When Jaime Bortz was a teenager, she'd gently take hold of her dad's hand while they walked through the mall in Buffalo, New York. She'd guide him along to prevent him from getting lost, as if he were the child, she the parent.

Then her dad, Steve Bortz, went to live in a nursing home. Jaime, a high schooler at the time, was embarrassed to tell her friends where her dad lived. She knew she never wanted to end up in a place like that.

But time is making it harder for Jaime to live at home. She's 39 now. As the clock ticks on, the gaps in her brain widen, and she becomes more confused. Memories are rapidly slipping away, much as they did for her dad. She forgets how to dress herself, can't speak in full sentences, and cries a lot, perhaps because she's still aware enough to be frustrated by what's happening.

Jaime's half-brother Todd went through this decline a decade ago. A father to three young kids at the time, he started forgetting how to drive his own bus route, often getting lost with passengers on board. In a matter of a few years, memories of who he married, what he liked to eat, and even his own shy nature were erased. He died of sepsis at 43. A year later, Todd's brother, Aaron, died at 40, with many of the same memory issues.

Jaime, Todd, and Aaron all inherited a rare PSEN1 gene mutation from their father that guaranteed they'd develop Alzheimer's at a young age. They are members of an unlucky tribe, the 1% of people with dementia who have early-onset familial Alzheimer's.

"Even with the family history, no one believed that someone her age would have it," Bonnie Bortz, Jaime's mother and Steve's widow, told me when I visited her at home in Buffalo last year. By "no one" she meant friends, family, even some doctors.

Bonnie has been a default caretaker at every turn. As a young mom, she handled Steve's decline. Years later, she helped Todd's wife, Michelle, go through it. Now 64, she's the anchor of a bustling household, caring for Jaime and her 9-year-old daughter.

"I am feeling desperate," Bonnie said. "I try to stay optimistic and positive, and I just kind of put on a harder exterior — I have to do what I got to do to get everybody through."

Bonnie is foreshadowing the burden many families will soon experience. An article published in Nature Medicine in January suggests America is set to weather a cascade of dementia cases, a doubling of Alzheimer's patients by 2060. It predicts that by then, the country will gain 1 million new dementia patients each year.

Families like the Bortzes are rare and warrant attention. There are just 45,000 cases like theirs worldwide. This small circle of people can offer researchers a glimpse into how Alzheimer's develops. Because they develop the first signs at early ages, researchers can separate the disease itself from other issues common among older people, like heart disease or type 2 diabetes. Early-onset cases have helped usher in a new class of Alzheimer's drugs, which have started to become available in recent years. While these antibody treatments don't cure the disease, they can slow its progression, buying families a little more time.

Still, there is much to learn. Researchers don't understand what causes the disease. Ultimately, there probably isn't just one kind of Alzheimer's that can be fixed by one single prescription. Families like the Bortzes show how far researchers still have to go in understanding dementia and developing treatments.

"It's like cancer," Fred "Rusty" Gage, who researches dementia and neurodegenerative diseases at the Salk Institute, told Business Insider. "This is not a single disease. There are different forms of it, and they're not just genetic forms versus nongenetic."

A 50/50 shot at dementia in your 30s

Bonnie knew something was wrong when Jaime moved back home in her early 30s. She kept forgetting her keys and phone and repeated herself a lot.

"The repeating of stories — that was definitely something my husband did," Bonnie said. "And it was subtle, little things." Jaime lost the insurance job she'd had for over a decade. Finally, around the time of Jaime's 36th birthday, they agreed it was time to get Jaime tested.

The type of dementia that runs in the Bortz family is genetically preordained. Someone who inherits a genetic mutation from one of their parents will almost certainly develop dementia, progressively forgetting what they've learned over a lifetime. It generally starts with short-term memories, then expands to erase aspects of who they are and how they function. People with this early-onset genetic form of the disease suffer a much earlier and faster descent than people with "regular," meaning sporadic, Alzheimer's.

Gage says that to categorically separate nongenetic forms of Alzheimer's from the forms that families like the Bortzes have is naive. Each person's genetics shape their case. For example, roughly 60% of people who carry two copies of the APOE4 gene will develop Alzheimer's during their lifetime. (The actor Chris Hemsworth, who carries a copy of the gene from each of his parents, has been open about his "4-4" status.) Other folks, through some kind of genetic luck, can carry the same genes, and may even develop the amyloid plaques or tau tangles characteristic of Alzheimer's and yet never show signs of dementia. Of Steve's four children, only one did not develop his rare form of early dementia.

"There's dozens of genes that have been found to be associated with Alzheimer's disease," Gage said. Few of them single-handedly control a person's cognitive destiny. If most dementia diagnoses are colored in shades of gray, the Bortzes' cases are harshly black and white.

In 2023, as life at the Bortzes' house was getting more difficult, new Alzheimer's drugs were starting to become available. The blockbuster was Leqembi, a Japanese drug brought to market in the US, designed to clear out the clumps of protein, or amyloid plaques, that form between brain cells in people with dementia.

