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Time Magazine
13-06-2025
- Health
- Time Magazine
The 9 Most Underrated Healthy Foods
Some foods simply radiate star power. Apples and bananas? They've got their own song. Peanuts, potatoes, and pepperjack cheese? They're in your pantry— and the cooking hall of fame. But the obvious choices aren't the only ones—and they're not even necessarily the best. 'People tend to fall into certain patterns—we're creatures of habit,' says registered dietitian nutritionist Mindy Haar, assistant dean at New York Institute of Technology's School of Health Professions. 'But from a nutritional point of view, by varying your diet, you're going to get ahead." In addition to exposing yourself to nutrients you might not be getting from the same old foods, switching up your standard fare can also be a delightful surprise for your taste buds. We asked dietitians to reveal their favorite underrated healthy foods, plus ideas on how to incorporate them into your diet. Celery The simple celery stalk—often thought of only as a hummus-dipping vehicle—deserves to be reconsidered. It's packed with essential nutrients like vitamin K, potassium, and folate, as well as a variety of antioxidants. Plus, it's versatile, says Laura Pensiero, a chef and registered dietitian who owns the restaurant Gigi Trattoria in Rhinebeck, N.Y. While the stalks can be chopped up and used in salads, stir-fry recipes, soups, and stews, the leaves hold untapped potential, too. Pensiero suggests using them to make a fresh, herby pesto that levels up pasta and grilled vegetables or can be smeared on sandwiches. You can also blend celery leaves into your favorite smoothie or juice for an extra kick of nutrition. Clementines This flavorful fruit—a hybrid between a mandarin and a sweet orange—is one of Haar's favorite choices for a nutrient-dense snack or even dessert. Because they're small, two clementines are considered a serving; they're about the equivalent of one big orange, calorie-wise. 'Clementines are wonderful sources of vitamin C,' she says. 'They have some fiber, they're satisfying if you're thirsty, they're very portable, and you can go on a hike and not worry about keeping them refrigerated.' Pumpkin seeds These flat, oval-shaped seeds are 'small but mighty when it comes to nutrition,' says Maggie Michalczyk, a Chicago-based registered dietitian and author of The Great Big Pumpkin Cookbook. 'They're packed with plant-based protein, healthy fat, and fiber, as well as important micronutrients like zinc, iron, copper, and magnesium.' Just 1 oz. of pumpkin seeds will give you 168 mg of magnesium, which is 40% of the daily recommendation for adults. Consider sprinkling them onto toast, tossing them into your favorite salad, mixing them into guacamole, or subbing them in for pine nuts in pesto, Michalczyk suggests. Pomegranate juice Hydration: great! Hydration with nutrition benefits: even better. Michalczyk likes pomegranate juice, which contains health-boosting polyphenol antioxidants and is also a good source of potassium —an important electrolyte that plays a role in muscle function. 'I love its tart bright flavor for warm-weather cocktails and mocktails,' she says. One of Michalczyk's favorite recipes involves mixing 100% pomegranate juice with sparkling water, adding a squeeze of lime juice, and topping with fresh mint. Or, for a mocktail that's 'delicious and looks like a sunset,' she suggests mixing pomegranate juice with passion fruit puree and sparkling water, and then garnishing it with mint. Freekeh This ancient whole grain isn't as popular in the U.S. as, say, quinoa. But it's commonly used in Middle Eastern cuisine, in part because it's a great source of protein, fiber, potassium, and folate. 'The seeds are a bit tender and the kernels are roasted, so it has a smoky, nutty flavor," Haar says. She serves it in place of rice or barley in all kinds of dishes, sometimes mixing it with chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, sunflower seeds, and raisins. It's been a hit: 'I find that when I entertain and have people over, they're excited to try new things,' she says, and head home inspired to recreate the recipes themselves. Prunes Perhaps you think of prunes in association with relieving constipation—a great benefit of the fruit, thanks to its fiber. But there's so much more to the dried plums, says Erin Palinski-Wade, a registered dietitian and certified diabetes care and education specialist in New York. Research suggests eating five or six prunes a day can slow bone loss and prevent the risk of fractures. Plus, they can lower heart disease risk in postmenopausal women. While there's nothing wrong with eating prunes straight from the package, you can also experiment with more creative approaches. Consider blending them into a puree that you can swap for butter, sugar, or eggs in your favorite baked goods, for