No wonder honey sales peak in January, according to the National Honey Board, the industry promotion board.

Made by bees from flower nectar, honey has been eaten and used for medicinal purposes by humans for thousands of years. But is honey really good for you?

Honey nutrition:

Honey is naturally about 80% sugar, so it’s calorie- and energy-dense. One tablespoon of honey contains the following, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

• 64 calories
• 17 grams of carbohydrates
• 17 grams of sugar

Honey has no fat, protein, fiber or cholesterol, but one tablespoon contains trace amounts of calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, selenium, vitamin C and folate.

In all, honey contains about 180 types of different compounds, including various phytochemicals, or plant-based bioactive compounds, studies have found.

What are the health benefits of honey?

If you’re choosing between different types of sweeteners, there might be some benefit of honey due to all the different compounds it contains, says Maya Vadiveloo, Ph.D., a registered dietitian and an associate professor of nutrition at the University of Rhode Island.

“There’s been some research showing that it has more antioxidants, and it’s relatively a better source of potassium and some minerals than, say, table sugar,” Vadiveloo tells TODAY.com.

“But I wouldn’t rush out to be eating honey as a health food… it’s still a source of added sugar.”

Honey contains antioxidants such as phenolic acid and flavonoids, which make it a slightly better choice than sugar, but both should be consumed in moderation, says Elisabetta Politi, a clinical dietitian at the Duke Lifestyle and Weight Management Center in Durham, North Carolina.

As a source of antioxidants, some studies suggest honey can help prevent heart disease, she adds.

A recent study found consuming around 2 tablespoons of honey a day alongside a healthy diet may improve cholesterol levels — reducing LDL cholesterol and triglycerides while increasing HDL cholesterol, says Diego Garzon, a clinical dietitian at UHealth, the University of Miami Health System.

“(But) honey is sugar like any other sugar,” Garzon tells TODAY.com. “At the end of the day, it should only be consumed in a very small amount.”

Which kind of honey is the best?

Darker honey generally has a higher antioxidant content than lighter honey, with Illinois buckwheat honey showing the highest antioxidant activity, according to the National Honey Board.

No matter what the floral source is, Garzon recommends eating raw honey, which hasn’t been heated or filtered, “so it tends to be a very pure form of honey without any of the nutritional content being compromised,” he says.

Foodborne pathogens don’t survive in honey so heating it doesn’t provide any food safety advantage, according to the Mayo Clinic.

How is honey used for healing?

Honey has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and wound healing properties.

Some of honey’s components might kill certain bacteria and fungi; it can keep skin from sticking to wound dressings and might provide nutrients that speed wound healing, according to the National Library of Medicine.

Honey is possibly effective for improving the healing of burns, cold sores, and the swelling and sores inside the mouth caused by chemotherapy or radiation, the agency notes, citing the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database.

Topical honey products might also improve the symptoms of rosacea, it adds.

Is honey effective for cough?

Yes, in head-to-head studies, honey either did as well or outperformed cough medicines, Dr. John Torres, NBC News senior medical correspondent, said in a TODAY segment that aired on Oct. 28, 2022.

“It did a really good job,” Torres noted.

When children with an upper respiratory tract infection were given either a dose of buckwheat honey, a cough suppressant or no treatment to relieve nighttime cough, their parents rated honey as the most effective remedy, a study published in JAMA Pediatrics found. It reduced cough and helped the kids sleep.

“The mechanism of cough suppression is not well understood, but honey has been shown to have both anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. … It may also just be that it coats a sore throat,” Dr. Cory Fisher, a family medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic, previously told TODAY.com.

Honey is “cheap, readily available, and has virtually no side effects, and doctors can recommend it as a suitable alternative to antibiotics” when it comes to upper respiratory tract infections in adults, researchers reported in the journal BMJ Evidence Based Medicine.

For cough relief, the experts suggested adding a bit of honey to some warm — not boiling hot — tea or water.

Does honey help with allergies?

No, this is a common myth, but honey doesn’t help with seasonal allergies, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

The theory is that local honey helps desensitize the body to pollen, but the pollen bees collect for honey is different from the pollens that cause allergies, the foundation noted.

The tiny amount of pollen allergens that might make it into honey would be broken down by the honey-making process and a person’s stomach enzymes during digestion so “you would not ingest enough intact pollen for your immune system to start becoming desensitized to it,” AAFA explains.

Health risks

Honey should never be given to babies younger than 12 months because of the risk of infant botulism, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns. It’s safe for children who are at least 1 year old, the agency adds.

Honey might slow blood clotting, so it could raise the risk of bruising and bleeding if eaten by people who take medications that also slow blood clotting, the National Library of Medicine cautions.

Large amounts of honey might increase blood sugar levels in Type 2 diabetes patients, it adds. The glycemic index — a measure of how quickly a food raises blood glucose — of honey and sugar is about the same, Politi says.

Is it OK to have honey every day?

Honey is considered an added sugar, which should be limited to no more than 100 calories per day for women and 150 calories per day for men, the American Heart Association advises.

That’s across all sources of added sugar, which add up quickly, Vadiveloo cautions.

If you’re not eating any other sugar, 2 to 3 tablespoons of honey per day should be the maximum, she and the other dietitians interviewed by TODAY.com say.

The best way to use honey is as a replacement for other sweeteners since it does provide some slight benefits over white granulated sugar, Garzon advises.

“If you don’t mind the taste of honey and you already use sugar in your coffee or tea then yes, I think there can be some benefit of substituting to honey,” Vadiveloo agreed.

“(But) I wouldn’t say that you need to have honey as part of a balanced diet. It’s not one of the things to eat more of like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes — it’s not in that category.”

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New government data posted Friday for last week — the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s — show 38 states with high or very high levels for respiratory illnesses with fever, cough and other symptoms. That’s up from 31 states the week before.

The measure likely includes people with COVID-19, RSV and other winter viruses, and not just flu. But flu seems to be increasing most dramatically, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We expect it to be elevated for several more weeks,” said the CDC’s Alicia Budd. So far, though, this is a moderate flu season, she said.

Interpreting flu reports during and after the holidays can be tricky, she noted. Schools are closed. More people are traveling. Some people may be less likely to go see a doctor, deciding to just suffer at home. Others may be more likely to go.

The flu season generally peaks between December and February; CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said she expects it to peak by the end of this month. Officials say this season’s flu shots are well-matched to the strain that is spreading the most.

According to CDC estimates, since the beginning of October, there have been at least 10 million illnesses, 110,000 hospitalizations, and 6,500 deaths from flu so far this season. The agency said 27 children have died of flu.

COVID-19 illnesses may not be as escalating as quickly as flu this winter. CDC data indicates coronavirus-caused hospitalizations haven’t hit the same levels they did at the same point during the last three winters. Still, COVID-19 is putting more people in the hospital than flu, CDC data shows.

Lauren Ancel Meyers of the University of Texas, said the nation is seeing a second rise in COVID-19 after a smaller peak in September.

“There is a lot of uncertainty about when and how high this current surge will peak,” said Meyers, who runs a team that forecasts COVID-19, flu and RSV trends

A new version of the coronavirus, called JN.1, is accounting for nearly two-thirds of U.S. cases, according to a CDC estimate. But health officials say there’s no evidence that that it causes more severe disease than other recent variants,

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

But if getting sick could put $1,900 in your bank account, many people would consider it.

To figure out how the flu is transmitted, researchers at UMD are conducting “a first-of-its-kind study” — and recruiting some brave, paid participants.

The University of Maryland School of Public Health in College Park and the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore are trying to learn more about how illness spreads. Their two-month study needs people willing to quarantine in a hotel with flu-infected people, likely getting infected themselves.

The goal is to better determine how the virus infects us every flu season.

“Nobody has successfully observed influenza transmission under controlled conditions,” said Dr. Donald Milton of UMD’s School of Public Health. “It has never been done.”

There could be a number of factors that play a role in the flu’s spread and infectiousness, and we need more information, the researchers say.

“There also might be the airborne component, and we just need to think about it when we get more of the data,” said Dr. Wilbur Chen of UMD’s School of Medicine.

Milton and Chen are leading the study, which will recruit both healthy patients and those who are in the early, onset days of the flu. The patients will mingle together in the same air-controlled environment, playing games, talking and watching TV to mimic a gathering.

“We just need to be able to capture it and monitor it very closely while on the quarantine unit,” Chen said.

“That then will tell us, if people get infected when the air quality is very poor, but not when the air quality is very good, that will tell us that they were getting it by breathing,” Milton explained.

What the study’s findings may show

If the researchers’ flu transmission hypothesis proves to be true, they say it could serve as the catalyst for a change in public health policy. Their goal is to spark improved air circulation in buildings.

“We can help make people healthier that way,” Milton said. “Colds are one of the main ways that people end up with severe asthma attacks, end up in the hospital.”

The multi-million dollar study uses money from the National Institutes of Health. It will include medical devices to measure the number of virus particles in exhaled air, and to test UV lights and air filters.

“I figured this will be a good opportunity to just kind of take a look and experience how studies are being conducted so that I can make my own judgment,” said Matthew Tan, one of the study participants.

Researchers have already recruited the healthy volunteers, but Friday is when they’re recruiting participants with the flu.

To qualify, adults between the age of 18 and 59 must have:

• A cough or sore throat
• A fever of at least 100.2 and
• A positive flu test

All volunteers will stay at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, with all expenses paid. They’ll also get up to $1,900.

The results of the study are expected in the spring.

A new study from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign exploring the relationship between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and language outcomes in early childhood found a link between use of the over-the-counter drug and “modest but significant delays” in the child’s future language development.

The language analyses involved 298 2-year-old children who had been followed prenatally, 254 of whom returned for further study at age 3.  

The work was conducted as part of the Illinois Kids Development Study, by Development Study principal investigator Susan Schantz, a University of Illinois professor emerita of comparative biosciences and Megan Woodbury, who led the research as a graduate student of U. of I.

“The previous studies had only asked pregnant people at most once a trimester about their acetaminophen use,” Woodbury said. “But with IKIDS, we talked to our participants every four to six weeks during pregnancy and then within 24 hours of the kid’s birth, so we had six time points during pregnancy.” 

Acetaminophen is considered the safest over-the-counter pain reliever and fever reducer available during pregnancy, and studies show that 50% to 65% of women in North America and Europe have taken the analgesic during pregnancy.

“The new study links acetaminophen use in pregnancy to modest but significant delays in the language development of offspring,” said Schantz.

The most dramatic finding was that each use of acetaminophen in the third trimester of pregnancy was associated with an almost two-word reduction in vocabulary in the 2-year-olds. 

“This suggests that if a pregnant person took acetaminophen 13 times – or once per week – during the third trimester of that pregnancy, their child might express 26 fewer words at age 2 than other children that age,” Woodbury said. 

Schants says fetal brain development occurs throughout pregnancy, but the second and third trimesters are especially critical times.

“Hearing is developing in the second trimester, but language development is already starting in the third trimester before the baby is even born,” she said. 

Woodbury explains that acetaminophen exerts its analgesic effect through the endocannabinoid system, which is also very important for fetal development.

The findings need to be tested in larger studies, the researchers said. Until then, people should not be afraid to take acetaminophen for fever or serious pain and discomfort during pregnancy. Conditions like a very high fever can be dangerous and using a drug like acetaminophen will likely help. 

“There aren’t other options for people to take when they really need them,” Schantz said. “But perhaps people should use more caution when turning to the drug to treat minor aches and pains.” 

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The new website, called LillyDirect, joins a growing list of platforms like Weight Watchers and Ro offering weight loss drugs through telehealth, but is the first of its kind from a pharmaceutical company.

It comes less than two months after the Food and Drug Administration approved Lilly’s weight loss drug Zepbound. The drug is the latest entrant into the field of the powerful — and pricy — class of medications called GLP-1 agonists, which includes Lilly’s Mounjaro as well as Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy.

“We’re used to buying consumer goods directly from manufacturers all the time on online websites,” said Lilly CEO David Ricks. “It really hasn’t been an option that’s been provided before” for prescription drugs.

Ricks said the new platform will make it easier for patients to access the drugs, cutting out the need to go to the doctor to get a prescription and then to a pharmacy to fill it. Patients who are prescribed Zepbound will be eligible for Lilly’s at-home prescription delivery service. 

Read the full story on NBCNews.com.

While many experts say this season likely won’t prove to be as deadly as some other recent winters, it still could mean hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and many thousands of deaths across the country.

New York City last week instituted a mask mandate for the city’s 11 public hospitals. Similar measures were ordered last week at some hospitals in Los Angeles and Massachusetts. Some hospitals reinstated masking rules for employees months ago, in anticipation of a seasonal rush of sick people.

Flu and COVID-19 infections have been increasing for weeks, with high levels of flu-like illness reported in 31 states just before Christmas. Updated national numbers are to be released Friday, but health officials predict infections will grow in many states well into January.

“What we’re seeing right now, in the first week of January, is really an acceleration — of flu cases, in particular,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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There is some good news. Flu and COVID-19 cases may peak by the end of the month and then drop, Cohen said. Though the flu has been skyrocketing, this year’s cases are being caused by a strain that usually doesn’t cause as many deaths and hospitalizations as some other versions. What’s more, signs suggest current flu vaccines are well-matched to the strain.

“I don’t think it’s going to be overwhelming,” said Dr. William Schaffner, Vanderbilt University infectious diseases expert. He deemed the current season “moderately severe.”

The CDC is pointing the public to an agency website where people can look up their county, which can help them make decisions about whether to wear masks or take other precautions. Cohen urged people to get vaccinated and to seek treatment for flu and COVID-19.

Vaccinations are down this year, officials say. About 44% of U.S. adults had gotten flu shots by Dec. 23, according to the most recently available CDC vaccination survey data. Only about 19% of U.S. adults were reported to have received an updated COVID-19 shot as of early December.

COVID-19 cases are causing more severe disease than the flu but have been rising less dramatically. Health officials are keeping an eye on JN.1, a new version of the ever-evolving coronavirus. The omicron variant was first detected in the U.S. in September and just before Christmas accounted for an estimated 44% of COVID-19 cases.

The JN.1 variant may spread easier or be better at evading our immune systems, but there is no evidence that it causes more severe disease than other recent variants, health officials say. Current evidence indicates vaccines and antiviral medications work against it.

The CDC also has reported disappointing vaccination rates against another seasonal bug, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. That is a common cause of mild cold-like symptoms, but it can be dangerous for infants and older people. RSV cases rose in the fall but appear to have plateaued and are even going down in some places, according to the latest data.

At Hillsdale Hospital in southern Michigan, a 65% increase in respiratory illness activity in late December triggered a limitation to visitors in the birthing center. Only a spouse, a support person and grandparents can visit. They all must wear a mask and not show symptoms of sickness.

The restriction is common for the hospital around this time of year, said Dr. Nichole Ellis, a pediatrician who is the hospital’s medical chief of staff. But it’s more difficult this season, she added.

“In the past, we would have one … disease that we were tracking or monitoring at one time,” Ellis said. “But now, babies and children will have multiple diseases at the same time. It’s not that they just have RSV … but they’re getting RSV and COVID at the same time, or influenza and RSV at the same time because all of the diseases are prevalent in our community.”

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Kenya Hunter in Atlanta contributed.

Oranges — a winter fruit in many parts of the U.S. — are known for their high vitamin content, but they are also bursting with other nutrients like potassium, magnesium and various antioxidants. And since oranges are made up of mostly water, they’re a hydrating snack to have on hand before or after a workout.

Oranges are most well-known for their immune-boosting properties, but they combat inflammation and play a role in eye and heart health, too. Learn the nutrition facts and benefits of oranges and some surprising recipes to include them in your daily diet.  

Oranges nutrition

One orange has:

• 73 calories
• 1 gram protein
• 17 grams carbohydrates
• 3 grams fiber (12% daily value (DV))
• 232 milligrams potassium (9% DV)
• 83 milligrams vitamin C (110% DV)

Orange benefits

Let’s start with a well-known fact: Eating an orange provides you with a heaping dose of vitamin C, a nutrient that is most recognized for its role in immune health. Vitamin C protects the body against foreign invaders, and research suggests that having enough vitamin C in the diet may prevent and treat infections. Insufficient amounts of vitamin C in the diet can cause scurvy — a condition that is rare in modern times, but is accompanied by weakness, fatigue, anemia and frequent infections. 

Oranges are also a good source of potassium, a mineral that works to regulate blood pressure and fluid balance within the body. Because most Americans don’t meet their daily potassium needs (3400 milligrams for males and 2600 milligrams for females), the 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans lists potassium as a nutrient of concern. Research shows that having adequate potassium in the diet is associated with lower blood pressure levels, reduced cardiovascular disease risk and decreased chance of having a stroke.

Oranges also contain an antioxidant called hesperidin, which suppresses inflammation and has been linked to cardiovascular health, immune health, cognitive function and bone health. The majority of the hesperidin in oranges is found in the peel. Since a whole orange (including the peel) is squeezed to make a glass of OJ, hesperidin is most abundant in orange juice. 

Lastly, oranges may help improve your sight. The fruit gets its color from a plant compound called beta carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A. The National Eye Institute examined the role of beta carotene on age-related eye diseases and found that supplementation with beta carotene, vitamins C and E, zinc, and copper lowered the risk of developing advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of visual impairment and blindness in the United States. In addition, oranges contain lutein and zeaxanthin, two plant compounds that have also been studied for their role in treating dry eye. 

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Are there drawbacks to eating oranges?

Eating oranges is not only safe — it’s encouraged. That said, oranges are an acidic fruit, and those who suffer from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) — a condition in which the stomach acid flows back up into the esophagus — may experience discomfort after eating oranges. In addition, individuals with kidney disease are usually advised to stay away from foods that are high in potassium, like oranges, since their kidneys cannot process the mineral. 

Fun facts about oranges

There are tons reasons to stock up on oranges besides the health benefits. Here are a few of them:

Eating an orange can help with hydration

There’s a reason orange slices are handed out at kids’ sporting events — they are tasty, sweet and hydrating. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, you should get about 20% of your daily water from food. One orange is 86% water, making it a hydrating fruit. Plus, potassium is one of the electrolytes we lose when we sweat, so eating an orange can help replace fluids after a tough workout. 

A glass of 100% orange juice is considered one serving of fruit

It’s a common misconception that orange juice is packed with sugar, but an 8-ounce glass of 100% OJ that is made from just oranges has zero added sugar. It also contains all the beneficial nutrients that are in oranges, like vitamin C, potassium, vitamin A and hesperidin.

So, if you don’t feel like eating your fruit — you can drink it instead! One 8-ounce glass of orange juice counts as one of your two daily servings of fruit. Plus, most brands of OJ are fortified, meaning that calcium and vitamin D are added, two nutrients that are essential for bone health. That said, the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines suggest no more than half of your daily fruit comes from juice, so stick to one glass per day. 