New drugs haven't been found to halt or prevent the disease, but data from one of Leqembi's clinical trials suggested it could slow progression down by about 27%. In practical terms, that means people might gain an extra four or five months of independence — of driving, perhaps, or cooking, shopping, dressing themselves, and remembering their families.

"The pessimist would look at the data as it stands and say: 'Well, we tried that. It obviously doesn't work very well, so maybe we should start looking at something else,'" Gage said.

Jaime was on early Medicare for her disability. Legally she was still allowed to drive, but her mom took her keys away after she failed a driving evaluation funded by the Alzheimer's Association. It was getting harder to remember daily minutia, like the fact that her daughter likes peanut butter toast now, or how to put a paper filter into a coffee maker.

Still, Bonnie decided not to put Jaime on antibody drugs. She knew that they presented a small risk of brain bleeds and that Jaime, because she's a woman and because of her genetics, would be at a higher risk of developing them.

"I don't want to cause more problems," Bonnie said. In 2023, Jaime was developing some muscle jerks, prompted by one of the other medications she was on. "I've never seen these medications help her in any way," Bonnie said. "Not with memory, not with anything."

After years of focusing on drugs that target amyloid plaques, scientists are starting to try new tactics. More than 100 new Alzheimer's drugs are in later-stage clinical trials. If those trials are successful, the drugs could become available to patients in the next couple of years. They include therapies designed to target neuronal tau tangles, which pulverize and kill brain cells from the inside, and others that go after the inflammation tied to Alzheimer's. Increasingly, doctors are wondering whether the anti-inflammatory effects of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro may prove effective against dementia.

"I would hope that we'd get to a good point where we look at where you are in the disease and we can fine-tune a cocktail," said Lindsay Hohsfield, an Alzheimer's researcher and associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, who cofounded a nonprofit called Youngtimers to support families like the Bortzes.

Can you build a brain back?

Jaime's condition has progressed dramatically over the past year. When I visited her at home in snowy Buffalo in early 2024, it was harder to tell something was amiss. She could carry on a simple conversation, exchanging pleasantries with a new houseguest — but if you spent more than a few minutes with her, you might notice her start to repeat questions ("Where do you live again?") or variations of them. Sometimes, she'd nod and quickly backtrack, insisting she already knew.

Reminiscing about old memories, like her favorite '90s TV shows or her pink prom dress, was much easier than recalling newly acquired information.

I asked how her speech therapy was going, and she turned to her mom blankly. I can't know what was going on in her mind, but it seemed like she was scanning our faces for hints about how to answer and where the conversation should go next. Bonnie sensed the difference in her daughter, in the way a mother can.

Later, sitting with me in the privacy of her SUV, Bonnie pointed out Jaime's repetition. That, she told me, is what it's like everyday.

Bonnie's been there through it all, managing the appointments, fighting to get Medicare payments, and evaluating which drugs and treatments to put her daughter on and which to skip. Driving often gives her some of her few solo moments of the day. She relishes going to work, rare time by herself. Recently she hired Michelle, Todd's wife, as an aide — a familiar face who can come help take care of Jaime for about 10 hours a week.

Bonnie tries to keep thoughts of the future to a minimum. Jaime's asked her, many times, not to put her in a nursing home.

"I pray to God it doesn't get to that point, because I would hate to do that to my daughter," she said. "With that being said, I am older. I don't know. I just, I don't know."

Bonnie doesn't know how Jaime's condition will develop and what kind of support she'll require. Jaime has told Bonnie that her biggest fears are the nursing home and death.

"The difficult thing about Alzheimer's, all brain diseases, if you truly wanted to reverse, you would also not only have to clear out disease, you'd actually have to build the brain back," said Dr. Nathaniel Chin, the medical director at the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. "This is not an infection where if you identify it, you kill it, you go back to being yourself. I mean, the disease has destroyed parts of your brain."

Hoping for a cure

Bonnie understands there's not much you can do to stop this disease. That doesn't stop her from being a mom — from trying to do something, anything, to help her daughter.

A man sometimes comes to her house for 10-minute sessions of cold laser therapy, designed to nourish and energize Jaime's cells.

"They're not working," Bonnie tells me, laughing out loud, probably realizing how ridiculous it sounds. Still, there's a quiet optimism. "Part of me is like, well, maybe we should keep trying, you know? As a mom."

Recently Bonnie joined an online support group for families with early-onset familial Alzheimer's. There she got sucked into another tantalizing promise that a product could somehow help Jaime. She ended up sending about $600 to a man offering specialty herbal supplements before she realized he'd never send her any medicine.

"You get yourself suckered in because you want to believe that there's something out there," Bonnie said. She's also ordered expensive memory supplements advertised on TV.

