Health

Whether fictional or fact-based, Munchausen syndrome by proxy grips the public. Media depictions in The Sixth Sense and Sharp Objects and real-life news coverage of Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s December 2023 release from jail are hard to look away from. The most well-known cases—real or dramatized—are often the starkest ones, but Munchausen by proxy comes in subtler, harder-to-detect forms too.“The media are fascinated, but they tend to depict the most extreme cases,” says Dr. Marc D. Feldman, distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and author of Dying to Be Ill: True Stories of Medical Deception.So how do more health care providers develop the skills to recognize this form of medical child abuse and report it to the appropriate authorities? What Is Munchausen by proxy?...

Eli Lilly & Co.’s weight-loss drug Zepbound improved breathing problems in highly anticipated studies that may convince more insurers to cover the $1,000-a-month treatment. In two late-stage trials of patients with obstructive sleep apnea, a condition closely linked to obesity, Zepbound reduced the number of times breathing slowed or stopped during sleep by up to 63% from the baseline, Lilly said in a statement Wednesday. The result topped Jefferies analysts’ expectations that the trials would likely show a reduction of about 50% to 55%. Patients in the 52-week studies also lost up to roughly 20% of their body weight, Lilly said. Lilly said it plans to share full results from the trials at the American Diabetes Association conference in June. The drug giant plans to submit those result...

Forget morning coffee. Across the internet, people are broadcasting a different routine: drinking a shot of extra virgin olive oil after they climb out of bed.Gulping down the oil that’s usually reserved for cooking has been a “gamechanger,” one TikToker said. “It gives my body a kickstart,” another chimed in. Others claim a shot (or more) of olive oil per day improves their gut health, boosts their metabolism, and makes their skin glow. Even celebrities, like Kourtney Kardashian and Ryan Seacrest, have trumpeted their love of olive oil shots. But are they pouring on the praise for good reason? We asked experts what they think of drinking a shot glass full of straight olive oil.The health benefits of olive oilEveryone needs fat in their diet, despite the bad rap that sometimes swirls aroun...

It used to be taboo for moms to talk about their postpartum struggles. Today, not so much. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: it seems like everyone lately is talking about the difficulty of the postpartum period. On Google, if you search for “celebrity postpartum stories,” almost every result yields an article about famous moms discussing things like postpartum depression, anxiety, psychosis, and even pelvic prolapse. In March 2023, Brittany Mahomes, wife of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, shared a warning with her 1.9 million followers, writing, “Just a daily reminder. Once you have kids please take care of your pelvic floor. Seriously.”This normalization has been a net gain for society. We, as a culture, needed to destigmatize talking about the postpartum struggle to im...

It’s impossible to escape the soaring popularity of Ozempic and similar drugs these days—daily headlines, celebrity “success” stories, and apparent ease in procuring prescriptions (even Costco sells them now) abound. But the cumulative effect of all of this has many experts in the eating disorder field worried about how this might affect their patients. This makes sense—even for those without eating disorders, these drugs can feel both triggering and enticing. After all, research tells us about 90% of women are dissatisfied with their bodies. This sounds like a quick fix.Then, I started hearing reports—first anecdotal, then published—that some doctors were prescribing weight loss drugs like Ozempic to their patients with eating disorders. As in, to help treat them.As a journalist who has e...

The U.K. House of Commons will vote Tuesday on the “Tobacco and Vapes Bill” that would make it illegal for anyone born in 2009 or beyond to buy tobacco and add restrictions to vaping. Its passage would amount to an effective lifetime ban on smoking for those under the age of 15. The bill was backed by Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has referred to tobacco as “the single biggest entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability, and death.”While the bill has support from lawmakers from both the opposition Labour and ruling Conservative party, some Tories have broken ranks with Sunak. Former Prime Ministers Liz Truss and Boris Johnson have both opposed the bill, with Johnson describing it as “nuts” and Truss calling it “profoundly unconservative.” “I think it actually risks ...

If you're feeling—yawn—sleepy or tired while you read this and wish you could get some more shut-eye, you're not alone. A majority of Americans say they would feel better if they could have more sleep, according to a new poll.But in the U.S., the ethos of grinding and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is ubiquitous, both in the country's beginnings and our current environment of always-on technology and work hours. And getting enough sleep can seem like a dream.The Gallup poll, released Monday, found 57% of Americans say they would feel better if they could get more sleep, while only 42% say they are getting as much sleep as they need. That’s a first in Gallup polling since 2001; in 2013, when Americans were last asked, it was just about the reverse — 56% saying they got the neede...

In 1970, the average woman in the U.S. had her first baby at around 21 years old. That’s hard to imagine now: new federal data published in April show that in 2022, the average first-time mother was a little older than 27—a record high for the country, and a sign of a major demographic change.This shift has been underway for years. Teenagers and women in their early 20s are having fewer kids, while the opposite is happening among older age groups. In 2022, for the seventh year in a row, the birth rate among U.S. women in their early 30s was higher than the rate among those in their late 20s. Perhaps even more notably, the number of babies born to women 40 and older, while still low overall, rose considerably from 2021 to 2022: up 6% among women ages 40 to 44 and 12% among those older than ...

Whooping cough is making a post-pandemic comeback in China, with cases surging more than 20-fold in the first two months of 2024.The world’s second-most populous country reported a combined 32,380 cases of pertussis—more commonly known as whooping cough—in January and February, compared with 1,421 cases during the same period in 2023, according to the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration. There were 13 deaths. The number of infections detected in the first 60 days of the year is near the full 2023 total, underscoring the risk of the highly contagious respiratory disease in China. The country endured a major respiratory disease outbreak in 2023 after pulling itself out of the Covid mire in late 2022, well after other nations had thrown open their borders and allowed pathog...

Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) is the most common genetic heart disease, affecting about 1 in every 500 people, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). In people with HOCM, genetic variants cause the heart’s walls to thicken and stiffen, blocking blood from flowing freely from the left ventricle to the aorta. This, in turn, results in shortness of breath and chest pain (especially during physical activity), abnormal heart rhythms, lightheadedness, dizziness, and fainting, and can worsen over time.If a parent has HOCM, offspring have a 50% chance of inheriting it. That means knowing your family’s heart health history is crucial: If your doctor is aware that you have relatives with HOCM, they can “screen family members early on, before they get sick or have any car...