example. Palinski-Wade uses pureed prunes in chocolate chip cookies —her kids love them, she says, and it's nice to add some health benefits to a tasty treat. Sardines It's time to get over your tinned-fish ick, Michalczyk says: Sardines are a nutrient-dense, protein-packed staple that belong in your pantry. One can contains 351 mg of calcium, 35 mg of magnesium, and 364 mg of potassium, among other nutrients. That makes sardines a "secret weapon to up the nutrition of anything you add them to,' Michalczyk says. Eat them directly out of the can, with crackers, in pasta, or on avocado toast, she suggests. Hemp hearts First, to clarify: The soft-shelled seeds of the hemp plant don't contain psychoactive or mind-altering properties. They are, however, rich in protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and minerals like magnesium. 'They're a true powerhouse, and a convenient way to upgrade so many dishes,' says Lora Silver, an oncology dietitian at Yale New Haven Health's Smilow Cancer Hospital. She likes adding them to her fruit and yogurt parfait, swirling them into French toast batter and salad dressings, and dusting them over avocado toast. When she craves a 'creamy porridge,' she blends them with ground flaxseeds, shredded coconut, and nut butter for a grain-free, high-fiber, low-carb hot cereal. Watercress Kale tends to get more attention than this leafy supergreen—and Silver believes it's time to change that. In one study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, watercress was rated as the top "powerhouse" choice out of 41 fruits and vegetables, based on its nutrient density and association with reduced chronic disease risk. The obvious way to use it is in a salad, but you can get more inventive, too. Silver suggests balancing watercress' peppery flavor with carmelized onions in a sandwich, or pairing it with peanut sauce in a grain bowl or wrap.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
"Razor blade throat": The "Nimbus" COVID variant sparks concern of summer surge
Post-pandemic amnesia is a natural reaction, and it's common for misremembering to occur after a pandemic or collective traumatic event occurs. Yet the reality is that SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, is still finding ways to infect people by evolving new mutations, and a new variant has raised concern among virologists that continue to track the virus. Last month, the World Health Organization labeled the COVID variant NB.1.8.1 a 'variant under monitoring' because it has been surging across Asia and made up 10.7% of global sequences reported as of mid-May. Now, the variant has been detected in the United States, Europe and Canada as well, concerning virus trackers who — for the first time since the Pirola variant began circulating in August 2023 — bestowed upon it a nickname: Nimbus. Nimbus has recombined genetic material from other strains three times. Although the process of recombination is a natural process of viruses trying to evolve to survive among the population, recombination events are concerning because each time a virus does so, it has the potential to evolve into something that is more infectious or causes more severe disease. One of these mutations in Nimbus allows it to evade the immunity we have built against the virus from prior infections, so transmissibility might be slightly higher, said Dr. Rajendram Rajnarayanan, of the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Arkansas. A recent preprint study, not yet peer-reviewed, found that the way this variant binds to cells could make it infect them more efficiently than earlier strains and that it could be easier for this strain to be passed along to someone else. However, there has not been any evidence yet to suggest that Nimbus is linked to more severe illness. 'We haven't seen a big surge in emergency departments due to COVID-related conditions and respiratory things in this term yet,' Rajnarayanan told Salon in a video call. 'We have to wait and watch.' Recently, many people have been reporting a symptom called 'razor blade throat,' but it's unclear if this is a symptom of COVID or one of the many other viruses circulating. Overall, it is difficult to attribute certain symptoms to variants when there are more than a dozen circulating at a time and testing remains relatively low compared to earlier stages of the pandemic, said Dr. T. Ryan Gregory, an evolutionary and genome biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada. 