In a moment of desperation, while Todd was in decline in the early 2010s, Michelle sent a letter to Dr. Phil, begging for his help. Maybe this wasn't really Alzheimer's, she wrote. Maybe, hopefully, it was some other rare, undiagnosed condition that could be cured once it could be properly identified. "It sounds stupid, but I see that he does all these different testings," she said. Deep down, she knew she wouldn't hear back, and knew he wouldn't be able to help. Still, she's contacted Dr. Phil a few times since then, including once recently, worrying about what's in store for the next generation of the family.

The throughline is a flicker of hope. Isn't there something that can help?

Before Jaime's diagnosis, Bonnie was considering moving out of the house where she'd raised her kids and into a smaller home, enjoying a new empty nest. Now her old nest is full of boisterous daily activity again.

Jaime is the last of her generation going through this rapid, fatal decline, but her young daughter is sometimes angry and embarrassed about her mom's condition. She lashes out — a kid grappling with losing pieces of her mother, one day at a time.

Michelle's 20-year-old daughter, Emma, wonders whether she should get tested before deciding whether she wants to have her own children. New genetic tests, in conjunction with IVF, are allowing some people with familial Alzheimer's to choose embryos to implant that don't carry the genetic mutation.

"I want to know, but then I don't want to know — I don't want to be worried about it all the time," Emma said. "It just should be taken out of the gene pool, probably. I don't want to do that to my kids."

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the new US health secretary.
• Kennedy, a vocal critic of vaccines, insisted in his confirmation hearings that he's not anti-vaccine.
• He promised to be an advocate for children and moms and thanked "MAHA moms" for their support.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent opponent of vaccine mandates and leader of a clean-eating campaign, has been confirmed as the new health secretary of the United States.

In his confirmation hearings, Kennedy promised to advocate for "America's children" and "especially the moms" as leader of the nation's health services. He also thanked the "MAHA moms" — a nod to his popular "make America healthy again" movement — before he was grilled by the Senate Finance Committee on January 29.

Kennedy was flanked by his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, and major players in his MAHA movement: former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, "Food Babe" influencer Vani Hari, brother-sister wellness influencers Calley and Casey Means, and Del Bigtree, the anti-vaccine proponent who is petitioning to trademark "MAHA" as a brand.

To get the job, Kennedy was interrogated about his views on vaccines, controversial statements about race and Lyme disease, and gaps in understanding about what the role of the Health and Human Services secretary entails.

He was not questioned about his passionate views on the weight-loss-drug industry, which he could influence since the Food and Drug Administration falls under the purview of the HHS.

Here's what you need to know:

'I'm supportive of vaccines'

One of Kennedy's biggest hurdles in securing the job was winning over Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who heads the Senate health committee and spent 30 years practicing medicine. Cassidy expressed grave concerns about Kennedy's views on vaccines, sharing that he had seen firsthand how vaccines saved children from preventable illnesses.

As he voted in favor of Kennedy on last Tuesday, Cassidy said he had received "serious commitments" from the Trump administration that he and Kennedy would have an "unprecedentedly close" working relationship.

"Ultimately restoring trust in our public health institutions is too important, and I think Mr. Kennedy can help get that done," Cassidy said.

Throughout Kennedy's two days of confirmation hearings, senators on both sides of the aisle questioned Kennedy about his years of advocacy against vaccine mandates. They mentioned:

• Kennedy's chairmanship for Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group. (Kennedy resigned from the Children's Health Defense board in December.)
• His visit to Samoa in 2019, as chairman of Children's Health Defense, as part of an anti-measles-vaccine movement.
• His ongoing financial involvement in a lawsuit against Merck, the maker of the HPV vaccine, which prevents cervical cancer.
• His 2021 book, "The Measles Book: Thirty-Five Secrets the Government and the Media Aren't Telling You about Measles and the Measles Vaccine." Kennedy promotes vitamin A and chicken soup as alternative measles treatments in the book.
• His belief Black and white Americans should have different vaccine regimens.

At the beginning of his testimony in January, Kennedy said his six children had all been vaccinated. "News reports claim that I am anti-vaccine," he said. "All of my kids are vaccinated."

Senators cited a 2020 video in which Kennedy said he wished his children were not vaccinated. "I would do anything for that," he said in the video for Children's Health Defense. "I would pay anything to be able to do that."

"I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines," Kennedy said during the hearing. "Every medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines."

A history of controversial statements

Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, listed several controversial statements Kennedy had made in interviews and asked him to clarify what he meant.

• When asked if he said Lyme disease is very likely a militarily engineered bioweapon — a long-running and debunked Lyme disease conspiracy theory — Kennedy said: "I did probably say that."
• Kennedy denied saying that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender. CNN reported that Kennedy said that on a podcast in 2022.
• Bennet read a quote from one of Kennedy's books saying that "African AIDS" is "entirely different" from "Western AIDS." Kennedy said he was not sure if he said that.
• When asked to confirm that he said COVID-19 was designed to kill Black people and to spare "Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese" people, Kennedy said he was quoting a study, not his own beliefs. (The study, published in 2020, does not mention Chinese people and does not suggest that the disease was designed to spare or target any group.)

