RSV Vaccine May Be Linked to a Slightly Higher Risk of Guillain-Barre Syndrome
NEW YORK — Health officials are investigating whether there’s a link between two new RSV vaccines and cases of a rare nervous system disorder in older U.S. adults.
The inquiry is based on fewer than two dozen cases seen among more than 9.5 million vaccine recipients, health officials said Thursday. And the available information is too limited to establish whether the shots caused the illnesses, they added.
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But the numbers are higher than expected and officials are gathering more information to determine if the vaccines are causing the problem. The data was pre...
Source: TIME: Health - March 2, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Mike Stobbe/AP Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate wire Source Type: news
CVS and Walgreens to Begin Offering Abortion Pills in March
CVS and Walgreens will begin dispensing the abortion pill mifepristone this March, the companies confirmed to TIME.
The pharmacies received a certification to offer mifepristone—which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to terminate a pregnancy through 10 weeks of gestation, and is often used with misoprostol—to customers with a prescription in compliance with federal and state laws. The news was first reported by the New York Times.
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Walgreens said that it will start to dispense mifepristone within a week at select locations in New...
Source: TIME: Health - March 1, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Solcyré Burga Tags: Uncategorized News News Desk Source Type: news
Norovirus Cases Are Rising. Here ’ s What to Know
Cases of norovirus, a nasty stomach bug that spreads easily, are climbing in the Northeastern U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
Nationwide, about 12% of most recent norovirus tests sent to the CDC were positive, but the proportion was about 16% in the Northeast, the agency said. That compares with nearly 10% of norovirus tests in the Midwest and South and nearly 13% in the West.
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Characterized by the sudden onset of vomiting, diarrhea, and general feelings of misery, norovirus outbreaks are notorious on cruise ships, nursing homes...
Source: TIME: Health - March 1, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: JoNel Aleccia/AP Tags: Uncategorized wire Source Type: news
The Hidden Health Costs of Climate Change
Climate change kills. Since 2000, nearly four million people worldwide have lost their lives due to floods, wildfires, heat waves, droughts, and other extreme weather events that have been linked to a steadily warming planet, according to a recent estimate in the journal Nature. That sweeping number can make it hard for any of us to grasp how the problem is touching health in our own small part of the world. Now, a new study in Nature Medicine provides some of that granular insight for people living in the U.S., exploring how climate-linked disasters affect visits to hospital emergency departments in counties nationwide, a...
Source: TIME: Health - March 1, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jeffrey Kluger Tags: Uncategorized climate change healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Why Older Adults Need Another COVID-19 Shot
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 thos...
Source: TIME: Health - February 29, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
9 Things Therapists Do When They Feel Lonely
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.
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Join an easy group class
When 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. “Some...
Source: TIME: Health - February 29, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Angela Haupt Tags: Uncategorized Evergreen healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Why Measles Cases Are Rising Right Now
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.
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Why are measles cases taking ...
Source: TIME: Health - February 28, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Wendy Williams Documentary Producers Say They Were Unaware of Her Dementia While Filming Most Scenes
The objective, said Hanson, was to document a woman making changes in her life, facing obstacles, and coming out the other side. Williams’ self-titled daytime talk show ended in 2022 because of ongoing health issues with Graves’ disease that kept her from filming. Sherri Shepherd, a guest host for Williams, was given her own show.
“We thought we were going to film a woman at a real turning point in her life, embarking on a new career with Wendy doing a podcast … recovering from a very difficult divorce,” said Hanson. “Once we started filming, it really went into a very diffe...
Source: TIME: Health - February 27, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Associated Press Tags: Uncategorized News Desk wire Source Type: news
Long COVID Doesn ’ t Always Look Like You Think It Does
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.
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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...
Source: TIME: Health - February 27, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jamie Ducharme Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
From COVID-19 to Measles, Florida ’ s War on Public Health
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.
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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. Fo...
Source: TIME: Health - February 27, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Scott A. Rivkees Tags: Uncategorized freelance Source Type: news
Peru Declares Health Emergency in Most Provinces as Dengue Cases Soar
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.
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“This is a grave problem,” health minister Cesar Vásquez said last week, before the emergency was declar...
Source: TIME: Health - February 27, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Franklin Briceño / AP Tags: Uncategorized wire Source Type: news
Here ’s What Americans Think of Weight Loss Drugs
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.)
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The survey included more than 10,000 people of different ages, genders, races, ethni...
Source: TIME: Health - February 26, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
An Asthma Drug Can Drastically Reduce Food Allergies
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.
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The drug was originally approved more than two decades ago to treat allergic asthma. But because of this ...
Source: TIME: Health - February 25, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
How Technology Can Help Us Remember Better
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 t...
Source: TIME: Health - February 24, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Charan Ranganath Tags: Uncategorized freelance Source Type: news
The Unique Hell of Getting Cancer as a Young Adult
When I got diagnosed with Stage 3b Hodgkin Lymphoma at age 32, it was almost impossible to process. Without a family history or lifestyle risk factors that put cancer on my radar, I stared at the emergency room doctor in utter disbelief when he said the CT scan of my swollen lymph node showed what appeared to be cancer—and lots of it. A few days away from a bucket list trip to Japan, I’d only gone to the emergency room because the antibiotics CityMD prescribed to me when I was sick weren’t working.I didn’t want to be sick in a foreign country. So when the doctor told me of my diagnosis, the on...
Source: TIME: Health - February 23, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Maria Yagoda Tags: Uncategorized freelance Source Type: news
