Health

True friendships can take years to develop—which isn’t exactly comforting to the 1 in 3 U.S. adults who say they are lonely right now. But you don’t need to wait for a new BFF to feel better. Small acts can help give you immediate relief from loneliness, experts say. We asked therapists what low-effort steps they take in their own lives when isolation starts to creep in.Join an easy group classWhen Courtney Morgan, a therapist in Louisville, Ky., wants to be around like-minded people without having to try too hard, she goes to a yoga class. “Sometimes I want to feel connected without actively engaging in a conversation,” she says. She tells her clients to seek out structured programming that they’re interested in, too. If want to try a group class—whether it’s fitness-related, educational,...

Older adults should get the COVID-19 vaccine more frequently than previously recommended, according to new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Health officials are urging people ages 65 and older to receive another vaccine dose in the spring, or at least four months after their most recent dose. CDC director Dr. Mandy Cohen announced the decision after a CDC advisory committee, which is made up of independent vaccine and infectious disease experts, voted 11-1 to make the change. “An additional vaccine dose can provide added protection that may have decreased over time for those at highest risk,” she said in a statement.The decision is based on data presented by CDC scientists that showed current hospitalization rates for COVID-19 are highest among senio...

The culture of public health and medicine rests on open discussions in which different points of view are considered for the betterment of patient care and health. This process depends on psychological safety so individuals feel free and safe to speak and openly disagree. These factors collectively create a just culture, which improves systems and organizations and is being widely implemented in healthcare nationwide.However, in the face of politicized anti-science and anti-expert sentiment and attacks, we need to ask if just culture is being restricted in public health. Following a series of legislative policy changes in Florida affecting academic institutions, health care, and public health, we see a regression in the open dialog of medical and public health experts about infectious dise...

Last year, cases of measles—a serious, vaccine-preventable disease that's highly contagious—jumped by 79% around the world. Most of them were in children. That trend is continuing this year, threatening to reverse an impressive 73% drop in measles deaths worldwide from 2000 to 2018. Cases in the U.S. are climbing, too. In just the first two months of 2024, 35 cases have already been reported in 15 states including California, Minnesota, Florida, New York, and Louisiana; in 2023, 58 cases were reported over the entire year. Why are measles cases taking off, and how can people protect themselves? Why measles cases are climbingNot enough kids are getting vaccinated. For herd immunity, about 95% or more of a population needs to be vaccinated, but most countries around the world have been below...

In the spring of 2023, after her third case of COVID-19, Jennifer Robertson started to feel strange. Her heart raced all day long and she could barely sleep at night. She had dizzy spells. She felt pins and needles in her arm, she says, a “buzzing feeling” in her foot, and pain in her legs and lymph nodes. She broke out in a rash. She smelled “phantom” cigarette smoke, even when none was in the air.Robertson, 48, had a feeling COVID-19 might have somehow been the trigger. She knew about Long COVID, the name for chronic symptoms following an infection, because her 11-year-old son has it. But “he didn’t have anything like this,” she says. “His set of symptoms are totally different,” involving spiking fevers and vocal and motor tics. Her own experience was so different from her son's, it was ...

If you watched Lifetime's Wendy Williams docuseries that premiered over the weekend and felt uncomfortable, you weren't alone.“Where is Wendy Williams?” premiered over the weekend and featured numerous scenes of the former talk show host unsteady, belligerent, confused and also drunk. Her manager would regularly find liquor bottles hidden throughout her apartment, behavior that producers say unnerved them while filming. But they say they didn't know at the time that Williams had dementia, which the public learned late last week.“We all became very concerned for her safety. To be honest, I was so concerned she would fall down the stairs and for numerous different reasons," said Erica Hanson, an executive producer who can be seen and heard speaking to Williams at certain moments in the serie...

LIMA, Peru — Peru declared a health emergency in most of its provinces on Monday due to a growing number of dengue cases that are occurring at a time of higher than usual temperatures caused by the El Nino weather pattern.According to the nation’s health ministry, the number of dengue cases registered during the first seven weeks of this year is twice as high as during the same period in 2023 – with more than 31,000 cases recorded.“This is a grave problem,” health minister Cesar Vásquez said last week, before the emergency was declared. “And it is getting out of hand.”The health emergency will enable the nation’s government to transfer funds faster to the affected regions and also transport doctors and nurses. It will cover 20 of the country’s 24 provinces, including regions that surround ...

Not every major medical innovation breaks through to the general public. But the buzzy weight loss drugs for people with obesity or Type 2 diabetes certainly have. About 75% of Americans have heard of Ozempic, Wegovy and other brands of anti-obesity drugs, according to the results of a new Pew Research Center survey. (Wegovy and Zepbound are specifically approved to treat obesity, while Ozempic and Mounjaro are approved to treat people with Type 2 diabetes and can help them lose weight.)The survey included more than 10,000 people of different ages, genders, races, ethnicities, education levels and political affiliations who were randomly recruited to answer online questions about obesity and the new class of anti-obesity medications.Among those familiar with the drugs, 53% said they were g...

About 20 million people in the U.S.—including four million children—have food allergies. Now, there's a new way to reduce their risk of severe allergic reactions. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that the drug omalizumab, or Xolair, allows people with food allergies to tolerate higher doses of allergenic foods before developing a reaction after an accidental exposure. It also leads to milder reactions if they are exposed.The drug was originally approved more than two decades ago to treat allergic asthma. But because of this new study and other data, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration expanded the approval of Xolair on Feb. 16 to include treatment of food allergies in anyone one year or older. It's now the first drug approved to treat allergies to multipl...

In the digital age, we have the technology to document our lives in extraordinary detail via photographs, voice recordings, and social media posts. In theory, this ability to effortlessly capture the important moments of our lives should enrich our ability to remember those moments. But in practice, people often tell me they experience the opposite.I study the neuroscience of memory and one question I hear again and again is whether technology is making us “dumber”—or, more precisely, whether it’s hurting our ability to remember. For some, the question is motivated by worry about the amount of time their children spend on screens or mobile devices. For others, it reflects concerns about their own memory problems.A common fear is that there might be a “use it or lose it” principle at play—t...