How Kennedy would work with Trump on fast food, abortion, and climate change

Kennedy said he agreed with his boss, President Donald Trump, on two major policy areas — but they agreed to disagree on another.

• Clean eating: Kennedy has gained broad support from Democrats and Republicans in his campaign to clean up America's food system. He has promised to ban synthetic food dyes and to take on seed oils in our food system, saying "it's time to make frying oil tallow again."

  Still, during his hearing, Kennedy said his views on food regulation will not clash with Trump's.

  "If you like a McDonald's cheeseburger or a Diet Coke, which my boss loves, you should be able to get them," Kennedy said as the room erupted in laughter at his reference to President Donald Trump. "If you want to eat Hostess Twinkies, you should be able to do that, but you should know what the impacts are on your family and on your health."

  "Something is poisoning the American people, and we know that the primary culprit [is] our changing food supply, the switch to highly chemical-intensive processed foods," he added.

• Abortion: Kennedy, once pro-choice, pledged to follow Trump's lead on abortion. "Whatever he does, I will implement those policies," he said.

  Senators in Kennedy's confirmation hearing focused on the so-called abortion pill mifepristone, which is used for noninvasive abortions up to 10 or 11 weeks.

  Anti-abortion activists are calling on Trump to ban the pill or limit access to it through the mail. Trump has said he is not yet planning to curb access to the pill.

  Kennedy suggested that the FDA and NIH should review the pill's safety, which was FDA-approved in 2000. In response, Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, submitted a stack of safety data to the record.

• Climate change: Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, said he and Trump have "agreed to disagree" on climate change. "I believe climate change is existential. My job is to make Americans healthy again," he said.

Kennedy's responses indicated he wasn't familiar with some of his new job duties

A common line of inquiry in the confirmation hearings was whether Kennedy had the experience to oversee the entire US health system.

During the hearings, Kennedy mixed up Medicaid and Medicare and did not know that states partially fund Medicaid. He struggled to explain how Medicare worked when Hassan questioned him, and he mistakenly said that HHS does not have a law enforcement arm — it does.

Meanwhile, Kennedy floated big ideas, such as suggesting that the government should provide concierge medical care to every American.

Kennedy also refused to say that healthcare is a human right. "In healthcare, if you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and you get cancer, you are now taking from the pool," he said.

• The CEO of Life Time Fitness says he takes about 45-50 supplements every morning.
• But he doesn't want you copying his strategy.
• He gets bloodwork done regularly, a technique longevity doctors endorse.

Bahram Akradi says that he's so fit, he can challenge people half his age at the gym.

"At 63, I'm competing with 33-year-olds," the CEO of Life Time Fitness told Business Insider.

He says folks who observe his daily routines and rituals often want to know his secrets for staying strong and healthy.

"They say, 'tell me what you're taking,' and I'm like, 'well, what I'm taking is customized to me. You don't need to be taking what I'm taking.'"

He subscribes to the same supplement-taking strategy that's become increasingly popular in longevity circles and at specialty clinics around the world: "Precision medicine." Test, then treat, according to your own results.

15 years in the making

For Akradi, the technique is nothing new. He says he's been taking "about 45 to 50" pills every morning for many years. Not every capsule is unique; he estimates there are about 35 to 40 different compounds in the mix.

"I have been doing what I'm doing for the last 15 years," he said. Every four months, he goes in for testing to reassess his regimen. "I do my blood work, and I adjust my supplements."

Most doctors would tell you this is probably overkill. Comprehensive bloodwork like this can cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Besides, getting bloodwork done once a year at an annual exam (ideally, one that's covered by insurance) is likely good enough to gauge what major supplement changes may be in order. But Akradi thinks of this as his own form of high-end seasonal housekeeping.

"My routine is: do my blood work every 120 days and then, 'oh, I don't have enough zinc in my deal,' add a little zinc. Or I have too much iron, take a little iron out," he said. "My strong recommendation to people, if they can afford it, is: don't take supplements generically."

A rocky road bringing his technique to the masses

In 2024, Akradi took a stab at his dream: adding a longevity clinic to a Life Time gym near the company's headquarters in Minneapolis.

The clinic, called Miora, sits in the posh, underground branch of Life Time below the arena where the Minnesota Timberwolves play. Doctors on staff can prescribe supplements and medications, including GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. "You come in, we take your blood, we go through your assessment," Akradi said.

Miora doesn't take insurance, sidestepping the US healthcare system and getting customers to pay out of pocket. Within six months, Akradi said, the clinic was profitable.

This is Life Time's second foray into clinical care. Akradi tried once, over a decade ago, to pivot into doctor's office care for gym-goers when he established the first "LT Proactive Care" clinic in 2013. The model relied on insurance and didn't work so well. Those clinics all eventually closed.

