Health

Get ready to see cicadas everywhere.More than a trillion of the critters are expected to surface in parts of the United States this year in a rare co-emergence event the likes of which hasn’t been seen in over two centuries.Known for their deafening mating calls, which can be as loud as lawnmowers, cicadas emerge after more than a decade underground, offering a tasty meal to birds—and even the occasional human.That’s right, cicadas, like many insects, have been hailed as an eco-friendly and high-protein alternative to poultry and cattle. They’re low in cholesterol, crunchy, and carry what has been described as a nutty flavor and shrimp-like quality. Restaurants have featured the bugs in experimental menus, while several cookbooks have even been published dedicated to recipes involving cica...

A suggestion for the masses: Now would be a good time to check in on your favorite Taylor Swift fan. After months of feverish anticipation, the superstar delivered her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, on Friday—and Swifities everywhere are losing their minds.From a neuroscience perspective, the response makes sense. Research suggests that music activates the brain’s reward system, triggering the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. “We know that music is highly tied to emotion for a variety of reasons,” says Lindsay Halladay, an associate professor in neuroscience and psychology at Santa Clara University. “The tempo of music can actually modulate neural oscillations, which are sometimes called brain waves. It can alter the way the whole brain is communicating.” That’s...

On April 24, the Supreme Court will hear arguments weighing whether Idaho politicians have the power to block doctors from giving emergency medical care to patients experiencing pregnancy complications—a case that will open the door for other states to prohibit emergency reproductive care and worsen medical infrastructure for people across the board. Once again, politicians have set up a case that could have devastating impacts on the ability of doctors to provide--and for pregnant women to receive--essential reproductive health care.I’m a family physician who’s practiced medicine in rural Idaho for more than 20 years, where I’ve had the opportunity to guide hundreds of patients through their pregnancies. It’s no exaggeration when I say that my state’s health care system is in crisis, than...

April 18, 2024 9:30 PM EDTA Covid-19 patient with a weakened immune system incubated a highly mutated novel strain over 613 days before succumbing to an underlying illness, researchers in the Netherlands found.The patient, a 72-year-old man with a blood disorder, failed to mount a strong immune response to multiple Covid shots before catching the omicron variant in February 2022. Detailed analysis of specimens collected from more than two dozen nose and throat swabs found the coronavirus developed resistance to sotrovimab, a Covid antibody treatment, within a few weeks, scientists at the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Experimental and Molecular Medicine said. It later acquired over 50 mutations, including some that suggested an enhanced ability to evade immune defenses, they said.The...

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 ...