescence. Coined by medical anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973, matrescence is, q...

Wildfires burning in Canada started sending smoke across the border on Sunday and into the week, prompting U.S. officials to issue air quality warnings in several northern states—and experts say people should be prepared to experience more air quality alerts this summer.Parts of Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin suffered from poor air quality on Sunday and Monday because of smoke from wildfires continuing to burn in British Columbia and Alberta. While skies in the U.S. mostly cleared by Tuesday, experts say they’re expecting another active wildfire season this summer. Last summer was Canada’s most devastating wildfire season on record, and researchers found that it was also the worst season in recent history for smoke exposure per U.S. resident. “We still think that last year ...

Striking up a conversation—especially with a stranger—is a lot like adding kindling to a fire pit and hoping it ignites. Choose the wrong starter, and the flame will fizzle out. But when you get it right, conversation and connection can spark.Conversations play an essential role in our well-being. Having just one quality talk a day, especially face-to-face, can increase happiness and lower stress levels by the end of the day, research has found. You don’t even have to know the person. In one study, people overestimated how awkward deep, meaningful talks with strangers would be, and found that instead, these conversations uplifted them and made them feel more connected than they expected. Plus, asking questions makes people like us more, which can be a boon to self-esteem.But what should yo...

TIME celebrated on Monday the 100 most influential people leading change in health at a special dinner. The first TIME100 Health list spotlights doctors, scientists, business leaders, advocates, and others at the forefront of big changes in the industry.After a panel discussion on prioritizing women’s health, three TIME100 Health honorees gave toasts about surviving noma, a severe gangrenous disease of the mouth and face; the healthcare advocates pioneering research and treatments related to COVID; and hospitals under attack in conflict zones.Surviving nomaFidel Strub, a survivor of Noma, has led an awareness campaign on the disease, which mostly affects malnourished young children living in extreme poverty. In 2023, the WHO officially recognized noma as a neglected tropical disease, notin...

The weight room at the gym can be an intimidating place. The equipment looks like it could crush you if you use it wrong. People grunt as they haul heavy things up and down. And why don’t these machines come with instruction manuals, anyway?Figuring out how to start strength training as a beginner can be tough, but it’s worth the effort. Modern exercise science shows that strength training offers a host of benefits, like stronger bones, decreased inflammation, lower risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, plus better sleep, mental health, and cognitive function. And, of course, stronger muscles. “We start to lose muscle tissue as early as our 30s if we don't [work to] maintain it,” says exercise physiologist Alyssa Olenick. That’s why current federal guidelines recommend that adults wor...

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he suffered memory loss and severe brain fog more than a decade ago, potentially related to a parasite in his brain, according to the New York Times.In a 2012 deposition reviewed by the Times, Kennedy said a worm “got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” He said the cognitive issues later resolved. Around the same time, the Times reports, Kennedy was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, which can also result in cognitive issues.Though they sound like something straight out of a horror movie, parasites can and do affect the human brain. Here's what to know.How do parasites get into the brain?According to the Times' reporting, Kennedy said he did not know which type of parasite affected him, but experts told the Times it l...