With one solid proof of concept, Akradi is planning to open at least two more Miora clinics before the end of Q1 2025, one in Florida and the other in Illinois. He views it as a natural evolution for the fitness company he founded in 1992, trying to show that Life Time is a complement — not an alternative — to alluring quick fixes, like diets and weight-loss pills.

"The goal was to build a fully integrated, healthy living and healthy aging company," he said.

Sometimes, less is more (when it comes to supplements)

Miora isn't the only place doing tailored supplement prescriptions.

There are longevity clinics sprouting up around the world taking a similar approach to supplementation — deciding a regimen based on bloodwork.

Andrea Maier, one of the leading academic supplement researchers in aging and longevity, says less is usually more when it comes to supplements for longevity.

"In our clinic, we are de-prescribing," Maier recently told Business Insider. "We first have to diagnose what's wrong, what somebody needs, and that might differ."

• As a reporter covering longevity and health, I'm skeptical of new products or fads.
• As I've met researchers and doctors around the world, I've picked up a few solid tips.
• Here are my seven favorite longevity tools, including foods and supplements.

As I've spent the past few years reporting on the rise of healthy aging and longevity research worldwide, I've seen the full spectrum of antiaging hacks. Some people spend thousands of dollars on supplements, others go to posh clinics for private, highly tailored services.

None of this is for me. Instead, I've picked up a few simple, cheap longevity habits.

Hearing researchers, doctors, and nutritionists lay out their arguments for why certain activities, foods, and pills were good for my long-term health, I eventually incorporated a few research-backed changes into my routine.

Here are my seven favorite daily longevity tips.

I eat more nuts and seeds than I used to

Nuts and seeds are great sources of protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and "healthy" fats. In short, it's all the good stuff that our ultra-processed diets often lack.

At home, I regularly stock different nuts and seeds. I keep a bag of ground flaxseed in the freezer to sprinkle over yogurt, oatmeal, and salads. I also ensure I have chia seeds — a staple for the breakfast balls I often prep in the summertime. And I like having pumpkin seeds around for a midday snack or sprinkled into dinner.

There's one kind of nut in my cupboard that deserves a special shoutout: the walnut.

Walnuts have the highest omega-3 concentration of any nut, which is a big reason Loma Linda cardiologist Gary Fraser puts them on his morning cereal, and why leading nut nutrition expert Joan Sabaté puts them in his daily longevity smoothie. I enjoy walnuts in Greek yogurt or on a lunchtime salad.

I've upped my leafy green intake

Green leaves are rich in nutrients like magnesium, iron, and nitrogen, and they help with digestion and gut health. Greens have also consistently been linked to better long-term brain health and cognition.

Dr. Dean Sherzai, half of the husband-and-wife team known as "The Brain Docs," says if you want to pick out one thing to improve your longevity, "just add green."

Sherzai recommends getting two servings of greens into your diet a day. When I'm doing my grocery shopping, I always add a bag of greens to the haul, whether it's arugula, spinach, or a spring mix.

Tracking my sleep has made some healthy habits stick

I've become one of those people who track their sleep and try to improve their sleep "hygiene" accordingly.

It started in 2024 when I attended a longevity conference in Singapore. It seemed like everyone there was tracking something with a smartwatch or ring. The experts doing some of the most cutting-edge research on how to help people stay fit and sharp into old age were tracking the quality of their sleep.

After a few weeks of using my own smart ring, I started to appreciate the daily insights.

The ring notices, for example, when I drink a beer right before bedtime. That's when my REM sleep (the memory-storing kind) decreases and my nighttime temperature goes up.

Sleep tracking has encouraged me to drink more herbal tea before bed, take more baths in the evenings, and be gentler to myself when I'm premenstrual. All of these changes have added up to slightly better daily sleep scores, as the quality of my sleep has trended upward.

I've committed to more strength training

Any longevity expert worth their salt will tell you the best longevity treatment we have right now is exercise. Some of the most promising research into longevity drugs aims to mimic the many positive effects of exercise.

I used to only do half of the job, though. I loved cardio training and hated weightlifting. My wake-up call came when I suffered a stress fracture from running too hard, too fast, without prioritizing cross-training.

Building muscle through strength training as we age is good for bone health, pain management, and fat burning. In recent years, I've started adding more squats, lunges, and deadlifts into my routine. These are not just helping me get stronger, they're also improving mobility and making me less likely to get injured in the years to come.

A little less butter, a little more olive oil

I've started replacing some of the butter and seed oil in my life with olive oil. This is less about butter being "bad" (though there are plenty of nutrition experts who'd tell you it's not the best choice) and more about the health benefits of olive oil.

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is rich in plant compounds called polyphenols, which are great for brain health, heart health, and reducing inflammation.