How to use orange peel

Think twice about tossing that orange peel. Although it may seem useless, the orange peel holds a ton of flavor and has many culinary purposes. The easiest way to use the peel is to use a microplane to grate it into a flavorful zest. Add the zest to baked goods or a warm bowl of oatmeal. The peel also adds flavor to drinks, and it looks beautiful lining the rim of a glass for a cocktail or hot tea. You can also add the whole peel to simmering soups, jams and jellies for a citrusy flavor. Lastly, for a sweet treat, make a simple candied orange peel. 

Healthy orange recipes

The juicy, acidic nature of oranges lends itself well to sweet and savory dishes alike. For a fun way to use oranges in everyday food and drinks, try any of these recipes. 

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Studies suggest going sober — even for just a month — has numerous health benefits, including weight loss, mental clarity and better sleep. It’s also great for your wallet and helps improve your financial savings, too.

So, if you’re thinking of giving up alcohol this month, here’s what to know about Dry January and tips to help make your endeavor successful.

What is Dry January?

Dry January began after a woman training for her first half-marathon, Emily Robinson in the U.K., decided to quit drinking for the month. She later went to work for an alcohol awareness organization that launched a national campaign called Alcohol Change UK, which encouraged people to “ditch the hangover, reduce the waistline and save some serious money by giving up alcohol for 31 days.”

The event slowly went global, gaining popularity on social media and soon spreading state-side.

Over the past couple of years, between 15% and 19% of people have participated in Dry January, according to research by Morning Consult.

Hilary Sheinbaum, author of the book “The Dry Challenge,” about Dry January, said she wrote from personal experience.

“On Dec. 31, 2016, moments before the ball dropped, I made a Dry January bet with a friend,” Sheinbaum said. “In the end, I ended up going the full 31 days. My friend did not. He ended up buying me a very fancy meal, but I had the opportunity to see how alcohol was affecting my day-to-day life. With Dry January, I had clearer skin. I was sleeping better. I had so much more financial savings at the end of the month.”

When she took on her first dry challenge, she was working regularly at booze-infused events as a red carpet reporter, and a food and beverage writer. She was also single and going on a lot of dates. Now in a two-year relationship, she and her live-in boyfriend do Dry January together.

“Having someone doing it with you is definitely encouraging,” Sheinbaum said. “For many Americans, we start off the year with a number of resolutions, whether that’s saving money, losing weight, just being healthier in general. Dry January checks the boxes for those goals and many more.”

Tips for a successful Dry January

Experts warn that the ritual isn’t meant as a substitute for addiction treatment and recovery. Dr. Joseph DeSanto, an MD and addiction specialist for the recovery program BioCorRx, agreed but said Dry January may give those in trouble “something to rally around, especially if they’re not in a 12-step group, and provide a sense of community.”

He added: “Any kind of harm reduction is advantageous. If someone is a heavy drinker, they could benefit greatly from switching to moderate to light drinking, even if they can’t stop altogether. I’ve never met an alcoholic that felt worse from drinking less or not drinking.”

Molly Desch, a certified life coach with a focus on sobriety, offers some helpful tips to make your Dry January successful.

• Write a list of 30 activities or hobbies – Is there a skill that you would like to learn or any hobbies that you used to do? Having a list of interests, activities and hobbies that you could do instead of drinking is a good reference tool to have handy when you’re bored and craving a drink.
• Tell your friends and family – Letting your friends and family know you’re not going to be indulging for the month is a good way to help hold yourself accountable. It also lets others know not to invite you to that bar where you’re tempted by a fear of missing out.
• Buy non-alcoholic drinks: A growing number of companies and bars are catering to customers who don’t drink alcohol. From non-alcoholic wines to spirits, beers and mocktails, it’s easier than ever to stay sober with booze-free adult beverages.
• Get a friend to join you – It’s easier to get through Dry January when you have someone doing the challenge with you as you both encourage each other along the way.
• Get professional help – There are plenty of groups and organizations that provide helpful resources for those struggling to stay sober. Whether it be motivational information, daily affirmations or just someone to talk to, it’s OK to get professional help if you think you need it.

Mocktails to try for Dry January:

Here are some easy ways to keep the party going sans the booze with these mocktail recipes:

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Gyms are packed at this time of year, but staying motivated in these cold winter months can be difficult.

The number one thing that helps motivate a real change is having a “menu of options,” psychologist Carrie Wilkens said.

Mixing some fun and novel activities into your rotation can turn workouts from a chore into something you look forward to.

Whether you have specific fitness goals or you’re just fighting the urge to hibernate, here are fresh ways to get active indoors in the D.C. area.

Tommy McFly is taking you inside some of the most fun workouts in D.C. in The Scene’s Fit in 2024 series. Watch this week on News4 Today, 4-7 a.m., and check back here for new videos.

Climbing for the adrenaline seekers

If you’re excited to see new sport climbing events at the Paris Olympics, then why not learn the ropes yourself?

Intro to rock climbing classes are the best way to try out what can be an addictive hobby.

Jenna, who teaches climbing at Sportrock, has seen students as young as 3 and well past retirement age.

“Whatever your walk of life is, we have a Parkinson’s group here, and our oldest climber is 82,” she said.

Where to find it: You have a lot of options!  Sportrock has locations in Alexandria, Gaithersburg and Sterling, and there’s even a Groupon for introductory classes (ages 14+ only). Reviewers also like Movement, which has locations in Crystal City and Rockville. Vertical Rock was still running holiday deals as of Jan. 2.

Boxing for a workout that packs a punch

Maybe you’ve seen boxing gyms popping up all around the D.C. area, but you’re not quite an Olympic athlete.

That’s no problem at BASH, a boxing-inspired gym that’s growing in Northern Virginia.

“We’re going to call you by name and face when you come into the studio and every single time that you come into class, we’re going to take you through your six core punches right from the start,” BASH founder Alex Trakas said.

Trakas founded the gym specifically to get more women involved in the sport, but her goals have grown.

“The second that I learned how to throw a punch, the second that I learned how to connect the combos and just felt more empowered and confident in myself, I was like, ‘I really want to bring this to more women,'” she said.

Where to find it: Bash has locations in Ballston, Rosslyn, Alexandria and the Mosaic District. You can find more boxing suggestions courtesy of ClassPass.

Cycling that’s not a luxury

Leticia Long’s Wired Cycling in Eckington strives to do fitness better.

Her classes are just $20 each, or you can buy five classes for $85. But she doesn’t compromise on the quality of her machines, and schedules classes early on most mornings so anyone can squeeze in a workout.

“I want you to figure out what feels right for your body today,” she said at a recent workout.

Where to find it: Wired Cycling can be found at 2028 4th Street NE, Washington, D.C. Book classes online.

Water aerobics for the whole family

Aqua aerobics provides a low-impact exercise where almost everyone can find a comfort zone.

Tons of gyms offer group classes, including YMCA Anthony Bowen at W and 14^th streets NW.

Instructor and former Olympian Rush Mijuskovic trained at the gym before competing in the Beijing Olympics, representing Montenegro in the triathlon.

“And we have, like people, three generations in the family going together for a while. And I’m teaching this class for 16 years,” Mijuskovic said. “This is the exercise you can do for the rest of your life.”

Where to find it: Check the YMCA’s Find Your Y page or look for rec centers with indoor pools in your county. Classes are offered by most park districts, including Montgomery County and Prince George’s County in Maryland and Arlington County, Alexandria and Fairfax County.

Want to know what’s up for your weekend? Sign up for The Weekend Scene, our newsletter about events, experiences and adventures for you and for your family around the DMV.

It’s one of numerous cases involving abortion restrictions that have played out in state and federal courts after the U.S. Supreme Court ended abortion rights in 2022. The administration issued guidance that year saying hospitals “must” provide abortion services if there’s a risk to the mother’s life, citing the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986, which requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment for anyone who arrives at the emergency room.

Abortion opponents have challenged the guidance in multiple jurisdictions. In Texas, the state joined abortion opponents in a lawsuit to stop the guidance from taking effect and won at the district court level. The Biden administration appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. But a unanimous three-judge panel rejected the appeal in Tuesday’s ruling.

The ruling said the guidance could not be used to require emergency care abortions in Texas or by members of two anti-abortion groups that filed suit — the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists and the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. The California-based 9th Circuit has allowed the use of the guidance to continue in an Idaho case, which is pending at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Opponents of the guidance said Texas law already allows abortions to save the life of the mother but that the federal guidance went too far, calling for abortions when an emergency condition is not present and eliminating obligations to treat the unborn child.

The 5th Circuit panel sided with Texas. The opinion said language in the 1986 emergency care law requires hospitals to stabilize the pregnant woman and her fetus.

“We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child especially when EMTALA imposes equal stabilization obligations,” said the opinion written by Judge Kurt Engelhardt.

In the appellate hearing last November, a U.S. Justice Department attorney arguing for the administration said the guidance provides needed safeguards for women and that the district court order blocking the use of the guidance was an error with “potentially devastating consequences for pregnant women within the state of Texas.”

The panel that ruled Tuesday included Engelhardt and Cory Wilson, nominated to the court by former President Donald Trump, and Leslie Southwick, nominated by former President George W. Bush.

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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 May 2022 that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade — but before the formal announcement that June, researchers found.

Nationally, the average number of daily requests shot up nearly tenfold, from about 25 in the eight months before the leak to 247 after the leak. In states where an abortion ban was inevitable, the average weekly request rate rose nearly ninefold.

“People are looking at looming threats to reproductive health access, looming threats to their reproductive rights, and potentially thinking to themselves: How can I prepare for this? Or how can I get around this or get out ahead of this?” said Dr. Abigail Aiken, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the letter’s authors.

Daily requests dropped to 89 nationally after the Supreme Court decision, the research shows, then rose to 172 in April 2023 when there were conflicting legal rulings about the federal approval of mifepristone. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on limits on the drug this year.

Co-author Dr. Rebecca Gomperts of Amsterdam, director of Aid Access, attributed this spike to greater public awareness during times of uncertainty.

Researchers found inequities in who is getting pills in advance. Compared with people requesting pills to manage current abortions, a greater proportion were at least 30 years old, white, had no children and lived in urban areas and regions with less poverty.

Advance provision isn’t yet reaching people who face the greatest barriers to abortion care, said Dr. Daniel Grossman, an OB-GYN at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research.

“It’s not surprising that some people would want to have these pills on hand in case they need them, instead of having to travel to another state or try to obtain them through telehealth once pregnant,” he added in an email, also saying more research is needed into the inequities.

Recently, Aiken said, some other organizations have started offering pills in advance.

“It’s a very new idea for a lot of folks because it’s not standard practice within the U.S. health care setting,” she said. “It will actually be news to a lot of people that it’s even something that is offered.”

Read more:

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“In the blink of an eye it could all be taken away… Life is so precious. One second you have it, and the next second it can be taken away from you just like that,” Hodgson begins the post.

While traveling, “I had a freak accident on my trip and was electrocuted by power lines and ended up blacking out and being rushed to the ER in Thailand,” Hodgson wrote. “It’s been the worst 10 days of my life — going in and out of hospitals fighting to regain my strength and fighting for my life. I am so lucky to be here today.”

Alongside the caption, Hodgson shared a series of photos and videos including a selfie in a hospital bed, a photo of her IV line, a page of hand-written affirmations from a journal and images of flowers and “Get Well Soon” gifts.

“Thank you to each and every one of you for all of the phone calls, messages, voice messages, texts, flowers, breakfast deliveries, baked goods, chocolates, cards, and just the never ending support and love,” Hodgson wrote in the caption. “Each text and message, even when I was too weak to answer, made all the difference to keep me fighting when I was losing hope.”

Hodgson, who has more than 24,000 followers on Instagram and more than 97,000 followers on TikTok, frequently posts informational videos about dental health, getting braces and what it’s like to work in medicine.

She shared a few more details about the emergency and her recovery on her Instagram stories.

“Hi everyone. Sorry I’ve been MIA for the past 12 days. Still don’t have a lot of energy to type it all out but just posted about why I’ve been gone,” she explained in an Instagram Story posted on January 1, 2024. “In short, I am just so lucky to be here and to get to ring in 2024. Don’t ever take it for granted. Love you all.”

In another post, she continued: “I’m still not out of the woods yet – going to be a lot of upcoming doctor appointments, big lifestyle changes, need to regain my strength, my weight, and need a lot of help to recover from the PTSD of it all,” Hodgson wrote. “There are still unanswered questions, but I’m just so grateful to be here.”

Hodgson ended her Instagram caption with a message of gratitude — and a reflection on what this challenging experience has taught her as we enter the new year.

“2023, you’ve taught me something I think we all need to be reminded of when we get caught up in the little things: What a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love…just being alive, being able to breathe, eat, talk, move your body, is something grand and something to be celebrated,” Hodgson wrote.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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Local researchers say they’re a step closer to making it a reality: Scientists at UC San Diego say they’ve created a vaccine that reduces inflammation. The vaccine zeroes in on the bacterial enzyme that cause acne without affecting beneficial skin bacteria.

“What we’ve been able to do is identify one of these components that it pretty much different between those bacteria that cause acne and those that don’t,” Dr. George Liu, who is associated with UC San Diego’s division of pediatric infectious diseases, told NBC 7. “And we’ve found that this one is a key component that drives the acne disease. And we’re targeting it with a vaccine … to be able to block it and showing that it has some fairly promising results in blocking the disease.”

Liu said around 70-80% of all people develop acne at some point in their lifetimes, most often during their teenage years.

As to when the vaccine might be available: Liu estimates between 5-10 years.

Amma, then 24, had just moved to California with dreams of becoming a fitness and lifestyle influencer. She was keen to get an injection of vitamins B12 and C, as well as a compound called deoxycholic acid that was supposed to melt fat away.

“They told me that the more areas of my body they inject, the better,” Amma said. She said she was injected more than 100 times in her arms, stomach and lower back with the combination of vitamins and fat-melting ingredients.

Within 24 hours, Amma felt dizzy and feverish. Each injection site, she said, was painful and oozed with pus.

“Anything touching my skin was excruciating,” she said. “My entire body felt like it was on fire.”

The number of med spas and hydration clinics has ballooned in recent years, turning into a $15 billion wellness industry offering a variety of services, from IV therapy to skincare and cosmetic procedures. Federal health officials and representatives of med spa owners warn consumers that, along with the boom, some facilities are using unlicensed workers to inject unapproved products in unsanitary conditions.

For more on this story go to NBCNews.com.

The figures underscore the chaotic state of the nation’s $7 billion vaping market and raise questions about how the U.S. government can stop the flow of fruit-flavored disposable e-cigarettes used by 1 in 10 American teens and adolescents.

More than 11,500 unique vaping products are being sold in U.S. stores, up 27% from 9,000 products in June, according to tightly held industry data from analytics firm Circana.

“FDA whacks one product and then the manufacturers get around it and the kids get around it,” said Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a Stanford University psychologist who develops anti-vaping educational materials. “It’s too easy to change your product a little bit and just relaunch it.”

Halpern-Felsher says she is “constantly” updating her curriculum to keep pace with new vaping brands and trends.

Nearly all the new products are disposable e-cigarettes, according to the sales data gathered from gas stations, convenience stores and other shops. The products generated $3.2 billion in the first 11 months of this year.

The FDA has authorized a handful of e-cigarettes for adult smokers and is still reviewing products from several major companies, including Juul. Regulators consider nearly all other e-cigarettes to be illegal.

“Those committing illegal acts don’t advertise their crimes, and those trying to import illegal tobacco products into the United States are no different,” said FDA’s tobacco director, Brian King, in a written response to AP questions. “The FDA and our federal partners are using tools, like import alerts, to stop these illegal tobacco products at the border and to deter countless others.”

The rise in e-cigarettes sold continues despite a record number of products detained.

An FDA database shows officials “refused” entry to 148 containers or pallets of “tobacco” goods last month, consisting almost entirely of vaping products from China. Refused imports are typically destroyed.

Through the end of November, U.S. officials had refused 374 such shipments this year, more than double the 118 refused in 2022.

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This year’s items included $400,000 worth of Esco Bars, a disposable brand placed on a list of banned imports in May. The agency’s posted data is often preliminary because it takes time to finalize refusals.

But recent history shows how easily companies can maneuver around import bans.

In July 2022, the FDA barred dozens of e-cigarettes from Chinese manufacturer Fume, including flavors Pineapple Ice and Blue Razz.

Fume sales dipped after the ban, but the company launched a slew of new products, posting $42 million in U.S. sales in the third quarter of 2023, the data shows. Roughly 98% of sales came from products not on the FDA’s “red list” of products that can be detained.

Industry shipping tactics are also challenging the usefulness of import restrictions.

In July, FDA and customs officials intercepted $18 million worth of illegal vapes, including leading brand Elf Bar. But the shipments were mislabeled as shoes, toys and other items — not e-cigarettes — requiring officials to individually open and verify the contents of more than two dozen containers.

Circana, formerly IRI, restricts access to its data, which it sells to companies and researchers. A person not authorized to share it gave the AP access on condition of anonymity.

The FDA has no schedule for updating its import lists but said it is “closely monitoring” instances where companies try to avoid detection.

“The FDA has a variety of tools at our disposal to take action against these tactics,” FDA’s King said.

The agency has limited powers to penalize foreign companies. Instead, regulators have sent hundreds of warning letters to U.S. stores selling their products, but those are not legally binding.

Even as the FDA attempts to work with customs officials, it is struggling to complete a yearslong review of applications submitted by manufacturers hoping to market their products to adults.

The few tobacco-flavored products currently authorized by the FDA are deeply unpopular. Their combined sales were just $174 million, or 2.4% of the vaping marketplace this year, according to Circana.

“Nobody wants them,” says Marc Silas, owner of 906 Vapor shop in Michigan. “If people wanted them, they’d be on the shelves and they’re not.”

Deeply frustrated with the pace of FDA’s review, public health groups have successfully sued the agency to speed up the process. The agency aimed to complete all major outstanding applications this year, but it recently said the process would stretch into next year.

The delays have raised questions about the viability of the current regulatory framework for e-cigarettes.

“FDA is trying to operate with an old model when the whole environment has changed,” said Scott Ballin, a health policy consultant who previously worked for the American Heart Association. “They have this long line of products that have to be reviewed one by one and now they’re in a giant hole.”

One alternative approach would be to make decisions about entire classes of e-cigarettes, rather than individual products.

The idea initially came from small vaping manufacturers who did not have the money to conduct the large studies typical of FDA applications. Public health advocates concerned about the persistence of underage vaping have embraced it.

Halpern-Felsher, of Stanford University, is among those urging the FDA to ban all flavored disposable e-cigarettes, the products used by most of the 2 million underage teens who vape.

“If we continue down this path that we’re on, we’re just going to have new and continuing generations of young people addicted to nicotine,” she said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The child who died was in the eastern part of the state, according to the Virginia Health Department.

As the weather gets colder, health experts believe flu activity will increase. There’s been a “sharp increase” in the number of flu cases nationwide in recent days, according to the director of the Centers for Disease Control.

The VDH urges everyone six months old and older to get a yearly flu vaccine, and consult their healthcare provider as needed.

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Breakthroughs in treatments of life-altering issues; a dinosaur discovery of the century in Maryland and a teen’s cancer-fighting invention are some of our most-read and favorite science and health stories of the year.