'That said, we learned from Omicron that high transmissibility can cause as much damage as high per infection virulence, and at this point it is not just acute severity that is of concern, but longer-term impacts of repeated infection,' Gregory told Salon in an email. Such impacts include conditions like "long COVID," in which the symptoms of COVID last for months or years, often disabling current data shows that most COVID infections in the U.S. are currently caused by the LP.8.1 variant, which descends from Pirola. Both of these strains are technically still in the WHO's Greek letter 'Omicron' family, which now contains thousands of offspring. If there's one thing viruses are good at, it's mutating into new forms that can evade our immunity, whether that's from vaccines or past infections. In 2023, the WHO decided to only name variants with this system if they were considered a 'variant of concern' and stated that certain action steps should be taken by countries if a variant fell under this classification. However, the agency has not labeled any variants like this since Omicron. Some argue that some variants have been different enough to warrant a new name, and that not naming variants makes it more difficult to distinguish between the complex alphabet soup of variants that are circulating at any given time. For example, Pirola, which included the BA.2.86 variant along with its descendants, was about as genetically different from the original Omicron strain as Omicron was from the original 'wild strain' virus from Wuhan, China. Nevertheless, in the past two years, 'it's largely been the Pirola show,' Gregory said. Current vaccines have been designed to protect against this strain. So far, Nimbus is not very common in the U.S., but it has been identified in California and has enough mutations in its spike protein that it has a potential to cause waves of illness in other regions — which is in part why it was designated a name. At-home tests should still work to detect this variant, but PCR tests that doctors can order are more accurate. Masking also helps prevent the spread of the virus. Every year following the start of the COVID pandemic, cases have surged in the summer. Last year's summer surge hit around August and was so intense that vaccines were approved slightly early. Although this year's summer wave hasn't yet started, experts predict we will likely experience another wave this summer. As it stands, variant trackers expect either Nimbus or another variant called XFG to be the dominant strain this time around. Although XFG currently makes up a greater proportion of cases in North America than NB.1.8.1, the latter has been detected in New York and California. 'NB.1.8.1 is a strong candidate for the summer surge,' Rajnarayanan said. 'Yet what we know from previous instances is that it doesn't have to be a single variant that pushes up [to prominence] and sometimes it can be a group of variants … that pick up mutations from each other and recombine.' The good news is that Nimbus is still similar enough to the Pirola variants that the available vaccines were designed to target. That means they should still be effective, Gregory said. However, concerns have been raised that vaccine access may be limited this fall due to the Food and Drug Administration announcing it would require drugmakers to conduct a new set of clinical trials before approving new vaccines for use. Last month, the FDA also said it will only recommend COVID vaccines for adults 65 and older and those at risk for severe illness. Critics have said this will only make the vaccines less likely to be covered by insurance and less available overall. On Monday, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy announced he was firing the expert panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control responsible for making recommendations on vaccines, further complicating matters. Paired with updated guidelines from the CDC that drop recommendations for healthy pregnant women and kids to routinely get vaccinated, these changes from the federal government could have a chilling effect that leads fewer people to get vaccinated. 'I'm concerned about accessibility,' Rajnarayanan said, adding that it's not clear if vaccines will be available to people without insurance that aren't included in federal recommendations. 'These kinds of things are still murky and I really want to see clearer guidelines.' While many people may seem to have forgotten about COVID, people are still routinely hospitalized and killed by the virus. Additionally, each COVID nfection carries a risk of going on to develop long Covid, which continues to debilitate millions of people. As we witnessed when COVID was a full-blown pandemic, emerging viruses can be especially damaging for people with existing conditions like diabetes, obesity and heart disease. It's important to protect against things like long COVID not only for the well-being of people today but also for our susceptibility to future viruses, Rajnarayanan said. 'In different parts of the world, I've seen funding for continuous surveillance gone down, and not just for surveillance, which is important, but also studying the disease itself,' Rajnarayanan said. 'This is not just about protecting [people] today but also protecting them from any other variant in the future.'
