July 11: ICYMI news for women
No TL;DR. Just the facts, ma'am. Recent news impacting women's health and lives.
Snippets is an occasional round-up of recent news pertinent to women’s health and lives. Watch our Notes for much more frequent hot-off-the-press news. If you like what you see here,❤️, share, or subscribe, free or paid. We have a paid option (at Substack’s lowest $30/year rate) only because Substack pushes paid posts—meaning you’ll help get news out and contribute to our piggy bank for paywalled articles we gift free here. Notes are free to all, and free subs get a minimum delay; no one misses anything. I’ve been in healthcare for four decades (this lifetime) and write WomenUnbroken mostly for the fun of it and in memory of our journalist/editor dad, constantly thanking goddess neither he nor mom can see today’s headlines.
An article marked * is from a professional journal; ^is a related Substack we like. See footnotes for tips on reading Snippets1 including disclaimer, sources and bias.2 Unless we specifically note AI, we use original sources, not AI—even though there is huge hope for AI in healthcare.3 Because of the depressing continued lack of women’s health research,4 remember most content here isn’t specific to women only. Apply what works for you, your body and those you love.
This week’s cover woman: She finally won! E. Jean Carroll
E. Jean Carroll beat Trump three times this week, including a final KO for her first $5.8M. Hallelujah! Details here5. Being a class act, she did not even comment publicly, let alone taunt, etc. No further comment except …what an amazing woman, giving hope and courage to many, many others.
News about our bodies
By the numbers: 2025 budget bill eating away at women’s healthcare access + Killing Obamacare with a thousand $ cuts | Watch out for newly-identified Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic CKM syndrome (gift link) | Millions of eye drops recalled | ^Sleep health (NYT, gift link in post) + foods that help with sleep (gift link) | Surprise (not): 2 in 3 voters say US health system doesn’t meet women’s needs | Unbabied—not just birth control | “Profound” medical ignorance of the clitoris6 | Why cancer seems so common now (gift link) + ^more | Bidet-curious? A gastroenterologist explains all7 (gift link) | No ice for sprains/strains? | Nutrition to prevent Alzheimer’s | Heavy metals in tampons—the problem trusting this FDA | 70% of veterans get psych meds from VA but is consent missing? | *Where are the women’s health drugs? | Cleveland Clinic: State of US women’s health | White House Women’s health conference: Birth control skepticism, teen fertility + EPA to MAHAs: just kidding (but RFK is all over a COVID vaccine injury list) + Hegseth said no military need for flu vaccine; 2 months later, hundreds of Air Force recruits were out sick and at least one died.
- Dread disease report
^Current detailed info on explosive (eek) spread of diarrhea parasite infection (gift link) | Wildly active tick season—see your region update here (gift link) | ^Heat illness | Aging and staying safe: latest versions of COVID | Upper East Side Manhattan Leggionnaire’s outbreak, bacteria found in Guggenheim | ^Remembering hantavirus.
- Nutrition, exercise, sleep, and looking great
FDA concerns about RFK-backed peptides | Best healthy eating advice of 2026 (so far) (gift link) | Finding [good] non-alcoholic wine (gift link) | 8 gut biome health tips | Costly cocktails, GLP-1s, fewer drinkers impact liquor sales (gift link) | Wirecutter reviews…wait for it…women’s undies | GLP news Record numbers using GLP-1s for weight loss + New $50 Medicare coverage for weight-loss8 + How restaurants are changing menus + In-depth on GLP-1s with never-timid Meghna Chakrabarti.
- By the Generations9 —Our health and lives
Gen Z/Millennials Is Gen Z normalizing cigarettes? | Medicine: listen to Gen Z | Gen Z helping others—mental health key? | ^What Gen Z wants from politicians | Tanmaxxing—yah, Z knows, but… | Forbes: Gen Z, Millennial mental health improving but work needs work | More workers testing + for MJ, fewer employers care (gift link) | That wow! headline that 31% Gen Z men say wives should obey husbands? 29 countries—not the US only (clickbait much?) | Does too-fast Gen Z/Millennial aging explain new young cancers? | Gen Z, Millennials lead way to daily well-being | Millennials sold weed health fantasy? | No surprise: Millennials and Boomers very different on healthcare + generational factors when choosing a doctor | Birth and parenting Preventing perinatal depression | ASD: could it be these meds during pregnancy? | Trump baby accounts: Should you sign up? | House passes bipartisan online kid safety bill; now to unsure Senate | Does a gene slow early menopause, infertility? Gen X How to actually understand women’s midlife life | Anger? or is it menopause rage? | Is midlife the most dangerous age for women’s mental health? | Sexual dysfunction and the midlife woman | Eating disorders and midlife women | Is AI bridging the menopause specialist shortage? | Saffron for menopause mood, sleep? | MS progression in midlife women | *B3 and grapes, blueberries linked to fewer menopause symptoms | HRT declines despite research | Key factors driving Gen Z net worth | Changing attitudes on mental health: Gen X/Boomers+ *Air pollution and bone loss | Monthly budget costs at 65+ | 5 habits for successful aging in 60s and beyond | Bring back that hula hoop? | ^The avoidance-confidence trade-off | Can Boomer screen habits mimic dementia? | Meet aging America’s family caregivers + ^people we need for serious illness | Home age-proofing | 40% of US population in ‘60s, now Boomers are half that and oldest is 80 + Is 2026 the nation’s longevity wake-up call?