Here’s a look at some of NBC Washington’s health and science stories about innovations that are changing lives for the better.

‘You’ve had enough’: What weight-loss drugs may teach us about addiction

The medications Ozempic and Wegovy have been all over the news for helping people lose weight — and researchers are now studying the potential impact they could have on alcoholism and other addictive behaviors.

“We’re seeing a decrease in impulsive behaviors from patients,” said Dr. Rocio Salas-Whalen, an endocrinologist. “Initially it was for food, but we’re seeing it for other types of impulses like alcohol, tobacco.”

The medications work by suppressing a person’s appetite and essentially rewiring the reward system in our brain for food and other cravings, such as for alcohol, Salas-Whalen explained.

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Alexandria, Virginia, mom Lisa Robillard first took weight-loss medication as part of a clinical trial. She was responding to chronic obesity, which she dealt with starting in childhood. On the medication, she lost 60 pounds, began to leave food on her plate and noticed her drinking habits change too.

“I just don’t have that desire. I will have a glass of wine, and where I may have had two or three, one is [now] fine or a half of a glass is fine. Something in my head says, ‘That’s good. You’ve had enough,’” she said.

Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine are taking a deeper dive with humans, studying this class of drugs and their potential effectiveness as a treatment for alcohol addiction as part of an ongoing clinical trial.

‘Most important dig site east of the Mississippi’: Ancient river ‘bone bed’ reveals dinosaur fossils in Maryland

In an undeveloped chunk of land in the middle of a heavily industrialized section of Prince George’s County, less than an hour from Washington, D.C., paleontologists have found a gold mine for the fossil record.

Paleontologists in Dinosaur Park, a public park and active dig site in Laurel, Maryland, announced in July that the park is home to what paleontologists call a bone bed. It’s the term used when one or more species are concentrated near each other, in the same geologic layer of the Earth.

“It is certainly the most significant collection of dinosaur bones discovered along the eastern seaboard in the last hundred years,” Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist with the Smithsonian, said.

One of the most exciting discoveries came on Earth Day: the three-foot-long leg bone of a large, meat-eating dinosaur. It belongs to a theropod, which is a branch of the dino family that includes carnivores like the T. Rex. But this dinosaur lived about 50 million years earlier than that.

JP Hodnett, a paleontologist with Prince George’s County Parks and Recreation, believes it belongs to an Acrocanthosaurus, a 12,000-pound, apex predator that called Laurel home about 115 million years ago.

“Finding a bonebed like this is a dream for many paleontologists,” said Hodnett in the release.

Dinosaur Park – and its many fossils – lie waiting to be discovered. If you want to try your hand at fossil hunting, visitors can take part in public programs for free on the first and third Saturdays of each month.

Virginia 14-year-old named top young scientist for cancer-fighting soap invention

Heman Bekele, a freshman at Woodson High School in Northern Virginia, spent his summer break working to cure cancer.

He was named “America’s Top Young Scientist” for creating a bar of soap designed to fight low-grade skin cancer. Out of nine students, he won the top prize of $25,000 and was named America’s Top Young Scientist.

“I wanted to try to find a way for the entire world to be able to have an equitable and accessible form of skin cancer treatment,” Bekele said.

The 14-year-old calls it skin cancer-treating soap, or SCTS for short. The soap replenishes the skin with dendritic cells, which help protect the skin and fight cancer.

Before making the soap, he reached out to University of Virginia professors to help with research.

He said he hopes to take the soap to market in the next five years and start a nonprofit so it can be available to people in need.

Diagnosed and treated for cancer all in one day, thanks to new medical tech

It can take several weeks to diagnose, and then treat someone with surgery, for lung cancer. But for some patients, INOVA Health System can do both procedures on the same day, thanks to new cutting-edge robotic technology.

“This is a game changer in the way we treat early stage lung cancer,” said Dr. Michael Weyant, the chief of thoracic surgery at INOVA. “So in one day, from start to finish, it is all taken care of.”

Weyant says the approach leads to better outcomes and reduces the mental toll that comes after a cancer diagnosis.

Sheryl Bitsch’s successful biopsy and surgery took about eight hours, and she was back in her Northern Virginia home the next day. In January, she told us she’s back to her routine, taking her new puppy out for long walks and looking forward to more travel adventures, thanks to innovative technology.

“It was a process that was, despite the diagnosis, really painless,” she said. “I’m not sure if I had to go home and think about this for weeks on end, I would have been nearly as okay with everything as I was as a result of it.”

Doctors say to be eligible for the same-day diagnosis and surgery, patients need to have an identified lung nodule that has not spread anywhere else.

‘It’s unreal’: AI helping paralysis patients regain movement and communicate

Two cutting-edge clinical trials are using artificial intelligence to help patients with paralysis regain movement in their body and reclaim their voice.

For years, Keith Thomas has been unable to move his arms and hands after a diving accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Now, a simple gesture like shaking someone’s hand gives him tremendous hope.

“When I feel the sense of touch, it’s like, it’s unreal because I haven’t felt that in three years now,” Keith Thomas said.

Through a new procedure called a double neural bypass, doctors at Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in New York implanted five tiny computer chips in Thomas’ brain that can literally read his mind.

“This is the first time the brain has been linked directly to spinal cord stimulation and to the body to restore movement and the sense of touch where the user’s thoughts are actually driving that therapy,” said Professor Chad Bouton, the vice president of Advanced Engineering and director of the Neural Bypass and Brain-Computer Interface Laboratory at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research.

AI isn’t just helping patients regain movement.

In a separate study published in the journal Nature, researchers from UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley are using artificial intelligence to help a paralyzed mother reclaim her voice.

Edited by Sophia Barnes

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Drugmakers and a wide-ranging and growing bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are gearing up to push for that to change next year.

As obesity rates rise among older adults, some lawmakers say the United States cannot afford to keep a decades-old law that prohibits Medicare from paying for new weight loss drugs, including Wegovy and Zepbound. But research shows the initial price tag of covering those drugs is so steep it could drain Medicare’s already shaky bank account.

A look at the debate around if — and how — Medicare should cover obesity drugs:

What obesity drugs are on the market and how do they work?

The Food and Drug Administration has in recent years approved a new class of weekly injectables, Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, to treat obesity.

People can lose as much as 15% to 25% of their body weight on the drugs, which imitate the hormones that regulate appetites by communicating fullness between the gut and brain when people eat.

The cost of the drugs, beloved by celebrities, has largely limited them to the wealthy, A monthly supply of Wegovy rings up at $1,300 and Zepbound will put you out $1,000. Shortages for the drugs have also limited the supplies. Private insurers often do not cover the medications or place strict restrictions on who can access them.

Last month, a large, international study found a 20% reduced risk of serious heart problems such as heart attacks in patients who took Wegovy.

Why doesn’t Medicare cover the drugs?

Long before Oprah Winfrey and TikTok influencers alike gushed about the benefits of these weight loss drugs, Congress made a rule: Medicare Part D, the health insurance plan for older Americans to get prescriptions, could not cover medications used to help gain or lose weight. Medicare will cover obesity screening and behavioral treatment if a person has body mass index over 30. People with BMIs over 30 are considered obese.

The rule was tacked onto legislation passed by Congress in 2003 that overhauled Medicare’s prescription drug benefits.

Lawmakers balked at paying high costs for drugs to treat a condition that was historically regarded as cosmetic. Safety problems in the 1990s with the anti-obesity treatment known as fen-phen, which had to be withdrawn from the market, were also fresh in their minds.

Medicaid, the state and federal partnership program for low-income people, does cover the drugs in some areas, but access is fragmented.

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The conversation is shifting

New studies are showing the drugs do more than help patients slim down.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, introduced legislation with Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., this year that would allow Medicare to cover the now-forbidden anti-obesity drugs, therapy, nutritionists and dieticians.

“For years there was a stigma against these people, then there was a stigma about talking about obesity,” Wenstrup said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Now we’re in a place where we’re saying this is a health problem we need to deal with this.”

He believes the intervention could alleviate all sorts of ailments associated with obesity that cost the system money.

“The problem is so prevalent,” Wenstrup said. “People are starting to realize you have to take into consideration the savings that comes with better health.”

Last year, about 40% of the nearly 66 million people enrolled in Medicare had obesity. That roughly mirrors the larger U.S. population, where 42% of adults struggle with obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Notably, Medicare does cover certain surgical procedures to treat medical complications of obesity in people with a body mass index of 35 and at least one related condition. Congress approved the exception in 2006, noted Mark McClellan, a former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the FDA.

The 17-year-old law may provide a blueprint for expanding coverage of the new drugs, which mirror the results of bariatric surgery in some cases, McClellan said. Evidence showed that the surgery reduced the risks of death and serious illness from conditions related to obesity.

“And that’s been the basis for coverage all this time,” McClellan said.

Cost is now the issue

Still, the upfront price tag for lifting the rule remains a challenge.

Some research shows offering weight loss drugs would assure Medicare’s impending bankruptcy. A Vanderbilt University analysis this year put an annual price of about $26 billion on anti-obesity drugs for Medicare if just 10% of the system’s enrollees were prescribed the medication.

Other research, however, shows it could also save the government billions, even trillions over many years, because it would reduce some of the chronic conditions and problems that stem from obesity.

An analysis this year from the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center estimated the government could save as much as $245 billion in a decade, with the majority of savings coming from reducing hospitalizations and other care.

“What we did is we looked at the long-term health consequences of treating obesity in the Medicare population,” said the study’s co-author, Darius Lakdawalla, the director of research at the center. The Schaeffer Center receives funding from pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly.

Lakdawalla said it’s nearly impossible to put a cost on covering the drugs because no one knows how many people will end up taking them or what the drugs will be priced at.

The Congressional Budget Office, which is tasked with pricing out legislative proposals, acknowledged this difficulty in an October blog post, with the director calling for more research on the topic.

Overall, the agency “expects that the drug’s net cost to the Medicare program would be significant over the next 10 years.”

The cost of the legislation is the biggest hang up in getting support, Ruiz said.

“When we talk about the initial cost, I often have to educate the members that the CBO does not take into account cost savings in their cost benefit analysis,” Ruiz told the AP. “Taking that number in isolation, one does not get the full picture of the full economies of reducing obesity and all of its comorbidities in our patients.”

Who wants Medicare to cover the drugs?

Doctors say weight loss drugs are only a part of the most effective strategies to treat a patient with obesity.

When Dr. Andrew Kraftson develops a plan with his patients at the University of Michigan’s Weight Navigator program, it involves a “perfect marriage” of behavioral intervention, health and diet education, and possibly anti-obesity medication.

But with Medicare patients, he is limited in what he can prescribe.

“A blanket prohibition for use of anti-obesity medication is an antiquated way of thinking and does not recognize obesity as a disease and is perpetuating health disparities,” Kraftson said. “I’m not so ignorant to think that Medicare should just start covering expensive treatments for everyone. But there is something between all or nothing.”

Lawmakers have introduced some variation of legislation that would permit Medicare coverage of weight loss drugs over the last decade. But this year’s bill has garnered interest from more than 60 lawmakers, from self-proclaimed budget hawk Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., to progressive Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif.

Passage is a top priority for two lawmakers, Wenstrup and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., before they retire next year.

Pharmaceutical companies also are readying for a lobbying blitz next year with the drugs getting the OK from the FDA to be used for weight loss.

“Americans should have access to the medicines that their doctors believe they should have,” Stephen Ubl, the president of the lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said on a call with reporters last week. “We would call on Medicare to cover these medicines.”

Already, Novo Nordisk has employed eight separate firms and spent nearly $20 million on lobbying the federal government on issues, including the Treat & Reduce Obesity Act, since 2020, disclosures show. Eli Lilly has spent roughly $2.4 million lobbying since 2021.

Advocates for groups such as the Obesity Society have been pushing for Medicare coverage of the medications for years. But the momentum may be shifting, thanks to the growing evidence that the obesity drugs can prevent strokes, heart attacks, even death, said Ted Kyle, a policy advisor.

“The conversation has shifted from debating whether obesity treatment is worthwhile to figuring out how to make the economics work,” he said. “This is why I now believe the change is inevitable.”

Associated Press writers JoNel Aleccia in Temecula, California, and Brian Slodysko contributed to this report.

In an early analysis of data from a clinical trial backed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, 165 children and adolescents who received injections of the drug Xolair were able to consume higher doses of the foods without triggering an allergic reaction, compared to those who treated with placebos, Dr. Alkis Togias, chief of the allergy, asthma and airway biology branch at NIAID, said.

“The major advantage of this medication is that it will cover more than one food and that it has been around for about two decades and we know its safety profile, which is pretty good,” Togias said.

The monoclonal antibody omalizumab, marketed as Xolair and developed by Genentech and Novartis, is already available as a treatment for asthma. The medication was shown to reduce allergic asthma attacks and hives in clinical trials. 

Read the full story on NBCNews.com.

What is the 30-30-30 rule and how does it work?

What is the 30-30-30 rule?

The 30-30-30 rule is a weight loss method that involves eating 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up, followed by 30 minutes of low-intensity exercise. Beyond these steps, the method doesn’t involve any other rules, restrictions or counting calories.

The morning routine was originally described by author Tim Ferriss in his book “The 4-Hour Body.” More recently, the 30-30-30 rule went viral on TikTok thanks to Gary Brecka, a podcaster and self-described “human biologist” who speaks about various ways to boost physical and mental health.

In two videos, which each have over 18 million views so far, Brecka breaks down how the 30-30-30 rule can aid with weight loss and blood sugar control.

So, what does the science say about the 30-30-30 morning routine? Can it actually help with weight loss, and are there any risks?

Does the 30-30-30 method work?

It’s difficult to say definitively if the 30-30-30 method works and whether it can lead to weight loss because it has not been studied rigorously, Tara Schmidt, lead registered dietitian at the Mayo Clinic, tells TODAY.com. And ultimately, the effectiveness of any diet or fitness plan will depend on the individual and their goals.

However, the method can be broken down into its different steps, which have been researched. Here’s what we know about the benefits of eating a high-protein breakfast, followed by low-intensity exercise in the morning.

Breakfast and weight loss

While eating breakfast has numerous benefits, does it actually help with weight loss? It depends. “The evidence that we have supporting breakfast for weight loss is rated as fair,” says Schmidt.

In the National Weight Control Registry study, subjects who maintained long-term weight loss tended to eat breakfast every day, says Schmidt, suggesting it may be a factor in their success. “We don’t know exactly why,” says Schmidt.

While some claim breakfast helps “jump-start” or boost metabolism, the evidence to support this is lacking, the experts note. A 2022 analysis found that those who ate a bigger breakfast did not burn calories any faster, TODAY.com previously reported.

“Theoretically it could be beneficial for calorie burn if you’re the kind of person where eating breakfast in the morning makes you feel more energetic and active throughout the day,” Jason Machowsky, an exercise physiologist and registered dietitian at Hospital for Special Surgery, tells TODAY.com.

The 30-30-30 rule specifically recommends eating breakfast within 30 minutes of waking and more importantly, that the breakfast has 30 grams of protein. Does this make a difference?

“I would not say that breakfast needs to be eaten within 30 minutes of waking. I would typically say eat breakfast within a few hours. … Not everyone can stomach food that early,” says Schmidt. “I think there is a benefit to having 30 grams of protein.”

Healthy adults should consume 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily, according to the Institute of Medicine’s dietary reference intake recommendations. For an adult weighing 150 pounds, that’s about 54 grams of protein per day, TODAY.com previously reported. What’s considered a “high-protein diet“ depends on the individual and their body size.

Research has suggested that eating protein at breakfast can help with satiety, or feeling fuller for longer, as well as blood sugar control and insulin resistance, the experts note.

High-protein breakfast choices may include eggs, lean meats, greek yogurt, ultra-filtered milk, nut butters, and protein shakes, says Schmidt. “It’s perfectly fine to have carbohydrates at breakfast, but when you have a protein source along with the carbohydrates, that glucose spike is not going to be as high,” Schmidt adds.

In addition to protein and carbohydrates, Schmidt encourages people to add in fruits and vegetables, which provide fiber and additional nutrients.

Low-intensity exercise for weight loss

The last step of the method is to get 30 minutes of low-intensity, steady state (LISS) cardiovascular exercise every morning after breakfast. This type of exercise gets your heart rate up but not too high so you can sustain it over a longer period of time without losing your breath. Examples include brisk walking, biking, swimming or using an elliptical, TODAY.com previously reported.

The U.S. Department of Health’s physical activity guidelines recommend adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity per week.

“Any exercise is going to help bring your blood sugar down, so it’s absolutely beneficial,” says Schmidt. “But I don’t think we have a lot of research to support it needs to be that quickly after a meal.”

In the now-viral videos on TikTok, Brecka claims the 30-30-30 method helps the body burn more fat.

“Fat-burning” is a loaded term, the experts say. “Lower intensity exercise is going to burn a higher percentage of calories coming from fat,” says Machowsky. But higher-intensity exercise may burn more calories total, he adds.

“If the goal is weight loss, it’s about the total amount of calories you’re burning,” Machowsky adds. “You need to be in a calorie deficit to promote actual reduction of fat stores off your body.”

Looking at the timing of exercise, many experts agree that the morning exercise can be ideal for logistic and health reasons — but whether it’s sustainable depends on the person.

A recent study published in the journal Obesity found that exercising between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. could help with weight loss, TODAY.com previously reported.

“Some people find the act of exercising in the morning makes them more mindful of their eating choices the rest of the day, so it can have a positive ripple effect,” says Machowsky.

Others may find that morning exercise is easier to make a consistent habit, Schmidt adds.

Does 30-30-30 help with weight loss?

Ultimately, the impact of the 30-30-30 method will depend on a person’s baseline activity level and other habits, the experts emphasize. “Ask yourself: Are the (30-30-30 steps) improvements upon those current habits?” says Machowsky.

“If you’re not doing any exercise and now you’re doing 30 minutes a day of low-intensity cardio, that’s better than nothing,” Machowsky adds. But if you’re doing higher-intensity or longer workouts and cutting back in order to do the 30-30-30 method, then you might not burn as many calories as before, the experts note.

While lots of different factors can impact an individual’s weight, the main strategy that guarantees weight loss is being in a calorie deficit, Schmidt says, so if the 30-30-30 method doesn’t get you there, then you aren’t likely to lose weight.

Risks of 30-30-30

Compared to other fad diets and fitness trends, the 30-30-30 rule is far less concerning, says Schmidt. The basic principles, eating a high-protein breakfast and exercising daily, are pretty easy to get behind. However, they may not work for everyone.

“The (method) doesn’t seem to be harmful to try, but it’s not one-size-fits-all,” says Machowksy.

“Some people are hungry in the morning and other people aren’t, so I wouldn’t go force feeding yourself,” says Machowsky. If you can’t stomach breakfast or hate morning workouts, this method may not be ideal for you, the experts note. “But it doesn’t mean that you can’t try it and see how your body responds,” he adds.

It’s generally safe for most people to consume 30 grams of protein at one time, given the daily recommended amount is higher than that for the average adult, the experts note. However, some people should limit their daily protein intake, says Schmidt, such as those with chronic kidney disease. “Always check with your physician first,” Schmidt adds.