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How the 'sexiest doctor alive' transformed viral fame into health education for millions
Most children don't witness their parents' struggle to become doctors. But Dr. Mikhail Varshavski remembers watching his father, a physician from Russia, tackle medical school and residency all over again in America. "My father decided to pursue medical education, yet again, in a new country, in a new language for the second time in his life, bless his heart," Varshavski told Fox News Digital. "I fell in love with the field, and I realized this is the only thing I want to do for the rest of my life." Being labeled "sexiest doctor alive" wasn't part of that plan, but Varshavski has leveraged the superficial attention into a way to provide health information to millions. Top Trump Admin Health Officials Share Vision For Hhs To 'Make America Healthy Again' Varshavski's family immigrated to the United States from Russia when he was six years old, seeking a better life. The transition came with challenges, though. "We had to restart our lives completely from scratch," he said. His mother, a Ph.D. math professor, swept floors to pay the bills while his father, who had been a physician in their home country, repeated the arduous process to become a doctor again. Read On The Fox News App Varshavski followed in his father's footsteps, completing an accelerated, seven-year combined program for a bachelor's degree in life sciences and a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree at the New York Institute of Technology. He was also building a following on Instagram before he started his residency in 2014. Then came the "15 minutes of fame," Varshavski said. Buzzfeed published an article in August 2015 titled "Um, You Really Need To See This Hot Doctor And His Dog," a compilation of Instagram photos of Varshavski and his husky. People Magazine dubbed Varshavski the "sexiest doctor alive" in November 2015. The superficial spotlight took Varshavski aback. At first. "This isn't the attention I'm trying to get," he recalled thinking at the time. "I would like to educate people. I want to celebrate healthcare. I wanna put good information out there." Trump Fda Overhauls Covid-19 Vaccine Approval To Focus On Older Populations, High-risk Individuals Major news outlets and talk shows flocked to book him, but the media frenzy ended fast. If the "gatekeepers" wouldn't let him talk about the topics he cared about — vaccines, nutrition, physical activity — he would have to do it himself, he said. He launched his YouTube channel, "Doctor Mike," inspired by a recurring theme he noticed in his day job. "Patients were being misled by something they read online or saw on television, usually in the form of a late-night infomercial," he said. This not only distracted patients from "putting in work like improving their diet, getting seven to nine hours of sleep, exercising [and] maintaining a healthy mental state," but it also spurred some to take "questionable medications and supplements," Varshavski said. He realized he could reach more than just the 30-40 patients he saw each day in person. He now boasts about 14 million subscribers on YouTube. "At a time where patients' first instinct … is to look at their phones, I wanted to be there for them," he said. "Just like family doctors are there for our patients when they're in the hospital, when they are in the nursing home, when they can't leave their home, and they're bed-bound, we're there." In addition to his videos talking about everything from high blood pressure to nutrition labels, and reacting to popular medical dramas or TikTok videos, Varshavski has also interviewed celebrities, medical professionals, and political guests, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Vice President Kamala Harris and current FDA commissioner Dr. Marty Makary. The New Jersey-based doctor still balances his online fame with his job seeing patients, most of whom don't recognize him as a celebrity, Varshavski said. "The ones that do recognize me are very excited," he said. "I can't tell you how much joy it brings me to have a child who's nervous to go the doctor face light up because it's the doctor that they saw on YouTube." Varshavski will be on "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday, May article source: How the 'sexiest doctor alive' transformed viral fame into health education for millions
Hindustan Times
19-05-2025
- Health
- Hindustan Times
Who is Kevin O'Connor? Biden's White House doctor faces scrutiny over health reports after Joe's cancer diagnosis
Joe Biden's White House hoctor, Kevin O'Connor, has come under fire after the former president was diagnosed with prostate cancer. In the aftermath of the diagnosis, many are asking whether O'Connor ever did a cancer screening. Dr. Kevin O'Connor is an American physician and retired US Army colonel who served as the physician to the president under both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. He graduated from the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed his residency in family medicine at The Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, New Jersey, where he was chief resident in 1995.
