Category: Health

A new large-scale study suggests that the MIND diet, which blends elements of the Mediterranean and DASH diets, could play a significant role in reducing the risk of dementia—even for people who begin following it later in life.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has officially approved Moderna’s latest COVID-19 vaccine, named mNEXSPIKE, for use in individuals aged 65 and older, as well as those 12 and up who have underlying medical conditions that put them at greater risk of serious illness.

Meet my patient Mrs. L. R. She’s 98 years young and has never suffered a day of serious illness in her long life. She was referred to me by her primary care physician to assess her heart condition because she had developed swelling in her legs, known as edema. When we first met in the clinic, I noted there was no accompanying family member, so I asked how she got to the medical center. She’d driven herself. I soon learned much more about this exceptionally vibrant, healthy lady who lives alone, has an extensive social network, and enjoys her solitude.

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Not long before the 2024 election, Dr. Casey Means wrote a letter to her Good Energy newsletter subscribers with a health-related wishlist for the next Administration.

In it were priorities that echo those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services: investigating toxins in the food supply, incentivizing healthy food purchases with food stamps, replacing factory farming with regenerative farming.

“More than anything, I would like to see our future White House rally Americans to be healthy and fit,” wrote Means, a physician who President Trump nominated on May 7 for U.S. Surgeon General. Trump discarded his first pick, Dr. Janette Neshiewat, a day before she was scheduled to appear before a Senate committee.

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Should killing nature be an international crime?

“From the Pope to Greta Thunberg, there are growing calls for the crime of ‘ecocide’ to be recognised in international criminal law — but could such a law ever work?” the BBC asked in a recent article.

Some courts have granted legal standing to sacred rivers, trees and landscapes and legal rights to non-human primates.

Numerous jurisdictions have ruled in favour of nature with respect to:

Pollution and other forms of destruction of nature

Trade in endangered species

Destruction of national parks, nature reserves and other protected areas and natural monuments

Before Dr. Manisha Deka became pregnant at age 38, she knew little about the benefits of lifting weights. 

“I have always been active, but I focused on exercises like running on the treadmill, yoga and Zumba classes,” said Deka, a specialist in internal medicine in India. “Those were the exercises that women tended to do at the time.”

Then she had a complicated pregnancy, which required her to stay in bed. “Once I gave birth and tried to stand up, I noticed that the muscles in my legs had lost all their strength,” Deka said. “I had to re-learn how to move, walk and climb stairs.” 

Some TikTok videos about health and fitness are hard to resist. People describe how they lost weight by eating only raw fruits and vegetables for a month or by substituting protein powder in place of flour or sugar. How many people take these recommendations to heart? What happens if they do?

Jason Wood was one of them. “I would sprinkle [protein powder] on top of a peanut butter sandwich or a yogurt just to make what I was eating seem healthier,” he said.

But Wood’s practice of adding protein powder to make his foods healthier wasn’t healthy. Eventually, Wood was diagnosed with orthorexia, an obsession with nutrition. Orthorexia is an eating disorder that differs significantly from better-known eating disorders like bulimia — bingeing and vomiting the food afterwards — and anorexia — not eating at all.

It is heart-breaking, and at the same time, it feels good, like everything together makes it feel like being in a nightmare; a kind of daze — This is how Sufia Easel describes the feelings behind her art. It is a layered emotion drawn from personal struggles with anxiety and depression, a theme that runs quietly but powerfully through her work.

Sufia Easel graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the University of Development Alternative (UODA) in 2018. After working two jobs, she decided to fully focus on her passion: painting, and building a small business selling merchandise based on her artworks.

“Only my closest friends and a few family members knew about my IVF journey. I kept it private to avoid judgment, the whispers calling me ‘defective’ for not conceiving naturally. In India, I saw women in their 50s enduring the same gruelling treatments, all longing to hold a child. People do not understand our pain; they only expect us to have children, as if that’s our sole purpose.”

The food scene in the city is as diverse as its people and just as expressive. And by expressive, I mean deeply personal. Food here is not just something we eat — it’s something we are! In Dhaka, you don’t need to scale hills or cross rivers to taste the country’s rich regional delicacies. You just need to be hungry. Why? Because, no matter where you are from, there’s probably a corner that smells of your childhood.

This is the metropolis’s secret superpower. For a city that’s relentlessly fast, loud, and crowded enough to make anyone consider monastic life, it has a surprisingly tender culinary soul. It doesn’t just feed you — it reminds you who you are.