Thirty minutes of low-intensity exercise is also safe for most people, the experts note. “For the general healthy population, I don’t see it being an issue,” says Machowsky. However, anyone with underlying health conditions should always check with their doctor before starting any new exercise program, he adds.

“Of course, there are always disclaimers: If something you eat doesn’t make you feel good, stop. If you do an activity that makes you hurt, stop,” says Machowsky.

“We keep finding newer ways to do the same thing we’ve been trying to tell people the whole time, which is you need to be exercising, you need to be eating a balanced diet, and it needs to be sustainable,” says Schmidt.

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It was 2019 and the little girl loved playing with dolls, going out for ice cream, and watching her favorite Nick Jr. cartoon, “Bubble Guppies.” At the teacher’s suggestion, Benton, 29, took the girl to see her local doctor in Ashtabula, Ohio.

At the time, Benton had never heard of precocious puberty. Having grown up in the Black community, where early puberty rates are among the highest in the U.S., Benton had known 7- and 8-year-old girls who’d had their periods or needed bras. But nobody in Benton’s family realized there was an actual medical diagnosis, or that prescription hormone treatments called puberty blockers could help slow the physical changes, if needed.

“Girls were just called ‘fast’ or ‘too mature for their age,’” Benton said. “I now understand they were struggling with precocious puberty.”

With puberty beginning at younger ages, especially among young Black girls, doctors say there’s an urgent need for greater awareness and education among families who may face hurdles in access to diagnosis and medical care.

In a 2022 article in the journal Pediatrics, researchers warned that biases in early puberty care had tremendous implications for the physical and emotional health of Black children.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com

“Your body never bounces back to what it used to be,” Hernandez said. 

That’s how she ended up at Xiluet Plastic Surgery Center in Miami, which she is now suing along with the doctor who performed the operation. Hernandez claims in her suit that a botched operation left her more than half a million dollars in debt for follow-up care — and emotionally, mentally and physically scarred. 

“Everything seemed like, you know, like they were a great place to go,” she said.  

In June 2022, Hernandez traveled from her home in Orlando to Xiluet in Miami to undergo a Brazilian butt lift or BBL.  

According to a lawsuit she filed against Xiluet, during the electronic intake process, “…she noted several times that she was diabetic,”  and was assured “…she was a good candidate for the procedure.”

Hernandez claims Xiluet “did not arrange for a consultation…(with the doctor) until the day of her procedure…”  and the day after the surgery she met with a “…physician assistant…” with Xiluet and pointed out “… a large laceration on the left side of her stomach/hip and one on her back that looked like bruises” 

“They said, ‘Oh, that’s normal,’” Hernandez said. “I did not see the doctor that morning and I was sent on my way.”

But as weeks passed, she says the wounds filled with liquid and smelled bad, and she had to drive back to Miami to see the doctor. 

“He pretty much drained the fluid out of there and then he told my husband, ‘Oh, if it happens again, so you guys don’t have to drive all the way over here for a four-hour drive, you can just do it yourself, order, you know, order stuff from Amazon,” Loyda said. “It’s normal, just drain it out.”

Days later, Loyda says she ended up in an emergency room in Orlando where they immediately began giving her antibiotics.

“It was necrosis at this point,” she said. “I had ten different bacteria…two of them were mortal bacterias that could have killed me.”

The company responded to Hernandez’s lawsuit denying any wrongdoing and calling her surgeon an independent contractor.

Hernanez’s attorney Peter Sotolongo pushed back on that claim, saying the clinic advertised with the surgeon as part of their team.

“We have evidence through documentation and some other things…that they held the doctor out to be part of their surgeons,” he said. 

A quick search of the internet turned up a Xiluet ad promoting procedures with the same doctor in April of 2022.

“You can now get your BBL for only $4,850 right here at Xiluet plastic surgery with our amazing doctor Tomasz Kosowski,” a woman can be heard saying in the video. 

The doctor no longer appears on Xiluet’s website, as of this story’s publishing. 

Earlier this year, Kosowski was charged in the murder of an attorney in an unrelated case. He’s awaiting trial. His lawyer didn’t reply to inquiries regarding Hernandez’s lawsuit.

As for Xiluet, the Florida Health Department has filed two administrative complaints against the center saying they failed   “…to only have licensed physicians perform surgical procedures at the office…”  failed “…to utilize surgeons who have transfer agreements or hospital staff privileges for a licensed hospital within reasonable proximity…” failed “…to maintain compliance with physician training requirements…”  and have “…an actively licensed anesthesia provider.” 

Though the Florida Health Department says the center corrected some of these failures, it is requesting the medical board impose a penalty, including revoking the license of Xiluet and another one of their doctors listed as their designated physician. 

As for Hernandez, she says the surgery took an emotional, physical and financial toll on her.  

“From being in the hospital for all that time, I have about half a million dollars in medical bills. I lost my job. I lost my car,” she said. 

She says she’s also on a slew of medications to deal with depression, anxiety, and panic attacks she’s experienced after the hospitalization. She says she tells her story to warn others of the possible consequences of plastic surgery gone wrong.

The U.S. is seeing a “sharp increase” in flu levels right now, particularly in the south, Cohen said Wednesday in an interview. Covid cases also appear to be climbing nationally, she said, while cases of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, seem to have reached their highest point this season.

“We’re seeing RSV peak a bit sooner, but we do not believe we’re near yet at the peak of flu or Covid,” Cohen said.

As of Dec. 9, the weekly number of positive RSV tests in the U.S. had fallen around 16% compared to the previous week.

The pattern is different from that of last year, Cohen said, when the three viruses “all seemed to peak around the same time.”

Read the full story at NBCNews.com here.

In a Dec. 22 post to her Instagram story, Johnson shared personal details about welcoming her son via caesarean section. She said she made the decision to decline “narcotic pain meds,” citing her past struggles with Adderall, a stimulant often used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Alongside a photo cradling her newborn son against her chest in the hospital, Johnson wrote, “Long story short during my comeback in 2010 I was prescribed Adderall to ‘curb my appetite and give me more energy’ by a not good doctor.”

“Fast forward 7 years of being heavily addicted to it and having it control me, when I finally freed myself of it I swore anything even remotely addictive I’d stay away from,” she added. “It affected every part of my life and changed who I was. I never want to feel out of control like that again.”

Explaining her refusal of narcotic pain medication, which can be addictive, she wrote, “So…Tylenol and Motrin for me.”

Johnson previously opened up about her experience with Adderall in a YouTube video posted in June 2020. In the video, she recounted her struggle with body image issues and a past eating disorder.

She said that in an effort to return to her Olympic weight, she took Adderall and weight loss pills and tested out various fad diets.

Shortly after releasing her video, Johnson appeared on TODAY to reflect on speaking out about her experience.

“I mean, it all started out with, ‘What do I want to teach my daughter?’” she said. “And I want to be the mom that teaches her through my mistakes.”

In addition to their newborn son, Johnson and her husband Andrew East also share daughter Drew Hazel, 4, and son Jett James, 2.

The former Olympian and NFL star announced the birth of their third child in their FamilyMade newsletter on Dec. 14.

Johnson shared the first photos of Barrett in an Instagram post on Dec. 15, posting a series of snaps of the newborn solo, with his brother and sister, and with his parents. 

After teasing her son’s name in the Instagram caption by adding a bear emoji, she finally revealed his name on Dec. 17 in another post.

In the caption, Johnson revealed his full name as well as his fitting nickname, Bear.

“We’ve all been waiting for you,” she added in the caption.

The gymnast announced her pregnancy in July and continued to give her followers on social media a glimpse into her journey. She even demonstrated her gymnastics skills in several Instagram videos in September, performing a back walkover, handstand and cartwheel — all while pregnant.

As for whether Johnson and East will be expanding their family again in the future, she told TODAY.com in July that it’s likely her last pregnancy, but she hasn’t ruled out other options. 

“I told Andrew we could talk about adoption,” she says. “We can talk about having babies in other ways after this, but I am done with pregnancy.”

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That sneeze often triggers the “sneeze etiquette” — a mysterious and silent message sent to the people next to you that unconsciously makes them say “bless you.”

Saying bless you is so ingrained in the American culture that if you sneeze and no one near you acknowledges, it creates a very noticeable, weird feeling.

“That person is rude. I guess you don’t care that I sneezed,” is how Elena, a woman from Orlando, Florida, described the awkward post-sneeze silence.

Where did the tradition come from?

“There are a lot of theories,” says Maralee McKee, founder of the Etiquette School of America. “We’ll never be sure if they’re right or not, but it’s part of what makes it so interesting.”

For something so deep-seated into the culture, the reasons why we say “bless you” or “God bless you” when someone sneezes are something of a muddled mess with a lot of theories floating around.

“I’ve heard that your heart skips a beat when you sneeze, so you’re supposed to say ‘bless you,'” said Angelica, from Los Angeles.

She’s not alone in that theory, one so popular that the Cleveland Clinic and dozens of other medical experts have officially and publicly debunked it.

There are a lot of other historical theories, some dating back centuries.

For many years in the Middle Ages, people believed that when you sneezed, your spirit left your body for a second. So, the thought went, to say “bless you” could bring you back to life and also keep evil spirits from entering you in the instant or two that you were believed to have been gone.

During the bubonic plague saying “God bless you” offered a desperate prayer for health and protection against the deadly disease. Pope Gregory is said to have encouraged people to embrace these blessings during that doom-filled era.

How do people react to sneezes around the world?

In place of “Bless you,” some Americans say “Gesundheit,” the German word for “health,” although many Americans don’t even realize it is a German word. The phrase appeared in America thanks to German immigrants.

As natural as it may feel to Americans, not every culture says something after someone sneezes. For instance, in Japan, silence is the norm. Only if you are having a sneeze fit, then someone will address your health.

In Turkey, a “live long and prosper” is the right way to address a person that just sneezed.

For Spanish-speakers, a “salud” is quite acceptable. For Portuguese-speakers, “saúde” does the trick.

Do we need to rewrite the sneezing etiquette rules?

“It’s the only bodily function we seem to react to,” McKee, the etiquette expert said about the ubiquitous American “bless you.”

“If someone burps, we ignore it. But a sneeze? Everyone notices.”

So, what if we could rewrite the sneezing etiquette rules? Would we ditch the “bless you” altogether? Opinions are divided: some advocate for a quiet response, while others see it as an unnecessary formality. Others see it as a polite way of acknowledging what can be a loud disruption.

Ultimately, the choice is up to the individual: stick with the trusty phrase or ditch it.

“It’s a form of habit,” said Elena. “I guess it doesn’t really need to be addressed.”

The FDA and the drug’s maker, Novo Nordisk, are testing the shots. They do not yet have information about the drugs’ identity, quality or safety, according to a statement. Five illnesses have been linked to the fake shots, but none have been serious, the FDA said Thursday.

Some of the fake 1 milligram semaglutide shots may still be for sale, FDA said. In addition to the drug itself, the needles, pen labels, carton and accompanying health care information are also counterfeit, the agency said.

It said the counterfeits were labeled with the lot number NAR0074 and serial number 430834149057.

FDA advised retail pharmacies to buy authentic Ozempic only through authorized distributors and for patients to get it only through state-licensed pharmacies.

Consumers can report suspect Ozempic packages by calling 800-332-1088 or by contacting a state complaint coordinator.

High levels of flu-like illnesses were reported last week in 17 states — up from 14 the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

“Folks are traveling a lot more this season. They want to see their families,” said the CDC’s Dr. Manisha Patel. “And all of that sort of adds to the mix” in the spread of viruses.

Health officials are keeping an eye on a version of the ever-evolving coronavirus, known as JN.1. The omicron variant was first detected in the U.S. in September and now accounts for an estimated 20% of cases. The CDC expects it to reach 50% in the next two weeks, Patel said.

It may spread easier or be better at evading our immune systems, but there is no evidence that the strain causes more severe disease than other recent variants, health officials say. And current evidence indicates vaccines and antiviral medications work against it.

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As for flu, early signs suggest current vaccines are well-matched to the strain that is causing the most illnesses, and that strain usually doesn’t cause as many deaths and hospitalizations as some other versions.

But the bad news is vaccinations are down this year, officials say. About 42% of U.S. adults had gotten flu shots by the first week of December, down from about 45% at the same time last year, according to the CDC.

Americans have also been slow to get other vaccinations. Only about 18% have gotten an updated COVID-19 shot that became available in September. At nursing homes, about a third of residents are up to date with COVID-19 vaccines.

And only 17% of adults 60 and older had received new shots against another respiratory virus. RSV, respiratory syncytial virus, is a common cause of mild coldlike symptoms but it can be dangerous for infants and older people.

The CDC last week took the unusual step of sending a health alert to U.S. doctors urging them to immunize their patients against the trio of viruses.

The Carolinas are currently seeing the heaviest traffic for respiratory infections in emergency rooms, according to CDC data posted this week.

It’s not as dire as some past winters, but some patients are still waiting days to get a hospital bed, noted Dr. Scott Curry, an infectious diseases specialist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

“We’ve barely been cold in South Carolina, and flu tends to hit us very hard when people actually get some cold weather to deal with,” he said. “We could get worse, very easily, in the next four to eight weeks.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Special needs children like these often take longer than most to become independently mobile, which can be a hardship for parents and others who care for them. Elijah is often carried because of his limb difference and clubfeet, meaning that instead of being straight, his feet are twisted inward and his toes point downward.

As a result, getting around on his own is a challenge.

That was until this past Spring. Elijah was one of the first recipients of a specially designed rolling chair built by a team of biomedical engineering students at Tulane University. Today, Elijah has mastered getting around on wheels – turning, stopping and steering all on his own.

“He loves his chair,” said Crystal Jack, Elijah’s mom. “So, I get a lot of things done because I know in his chair, he’s safe. He know how to go around the house with it and everything, so I get a lot of things done now.”

Before the chair, Jack said her son was able to scoot on the floor to get where he needed to go but the chair offers a whole new level of independence.

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“Like I said we come a long way, but I’m blessed to have him,” Jack said, smiling warmly as he moved back and forth around the living room of her mother’s home in Ventress, Louisiana.

The Tulane students partnered with the nonprofit MakeGood in 2022 to design and produce the chairs to help toddlers (roughly ages 1-4) build independence and strength, and for some, prepare for a real wheelchair. While it remains difficult to access precise numbers for total wheelchair use among children, there were about 2.8 million wheelchair users in the U.S. in 2002, of whom 121,000 were under 15 years of age, according to the US Census.

MakeGood is the New Orleans area coordinator for TOM Global, an Israeli nonprofit that combines modern design and digital manufacturing to fulfill neglected needs of people with disabilities and limitations. TOM stands for Tikkun Olam, which is Hebrew for “repairing the world.”

The students partnered with the nonprofits as part of a service-learning project — a graduation requirement at Tulane. But many say they had no idea when the project started the depth of impact their chairs would make in the lives of children in the community.

Dylan Lucia, a graduate student at Tulane from the San Diego, California area, said he chose the field of biomedical engineering to help people and this project has manifested that.

“Seeing that direct kind of patient feedback and seeing how much these (chairs) were improving their lives and helping them become a more independent person, even as a small toddler … like, it was really, really endearing to see something like that and to see the positive change,” Lucia said.

The chairs are particularly helpful for families whose children will eventually need wheelchairs. Noam Platt, director of MakeGood, said insurance companies typically don’t cover the cost of a wheelchair for a child unless there is sufficient evidence that the child can use it effectively.

“These devices are used to create that evidence that their quality of life will be improved so they can get maybe a more durable assistive technology,” Platt said.

Freya’s chair was one of five made throughout several weekends early this fall at Tulane’s Scot Ackerman MakerSpace, an enormous workshop with laser cutters, 3D printers and drilling and sewing equipment.

Students applied padding and safety straps to the chairs, and some required modifications to accommodate the needs of the children receiving them. For instance, Freya’s chair needed a wider strap to help secure her torso, and another patient needed a space behind the chair big enough to hold his breathing vent. Freya’s chair also had a bar added to the back, so that she could push it like a stroller. She took her first steps in early December after working with her physical therapist and her chair.

There’s no word on how long Freya will have to use the chair but her mother said it has been more than a blessing.

“At first, we thought the muscle tone in her ankles wasn’t strong enough for her to walk at all, but the neurologists recently told us everything is looking good and she should be walking on her own or with limited assistance soon,” said her mom, Heather Hampton, of Metairie, Louisiana.

Hampton said Freya’s able to push the chair like a stroller on her own. She wishes they could’ve gotten it sooner but understands the adjustments that needed to be made.

“We’re just happy that she’ll ultimately be able to get around and walk independently,” Hampton said.

Platt said the mobility chairs’ original design and plans came from TOM Global but the parts were purchased in the U.S. or made and then assembled by hand at Tulane. The wood panels used for the chair’s frame were laser cut and then sanded by students to buff out any splinters and rough edges. Padded seats were stuffed into fabric cushions sewn by students. Wheels were purchased online and then screwed into place.

Elijah has had his chair since the end of March. It was made in the first batch of about 10 chairs delivered to pediatric patients for use in occupational and physical therapy sessions.

“His chair shows him that, like, ‘I could be up like other children.’ You know, he don’t let his (being) disabled get in the way,” said Jack who added Elijah will likely need some type of mobility assistance for the rest of his life.

Bumpers were added to the bottom front of the most recent batch of chairs after parents from the first round said their furniture – and feet – were taking hits as their children became better and faster at using their chairs.

Platt said there have been two rounds, so far, of chair building and 15 chairs have been given away. But, he said they’re aiming for at least 10 to 15 more by Spring 2024.

“We coordinate with our clinical partners to find kids that would be a good fit for these devices,” he said. “We work with the clinical team to make sure each chair fits the individuals and make customizations if necessary.”

Platt said the chairs cost less than $200 each to make, and even though these chairs were donated to patients at no cost, the price is still much lower than most pediatric wheelchairs on the market and electric-powered wheelchairs can run into the thousands.

The student-made chairs also look and feel more like toys than hospital equipment, Platt said. They’re made to be light and easy to maneuver.

Platt said he’d ultimately like to see the chairs be made in high schools and colleges across the country.

“For the students that I work with, I tell them this is just the beginning,” Platt said. “I’m trying to open their eyes to kind of a lifelong passion that they’ll have to solving these problems because once you see the problems, you see the scope of the problems and you can’t really ignore them.”

The abortion landscape has been in flux since the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, which touched off a round of abortion policy changes and new litigation about them.

There are still looming ballot questions and court decisions. And lawmakers could tweak current abortion laws.

Here’s a look at what to know.

Abortion will be on the ballot in 2024

Since Roe was overturned, abortion-related questions have been on the ballot in seven states – and the abortion rights side has prevailed on all of them.

Legislatures in the East Coast blue states of Maryland and New York have already put questions on the November 2024 ballot to amend the state constitutions to include rights regarding reproductive health care.

Both states already allow abortion through viability, which is generally considered to be about 24 weeks gestational age.