Nutrition expert Dr. Artemis Simopoulos recommends mixing olive oil 1:1 with butter for a healthier spread on toast. I haven't tried that yet, but I do sometimes replace butter for 100% EVOO on my toast, and I also sub out prepackaged salads and dressings for greens and olive oil.

Berries have become a near-daily treat

Over the past two years I've upped my daily berry intake, simply due to learning more about their health benefits. Berries are so rich in chemical compounds that they're like power fuel for our cells. Plus, they're better for digestion and gut health than anything sweet I might pick out of a vending machine.

I try to stock at least one to two kinds of berries in the fridge when they're in season, including blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries.

I started taking a supplement. It's not a multivitamin.

Supplements aren't magic pills, but as the name suggests they can help supplement what a person's diet or lifestyle isn't covering. While nutraceutical supplement companies in the US don't have to abide by the same rigorous standards as pharmaceutical drug companies, there are third-party supplement testing outfits that certify some brands.

In longevity circles, people tend to subscribe to a highly personalized version of supplementation. Often, they'll use blood tests and other "biomarkers" like cholesterol, blood pressure, and genetic testing to come up with a daily pill strategy.

About a year ago, on the recommendation of the Miora longevity clinic at Life Time Fitness, I did some bloodwork and started taking magnesium. It's a mineral that most Americans don't get enough of.

The magnesium supplement I buy sets me back about 28 cents per day. It is United States Pharmacopeia (USP) verified, meaning I can be reasonably confident that what's advertised on the label is in the bottle.

I got another blood test recently, and I'm no longer deficient in magnesium. I can't say the difference is obvious, but I have noticed marginal benefits for my muscle relaxation, sleep, and digestion.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia around 1996.
• One symptom of the rare neurological disorder is a raspy, halting voice.
• There is no cure for the condition, but patients can undergo speech therapy or vocal fold surgery.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump's pick to lead the nation's health services, has a neurological condition that changes the way he talks.

As he is answering questions from Senators in Washington this week, before they vote to decide whether he'll be the next US Secretary of Health and Human Services, he's answering in his distinctly raspy voice.

Kennedy, 71, previously revealed he was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition called spasmodic dysphonia when he was in his early 40s.

"It began as a mild tremble for a couple of years," Kennedy told Oprah Winfrey in 2007, adding that he believed his condition had worsened over the years.

Kennedy has also had several other health issues. He told The New York Times that he developed mercury poisoning from a diet very high in tuna and perch, and contracted a parasite that traveled into his brain. He also has an irregular heart rhythm (AFib).

What is spasmodic dysphonia?

Spasmodic dysphonia is a neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms in the muscles of the voice box, also known as the larynx. The condition means vocal cords don't vibrate normally.

Spasmodic dysphonia can strain an individual's ability to speak, sometimes causing their voice to sound hoarse or breathy. Humming, laughing, singing, swallowing, and crying can also be impacted.

What causes spasmodic dysphonia?

The exact cause of spasmodic dysphonia is unknown.

"Spasmodic dysphonia is thought to be caused by abnormal functioning in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia," according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. "The basal ganglia help coordinate the movements of muscles throughout the body."

Research has also found abnormalities in areas of the cerebral cortex — the section of the brain that controls muscle movement, the NIDCD says.

Spasmodic dysphonia may be inherited, but a specific gene for the disorder has not yet been identified.

There is no evidence that spasmodic dysphonia is caused by vaccines, but Kennedy has suggested that his disorder might've been prompted by a flu shot. "I haven't been able to figure out any other cause," he told podcaster Joshua Lane in 2021.

Afterward, he told NBC the idea is just "my own speculation."

Is spasmodic dysphonia painful?

The condition is not known to be painful, but it does make it harder to speak.

When asked if it hurts to talk, Kennedy told Winfrey "no, but it's an effort."

Kennedy told NewsNation in 2023 that he feels the condition makes it "problematical" for people to listen to him.

"I cannot listen to myself on TV," he joked. "So I feel sorry for you guys."

Can spasmodic dysphonia be cured?

Symptoms of spasmodic dysphonia, which is a chronic condition, often develop around middle age, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The symptoms can also be worse under stress.

There is no cure for the condition, but there are treatment options available, including speech therapy and psychological counseling to treat mild cases. Botox injections can also help.

In 2024, Kennedy told NBC's Brandy Zadrozny that he recently underwent surgery in Japan to have a titanium bridge implanted between his vocal folds, which helps strengthen his voice.

How rare is spasmodic dysphonia?

The disorder is rare and impacts about 1 in 100,000 people, according to a 2011 study published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

"Hellboy" actor Selma Blair, CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues, and journalist Diane Rehm all have spasmodic dysphonia.

• Eli Lilly makes the popular shots Mounjaro and Zepbound.
• Next, the company says they have a pill coming that could be as powerful as rival Ozempic.
• The company's head of obesity said the ultimate goal is to develop a once-per-year shot.

