Dec 28: 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 with a much needed espresso (or snippet of win). We do it for you!
Life is short. Have at it full bore, as the woman in our pic did! Eyedrops and nose sprays for quick fixes for minor and major issues? Supplements to avoid if you have hypertension. Lots of great year end reviews: 15 products women loved, breast cancer advances, new types of meditation, women leaders who influenced healthcare, top 5 insurance changes for women, and cool breakthroughs in health innovation and tech. The latest on the healthcare financing fight that’s a mere hundred years old. States with good or strange news, including proposed new laws on AI, teens, and social media. The GDP apparently grew, led by healthcare spending—but was it just the superflu and people scrambling to use paid-up insurance deductibles? Tips for easy nutrition fixes. How ADHD drugs work. Every parent has favorite children—and how that works for the non-favs. New non-hormonal menopause therapies. The wreck of the HHS, and a heartbreaking look at the devastation our cuts wreaked on moms and babies in Kenya.
See below for footnote tips on reading Snippets1 including paywall tricks2 and info on our sources and bias.3 And if you hit problem link, refresh; we correct regularly.
This week’s cover pic:
Iris Apfel, who became a fashion icon in her 90s and died last year at 102, once said, “When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else.” I’m with her! IMO, one of the very best things about getting to the no-longer-tethered-to-ideal-mom/employee stage is being able to do what I want when I want, ignoring predictable monotony. Life is short—have at it full bore! Celebrate the path Iris created for all of us. Happy new year!
News about our bodies
A simple eyedrop for far-sightedness, and a nasal spray that fights brain cancer? Patients sue insurance plans that won’t provide mental health options. (Gift article) New books to kickstart health goals. Big advances in breast cancer this year. Needed more than ever? Meditation focusing on loving kindness. Handling outrageous medical bills. (Gift article) FDA approves urinary continence wearable and an at-home brain stimulation device for depression.
The states: It never stays local: hundreds exposed to measles at Newark airport in New Jersey. What Michiganders need to know about expiring ACA credits. New New York law mandates social media warnings on platforms luring excessive use. Deaths in Missouri as COVID cases increase again nationally. Florida governor emerges as AI skeptic. And while the GDP apparently grew in November, healthcare spending was a primary contributor to that growth, and that may be a more temporary problem than good: this year’s ‘superflu’ cases are skyrocketing in 47 states (breaking records in New York). and it’s very likely those currently on ACA but who plan to go bare or to cheap catastrophic plans in 2026 after an average 114% cost increase moved to use up year end paid-up deductibles for screenings, medications and other large expenses?
- Nutrition, exercise, sleep, and looking great
Gut healthy packaged snacks? Heart-healthy breakfast swaps. Supplements that are problems with hypertension. Health comparison: parsnips and carrots. An avocado a day to keep doctor away? Wegovy pill approved for weight loss. Foods with healthy-sounding buzzwords and added sugars. A new study argues cheese is healthy. So…which cheese is best? Brown rice or white?
- Generational and lifestyle health news
How ADHD drugs improve attention. Parenting: favorite (and unfavorite) children. (Gift article) *2025 birth control review. Deep dive: Teens, social media and AI in 2025. Midlife GLP use review, and menopause myths we kicked to the curb. *New non-hormonal menopause therapies. Virtual reality opens doors for older adults. (Gift article) Perks of volunteering with children. Super-agers on a healthy life. (Gift article) Women are twice as likely as men to develop this type of congestive heart failure, and the AHA is investing in a new diagnostic tool. Noom enters longevity market with microdose GLP-1 Program and biomarker testing.
News affecting our lives and families
Congress takes ACA fight into January, with as much chance of success as we saw in December—and it’s same fight that’s been going on for a hundred years. 2025 year end reviews: standout health news of the year, 15 health products women loved, and women of influence in healthcare. Specific to women, from *Managed Healthcare Executive (an insurance periodical), the year’s top 5 women’s health insurance changes (actually positive), and a take on ACA coverage for women. 5 very cool breakthrough health innovations and healthcare tech start-ups this year.
And on the negative side, the docs I’d vote least likely to be trying to get rich, pediatricians, sue Kennedy over Trump-style retaliation cuts that will negatively affect children’s health research for years. Private health insurance costs are also going up in 2026; some options. A year of going back to the 50s with Kennedy’s HHS (Gift article) and 3 things to watch in 2026 as a result. Plus a brutal year for global health, with the US leading the disaster and—particularly if you’re a woman— heartbreaking stories from a maternity ward in Kenya that bring our foreign aid cuts into nightmare focus.
Quick tips for reading Snippets:
Make sure you check our posts and Notes: We’re updating more frequently there to keep Snippets a readable length.
If you hit a paywall here or anywhere, try copying the URL of the article into archive.ph, free for the time being.
See footnotes below 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. See below for more on sources and bias.
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.