While those are the only states where ballot questions are a sure thing, they’re possible in several others.

There are pushes to add constitutional rights to abortion in Minnesota, Montana, Nevada and Virginia, where it’s legal in most cases already; and in Arizona, Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota, where heavier restrictions are in place.

In Missouri, where abortion is banned throughout pregnancy, there are dueling ballot measures to expand abortion access. One would bar the government from banning it during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. Another, from moderate Republicans, would make it legal but for fewer weeks.

In Colorado, where abortion is legal in most cases, there are pushes for ballot measures both to enshrine abortion rights and to roll them back.

Lawmakers in Iowa, where abortion restrictions have been put on hold by a court, are pushing for an amendment that would clear the way for a ban. There could be a similar effort in Pennsylvania, where abortion is legal until viability.

And it’s still in the courts

For nearly 50 years, abortion legal questions were waged mostly in federal courts.

But the U.S. Supreme Court finding that there’s no national right to abortion directed the latest generation of legal battles over abortion mostly to state court.

Some of the big issues that are yet to be decided:

Women in Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas are suing over being denied abortion while facing harrowing pregnancy complications. The Texas Supreme Court heard arguments in a similar case in November, and this month it denied a woman’s request for an immediate abortion, finding that her life was not in danger, so she did qualify under the exceptions in state law.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up the question of whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone was appropriate.

State courts are considering several challenges to abortion bans and restrictions, including in Iowa, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, where courts have blocked enforcement of the measures.

In Idaho, a federal judge in November blocked enforcement of the state’s first-in-the-nation “abortion trafficking” ban while courts sort out the constitutionality of the measure.

Abortion could also be on the legislative agenda

Legislative sessions begin in January or February in most states, and there haven’t been many abortion-related bills filed yet.

But activists on both sides anticipate that bills will emerge.

Inrgid Duran, the legislative director at National Right to Life, said other states could pursue provisions like Idaho’s to make it illegal to transport a minor for an abortion without parental consent. Enforcement in Idaho is on hold.

She also said there could be more efforts to fund organizations, sometimes called crisis pregnancy centers, that seek to dissuade abortion, and more measures to clarify abortion definitions.

“The pro-life movement has faced challenges before and will continue to face challenges,” she said. “But it’s not going to deter us from continuing to do what is right by advocating for the vulnerable.”

Some conservative groups are also prioritizing providing more resources to support women during pregnancy and after birth, including with tax credits or grants to boost organizations that encourage women not to seek abortions.

Missouri lawmakers have introduced measures that would make it possible to file homicide charges against women who have abortions. Most major anti-abortion groups oppose that approach, which has been introduced in other states but never gained traction.

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Eight out of 10 women in Prince George’s County leave the county to deliver their babies, according to Luminis Health.

Jackie Key of Brandywine, Maryland, says her delivery care facility option were far from her home.

“Washington, D.C., to Sibley Hospital, and then my second one, I had to travel to Germantown,” she said.  

She said she and many others are forced to make long drives and tough decisions to get the care they want and deserve.

“I think it’s absolutely insane given the wealth that’s in the county,” Key said.

Maryland’s Health Care Commission approved Luminis Health’s plan for a women’s health pavilion. The expansion project will create private labor and post-delivery suites; dedicated cesarean-section operating rooms; a special care nursery; and access to family planning, mental health care and maternal care support.

Providing a comfortable delivery experience is a medical priority, Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center President Deneen Richmond said.

“To have that care delivered in a culturally sensitive matter, to have people listen to you, and to understand what women of color particularly are going through in their pregnancy, during their delivery,” she said.

Prince George’s County Council member Krystal Oriadha helped pass legislation addressing Black maternal health in the county.

“The numbers aren’t really good in Prince George’s County when it comes to maternal health,” she said.

She too had to leave to give birth.

“I ended up delivering in Anne Arundel because I didn’t have the ability to deliver in the county, so, because of my health provider, they had no options for me to give birth in Prince George’s County,” Oriadha said.

Luminis Health expects to open the facility in Lanham in 2028 with a goal to deliver 2,000 babies during the first year.

JN.1 is now the fastest-growing variant in the country, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It currently accounts for more than one-fifth of all infections in the U.S.

The HV.1 subvariant is still the dominant strain right now — but JN.1 is not far behind. During the two-week period ending on Dec. 9, HV.1 accounted for about 30% of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., per the CDC’s latest estimates. JN.1 was the second-most prevalent strain, making up about 21% of cases, followed by EG.5.

Scientists are closely monitoring JN.1, which has sparked some concern due to its rapid growth rate and large number of mutations. However, the new variant is closely related to a strain we’ve seen before. It’s a direct offshoot of BA.2.86, aka “Pirola,” which has been spreading in the U.S. since the summer.

JN.1 has one more mutation compared to its parent strain BA.2.86, which has more than 30 mutations that set it apart from the omicron XBB.1.5 variant. XBB.1.5 was the dominant strain for most of 2023 and it’s the variant targeted in the updated COVID-19 vaccine, TODAY.com previously reported.

All of the most prevalent COVID-19 variants in the U.S. right now are descendants of omicron, which began circulating in late 2021.

During the last few weeks, JN.1 has beat out many other variants, including its parental strain BA.2.86 as well as EG.5 or Eris, and XBB.1.16 aka Arcturus.

JN.1’s growth comes as COVID hospitalizations rise quickly, influenza continues to spread and RSV activity is still high in many places, according to a Dec. 14 update from the CDC. The agency warned that at the end of the month, emergency rooms and hospitals could become strained, similarly to last year, especially in the South.

Will JN.1 cause a COVID-19 surge? Does JN.1 have different symptoms or is it harder to detect on COVID tests? Does it respond to vaccines and treatments? Here’s what experts know about JN.1 so far.

What is JN.1, the new COVID-19 variant?

JN.1 was first detected in September 2023 and it has been detected in at least 12 countries so far, including the U.S., according to the CDC. Just like the other newer variants, JN.1 is part of the omicron family.

“Think of (the variants) as children and grandchildren of omicron. They’re part of the same extended family, but they each have their own distinctive personalities,” Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, tells TODAY.com.

JN.1 descended from BA.2.86, which is a sublineage of the omicron BA.2 variant, TODAY.com previously reported — that’s what sets JN.1 and BA.2.86 apart from the other prevailing variants like HV.1 and EG.5, which descended from Omicron XBB.

“When its parent BA.2.86 emerged, everybody was worried because it had a lot of mutations and looked like it was going to evade a lot of the immunity from vaccines and infection population,” Andrew Pekosz, PhD, professor and vice chair in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, tells TODAY.com. “But (BA.2.86) sort of fizzled out,” Pekosz adds.

Laboratory data suggest that Pirola is less contagious and immune-evasive than scientists once feared, NBC News reported.

JN.1, however, picked up an additional mutation in its spike protein, says Pekosz. Spike proteins help the virus latch onto human cells and play a crucial role in helping SARS-CoV-2 infect people, per the CDC. This mutation may affect JN’1’s immune escape properties, says Pekosz.

“Now it’s circulating and growing at a really fast rate compared to other variants, as well as the parent it’s derived from (BA.2.86),” says Pekosz.

In early November, JN.1 accounted for fewer than 1% of COVID-19 cases and now, only several weeks later, it makes up over 20% of cases, Dr. Michael Phillips, chief epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health, tells TODAY.com.

What are the symptoms of JN.1?

It’s not known whether JN.1 causes different symptoms from other variants, according the CDC.

“Right now, there’s nothing that says that JN.1 infection is any different from previous COVID variants in terms of disease severity or symptoms, but we’re paying close attention,” says Pekosz.

The symptoms of JN.1 appear to be similar to those caused by other strains, which include:

• Sore throat
• Congestion
• Runny nose
• Cough
• Fatigue
• Headache
• Muscle aches
• Fever or chills
• Loss of sense of taste or smell

According to the CDC, the type and severity of symptoms a person experiences usually depends more on a person’s underlying health and immunity rather than the variant which caused infection.

While severe infections do still occur, overall “(COVID-19) is causing a lot of milder illness,” says Schaffner.

Some doctors have reported that upper respiratory symptoms seem to follow a pattern of starting with a sore throat, followed by congestion and a cough, NBC News previously reported.

“The virus is adapting. … I think it’s getting better at infecting humans and evading pre-existing immunity in the population … but it’s not changing symptomology too much,” says Pekosz.

At this time, there’s no evidence that JN.1 causes more severe infection, the experts note.

Is JN.1 more transmissible?

“One of the things these (omicron variants) have in common is that they are highly contagious, and as new variants crop up, they seem to be as contagious or even more contagious than the previous variants,” says Schaffner.

According to the CDC, the continued growth of JN.1 suggests that the variant is either more transmissible or better at evading our immune systems.

“It’s probably a little bit more transmissible than its parental virus because we’ve seen an increase in case numbers that we didn’t with (BA.2.86),” says Pekosz. However, it is too early to tell how exactly JN.1’s transmissibility or immune escape properties compare to other variants, such as HV.1, the experts note.

Many of the newer strains, including JN.1, have another mutation that affects how strongly the spike protein binds to cells in the respiratory tract, says Pekosz. “We know that it’s probably helping the virus become better at replicating and helping the virus evade more of that pre-existing immune response,” he adds.

JN.1 does not pose an increased public health risk compared to other variants currently in circulation, the CDC said.

The changes in JN.1 could give it an advantage over other variants, but it’s unclear how that will affect cases in the coming months. So far, “there doesn’t seem to be a massive increase in transmission. … We would be concerned if there was a huge surge in cases,” says Pekosz.

Will JN.1 cause a surge?

“Right now, JN.1 is increasing in terms of the percentage of COVID-19 cases it’s causing, and there’s also been a slight increase in total cases,” says Pekosz.

Test positivity, an early indicator of case levels, is on the rise, says Phillips — the rate increased by 11.5% in the past week, per the CDC. (The CDC no longer tracks the total number of cases in the U.S.).

Hospitalizations have also risen by 13% and ICU admissions by 9% in the last two weeks, according to an NBC News analysis.

“The good news is that as of yet we’re not seeing severe disease or hospitalizations going up significantly, and ICU admissions are still very low, but we’re going to watch these carefully,” says Phillips.

COVID-19 activity was expected to rise around this time as the country enters winter and respiratory virus season, the experts note. In recent years, the virus has followed a pattern of increasing and peaking around new year, according to the CDC.

“Right now, we do not know to what extent JN.1 may be contributing to these increases or possible increases through the rest of December,” the CDC said. Only time will tell whether JN.1 or another variant will cause a surge in infections this winter.

Do COVID-19 tests detect JN.1?

All COVID-19 diagnostic tests — including rapid antigen tests and PCR tests — are expected to be effective at detecting JN.1, as well as other variants, according to the CDC.

Testing is an important tool to protect yourself and others from COVID-19, especially ahead of holiday gatherings, says Schaffner.

The symptoms of COVID-19 are often indistinguishable from those caused by other viruses spreading right now, the experts note. These include respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and rhinovirus, which causes the common cold.

The experts urge anyone who becomes ill or is exposed to COVID-19 to take a test, especially people at higher risk of severe disease, such as people over the age of 65, who are immunocompromised and who have underlying health conditions.

Every American can order four free at-home COVID-19 tests from the government, which will be delivered by mail via the U.S. Postal Service. To order your free tests, go to COVIDTests.gov.

“Get tested because, whether it’s COVID or flu, we have treatment available,” says Schaffner. Current treatments are also expected to be effective against JN.1, the CDC said.

“JN.1 should be just as sensitive to the antivirals available as any other variants,” says Pekosz, adding that antivirals like Paxlovid are most effective when taken within the first few days after infection.

Does the new COVID vaccine protect against JN.1?

The new, updated COVID-19 vaccines, recommended for everyone 6 months and older, are expected to increase protection against JN.1, as well as other variants, the CDC said.

Although the shots target omicron XBB.1.5, which has since been overtaken by HV.1, JN.1, EG.5, and others, there is still evidence that it will protect against new strains circulating this winter, TODAY.com previously reported.

Data from laboratory studies show that the vaccine appears to generate a strong immune response against JN.1’s parent strain, BA.2.86, Schaffner notes.

The new vaccines also protect against severe disease, hospitalization and death, the experts emphasize. So even if you get COVID-19 after vaccination, the infection will likely be milder and it can keep you out of the hospital, Phillips adds.

However, uptake of the new vaccine among the U.S. population has been poor so far, the experts say. As of Dec. 8, only about 17% of adults, 7% of children and 36% of adults ages 65 and older have gotten the new vaccine, according to the latest CDC data on vaccination trends.

On Dec. 14, CDC officials issued an alert to warn about low vaccination rates against COVID-19, flu and RSV in the U.S.

Now is the best time to get vaccinated if you haven’t already, the experts say. “The sooner you get vaccinated, the sooner you’ll be protected and it does take seven to 10 days for protection to build up to the maximum,” says Schaffner.

Phillips recommends everyone, especially high-risk individuals, to get the seasonal influenza shot, as well.

“Getting vaccinated is the best present you can give yourself and your family this holiday season,” Schaffner adds.

How to protect yourself from JN.1

Every day, but especially during respiratory virus season, people can take steps to protect themselves and others from COVID-19.

The experts encourage everyone to:

• Stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines.
• Test if you have symptoms.
• Isolate if you have COVID-19.
• Avoid contact with sick people.
• Improve ventilation.
• Wear a mask in crowded, indoor spaces.
• Wash your hands with soap and water.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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There was some hope that children in a government food program might be bucking a trend in obesity rates — earlier research found rates were dropping a little about a decade ago for those kids. But an update released Monday in the journal Pediatrics shows the rate bounced back up a bit by 2020.

The increase echoes other national data, which suggests around 2.5% of all preschool-aged children were severely obese during the same period.

“We were doing well and now we see this upward trend,” said one of the study’s authors, Heidi Blanck of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are dismayed at seeing these findings.”

The study looked at children ages 2 to 4 enrolled in the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides healthy foods and other services to preschool-aged children in low-income families. The children were weighed and measured.

The researchers found that 2.1% of kids in the program were severely obese in 2010. Six years later, the rate had dipped to 1.8%. But by 2020, it was 2%. That translates to about 33,000 of more than 1.6 million kids in the WIC program.

Significant increases were seen in 20 states with the highest rate in California at 2.8%. There also were notable rises in some racial and ethnic groups. The highest rate, about 2.8%, was in Hispanic kids.

Experts say severe obesity at a very early age is nearly irreversible, and is strongly associated with chronic health problems and an early death.

It’s not clear why the increase occurred, Blanck said.

When WIC obesity rates dropped, some experts attributed it to 2009 policy changes that eliminated juice from infant food packages, provided less saturated fat, and tried to make it easier to buy fruits and vegetables.

The package hasn’t changed. But “the daily hardships that families living in poverty are facing may be harder today than they were 10 years ago, and the slight increases in the WIC package just weren’t enough,” said Dr. Sarah Armstrong, a Duke University childhood obesity researcher.

The researchers faced challenges. The number of kids in WIC declined in the past decade. And the study period included 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic hit, when fewer parents brought their children in to see doctors. That reduced the amount of complete information available.

Despite it’s limitations, it was a “very well done study,” said Deanna Hoelscher, a childhood obesity researcher at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, “It gives you a hint of what’s going on.”

What’s happened since 2020 is not yet known. Some small studies have suggested a marked increase in childhood obesity — especially during the pandemic, when kids were kept home from schools, eating and bedtime routines were disrupted and physical activity decreased.

“We are thinking it’s going to get worse,” Hoelscher said.

The Food and Drug Administration disclosed the recall in a filing and said it began on Nov. 6. It encompasses 1,557 cases of 12-ounce cans of Sprite, 417 cases of Diet Coke, and 14 cases of Fanta Orange.

The FDA filing shows the recall started Nov. 6, and it was made by United Packers, based in Alabama.

Read the full story on NBC News.com here

The FDA has been investigating the lead contamination in the cinnamon-flavored applesauce products from Florida-based food manufacturer WanaBana since October.

The agency has homed in on the cinnamon specifically as the source of the lead.

A spokesperson for the FDA said that one of the agency’s current theories is that the cinnamon contamination was the result of “economically motivated adulteration.”

Read the full story on NBC News.com here.

The Los Angeles medical examiner determined Matthew Perry‘s cause of death to be the acute effects of ketamine, more than a month after the death of the “Friends actor on Oct. 28.

Perry had been found unresponsive in the pool at his residence in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades area. Paramedics responded and pronounced Perry dead at the scene.

In addition to the “acute effects” of ketamine, contributing factors in Perry’s death included drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, used to treat opioid use disorder. The manner of death was determined to be an accident.

The coroner’s autopsy report noted that Perry was on ketamine infusion therapy to deal with depression and anxiety, with the most recent therapy “reportedly one and a half weeks before death.” The autopsy report noted that the ketamine found in Perry’s system at the time of death “could not be from that infusion therapy, since ketamine’s half-life is three to four hours, or less.”

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The report said the method of intake could not be determined, but trace amounts of the drug were found in Perry’s stomach.

“At the high levels of ketamine found in his postmortem blood specimens, the main lethal effects would be from both cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression,” the autopsy report stated.

Perry had taken drugs in the past but had been “reportedly clean for 19 months,” according to the report. The actor had openly talked about his struggles with addiction, dating to his time on the hit show “Friends” in the 1990s.

In his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” Perry referenced his ketamine therapy.

“Taking K is like being hit in the head by a giant happy shovel,” he wrote. “But the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel. Ketamine is not for me.”

Here’s an explanation about the drug found in his system when he died, and why it is becoming more popular as a treatment for mental health problems — even though it remains a largely unregulated market.

What is ketamine? How does it work?

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects, according to the DEA. Its medical uses include the induction and maintenance of anesthesia and as a treatment for depression.

The drug was first synthesized in 1962, and was approved for use as an anesthetic in the United States in 1970. While it can commonly be found in medications such as horse tranquilizers, it has also been used to treat smaller animals and humans for decades.

Ketamine itself gained more widespread notoriety and popularity in the 70s and 80s as an illegal party drug, otherwise known as “Special K.” It continues to be used as a popular party drug to this day.

It’s not entirely known what ketamine does to the brain or how it works. Some psychotherapists have said the drug works similarly to other anti-depressants, as it boosts the feel-good chemicals in the brain. It can also reduce inflammation and form new neural pathways associated with the ability to create new habits and behaviors. 

Is esketamine different? Is it legal?

The FDA approved a version of ketamine called esketamine, or Spravato, in 2019. It’s an inhaled version that must be administered in a doctor’s office, and it is approved only for people for whom other depression treatments have failed.

Esketamine has been found to help reducing depression with suicidal thoughts, the Columbia University Irving Medical Center said. It is believed to work differently than traditional antidepressants, which may help those who were not responsive to those treatments.

Patients will typically have eight weeks of esketamine treatments, with multiple treatments per week, according to Columbia, which added that patients receiving the treatment will “typically experience mild sedation and dissociation.”

Is ketamine safe to use?