Imagine this: You walk into your doctor and get your yearly flu vaccine and a yearly dose of your weight-loss injection. If Eli Lilly has its way, this may be the future of obesity care.

Eli Lilly makes some of the most powerful weight-loss drugs in the world. The company has pivoted dramatically over the past several years, going from a major insulin provider to a GLP-1 injection juggernaut.

Leading the charge is Patrik Jonsson, a 35-year Lilly veteran who got his start as a sales rep for the company in Sweden. For the past year, Jonsson has run Lilly Diabetes and Obesity, which means he oversees everything from insulin shots to the newer, high-demand drugs now known as "weight-loss" shots: Mounjaro, prescribed for diabetes, and Zepbound, for obesity.

If you ask him what he's most excited about, it's not a daily, weekly, or even monthly medicine for weight loss or diabetes control. His eye is trained on a one-and-done solution, a slow-release compound that patients could one day have access to at an annual checkup and then not have to worry about for a year. Jonsson says scientists inside the company are already working on making a yearly weight-loss shot a reality.

Here are the small steps they're taking this year to get there.

Eli Lilly's oral weight loss pill, orforglipron

Eli Lilly competitor Novo Nordisk kicked off the weight-loss drug craze when it started selling Ozempic in the US in 2017. Back then, the once-weekly drug was only approved to treat type 2 diabetes.

It took a while to become popular as an off-label weight loss aid. Once it did, demand skyrocketed above what the company could produce.

In clinical trials, Ozempic has consistently helped people lose, on average, about 15% of their body weight over the course of a year. Still, it requires a special injector pen and consistent refrigeration. Patients also reported uncomfortable side effects from Ozempic, like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Eli Lilly hopes that a new pill it's developing can do everything Ozempic can without the hassles. It's called orforglipron (put the emphasis on the second syllable: or-FOUR-glip-ron).

"It takes a while to get used to it, even for us," Jonsson said of the awkward generic drug name, in an interview with Business Insider.

Like Ozempic, the new pill is designed to mimic the glucagon-like peptide 1 hormone that our bodies produce naturally, albeit in very small, transient doses. In earlier phase two trials the company sponsored, patients taking orforglipron achieved about 14.7% weight loss, on average, almost matching Ozempic.

"When you do phase three trials, you continue for a longer period of time, and normally you see a continued weight loss," he told BI.

The company is working on wrapping up those final phase three trials right now. The hope is that results will be available for regulators to review by the end of 2025.

"We actually believe that we have an oral here that could generate the same amount of weight loss as you see with Wegovy or Ozempic, but in a pill," Jonsson added, echoing what Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said during the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month.

If that final trial goes well, orforglipron could be available to consumers (with a snappier, yet-to-be-decided brand name) in early 2026. That would be good news for folks with needle phobia, but the even bigger opportunity would be the mass market that a daily weight-loss pill could unlock.

"Most importantly, when you look at the global need, we expect that there are more than one billion people across the globe that are suffering from obesity," Jonsson said. "There is no way that we can meet those demands with injectable treatments today."

Novo Nordisk already has a daily oral GLP-1 pill with the same active ingredient as Ozempic. Called Rybelsus, it has been FDA-approved to help treat type 2 diabetes since 2019. It isn't approved for weight loss, and in trials of patients with diabetes, it wasn't as effective as Ozempic or Mounjaro at decreasing "food noise" or prompting weight loss.

Rybelsus can also be kind of a chore to take, because it works best when patients fast overnight beforehand and then only drink a few small sips of water for the first 30 minutes afterward. Jonsson says orforglipron is likely more effective than Rybelsus because of pharmaceutical differences between the molecules, which impact things like absorption.

"This has been an evolution, to discover incretins with more appealing pharmacological properties," he said. "Not all GLP-1s are the same."

Retatrutide, the 'King Kong' drug to mimic bariatric surgery

Eli Lilly isn't pivoting away from weekly weight loss injections entirely. It's also working on another, even more powerful weight-loss shot.

While Ozempic mimics one hunger-relieving hormone, and Mounjaro mimics two, Eli Lilly is working on what's called a "triple agonist," with three different hormone-like substances inside.

Researchers testing the drug say this shot could be as powerful as bariatric surgery, with patients losing roughly a quarter of their body weight in one year.

"You have GLP-1 receptor agonist, you have GIP receptor agonist, but then we're adding the pharmacology of glucagon as well," Jonsson said. (Glucagon, like insulin, is one of the hormones that regulates blood sugar.)

The shot, called retatrutide, is already looking more powerful than any drug on the market in this category, earning it the nickname "King Kong" from doctors and researchers working in diabetes and weight loss treatment. It will likely be reserved to treat patients who have a BMI over 35.

"We also expect there to be some benefits in terms of cardiovascular benefits, kidney benefits, and liver benefits because it has demonstrated reduced liver fat in earlier studies,' Jonsson said. "So it could potentially be really, really appealing for the treatment of MASH [a chronic liver disease], for example."