Policy: Health & Women’s Lives
UN: 6 uncomfortable truths about women’s health | Trump says women’s health research is “DEI;” the European Medical Agency sees an opportunity for precision medicine. | KFF: Status of abortion-related states since Dobbs | World Economic Forum: Women often lead in emergencies but without the usual backing to do so: Why women should be at the helm in health emergencies | The state of women’s health in numbers + Science to patient gaps and opportunities + Investment outlook |
The Platner debacle: The cost of ignoring the obvious [to so many women] (free link).
Quick tips for reading Snippets:
See footnotes and italicized comments for context from our 30+ years in women’s and children’s healthcare.
Disclaimer: Listing these headlines does not indicate a recommendation. With so many news items, we don’t take the time to review each. Use common sense and dig deeper into any issue that interests you; follow the links.
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, I’m biased. 1) I’ve been in women’s and children’s health for decades as a provider, health system exec, faculty and international consultant. If you’re in healthcare, with few exceptions, women’s and children’s services are not where you make money; those services are most 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 I 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; you’ll see that in our posts and Notes. 2) My long-ago time helping moms as a certified nurse-midwife was my all-time (and most exhausting) favorite and you’ll see posts related to birth and parenting, but also a definite tilt to women of a certain age, long left out of medical research and frank discussions. 3) I have a master’s degree as a nurse practitioner, so I was trained in Western medicine, but have lived long enough to know much of Traditional Chinese Medicine 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.
I’ve been in healthcare long enough to know no doctor anywhere can possibly keep up to date on every piece of medical research worldwide in their own specialty, let alone others. And it’s well-documented within medicine that takes 10 to 17 years for research-identified best practices to be integrated by local providers. So I hold great hope for AI to sort out the morass of worldwide research in minutes…as long as the data is there to “scrape.”
…and for female-specific research and best practices, the data simply isn’t there, adding additional worry to using AI for information specific to females. After decades of male-only foundational research, and even after the IOM finally started requiring inclusion of women in medical research, <40% of studies today include female participants—and that was before the Trump administration delayed or killed much of it based on “DEI.” Our hormones alone mean many male findings—diagnosis and treatment—are different or inapplicable. So while I hold great hope overall for AI, I’m cautious applying it to women specifically without seeing the original study.
On June 29, SCOTUS rejected Trump’s appeal of E. Jean’s Carroll’s win in the 2023 civil case she won when Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her. Nine days later, July 8, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered the release of nearly $5.8 million—the initial $5M 2023 civil jury award plus interest—to Carroll. (This is a separate payout than Carroll’s larger $83.3M 2024 defamation judgment against Trump; the larger one remains on appeal.)
Trump’s legal team immediately filed an appeal (of course) to block the disbursement, but the Manhattan federal appeals court also immediately rejected the delay that night. Because SCOTUS previously denied review, this $5M+ judgment is final: it cannot be appealed again. Judge Kaplan then directed the court clerk to immediately transfer the funds to Carroll’s lawyers, making the money already held in trust legally available to her immediately. F.I.N.A.L.L.Y.
If men had a clitoris, we’d have known every millimeter, nerve and blood vessel hours after the Garden of Eden—as soon as Adam could find another guy to poke around in.
I did a lot of business in Japan, where they treated me very well. By the early 2000s, every hotel in Japan—5 star to Holiday Inns—had bidet toilets in each room. The Japanese have been way ahead of us on this. In the mid-2000s, we bought two Toto bidet toilets and we value them more than just about any other household possession; we moved them with us from one state to another, entertaining many of our friends. 20 years without a single problem; can’t say enough about them. Amerian brands (Koehler, American Standard) finally got into the act a few years ago, but we swear by our Totos. (“Life changing!” shouted one of our sons’ girlfriends onece…LOL!)
That’s a big change. Previously, Medicare only paid for diabetes-related use of GLP-1s. Medicare Advantage plans are also offering the $50/month GLP-1s for weight loss.
A career in women’s health led me to learn how to reach women about health which led to my work on life phases and social generations theory—the real research backed by socio-economic studies, not memes or a sell-you-something-sales-pitch. Social generations grew up at about the same age at the same time experiencing similar societal impacts and changes. Boomers have always been Boomers; the term isn’t ageist. The generations don’t have cut-and-dried start/stop times. For example, those born early or late in a social generation have characteristics of each (and are often leaders, BTW.) Keep the overlap in mind as you read.