Soaring interest in psychedelics as a mental health treatment has fueled a boom of clinics across the U.S., touting the drug most commonly known in the club scene. Using ketamine to treat depression is legal and doctors say it can be a gamechanger, but it’s also a largely unregulated industry that comes with serious risks.

According to Columbia University Irving Medical Center, ketamine is an “effective and safe anesthesia” when given intravenously (a.k.a. as an IV drip). Columbia also touted its use to treat multiple psychotic disorders, including depression.

Given the drug’s FDA-approved status, any doctor can issue off-label prescriptions, but that does not include IV ketamine, which is not FDA approved. Columbia said that the initial infusion treatment takes place over the course of two to three weeks, with each treatment lasting about an hour or two. But they note that, as it is with eskatemine, the treatment is not meant for patients who have experienced psychosis or are actively abusing drugs or alcohol.

And while legal, ketamine is not approved to be used as a treatment for psychiatric conditions. But Dr. Dan Iosifescu, a professor of psychiatry at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, is among the believers.

“Individuals with very severe hard to treat depression would potentially get much better in the span of 24 hours after a single treatment,” he told NBC New York back in May.

Ketamine is used as a treatment in clinics throughout the country, including the spa-like Manhattan clinic Nushama, which is part of the wave of clinics now offering ketamine assisted therapy, with medical supervision. With little regulatory oversight, clinics are relying on guidance from doctors like Iosifescu – who co-authored a paper of treatment guidelines.

“There are unfortunately clinics that I’ve referred patients to that have either not followed these monitoring protocols, which to me puts patients at some level of risk,” said Dr. Iosifescu.

What are the potential risks and side effects of using ketamine?

Dr. James Murrough, at Mt. Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, is encouraged by the benefits of ketamine therapy. He points out that patients typically need prolonged treatment, which comes with risks.

“We have to think very judiciously often about how much ketamine we’re using, how often to benefit a patient, to maintain a response,” Dr. Murrough said.

He said the drug often stops working if people don’t take more. And then prolonged recreational use at high-doses can have serious side effects, including memory loss, mood changes and a loss of cognitive functioning.

“The rates of people developing addiction is relatively low, but we shouldn’t let our guard down,” said. Dr. Murrough.

One patient who went to a ketamine clinic in North Carolina for treatment shared what happened during his bad experience there, when he believes he was given too high of a dose.

“I remember thinking in my head, if only I knew Morse code, you know, I could tap out SOS,” said Steven Petrow. “My lips were completely numb and then I felt that I didn’t have lips…and then I didn’t have a throat and I didn’t have a mouth.”

Experts agree that people seeking ketamine treatment must be on guard and be sure to ask about safety protocols.

NBC News’ Lauren Dunn and Kate Snow contributed to this report.

“Even if you’re not clearing like a snow-covered driveway or digging out your car, cold weather can cause high blood pressure, and that’s a key risk factor for strokes and for heart attacks,” said Catherine Roberts with Consumer Reports.

Doctors say the best thing to do in the winter is to stay warm.

“Staying bundled up so your core temperature is higher is good. Most of it because if you’re cold and you’re shivering, that puts a lot of stress on the body, said Dr. Joshua Willey, a neurologist.

Willey said it’s especially important to keep in mind when exerting yourself outdoors. Dress in layers and keep your core, or torso, warm to help keep blood flowing to your extremities.

“If you have problems with the circulation to the legs, making sure that your legs are well bundled up so that there’s enough circulation getting to your feet,” he said.

While you can’t do anything about the weather, you can cut other risk factors. One study found that 80% of strokes are preventable.

Steps doctors recommend taking to prevent stroke:

• Keep health issues such as high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol under control.
• Get enough physical activity and eat a healthy diet.
• Limit alcohol to one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men.

It’s also important to stay alert to the signs of a stroke. If someone is having balance or vision problems, their face is drooping, or they are experiencing arm weakness or slurred speech, get help immediately.

The White House unveiled a list of 48 drugs — from chemotherapy treatments to growth hormones used to treat endocrine disorders — whose prices increased faster than the rate of inflation this year. Under a new law, drugmakers will have to pay rebates to the federal government because of those price increases. The money will be used to lower the price Medicare enrollees pay on the drugs early next year.

“For years, there’s been no check on how high or how fast big pharma can raise drug prices,” President Joe Biden said Thursday, speaking in a lab at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. “Let’s call this for what it is – it simply is a rip off. They’re ripping off Medicare. They’re ripping off the American people. We’re now fighting back.”

This is the first time drugmakers will have to pay the penalties for outpatient drug treatments under the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Congress last year. The rebates will translate into a wide range of savings — from as little as $1 to as much as $2,700 — on the drugs that the White House estimates are used every year by 750,000 older Americans.

The types of drugs on the government’s list vary. They include generic drugs, medications taken orally or injected, and treat a variety of disorders or illnesses, according to a review by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists of the administration’s list.

But all of the drugs, the White House said, raised their prices significantly this year, many by nearly 20%.

The price decreases will only be seen for patients who access the drugs on Medicare Part B, the government outpatient care coverage. But the rebates are “an important tool to discourage excessive price increases,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, said Thursday in a statement.

Only a small number of drugs met the criteria for penalties, pointed out Stephen Ubl, the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also called PhRMA.

“It’s a tiny fraction of overall working medicines,” he said.

As it readies for a 2024 reelection campaign, the Biden administration has rolled out a number of efforts to push pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices. Last week, the White House announced it was considering an aggressive, unprecedented new tactic: pulling the patents of some drugs priced out of reach for most Americans.

“On no. We’ve upset Big Pharma again,” the White House posted on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, last week, just hours after the announcement.

The president plans to make his push for lower drug prices a central theme of his reelection pitch to Americans.

The U.S. Health and Human Services agency also released a report on Thursday that will help guide its first-ever negotiation process with drugmakers over the price of 10 of Medicare’s costliest drugs. The new prices for those drugs will be negotiated by HHS next year, in the middle of next year’s presidential campaign.

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Associated Press writer Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed.

We spoke to emergency room physicians and pediatricians about the top reasons kids end up in the hospital over the holidays and how parents can help keep kids safe.

Flu, colds and respiratory viruses

“Right now we are smack dab in the middle of cold and flu season. We’re seeing a lot of RSV and influenza and still a bit of COVID-19 (among children),”  Dr. Meghan Martin, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, tells TODAY.com. 

Up to 5.4 million people in the United States have already gotten the flu this season so far, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is also on the rise in most of the country, and COVID-19 cases are increasing as new variants continue to circulate.

During the holidays, people often travel and gather indoors, which creates more opportunities for children to share germs, Dr. Kara Kowalczyk, an emergency medicine doctor at Riley Children’s Health in Indianapolis, tells TODAY.com.

While most kids will recover from these common respiratory viruses, some may end up with serious illness, difficulties breathing, or hospitalized, Martin notes. Young children under 2 or those with underlying conditions are at higher risk, says Martin.

The experts recommend parents make sure all family members are up to date on their vaccinations, including the seasonal flu shot and updated COVID-19 vaccine. RSV vaccines are also available for pregnant people to help protect infants, says Martin.

“For newborns (under 3 months old), the risk of RSV and hospitalization are a lot higher so I would consider skipping the large gathering or opting for a smaller gathering,” says Martin.

If a child is not feeling well, parents should try to isolate them from other family members during holiday gatherings, Dr. Danielle Grant, a pediatrician with Texas Children’s Pediatrics, tells TODAY.com.

Gastrointestinal illness

Stomach bugs and food poisoning will send plenty of kids to the emergency room with vomiting and diarrhea this holiday season, the experts warn. “We see these fairly consistently, but we will see an increase again, especially with group gatherings,” says Martin.

Norovirus, aka stomach flu, peaks between November and April and often causes outbreaks around the holidays. It’s highly contagious and transmitted through direct contact or contaminated foods, drinks and surfaces, TODAY.com previously reported. Norovirus can spread rapidly in homes, schools and day cares.

There also tends to be an uptick in food poisoning around the holidays, says Kowalczyk. People are often preparing large meals that are left out at room temperature for longer periods of time, Martin notes, which can allow bacteria to grow to unsafe levels.

Feasting on home-cooked meals is one of the best parts of the holidays, but it’s crucial to follow food safety practices to keep kids and families safe. Hand-washing is also crucial to prevent the spread of gastrointestinal illness, Kowalczyk says.

Most cases of gastroenteritis only last a few days and can be treated at home, but it can put a real dent in holiday plans. Children who are sick with vomiting and diarrhea should stay home and isolated until they feel better, and get plenty of rest and fluids.

Injuries in unfamiliar homes

Over the holidays, many children will be spending time in new environments or homes — whether it’s a grandma and grandpa’s house, a neighbor’s party or a hotel. “We tend to see a lot of kids coming in for (injuries) from new places not being child-proofed,” says Martin. The experts have seen everything from bumps and cuts to broken bones and head injuries.

“Around the holidays, we do sometimes see more burns,” says Kowalczyk, adding that these are often from candles, hot water or open flames on stoves. Children can get injured from playing with fireplaces or fire pits, especially when unsupervised, says Dr. Lois Lee, pediatric emergency medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“Decorations can become a (choking) problem. Things like holly berries, poinsettias and mistletoe are all toxic for kids, and they tend to try to put that in their mouth,” says Martin.

Even if a home is child-proofed, a child’s excitement and curiosity can get them into trouble. Martin warns about poisonings caused by what she dubs “grandma’s purse syndrome.”

“A lot of grandparents keep medications in their purse and if it’s on the ground or a low level (surface), kids can get into it,” says Martin.

Children with food allergies may get into unsafe foods or snacks in a new home, Lee adds. Pediatric edible cannabis exposures are also rising, says Lee. These products can be easily mistaken for regular candy and a child may end up overdosing cannabis, Lee notes.

Children, especially young children, should always be supervised in new homes or environments, says Martin. Always ensure any medications, toxic or poisonous substances, and other hazards are kept out of reach, the experts emphasize. When in doubt, call poison control.

Toy-related injuries

New toys are one of the best parts of the holidays for children. They also cause a number of injuries that send children to the emergency room on the holidays, TODAY.com previously reported. The most common culprit are rideable toys with wheels, says Lee, including scooters, bicycles, skateboards and hoverboards.

“Kids will open a gift and just jump on it and boom, there’s an accident,” says Grant. Children may end up with sprains, broken bones or head injuries, so it’s crucial to make sure kids wear a helmet and other safety gear before taking their new toy for a ride, the experts note.

“Make sure any items given to kids are appropriate for their age. The reason those recommendations exist is to prevent choking,” says Kowalczyk. Toddlers love to put things in their mouths, and it can only take seconds for a toy or a small piece of a toy to cause a “life-altering event,” Kowalczyk adds.

Toys like water beads and magnets can also cause severe injuries if they are ingested, which is why many experts do not recommend giving them to young children.

If a toy contains button batteries, parents should take extra steps to ensure children can’t get their hands on them, the experts warn. “They can get stuck in the esophagus and within just a few hours it can erode the esophagus and can cause lifelong damage or even death,” says Kowalczyk.

Parents should check the toy’s label for age guidelines and safety warnings before gifting it to the child, the experts emphasize, and supervise young children around new toys whenever possible.

Bites from unfamiliar pets

Similarly, children may be around new pets or and vice versa during the holidays, leading to accidents. “There’s absolutely an increase in animal bites and scratches,” says Martin, adding that many of these are from dogs.

The holidays are stressful for pets, too. Even well-behaved dogs can become overstimulated or upset by new people, new environments and new routines over the holidays, Kowalczyk notes.

Children, especially young children, may not be able to resist approaching or petting a pet that looks cute, says Grant. Curious toddlers can grab tails or ears.

Even if a child isn’t touching the dog, simply being nearby or unsupervised can be dangerous, says Lee. “Many dogs, their mouths are right at the same level of a child’s face,” she adds. “Sometimes … something happens and the child is right there.”

Additionally, “with bites, there’s a high risk that those can get infected and some of these dog bites on the face can be fairly disfiguring,” says Martin.

Children should always be supervised around pets, especially ones they don’t know, says Lee, and parents should teach children how to behave appropriately around animals. During big holiday gatherings and parties, Martin recommends keeping children and pets safely separated if possible.

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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The agency issued a health alert to doctors across the country, warning that low vaccination rates amid “ongoing increases in national and international respiratory disease activity” could strain U.S. health care systems in the coming weeks, and called on doctors to encourage their patients to get the shots immediately to protect them for the remainder of the season.

“In the past 4 weeks, hospitalizations among all age groups increased by 200% for influenza, 51% for Covid-19, and 60% for RSV,” the CDC said in its health alert. “Currently, the highest respiratory disease activity in the United States is occurring across the southern half of the country, with increasing activity in northern states.”

As of Dec. 8, just 17.2% of adults had received the updated Covid shot, according to the CDC. About 40% of children and adults have gotten this year’s flu shot. And 15.9% of older adults eligible for the RSV vaccine have received it.

Read the full story on NBC News.com here

The legendary television host recently shared the steps she’s taken to slim down, including taking a weight-loss medication that she says has helped her feel good from the inside out.

“I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing,” she told People in an interview published Dec. 13, opting not to reveal the drug she’s been using. “The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.”

As Oprah put it, “I’m absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.”

Of course, The Color Purple producer hasn’t solely relied on the weight-loss medication to maintain her appearance. In the last two years, she’s kicked her health and fitness regimens into high gear. 

“After knee surgery, I started hiking and setting new distance goals each week,” she noted. “I could eventually hike three to five miles every day and a 10-mile straight-up hike on weekends.”

The 69-year-old also made changes to her eating habits.

“I eat my last meal at 4 o’clock, drink a gallon of water a day, and use the WeightWatchers principles of counting points,” she detailed. “I had an awareness of [weight-loss] medications, but felt I had to prove I had the willpower to do it. I now no longer feel that way.”

If anything, Oprah—who has been candid about her weight fluctuations over the years—explained that she’s physically and mentally in the best shape ever.

“I felt stronger, more fit and more alive than I’d felt in years,” she said. “I know everybody thought I was on [Ozempic], but I worked so damn hard. I know that if I’m not also working out and vigilant about all the other things, it doesn’t work for me.”

She added, “It was a second shot for me to live a more vital and vibrant life.”

Oprah isn’t the only celebrity to speak about using a weight-loss medication. Keep reading to see how other A-listers have weighed in on the topic.

Raven-Symoné

“I think it’s very important we understand certain medications are made for certain people,” she told E! News’ Francesca Amiker, “and to not take that away just for glamazon purposes.”

Raven continued, “Do what you gotta do, just make sure you save the medication for the people who actually need it.”

Sharon Osbourne

The Talk U.K. host revealed in September 2023 that she shed 42 pounds after using Ozempic earlier in the year.

“Whatever you choose is up to you,” she exclusively told E! News. “It’s not a dirty little secret when you’ve taken something to help you lose weight, which is perfectly fine.”

She added, “We don’t have to bulls–t.”

Amy Schumer

The Trainwreck star did not hold back when she called out celebrities for not being honest about using Ozempic as a weight loss tool during her June 8, 2023 appearance on Watch What Happens Live. 

“Everyone and their mom is gonna try it. Everyone has been lying saying, ‘Oh, smaller portions,'” she told Andy Cohen, who has also publicly weighed in on the Ozempic craze multiple times. “Like, shut the f–k up. You are on Ozempic or one of those things, or you got work done. Just stop.”

Schumer, who has been open about her past medical procedures, added, “Be real with people. When I got lipo, I said I got lipo.”

She admitted to becoming “immediately invested” in Ozempic last year, but explained that it was not “livable” for her to take the Type 2 diabetes drug and hindered her ability to spend time with her 4-year-old son Gene. 

“I was one of those people that felt so sick and couldn’t play with my son,” Schumer recalled. “I was so skinny, and he’s throwing a ball at me and [I couldn’t].”

Dr. Drew Pinsky

“People have a mixed feeling about interventions like this,” Dr. Drew exclusively told E! News at Fox’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test season two event in Los Angeles on Sept. 12, 2023. “They’re tantalized by it, but on the other hand, they have this weird judgment.”

He continued, “If we have a medication that can be helpful, by all means, people should be encouraged to think about it.”

Sophie Turner

Forget winter, a hot take is coming.

The Game of Thrones alum was not shy when it came to sharing her opinion about Ozempic and its advertisements.

In an April 5, 2023 Instagram Story, the actress reposted a tweet from writer Sophie Vershbow that read, “The Ozempic ads plastered across the Times Square subway station can f–k all the way off.” One ad featured in Vershbow’s Twitter photos read, “One shot to lose weight,” while another offered similar text, “A weekly shot to lose weight.”

Turner adding her own commentary, writing, “WTF.”

Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk previously told E! News that the drug is not FDA-approved for chronic weight management.

“While we recognize that some healthcare providers may be prescribing Ozempic for patients whose goal is to lose weight, Novo Nordisk does not promote, suggest, or encourage off-label use of our medicines and is committed to fully complying with all applicable U.S. laws and regulations in the promotion of our products,” the Danish pharmaceutical company said in a statement. “We trust that healthcare providers are evaluating a patient’s individual needs and determining which medicine is right for that particular patient.”

Chelsea Handler

Ozempic is no laughing matter for the comedian. Handler revealed her “anti-aging doctor” prescribed her the medication without realizing what the drug was.

“I didn’t even know I was on it,” she said during the Jan. 25, 2023 episode of Call Her Daddy. “She said, ‘If you ever want to drop five pounds, this is good.'”

But while she tried the drug, Handler noted that she didn’t like how it made her feel.

“I came back from a vacation and I injected myself with it,” she recalled. “I went to lunch with a girlfriend a few days later, and she was like, ‘I’m not really eating anything. I’m so nauseous, I’m on Ozempic.’ And I was like, ‘I’m kind of nauseous too.’ But I had just come back from Spain and was jet-lagged.”

Ultimately, Handler stopped using the drug because it wasn’t medically necessary for her, adding that she gave away the remaining doses to friends.

“I’ve injected about four or five of my friends with Ozempic, because I realized I didn’t want to use it because it was silly,” she said. “It’s for heavy people. I have people coming over to my house, and I’m like, ‘OK, I can see you at 1, I can see you at 2.'”

Khloe Kardashian

KoKo clapped back when commenters on Instagram speculated that she was taking Ozempic. 

“Let’s not discredit my years of working out,” Kardashian wrote on a January 2023 post. “I get up 5 days a week at 6am to train. Please stop with your assumptions. I guess new year still means mean people.”

Kyle Richards

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star got real about claims that she was taking the medication after her followers on social media took notice of her weight loss earlier this year.

Richards wrote back to one user under a Jan. 5, 2023 snap on Instagram of herself and her girlfriends after a workout, “I am NOT on ozempic.” In another response, Richards added, “Never have been.”

That wouldn’t be the last time the Bravo star shot down the rumors, reiterating that she is “NOT taking” the medication under a Jan. 16 post on Instagram by Page Six. 

Jessica Simpson

After fans questioned whether or not she was taking Ozempic, Jessica set the record straight.

