Feb 15: ICYMI news for women
No TL;DR. Just the facts, ma'am. Dozens of recent news articles for women.
Sunday Snippets is an occasional round-up of recent headlines on women’s health and lives that that we haven’t covered in our Notes or posts. If you find Snippets valuable, give us a shout-out with a❤️, a share or a FREE* subscription, or reward us once with a much needed espresso (or snippet of win). We do it for you! *Forget paid subs; we do this for the fun of it and in memory of my journalist/editor dad, who would be horrified at most of today’s headlines.
See footnotes for tips on reading Snippets1 including paywall tricks2 and info on our sources and bias.3 Note articles marked with an asterisk (*) are from professional journals.
This week’s cover image
As John Fugelsang says, this week America got to witness “Future Law School Case Study Pam Bondi” scream that anyone still ‘obsessed’ with the Epstein victims isn’t paying attention to the stock market. If you have a heart or a soul, you headed to the bathroom after that one. Cruella makes me ashamed to be the same gender. If you haven’t seen the Judicial Committee Bondi screaming show hearing, please at least scan it here. Even MAGA was revolted. And kudos to Representative Massie (R-KY)—forced yesterday to notify us what he will not die naturally of, just in case—for ramming this through after decades of every administration ignoring it…what Trump, Bondi et all would dearly love to repeat.
Health advice of the week from the genius running our public health system
“I'm not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”
News about our bodies
Heart health month: 6 surprising tips. Debunking 5 women’s health myths. Stomach bug or norovirus? FDA approves Merck ovarian CA drug. Structural racism in women’s health. EPA ruling defies science. Shoulder pain originating in mouth? )gift article) An insurer finally has to pay for not having enough mental health providers—they’re hardly alone. Harmful chemicals in Black women’s hair products. High deductible plans worsen CA outcomes. Tribal health impacted by end of ACA subsidies. AMA launches own vaccine reviews. Feed a cold, starve a fever? (gift article) Does TrumpRx beat pharmacy prices? *No surprise: AI aids breast CA screening.
The states: SC measles outbreak larger than TX, spreading quickly in NC. Measles map. Why women can’t report a miscarriage in KY—and here’s what happened the last time KY did this. CA sues over public health cuts to four blue states. Potomac sewage spill in VA. Also in VA, cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS). CA: deaths from toxic mushrooms.
- Nutrition, exercise, sleep, and looking great
Dark or red lettuce healthier than others. 8 best fermented foods. Sourdough bread is having a moment. Scurvy and GLP-1s…really. Why exercise alone won’t yield weight loss.
- Generational and lifestyle health news
Tippy Toes baby food recall; children being pushed into jail by no mental health help. Risky: stopping antidepressants during pregnancy (gift article). *Minipad screening for cervical cancer? What Gen X, Millennials should watch for about colorectal CA. Flexibility, rising costs keeping mothers at work (gift article). Want more babies? Abolish commutes (opinion; gift article). *Hypothyroidism and women’s urinary incontinence. Healthcare costs eating into Social Security checks. Guthrie kidnapping and senior safety (gift article).
News affecting our lives and families
Women’s health investment outlook. Without healthcare growth, the labor market looks much worse (gift article). A year of Kennedy upends healthcare—now with yet more HHS leadership chaos. AI-driven job insecurity and mental health. Fact check: is climate change a scam? Women and leadership style: about time we talked about this. Healthcare cost stress fueling Dem campaigns. Health travel warning for Seychelles. FDA refuses to review Modern flu vaccine. Amazon nukes Ring partnership after backlash.
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.
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.
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.