Health

It’s no secret that fruits and veggies are good for you. But a new Netflix show, You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment, shows just how powerful—and fast-acting—they can be.The show features pairs of adult identical twins who participated in a study published in November 2023. For eight weeks, everyone in the study ate a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes and low in sugars and refined starches. But one twin from each pair was assigned to eat only these plant-based foods, while the other also ate animal products such as chicken, fish, eggs, and dairy.Both groups saw improvements in their cholesterol levels and modest reductions in weight over the eight weeks, but those trends were more dramatic among twins who followed the vegan diet. Average fasting insulin levels—...

Thousands of women stocked up on abortion pills just in case they needed them, new research shows, with demand peaking in the past couple years at times when it looked like the medications might become harder to get.Medication abortion accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., and typically involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. A research letter published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine looked at requests for these pills from people who weren’t pregnant and sought them through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service that prescribes them for future and immediate use.Aid Access received about 48,400 requests from across the U.S. for so-called “advance provision” from September 2021 through April 2023. Requests were highest right after news leaked in M...

A longing for authenticity. An urge to protect the planet and embrace nature. An itch to spice things up. These are the modern sentiments shaping what will show up on our plates and in our glasses in 2024, according to experts who forecast food trends.We asked nearly a dozen industry insiders—from chefs to a food futurologist—what to expect in the year ahead for food and drink. Here’s what they said.An emphasis on global flavorsEven if you don’t venture farther than a nearby restaurant in 2024, exciting new flavors from around the world will be at the other end of your fork. One of the defining trends of the year is expected to be third-culture cuisine, or dishes from a chef's diverse background. Think: wafu Italian restaurants, which bridge Japanese and Italian cultures, and Filipino-Brit...

Good riddance to that pack of chicken thighs you never got around to making for dinner, and the single-serve yogurts that seemed like a good idea at the time. Those browning bananas on the counter? Bon voyage; may they enjoy their trip to the landfill.If that attitude toward food sounds cavalier, it’s also realistic: One-third of all food in America is wasted, according to a MITRE-Gallup report published in November—which means the average family of four spends at least $1,500 annually on food that ends up being thrown out. To visualize the amount of (often perfectly fine) food that’s wasted nationwide, picture stuffing it into 1 million semi-trucks, or letting crops that grow on farm land large enough to cover California and New York just rot.Food waste has numerous implications, includin...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — More than 700,000 immigrants living illegally in California will gain access to free health care starting Monday under one of the state's most ambitious coverage expansions in a decade.It's an effort that will eventually cost the state about $3.1 billion per year and inches California closer to Democrats’ goal of providing universal health care to its roughly 39 million residents.Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers agreed in 2022 to provide health care access to all low-income adults regardless of their immigration status through the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal.California is the most populous state to guarantee such coverage, though Oregon began doing so in July.Newsom called the expansion “a transformative step towards strengthening the health c...

In June of 2022, a report from the American Diabetes Association highlighted heart failure as “an underappreciated complication of diabetes.” According to that report, up to 22% of people with diabetes will develop heart failure, and the incidence of heart failure within the diabetes community is increasing.“Heart failure is the most prevalent cardiovascular complication in people with diabetes,” says Dr. Rodica Pop-Busui, a professor of diabetes at the University of Michigan and president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association. “In the U.S. alone there are 37 million people diagnosed with diabetes, and heart failure in this population is a very serious health care problem that needs to be addressed before it reaches more advanced and more costly stages.” For a time, ...

Whether you feel reborn—or even just a little bit reset—at the start of a new year, consider making your mental health a priority in 2024. Why? “Because that’s the gateway to everything else,” says Guy Winch, a clinical psychologist, author of Emotional First Aid, and co-host of the Dear Therapists podcast. “It’s the linchpin that allows you to succeed or to fail.”With that in mind, we asked Winch and other experts to share the New Year’s resolutions they wish people would make in the name of mental health.1. Rethink your social-media useSpend some time reflecting on whether you’d like to continue with the same online habits in 2024, says Nedra Glover Tawwab, a therapist and author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself. (If it’s hard to stop scrolling long enough to...

The case study involved just one patient: a 20-year-old woman with severe systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). But the study’s results were so dramatic that they appeared in 2021 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The woman received a type of cell therapy called CAR-T, which in the past has been used primarily to treat cancer. CAR-T cell therapy involves altering a patient’s immune cells so that they identify and attack problems or pathogens. In people with cancer, that attack is aimed at the diseased cells. But in the NEJM case study, the therapy was directed at the woman’s own B cells, which are thought to be a primary cause of inflammation and damage in patients with lupus. The results were astonishing. “Within one month, nearly all of her symptoms had calmed down,” says Dr. Michell...

Doctors and parents celebrated the major advances that came in 2023 to treat respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which sends up to 80,000 children under age five to the hospital each year in the U.S. This year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two critical ways to reduce the risk of RSV in young kids: a vaccine for pregnant mothers that can protect newborns, and a drug treatment for babies under one year.In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers report encouraging real-world data that show how effective the drug treatment, nirsevimab (brand name: Beyfortus), can be. The study, which was funded by the drug's makers Sanofi and AstraZeneca, included more than 8,000 infants in France, Germany, and the U.K. who were one year old or younger and enterin...

The science is clear: from a health perspective, the less you drink, the better. But alcohol is a cornerstone of nearly every personal and professional gathering, so you may not always want to abstain.Nor do you always have to. Most people can make drinking in moderation part of a healthy lifestyle in a variety of ways, experts say.Here’s how to do it.Take inventory of your habits.Becoming a healthier drinker starts with getting real with yourself. Have you had a problem with alcohol in the past, or do you now? “Reflecting earnestly and honestly is an important first step,” says Dr. Aakash Shah, chief of addiction medicine at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey. Those with alcohol addiction issues are usually advised to abstain from drinking. Not sure if that’s you? Consider whether y...