Oh Lord,” she told Bustle in an interview published July 6, 2023. “I mean, it is not [Ozempic], it’s willpower. I’m like, do people want me to be drinking again? Because that’s when I was heavier. Or they want me to be having another baby? My body can’t do it.”

Golnesa “GG” Gharachedaghi

This Shah isn’t shy about her Ozempic use. 

Gharachedaghi didn’t “see a reason to hide” being on the medication when discussing her health journey, telling Entertainment Tonight in May 2023 that she would prefer to “just talk about it because there’s so many people out there who want to do the same thing or they want to learn about what you did.”

Of her 30-pound weight loss due to her experience with Semaglutide—the generic version of the weight-loss drug—the Shahs of Sunset star explained, “Obviously, I didn’t look like this two months ago. So..I would be a liar to say I quit drinking alcohol and you know all of a sudden started working out like some people like to say.”

Gharachedaghi went on to note that she still has an appetite, saying, “I’m actually a little hungry. Look I’m gonna go smoke a little pot and I’m gonna eat definitely.”

Remi Bader

The influencer said that using Ozempic to treat her type 2 diabetes negatively affected her overall health. 

“It was brand new, just got FDA approved, no one knew about it and I was so scared,” Bader recalled on the Jan. 12, 2023 episode of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast. “They said I need this. And I had a lot of mixed feelings.”

After she went off the drug, Bader—who has been open about her battle with binge eating—said it caused a cycle of “bad binging.”

“I saw a doctor, and they were like, ‘It’s 100 percent because you went on Ozempic,'” she explained. “It was making me think I wasn’t hungry for so long. I lost some weight. I didn’t want to be obsessed with being on it long term. I was like, ‘I bet the second I got off I’m going to get starving again.’ I did, and my binging got so much worse. So then I kind of blamed Ozempic.”

Dolores Catania

Forget shedding for the wedding because The Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member admitted she was taking Ozempic to lose weight prior to filming the season 13 reunion. 

During the April 4, 2023 episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Catania confirmed she had been taking the antidiabetic medication because she didn’t want to be “looking any bigger than anyone else,” at the taping, explaining, “I got on the bandwagon.” She then joked that “not one” of her co-stars wasn’t also taking Ozempic and said the only side effect she was experiencing was that she was “just not hungry.”

Gracie McGraw

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s daughter first opened up about taking the diabetes drug when she shared her PCOS diagnosis in March 2022. 

“To get the correct diagnosis you would need 2 out of the 5 characteristics of PCOS and I had 4,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “During my appointment with my endocrinologist I realized that may have been a factor in my issues with weight, so we decided to try a medicine to regulate my body more normally and create the tools to continue to keep my body and myself healthy as I get older.”

Gracie offered an update on her health journey in a June 5 post after a commenter called out her alleged use of Type 2 diabetes medication.

“I did use Ozempic last year, yes,” she wrote. “I am now on a low dose of Mounjaro for my PCOS as well as working out. No need to accuse when I have been open about it.”

But repeated recalls involving over-the-counter drops are drawing new attention to just how little U.S. officials know about the conditions at some manufacturing plants on the other side of the world — and the limited tools they have to intervene when there’s a problem.

The Food and Drug Administration is asking Congress for new powers, including the ability to mandate drug recalls and require eyedrop makers to undergo inspections before shipping products to the U.S. But experts say those capabilities will do little without more staff and resources for foreign inspections, which were a challenge even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced regulators to skip thousands of visits.

“The FDA is not getting its job done in terms of drug quality assurance inspections abroad,” said David Ridley of Duke University and co-author of a recent paper tracking the downturn in inspections. “Very few foreign drugmakers have been inspected in the past four years.”

In 2022, FDA foreign inspections were down 79% from 2019, according to agency records collected by Ridley’s group. Inspections increased this year but are still far below pre-pandemic levels.

FDA spokesman Jeremy Kahn said: “The FDA works to inspect as many facilities possible, but ultimately industry is responsible for the quality of their products.”

An October recall of two dozen eyedrop brands came after FDA staff found cracked floors, barefoot workers and other unsanitary conditions at a Mumbai plant that supplied products to CVS, Walmart and other major retailers. It was the first time FDA staff had visited the site.

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That inspection was prompted by an earlier recall of tainted eyedrops from a different Indian plant that’s been linked to four deaths and more than a dozen cases of vision loss. That plant had also never been previously inspected.

“These are very rare instances, but what we’ve seen is that these products can cause real harm,” said Dr. Timothy Janetos, an ophthalmologist at Northwestern University. “Something needs to change.”

Experts point to three possible changes:

Earlier inspections

Prescription medicines are highly regulated. Before a drugmaker can sell one in the U.S., it must undergo FDA review to establish its safety and effectiveness. As part of the process, the FDA typically inspects the factory where the drug will be made.

But eyedrops and other over-the-counter products don’t undergo preliminary review or inspections. Instead, they are governed by a different system called a monograph, essentially a generic recipe for all medicines in a particular class. So long as drugmakers attest that they are using the standard recipe, they can launch a product within days of filing with the FDA.

“It’s nothing more than electronic paperwork,” said Dr. Sandra Brown of the Dry Eye Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for increased regulation. “There’s no requirement for the facility to be inspected prior to shipping for sale.”

The FDA says it has flexibility to adjust its review process “to ensure safety.”

But the agency is asking Congress for the power to require manufacturers of eyedrops and other sterile products to give at least six months notice before shipping products from a new factory. That would give inspectors time to visit facilities that aren’t on their radar.

The proposal could face pushback from some over-the-counter drugmakers, who aren’t accustomed to preapproval inspections.

But Brown says the unique risks of tainted eyedrops require a different approach from pills and tablets.

“Anything you swallow is going to meet up with your stomach acid, which is going to kill most bacteria,” Brown said. “It’s much more dangerous to put a product in your eye.”

Requiring recalls

The FDA warned consumers in late October not to use the eyedrops sold at CVS, Rite-Aid and other stores. But the products weren’t officially recalled until Nov. 15, almost three weeks later.

That’s because Indian manufacturer, Kilitch Healthcare, initially declined to cooperate. The FDA can force recalls of food, medical devices and many other products, but it lacks the same authority for drugs and instead must ask companies to voluntarily take action.

The FDA recently asked Congress for mandatory recall authority over drugs.

Funding foreign inspectors

Since the 1990s, drug manufacturing has increasingly moved to India, China and other lower-cost countries.

The Government Accountability Office has raised concerns for years about the FDA’s oversight of the global supply chain, flagging it as a “high-risk” issue for more than a decade.

The FDA said in a statement it uses “all available tools” to ensure Americans get “high quality, safe and effective” medications.

The agency generally prioritizes factories that have never been inspected or haven’t been inspected in the last five years. It halted most routine, in-person foreign inspections in March 2020 and did not resume them until 2022. The agency didn’t conduct any inspections in India during the first year of COVID-19.

FDA leaders have long said it’s challenging to recruit and keep overseas inspectors.

Experts say Congress can and should address that.

“Federal hiring is inherently slow and pay is often not competitive,” said Ridley, the Duke researcher. ”Congress needs to try and help FDA solve that problem and then hold them responsible for staffing inspections.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Ozempic, Wegovy and similar drugs have been in short supply over the past year as demand has grown.

For those who do manage to find them, the drugs aren’t cheap. They typically cost more than $1,000 a month without insurance.

Between high costs and and nationwide shortages, many have turned to knockoff versions.

Searches for “Ozempic dupe” have skyrocketed by 373% in the past year, according to Kaly.com, and #Ozempic has gained 1.3 billion views on social media platforms like TikTok.

Some compounding pharmacies, which mix and alter drug ingredients to create custom medications for patients, are offering copycat injections at a fraction of the cost. They’re about $100 to $200 for a month’s supply, but the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved the medications.

The FDA told News4 it’s monitoring the internet for fraudulent or unapproved products and has issued warning letters to pharmacies to stop the distribution of illegally marketed semaglutide – the active ingredient in both Wegovy and Ozempic.

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“No one knows exactly what it is and no one knows where it’s coming from So it’s actually pretty dangerous,” said Dr. Domenica Rubino with the Washington Center for Weight Management and Research in Arlington, Virginia.

Rubino said the copycat versions of semaglutide are often mixed with vitamins or other ingredients that haven’t been tested and might not be safe.

Regulators are also sounding the alarm. Four states, including West Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina, are threatening legal action over safety concerns, saying it’s almost impossible for compounding pharmacies to replicate weight loss drugs on the market.

That’s because there are no FDA-approved generic versions of Wegovy or Ozempic, and drug maker Novo Nordisk said it doesn’t supply its ingredients to others.

“You have to understand that there’s a desperateness,” Rubino said.

Despite the risk, News4 found dozens of companies selling semaglutide on social media platforms, some promising overnight delivery of vials with liquid that patients are told to inject weekly.

Several websites even offer telehealth visits in which people can get the medications without ever seeing a provider on video or in person.

“This is about health. It’s not about weight loss. It’s not about fitting into your designer dress — and I can’t stress that enough,” Rubinio said.

Patients who are considering taking weight loss medication should always consult with a doctor or health care provider.

Doctors said it’s also important for people to do their research before taking the medications and understand the potential side effects, which can include nausea and vomiting to changes in vision and kidney problems. In serious cases, Ozempic and Wegovy could cause intestinal blockages, according to the drug’s warning label.

Ashwagandha is a “very powerful herb that has its origins in Ayurveda, which is the ancient form of medicine from India [that is] 5,000 years old,” says Dr. Meena Makhijani, an integrative medicine physician at UCLA Health and board-certified Ayurveda practitioner.

“So, ashwagandha has been used and described through all of these years within Ayurveda. And now of course, [it’s] gaining popularity throughout the world.”

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“Traditionally, ashwagandha is used in a tea form or powder form,” Makhijani notes, but now, ashwagandha is also available in capsules, gummies and even beverages. A 30-day supply of the supplements is usually around $20 to $30.

Some of the health benefits that people associate with the herb are stress management, reduced inflammation and improved reproductive health. But just how true are these claims, and is ashwagandha even safe?

A few of the common side effects of taking ashwagandha can include stomach problems like irritation of the gastrointestinal lining, diarrhea, and in rare cases, vomiting and nausea.

Here’s what experts say, and research shows, about ashwagandha’s effects on health.

Ashwagandha is ‘very effective’ at reducing levels of stress and anxiety

The great news is ashwagandha seems to live up to the hype as it relates to lowering stress.

“It is very effective, especially when we’re talking about stress and anxiety. There’s thousands of years of anecdotal evidence, but also there’s research that’s being done,” Makhijani tells CNBC Make It.

The strongest evidence for use of ashwagandha as a supplement is that it seems to reduce cortisol levels and perceived stress levels, says Andy De Santis, a private-practice dietitian and writer from Toronto.

“As a result, there is a little bit of evidence that it can help with sleep, falling asleep sooner and having better sleep quality,” De Santis says.

A 2021 systematic review published in the Journal of Herbal Medicine analyzed seven studies that tested the effects of ashwagandha on the stress and anxiety levels of nearly 500 adults in India. Researchers found that the groups who used ashwagandha for six to eight weeks saw a reduction in their levels of stress, anxiety and cortisol, and reported better sleep and less fatigue, than those who didn’t add the herb to their diet during the same time.

A 2022 clinical trial done in Florida with 60 men and women who reported that they were experiencing stress, tested the efficiency of ashwagandha capsules for 30 days. Those who received the supplements within that time frame reported positive changes in their levels of anxiety, stress, food cravings and depression, in comparison to those who didn’t take ashwagandha.

The supplement’s rise in popularity in recent years likely stems from the evidence that it improves a person’s mental health, says De Santis. “There’s so much demand for that outcome because stress is a significant part of all of our lives,” he adds. “People are just looking for help in this area.”

Yet, the benefits of ashwagandha don’t stop at stress and anxiety management. The herb may also help muscles heal faster and improve male reproductive health.

Ashwagandha “can be used for strengthening our bodies, especially the muscles. So people are using it for workouts to build endurance and strength that way,” says Makhijani. Many people use the supplement for rejuvenation, she adds, which “can be used for anti-aging purposes.”

Ashwagandha is ‘safe’ for most people but ‘herbs aren’t used for life’

When it comes to safety, ashwagandha is “safe for everybody” generally, but pregnant people and those with certain autoimmune conditions or cancers should avoid using the supplement, says Makhijani. People who have ulcers may want to avoid taking ashwagandha supplements as well, she adds.

“It might not be right for everybody at all times, and so it is really important to speak with your physician, an Ayurveda practitioner or a doctor of Ayurveda to see if it is right for you, as an individual,” says Makhijani.

The most common dose of ashwagandha is 250 milligrams daily, she says. Some people time their use of the supplement around workouts for performance enhancement or before bed to improve sleep quality, Makhijani adds.

But “the biggest potential downfall” of using ashwagandha is developing an over-reliance on it to “provide a long-term solution to problems,” says De Santis. “What else are you doing around those areas?”

It’s important to note that in Ayurvedic medicine, ashwagandha isn’t used consistently for extended periods of time, says Makhijani. Users of the herb typically take breaks between uses, she says.

“Usually, in Ayurveda, herbs would not just be used for life. They have a certain period that we would use them, potentially three months or so. Then, you might take a break,” she says. “If it’s used in a proper way, it would be very beneficial for most people [to take breaks].”

Also, be very mindful of where you purchase your ashwagandha supplements, she warns.

“Supplements are not very well regulated necessarily by the FDA, so there can be tremendous variety in the quality of the product people are receiving, in the strength of the product [and] in the potency of the active compounds of the herb. There can be a difference based on the part of the herb that’s used: roots, leaves or berries,” she says.

“It’s [also] being blended with other supplements, so you just kind of have to be aware of what you’re consuming.”

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s number is larger than previous studies have suggested, and is likely boosted by some of the patients with long COVID. The condition clearly “is not a rare illness,” said the CDC’s Dr. Elizabeth Unger, one of the report’s co-authors.

Chronic fatigue is characterized by at least six months of severe exhaustion not helped by bed rest. Patients also report pain, brain fog and other symptoms that can get worse after exercise, work or other activity. There is no cure, and no blood test or scan to enable a quick diagnosis.

Doctors have not been able to pin down a cause, although research suggests it is a body’s prolonged overreaction to an infection or other jolt to the immune system.

The condition rose to prominence nearly 40 years ago, when clusters of cases were reported in Incline Village, Nevada, and Lyndonville, New York. Some doctors dismissed it as psychosomatic and called it “yuppie flu.”

Some physicians still hold that opinion, experts and patients say.

Doctors “called me a hypochondriac and said it was just anxiety and depression,” said Hannah Powell, a 26-year-old Utah woman who went undiagnosed for five years.

The new CDC report is based on a survey of 57,000 U.S. adults in 2021 and 2022. Participants were asked if a doctor or other health-care professional had ever told them they had myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome, and whether they still have it. About 1.3% said yes to both questions.

That translated to about 3.3 million U.S. adults, CDC officials said.

Among the other findings: The syndrome was more common in women than men, and in white people compared with some other racial and ethnic groups. Those findings are consistent with earlier, smaller studies.

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However, the findings also contradicted long-held perceptions that chronic fatigue syndrome is a rich white woman’s disease.

There was less of a gap between women and men than some previous studies suggested, and there was hardly any difference between white and Black people. The study also found that a higher percentage of poor people said they had it than affluent people.

Those misperceptions may stem from the fact that patients who are diagnosed and treated “traditionally tend to have a little more access to health care, and maybe are a little more believed when they say they’re fatigued and continue to be fatigued and can’t go to work,” said Dr. Brayden Yellman, a specialist at the Bateman Horne Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The report relied on patients’ memories, without verifying their diagnoses through medical records.

That could lead to some overcounting, but experts believe only a fraction of the people with chronic fatigue syndrome are diagnosed, said Dr. Daniel Clauw, director of the University of Michigan’s Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center.

“It’s never, in the U.S., become a clinically popular diagnosis to give because there’s no drugs approved for it. There’s no treatment guidelines for it,” Clauw said

The tally likely includes some patients with long COVID who were suffering from prolonged exhaustion, CDC officials said.

Long COVID is broadly defined as chronic health problems weeks, months or years after an acute COVID-19 infection. Symptoms vary, but a subset of patients have the same problems seen in people with chronic fatigue syndrome.

“We think it’s the same illness,” Yellman said. But long COVID is more widely accepted by doctors, and is being diagnosed much more quickly, he said.

Powell, one of Yellman’s patients, was a high school athlete who came down with an illness during a trip to Belize before senior year. Doctors thought it was malaria, and she seemed to recover. But she developed a persistent exhaustion, had trouble sleeping and had recurrent vomiting. She gradually had to stop playing sports, and had trouble doing schoolwork, she said.

After five years, she was diagnosed with chronic fatigue and began to achieve some stability through regular infusions of fluids and medications. She graduated from the University of Utah and now works for an organization that helps domestic violence victims.

Getting care is still a struggle, she said.

“When I go to the ER or to another doctor’s visit, instead of saying I have chronic fatigue syndrome, I usually say I have long COVID,” Powell said. “And I am believed almost immediately.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Food and Drug Administration said the one-time treatments can be used for patients 12 and older with severe forms of the disease. One, made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, is the first approved therapy based on CRISPR, the gene editing tool that won its inventors the Nobel Prize in 2020. The other is made by Bluebird Bio and works differently.

“Sickle cell disease is a rare, debilitating and life-threatening blood disorder with significant unmet need,” the FDA’s Dr. Nicole Verdun said in a statement announcing the approvals. “”We are excited to advance the field especially for individuals whose lives have been severely disrupted by the disease.”

In the U.S., an estimated 100,000 people have the disease and about a fifth of them have the severe form. Sickle cell is most common among Black people and 1 in 365 Black babies are born with the disease nationally. Scientists believe being a carrier of the sickle cell trait helps protect against severe malaria, so the disease occurs more often in mosquito-prone regions such as Africa or in people whose ancestors lived in those places.

The disease affects hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen. A genetic mutation causes the cells to become sickle or crescent-shaped, which can block blood flow, causing excruciating pain, organ damage, stroke and other problems.

Current treatments include medications and blood transfusions. The only permanent solution is a bone marrow transplant, which must come from a closely matched donor without the disease and brings a risk of rejection.

The Vertex treatment was recently authorized in Britain and Bahrain and is under review elsewhere.

The high school technology and engineering teacher was 40 at the time and ready to head out for an annual pond hockey trip with his brother and some friends. But he felt tired, had a quick dizzy spell at his desk and had developed an odd lisp.

“I kept telling myself, I’m going on this big trip, maybe I’m just a little tired and hadn’t slept a lot,” Kenny, now 41, tells TODAY.com. His wife, a counselor at the same school, noticed he was slurring his words a bit and asked if he was OK. But he brushed off her concerns and got in the car.

On the five-and-a-half-hour drive from the Chicago suburbs up to the hockey event in Eagle River, Wisconsin, Kenny couldn’t shake the exhaustion. He napped in the car on the way up while his brother drove, and when they arrived, his lisp was more pronounced.

“My mind kept saying, this just doesn’t seem right,” he recalls, but he still chalked it up to not getting enough sleep and wanted to stick it out to experience the event that the group had waited for all year.