The Sun
06-05-2025
- Health
- The Sun
The simple 30-second finger test that can reveal your risk of devastating incurable disease
JOINT flexibility is important for healthy movement and function. But being able to move your joints in an extraordinary way could be a sign of Ehlers-Danlos syndromes (EDS). 3 EDS are a group of inherited disorders that affect connective tissues, primarily the skin, joints, and blood vessels. These disorders result from genetic mutations that impact the production or structure of collagen, a key protein that provides support and structure to various tissues. EDS is characterised by joint hypermobility - an increased range of motion in the joints, making them more flexible than average. Skin can stretch further than normal, joints bend too far and sometimes dislocate, and internal tissues bruise or tear more easily. According to Jeannie Di Bon, a UK-based hypermobility and EDS specialist, just because you're hypermobile doesn't automatically mean something's wrong with your connective tissue or that you've got a syndrome. But if hypermobility begins to really bother you and suddenly becomes very problematic (often overnight), it could be cause for investigation for a connective tissue disorder, such as EDS, Di Bon told Newsweek. Easy test for hypermobility 3 The nine-point Beighton score is a simple assessment tool used to evaluate joint hypermobility. It involves testing the flexibility of several joints, with each positive result adding a point to the score. A higher score generally indicates greater joint hypermobility. The score is calculated by adding up the points earned for each of the five tests. What is Raynaud's disease? If the finger can be bent back more than 90 degrees - one point for each hand. If the thumb can be bent backward so that it touches or goes beyond the palm of the hand or wrist - one point for each hand. Being able to extend the elbow beyond 10 degrees - one point for each elbow. Being able to extend the knee beyond 10 degrees - one point for each knee. The ability to bend forward from the waist, with knees fully extended, and touch the palms flat on the floor - one point if the palms can touch the floor. A score of more than five out of nine, for an adult, indicates a person has hypermobility. For a child, it's a score of at least six out of nine. The score alone doesn't confirm EDS. A hypermobile-EDS diagnosis is "based on a checklist where the patient meets certain criteria, including a Brighton score level," Dr Bernadette Riley, director of the Ehlers‑Danlos Syndrome/Hypermobility Treatment Center at New York Institute of Technology's College of Osteopathic Medicine, told Newsweek. Official figures for diagnosed cases of EDS in the UK are around 135,000 to 300,000. The actual number of people living with the condition is likely higher due to underdiagnosis and misdiagnosis. EDS can manifest at different ages, depending on the specific type, with some forms being evident at birth and others not being diagnosed until adulthood. While symptoms of inherited EDS can be present at birth, they may not be noticeable until puberty. Some milder forms are often not diagnosed until early adulthood, while more severe types are typically diagnosed in childhood. Symptoms of Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes Ehlers-Danlos syndromes (EDS) are a group of rare inherited conditions that affect connective tissue. Connective tissues provide support in skin, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, internal organs and bones. EDS can affect people in different ways. For some, the condition is relatively mild, while for others their symptoms can be disabling. Different types of EDS are caused by faults in certain genes that make connective tissue weaker. There are 13 types of EDS, most of which are rare. Hypermobile EDS (hEDS) is the most common type. Several types of EDS may share some symptoms. These include: an increased range of joint movement (joint hypermobility) stretchy skin fragile skin that breaks or bruises easily If you suspect symptoms of EDS, speak to your GP. Source: NHS People with EDS have also been found to be more susceptible to respiratory issues, including a range of symptoms from shortness of breath and exercise limitations to conditions like pneumothorax. A 2022 study published in Respiratory Medicine and Research found that almost 85 percent of EDS patients had signs of respiratory problems. And mental health conditions are also widely reported among EDS patients. Another 2022 study found almost half of the EDS patients surveyed had depression and over half had "probable" anxiety. There's no cure for EDS, however, various treatments and lifestyle adjustments can help manage symptoms, prevent complications, and improve quality of life.
