Dec 14: ICYMI news for women
No TL;DR. Just the facts, ma'am. Dozens of new articles in the last week alone that matter to women. Click your picks: we watch the news so you don't have to.
Sunday Snippets is a round-up of the week’s headlines about women’s health and lives that we haven’t covered in our Notes or posts. Snippets goes first to our terrific paid subscribers, then later to free subscribers. It takes a full day each week to search the news and add context. If you find Snippets valuable, give us a shout-out with a❤️ or a share, or reward us one time with a much needed espresso (or snippet of win) or—definitely best of all—a subscription to support what we do. We do it for you.
In the news this week for women: Cover pic: Is she a Republican dream, a Democrat nightmare, or exactly what we need? Lots of news this week: Here’s why your GI system may not love December, and get braced for the superflu. Sexism brain scars, and not just from weaponized incompetence. Baby boom tips from abroad? We may be having MJ dreams, and what reclassification might mean. Is there a time limit on anti-depressants? And can the new sexual arousal cream mean we don’t need them? How to skip an 8x greater risk of skin cancer. Is the new autism drug safe? Can you hack gray hair? When is the SS COLA coming (hint: earlier than you thought). Fibroids? They may play out dangerously elsewhere in your body. News flash: if it’s men’s health, it’s not DEI (naturally). India is experimenting with paying women for what we’re all expected to do without pay, and Hallmark comes through with hours of shirtless men…happy holidays!
Make sure you check our posts and Notes: We’re updating more frequently there to keep Snippets a readable length.
Tip: If you hit a paywall here or anywhere, copy the URL of the article into archive.ph.1
See our footnotes and italicized comments for context from our 30+ years in healthcare.
Articles marked with an asterisk (*) are from professional journals.
Disclaimer: Listing these headlines does not indicate a recommendation. With so many news items each week, we don’t take the time to review each. Use common sense and dig deeper into any issue that interests you. More on sources and bias.2
This week’s Women in the News cover pic
Jasmine Crockett has more than held her own in the House. Now she’s running for Senate, and will primary against James Talarico, who’s been working very hard for months to get in in a great position for Dems, and she may already be ahead of him less than a week after she announced. Many are cheering; others are enraged. The opinions of others have never bothered Ms. Crockett much, and true to form, she’s going to do what she’s going to do. What’s your read? Comment to tell us.
News about our bodies
If your GI system is bucking the holidays, it’s not just you—and it’s not a great time for mental health, either. As expected the mutant ‘super flu’ is spreading like crazy in the UK; what to watch for here. How sexism ‘brain scars’ harm our health. Head to head: Newsom or Kennedy on women’s health. What other governments are doing to spark a baby boom. After 40, risk-based screening works as well as annual mammograms (with a lot less radiation). Unlocking zinc for colds. Two new drugs to treat gonorrhea. What if MJ doesn’t do what we thought for sleep or pain? Is Zepbound actually the GLP winner (and for knees, too)? Is there a time limit on anti-depressants? *DARE to PLAY sexual arousal cream becomes available in several states. Better sunscreen—already approved in other countries—gets approval here.
- News by generation/lifestyle
For your skimming convenience, but generation don’t have a ‘hard stop’—they overlap, so scan others, too.
Gen Z and Millennials
The question you never knew you needed to ask: do menstrual cups work in space? Hate getting pap smears? Here’s an alternative. Health-not: Young women now have a 2 to 8 times higher risk of skin cancer, modeled by the guy in charge of the nation’s health. *Monoclonal antibody shows promise for endometriosis pain.
Pregnancy, birth and parenting
Australia acts to protect children online…where’s America? US surrogates carrying babies for Chinese billionaires. (Yes, really.) New autism drug: when Trump says yes but the science isn’t yet there. Pediatricians lay out kid gifting dos and don’t. *Study: COVID vaccine slashes kids’ ER visits by 76%. Hundreds quarantined in SC from completely preventable measles outbreak as only-in-FL push increases to get rid of childhood vaccines. New glasses approved to slow nearsightedness in kids.
Midlife and better
Can you hack gray hair? Social Security COLA: Dec 31. Brain changes aren’t linear; here’s the code. Why waist:hip ratio is an increasingly important measure of health in women. Fibroids linked to women’s heart disease risk.
News affecting our lives and families
Surprise! When it’s men’s health, it’s not DEI! What the reclassification of marijuana might mean. Dare you to find a woman who doesn’t know what ‘weaponized incompetence’ is. Things you can’t make up: Now Trump wants to work with such a “nice group of Democrats” on healthcare. Catch up here. New 2025 SNAP restrictions. FDA said kids died from COVID vaccines, but provided no data. Now they’re on to adult deaths. Women’s healthcare market value $46B by 2033; here’s why. (The world saying Kennedy’s HHS is wrong, wrong, wrong.) The VA says it has new ‘age-friendly’ teams, but at the same time is eliminating 35K health jobs, including doctors and nurses. India’s sweeping experiment to pay women for homemaking—what a thought. And, finally…tired of the same old Hallmark movies? Hallmark apparently listened, so now we have 8 hours of shirtless men.
Archive.ph is a web archiving service that captures and preserves snapshots of web pages. If it’s a lesser-known site or if the article is very popular, it could take a few minutes to load, but it generally works very well—including, BTW, forwarding posts to Canada or other countries wisely concerned about some of our US media. And, yes, the FBI is now after it, so use while you can.
Sources: We check both public and professional news sites, with click-throughs for sources. We tend to go straight to the original info more than the interpretation of popular magazines and blogs, as we’ve found the latter do not always correctly interpret medical science information. Medical editors are becoming rare. We give you the news directly, including the primary studies when available, and leave you to your interpretation.
Bias: Yes, we’re biased. 1) We’ve been in women’s and children’s health for over three decades as providers, international consultants, and health system execs. If you’re in healthcare, with few exceptions, women’s and children’s services are not where you make money; those services are more often loss leaders. From policy to research to reimbursement for providers, women and children are second rate citizens, absolutely related to the historical perception of monetary value. So, you probably won’t be surprised we do not lean politically right on women’s health. We are center left but fair: we do not misrepresent data, and we do scan information from neutral and both center-left and center-right sites. It’s also possible we are a bit cynical. 2) We were trained in Western medicine, but have lived long enough to know much of Eastern and Ayurvedic medicine systems work just as well—what the US now calls “complementary and integrative medicine.” We strongly prefer actual scientific research to back up therapies, and definitely for therapies with potential harmful side effects. 3) If you’re wondering about media bias, check it on AllSides. We do. Another cool website and app (thank you, Julie L!) is ground.news, which rates political bias in particular stories.