Someone in the group suggested he might have Bell’s palsy, a condition that causes sudden (but usually temporary) facial muscle weakness. But the next day, Kenny went to snowmobile the ice and realized his symptoms were getting worse.

“I go to try and start my sled. I grab with my left hand trying to pull, and I’m like, huh, I’ve got no strength,” he recounts, adding that he’d also had trouble getting his boots on that morning.

At that point, he finally took the guys up on their offer to drive him to urgent care — and Kenny learned just how serious his situation really was.

“The word ‘stroke’ never came to mind.”

At the urgent care center, Kenny was coherent and conscious but found it challenging to speak. “They asked me what was wrong and I could barely get the words out because my lisp was so heavy at that point,” he says.

Initially, the medical staff agreed that he might have Bell’s palsy, but they sent him for a CT scan anyway just to be sure.

“That was my life-changing moment,” Kenny says.

The staff literally ran into his room and told him the CT scan revealed he was actually having a stroke. “I remember the heart monitor that I was hooked up to just started beeping because my heart was going nuts,” Kenny says. “I was shaken.” 

Kenny was transferred to a hospital an hour away, and his wife drove through a blizzard to meet him there. The team there performed more tests — including an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart — and prescribed medication to keep him safe until he got home to see doctors in Chicago.

But, on the long drive back home, the doctors called Kenny to tell him the news: The echocardiogram showed bubbles in his heart, a telltale sign that he had a relatively common congenital heart condition known as a patent foramen ovale, which likely contributed to his stroke.

What is a patent foramen ovale?

A PFO is a flap-like hole in the tissue between the two upper chambers of the heart that may allow blood to flow between them.

On its own, a PFO isn’t necessarily a cause for concern. In fact, everyone is born with a PFO, Dr. Atman P. Shah, clinical director of cardiology and co-director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at the University of Chicago, tells TODAY.com.

In the womb, “we don’t really need our lungs,” Shah explains, “because we’re just swimming in amniotic fluid.”

During that time, fresh oxygenated blood comes to the right side of the heart and, instead of going through the lungs, passes through a PFO to the left side of the heart, Shah says. From there, it circulates throughout the fetus.

And when we’re born, the PFO typically closes on its own.

“When we take our first breath, our lungs inflate and the PFO slaps shut,” Dr. Mingming Ning, associate professor and director of the cardio-neurology clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells TODAY.com.

But, in one in four people, that PFO doesn’t actually close. Many of those people live their whole lives without ever knowing they have a PFO. But, for others, their PFO contributes to serious health issues— including strokes and migraine attacks.

If you develop a clot in your leg, for instance, that can break off and travel up to the lungs, where it might get broken up more, Shah says. “But if there’s a PFO, those clots can transit directly to the left side of the heart, which is responsible for supplying blood to the brain and other vital organs and muscles,” he explains.

The PFO makes it easier for clots from elsewhere in the body to travel up an artery directly to the brain, which causes a stroke.

An opening in the heart like this may also allow homocysteine, a naturally occurring amino acid that encourages clotting, to go through the heart without being deactivated by the lungs like normal, Ning explains.

“It’s not just a hole that allows a clot to go through,” she says. It actually can change the blood’s chemistry, making it more likely to develop abnormal clots in the future, Ning adds.

Still, Ning wants to reassure people that, because PFO-related strokes are “opportunistic,” simple precautions to prevent clots can help prevent those events. For example, she recommends staying hydrated, keeping physically active and getting screened for clot risks before taking hormonal birth control pills.

The frontier of research right now is looking for ways to determine, out of the billions of people on the planet with a PFO, who has a benign PFO and who is likely to develop a stroke or other complication, she explains.

Treatment for PFO after a stroke

In people like Kenny who have a PFO and have survived a stroke, the first step is to connect with a neurologist who will order an exhaustive list of tests to look for other factors that may have led to the stroke. Kenny also wore a heart monitor on his chest for 30 days.

Once the team determines that the PFO was the major contributing factor to the stroke, patients have a choice, Shah says: They can take powerful blood thinners for the rest of their life or they may be a good candidate to have the PFO closed with a small implanted device.

There are a few similar PFO closure devices on the market that come in different sizes and, generally, all work the same way, Shah says. For Kenny, the choice was clear, and he received an Abbott Amplatzer Talisman device in mid-April 2023.

First, a tiny catheter is inserted into a vein in the patient’s leg, which goes all the way up to the right atrium of the heart. Using a specialized ultrasound probe, the medical team is able to precisely place the catheter through the PFO. From there, the team sends the small device into place via the catheter.

The device “looks like two frisbees connected by a pin,” says Shah, who implanted Kenny’s device. One frisbee sits on either side of the PFO, “so we’re kind of making a heart sandwich,” he adds. Once the team is comfortable with how the device is sitting, they unscrew it and leave it in place permanently.

Ning notes that not everyone with a PFO who’s had a stroke is eligible to have their devices covered by insurance because the original clinical trials of the devices excluded people in certain groups, she says, such as those with genetic risks for blood clotting and people over the age of 60 who have increased risk for atrial fibrillation.

That doesn’t mean people in those groups should not get treatment, especially because PFO-related strokes can happen at any age, Ning explains. But, as always, their treatment should be individualized based on their specific case and risk factors.

Healing and recovering — physically and mentally

For Kenny, the PFO closure was instrumental in also bringing him mental and emotional closure about his massive health scare.

As a passionate educator, he says it was hard to be away from the classroom for three months. “I remember my wife would come in and set my laptop up and turn it on. … I had tears looking at the kids,” Kenny recalls.

He also had to take a break from hockey. And his 11-year-old daughter was concerned about her dad, especially because it was hard for him to speak in the days following the stroke and he felt extremely exhausted.

Looking back now, Kenny knows all the signs of a stroke were there in the classroom on the first day. And he urges other people not to brush worrying symptoms like those aside.

“I will live with the fact if I had listened to my body and listened to the signs and been aware of this, I never would have gotten in the car in the parking lot,” he says. “I would have stayed home. I would have been with my wife and I would have (gone) to the hospital.” 

The idea that he could have been having a stroke at 40 “never occurred to me,” he says.

Coming to terms with the fact that he did have a stroke was part of his recovery. “It took a long time for me to be able to say the words, ‘I had a stroke,'” Kenny says, because he was worried that he would be judged for having a health issue like this so young.

However, as an engineering teacher, he says finding a reason for his stroke and a treatment for it helped pull him through and out of that mental hole. “I look at things from logic,” he says. “If someone’s broke, how do we fix it?”

Recovery from the PFO closure was relatively easy, he says. He spent the night in the hospital and went home the next day. Generally, patients are told to avoid lifting anything over 15 pounds for about a week to avoid popping the healing vein in the leg, Shah says. And they’ll likely go on to take baby aspirin for the rest of their lives to reduce the risk for a clot-related stroke, he adds.

Gradually, Kenny was able to hit his personal recovery milestones, including seeing his students, putting his ice skates back on and being able to go for a run again. And, about six months after his stroke, Kenny returned to Eagle River with his family and one of the members of his pond hockey group.

He woke up early and ran a lap around the lake where they play, down the road and back to where they were staying. Kenny calls it his “yes moment,” a reminder that he could still do all the things he loved. “It was an astonishing feeling,” he says.

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Dr. Dean Ornish, who founded the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in California, is leading the clinical trial.

“For the last 45 years, I’ve directed research showing that simple lifestyle changes: what we eat, how we respond to stress, how much exercise we get and how much love and social support we have cannot only help prevent, but often reverse the progression of the most common and costly chronic diseases,” said Ornish, who is also a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco.

Through previous studies, Ornish found that lifestyle changes can reverse heart disease in some patients. Now, he’s seeing if it works in the fight against Alzheimer’s.

“What’s good for your heart is good for your brain. We know that Alzheimer’s and heart disease share many of these same underlying biological mechanisms,” Ornish said.

Healthy eating and exercise have been shown to reduce the risk of cognitive decline and dementia but this research takes it a step further to see if it can actually prevent or reverse the disease.

Participants of the study will follow a lifestyle medicine program that includes:

1. Eating a whole foods, plant-based diet: “Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products, ideally as close as they come in nature as possible, minimally processed, low in fat, low in sugar,” Ornish said.
2. Getting moderate exercise: Ornish said walking half-an-hour to an hour three times a week and incorporating some strength training qualifies as moderate exercise.
3. Reducing stress: Using meditation and other yoga-based stress management techniques.
4. Increasing social support: Joining support groups or spending quality time with friends and family.

“To reduce it to its essence: to eat well, move more, stress less and love more. That’s it,” Ornish said.

Ornish is teaming up with leading neurologists across the country, including at Harvard Medical School, to put the theory to the test.

“Our unique contribution has been to be using these very high tech, expensive state of the art scientific measures to prove how powerful these very simple and low tech and low cost interventions can be,” he said.

While the results of the trial aren’t expected until next year, others in the field are watching closely.

Dr. Jessica Caldwell, with the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement Prevention Center at Cleveland Clinic in Las Vegas, said she encourages her patients to get moving to keep their mind sharp.

“Physical exercise directly impacts the brain right away, as well as for months afterward,” Caldwell said. “It changes the levels of your neurochemistry that supports memory. When we exercise, it improves our mood, it can reduce our stress levels.”

More than 6 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s. Doctors said the disease starts decades before a person develops memory loss and other symptoms.

But this transaction was different from typical exchanges that occur every day at thousands of pharmacies across the United States. The cost to Phoenix, 50, who lives in the nearby community of Falcon and has no health insurance, was nothing.

Open Bible Medical Clinic and Pharmacy runs Colorado’s only current drug donation program. Most of the medications it dispenses come from nursing homes across the state.

“We take any and all of it,” said founding pharmacist Frieda Martin, who used those donations to fill 1,900 prescriptions for 200 low-income and uninsured adults last year. Participants pay a $15 annual registration fee for free medications and care at the adjoining clinic.

Drug donation programs like this one in Colorado and one in California take unopened, unexpired medications from health care facilities, private residents, pharmacies, or prisons that pile up when patients are discharged, change drugs, or die, and re-dispense them to uninsured and low-income patients. About 8% of adults in the U.S. who took prescription drugs in 2021, about 9 million people, did not take them as prescribed because of cost, and uninsured adults were more likely to skip medications than those with insurance, according to the National Health Interview Survey.

The programs vary in size but are often run by charitable pharmacies, nonprofits, or governments, and keep drugs out of landfills or incinerators, where an estimated $11 billion in unused medications are disposed of each year.

Forty-four states already have laws allowing drug donations, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many programs, like Colorado’s, are small or underutilized. Now, Colorado and other states are seeking to expand their approach.

“Drug donation programs are effective. There is a huge need for them. And there are opportunities for states to help their residents by enacting new laws,” said George Wang, a co-founder of SIRUM, which stands for Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine, a nonprofit with the largest network of drug donors and distributors in the U.S.

Colorado Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Democrat, said he plans to introduce a bill next year to create a drug donation program to help the estimated 10% of state residents who can’t fill their prescriptions because of cost.

Similarly, legislation in California signed last year allows expansion of the state’s first and only drug donation program, Better Health Pharmacy in Santa Clara County, to San Mateo and San Francisco counties. Kathy Le, the supervising pharmacist at Better Health, said it is in “the early stages” of working with other county-run pharmacies in California to develop similar programs.

The Wyoming Medication Donation Program, based in Cheyenne, uses mail distribution to reach residents, including those in remote parts of the state who may not have local pharmacies, said Sarah Gilliard, a pharmacist and its program manager. The program mails a total of approximately 16,000 free prescriptions annually to 2,000 Wyoming residents who are low-income, uninsured, or underinsured.

“Access is definitely a big consideration when it comes to the design of our program,” she said.

Many of the Wyoming program’s participants are 65 and older, on Medicare, with fixed incomes and unaffordable copays, but Gilliard said there has been a recent increase in participants between the ages of 20 and 40. Wyoming is one of 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid to cover more low-income residents, which could be a factor in that uptick, Gilliard said.

Donations come from all 50 states, with the majority from people who find the program online or through word of mouth. Sometimes donors tuck handwritten notes inside the packages about the high cost of medication or memories of a relative who died.

Gilliard saves each one and tacks them to the pharmacy wall.

Wyoming’s program, with its central state-run pharmacy that receives, processes, and mails prescriptions to residents, could be a model for Colorado, said Gina Moore, a pharmacist and senior associate dean at the University of Colorado’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Aurora. Moore co-authored a task force report for the state government last December about the feasibility of a drug donation program.

The report noted the success of programs with external funding, which, in Wyoming’s case, comes directly from taxpayer dollars. Using Wyoming’s budget, it projected a Colorado drug donation program would cost an estimated $431,000 in the first year, with a pharmacist and pharmacy technician serving roughly 1,500 patients.

In Colorado Springs, Martin and her husband, Jeff Martin, who is the executive director of Open Bible Medical Clinic and Pharmacy, believe a charitable, volunteer-run model like theirs would be feasible for Colorado, and they wonder how their long-running pharmacy will fit in with potential state-run efforts. In the task force report, Moore and her colleagues write that the state-run model and the Martins’ program could coexist.

Since Colorado enacted a law to allow drug donation in 2005, it has been amended several times in attempts to help it grow. But the state has not invested money or infrastructure to make a drug donation program take off.

Drug donations mailed to Open Bible dwindled during the pandemic and are only now slowly rebounding. The pharmacy ships roughly half of all donated medications to clinics across Colorado that serve uninsured and low-income patients in other cities such as Denver, Loveland, and Longmont.

Elsewhere in the U.S., SIRUM ensures that donors have packaging to ship donated medications, and it provides software to make inventorying and dispensing easier. Recently, it built a live online inventory of medications for Good Pill, a nonprofit pharmacy that mails 90-day prescriptions for about $6 to residents of Illinois and Georgia.

SIRUM helps facilitate donations for California’s Better Health Pharmacy, which has dispensed medications to 15,000 Santa Clara County residents since opening in 2015, Le said. Many are uninsured, underinsured, and speak Spanish or Vietnamese. Ten volunteers, often students, help log donations, and Better Health Pharmacy fills roughly 40,000 prescriptions a year with annual operating costs of just over $1 million, according to Le and Santa Clara County public health officials.

Besides prescriptions, Better Health Pharmacy provides free covid antigen tests and flu vaccinations to address its community’s needs. “We try to come up with creative solutions to expand the scope of our services,” Le said.

This commitment to addressing gaps in health care access and reducing impact on the environment means the “timing is right” for expansion of drug donation programs in California and beyond, said Monika Roy, assistant health officer and communicable disease controller at Santa Clara County’s Public Health Department.

“During the pandemic, inequities in access to care were magnified,” Roy said. “When we have solutions like these, it’s a step forward to address both equity and climate change in the same model.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

All of the infants have distinctive physical birth defects, such as cleft palate and unusually small heads. No common genetic cause has been uncovered — all were born to mothers who said they’d used street drugs, particularly fentanyl, while they were pregnant.

Six babies were identified at Nemours Children’s Health in Wilmington, Delaware, two in California and one each in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Erin Wadman, a genetic counselor at Nemours, and her colleagues published their findings recently in Genetics in Medicine Open.

Fentanyl Sep 29, 2023

Portland police investigating nearly a dozen fentanyl overdoses involving children, with 5 fatal

The aha moment linking the infants came in August 2022, when Wadman was called upon to consult in the case of a baby who’d been born with birth defects. “I was sitting there in the appointment, and I was just like this face looks so familiar. This story sounds so familiar. And I was just thinking about how this patient reminded me so much of a patient I’d seen earlier in the year and then other patients I’d seen,” Wadman said. “That’s when we were like we think we might have stumbled on something really big here.”

In addition to cleft palate, the 10 infants have unusually small bodies and heads. They tend to have drooping eyelids. Their noses tend to turn upward, and their lower jaws are often undersized. Their feet may point down and inward, and two of their middle toes are webbed. Baby boys may have genital irregularities. Some have trouble feeding, and their thumbs may not be fully formed. The physical similarities reminded Wadman and a Nemours colleague, Dr. Karen Gripp, a geneticist, of a syndrome called Smith-Lemli-Opitz. In those cases, genetic variants affect how fetuses process cholesterol, which is necessary for normal cell function and brain development.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com.

The 38-year-old Olympic gold medalist previously opened up about receiving a preeclampsia diagnosis in 2018 before she gave birth to her daughter, Camryn. She became an advocate for Black moms after her traumatic birth experience, she told TODAY in 2020, and has continued to address the Black maternal mortality crisis following the death of her relay teammate Tori Bowie in May.

During a sit-down with Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” Dec. 3, Felix discussed the ways the medical community has failed women of color, particularly Black women who are “three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

When she was pregnant, Felix said she was not aware of the higher rates of childbirth complications that affect women of color. 

“I felt like I should’ve known that I was at risk,” she said. “I felt like I should’ve been told the signs to look for. Instead, I wasn’t. I didn’t know what preeclampsia was. I didn’t understand that the swelling in my feet is just not simply a sign of pregnancy, but could be preeclampsia. And so I felt like I had great medical care, but that’s not always enough.”

According to Cleveland Clinic, preeclampsia is a serious blood pressure condition that can develop during pregnancy. 

She told Welker that she wishes her doctor would’ve shared more signs and symptoms to be aware of and advised her to monitor her blood pressure. The retired athlete said she had never heard of preeclampsia until her diagnosis. 

Felix recalled her frightening delivery in 2018, describing her preeclampsia as “severe.”

“They were in constant worry of me having a stroke, of my vision being lost,” she revealed.  “I went from being admitted to the hospital and being told that our goal was to stay there for another two weeks, to try to stay pregnant. And I delivered later that night.”

She continued, “And so it was a very quick progression. But I know that if I did not deliver, myself or my baby or both of us wouldn’t have made it.” 

Some of her teammates also battled childbirth complications. Bowie, who anchored the U.S. women’s 4×100 meter relay team with Felix, Tianna Bartoletta and English Gardner, was found dead inside a Florida home on May 2 at the age of 32. The three-time Olympic medalist was about eight months pregnant at the time of her death. 

An autopsy report from Florida’s Orange County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Bowie was “undergoing labor (crowning)” at the time of her death and listed respiratory distress and eclampsia as other possible complications, according to NBC News. 

Felix said her friend’s death was “absolutely devastating” and brought conversations about the ongoing Black maternal mortality crisis “back to the forefront.” 

“This is the reality of Black women giving birth in America,” Felix said. “And there are so many situations that are like this. And so I hate that it takes such a devastating loss to bring it back to the forefront. But it also is just such a motivation that we have to do better.”                         

The decorated Olympian also had a message for the medical community: there needs to be more implicit bias training.         

“(There are) countless stories of women not being heard when they are in the delivery room (and) at doctors appointments. I don’t think you should have to be prepared to advocate for yourself,” she pointed out.    

She said it can be “intimidating” for women to speak up to doctors who think they know best. Felix said policy change is important, too. 

“I think we just have to remember these stories, these people, and not be detached from that as well,” she added. 

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