While it's still uncertain whether final retatrutide trial results will be available to submit to the FDA in 2025, Jonsson said it "might" happen, setting up the drug to potentially become available in 2026.

If the "King Kong" shot does become available, that might be enough horsepower to treat the most severe obesity cases. Then, instead of chasing more and more powerful injections, the diabetes and weight loss market may pivot to perfecting techniques, aiming to reduce side effects or lower muscle loss while upping fat loss, Jonsson said.

"With adding the pharmacology of glucagon, we might get very close to the amount of weight loss one should aspire to," he said.

The dream: a once-a-year obesity shot

When Jonsson goes into full crystal ball-gazing mode, he imagines a future where these drugs could become as convenient as flu vaccines — though affordable weight-loss medications may remain a pipe dream.

"Really, the big aspiration here would be to find something once and done," he said.

He imagines a futuristic scenario in which patients are administered their once-yearly hormone shot during an annual doctor's visit.

"That's what I know our researchers are aspiring to deliver, but it's not going to happen this decade," he said.

• Drinking alcohol impacts everyone a little differently.
• Musculature, water, genes, tobacco use, and other factors change an individual's risk equation.
• Here's how alcohol affects a person's body, from a first sip to potential long-term fallout.

This Dry January, the US Surgeon General is warning that the cancer risks of drinking rival smoking and obesity. A lot of this has to do with how our body processes alcohol, breaking it down into potentially cancer-causing substances along the way.

Everyone is a little different when it comes to how alcohol is managed in the body, so it's not exactly scientific to say "there is no safe level of alcohol."

Our body size, sex, muscle-to-fat ratio, how much water is in our system to dilute a drink, and certain genetic mutations all play key roles. So does the alcohol content of what we drink. A shot of vodka is more toxic to the body than a sip of beer, for example.

Given all this, developing hard and fast rules about how much alcohol is too much, and whether a little bit of alcohol is definitely harmful, is complicated.

What alcohol does to your body in the first hour of drinking

Alcohol is a tiny molecule, bathing nearly every cell in the body when we drink.

The basic trajectory of liquor in the body is from a person's mouth, through the esophagus, to the stomach, intestines, and the liver, where about 80-90% of the alcohol people consume is processed.

The liver can only process a little bit of alcohol at a time, though. How long it takes depends on how much you drink and your size, plus other factors, including how much water you have in you (muscles are more watery than fat).

As a general rule, most people will clear out one drink (like a quickly consumed shot) in two hours or less. But if a person is binge drinking, plowing through four or five drinks within a couple of hours, it's going to take about six to seven hours for the football-sized liver to metabolize that alcohol.

During that time, lots of alcohol in the "queue" is spilling out into our bloodstream, running around the body and infiltrating the brain, biding time until the liver is ready for it. This is how people get drunk.

"Once your blood alcohol level gets to a certain level, it becomes a ubiquitous substance in every part of your body," Dr. Stephen Holt, who runs the addiction recovery clinic at Yale School of Medicine, told Business Insider. "It basically goes to every organ in your body. It goes to your heart, your kidneys, your liver, of course, your brain, it's going to your bones."

About 15-30 minutes after a drink, alcohol seeping into the brain begins to change how we feel.

Inside the brain, alcohol binds to several different receptors, calming down the sympathetic nervous system, lowering stress, fear, and anxiety — helping press pause on life's worries. It also boosts feelings of euphoria, triggered by a release of dopamine, which can motivate people to seek out another drink. And finally, there's a release of beta-endorphins, our natural painkillers, for both physical and emotional woes.

The next day

The first chemical produced when our liver breaks down alcohol is acetaldehyde, a known cancer-causer.

Acetaldehyde plays a big role in hangovers: it causes nausea, which works in conjunction with the anxiety, unease, and restlessness people feel as their brain overcorrects for last night's drunken chemical imbalances.

Some folks are very efficient at turning over acetaldehyde into a vinegar-like substance (acetate) that we can pee out. Other people, including many people of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese descent, have genetic factors that slow down how fast they can process acetaldehyde, making their face flush.

It's the long-term effects of acetaldehyde on the body that scientists are most concerned about: the potential for DNA damage, chronic inflammation, liver scarring, heart disease.

People with the flushing ALDH2 gene mutation (roughly 8% of us) are at greater risk of developing issues like cancer from drinking, due to acetaldehyde's toxicity. But they're also less likely to become addicted to alcohol because they feel extra awful after they have a drink.

Over time, there's evidence that regular drinking can lead to changes in:

Head and neck:

As alcohol starts its journey down a person's throat, it can do DNA damage in oral cells.

People who smoke are able to absorb more carcinogenic chemicals in tobacco if they are drinking at the same time, as tissues become more permeable.

"A carcinogen will impact folks individually in different ways," American Cancer Society chief scientific officer Dr. William Dahut said during a recent media briefing. "There are clearly patients at higher risk for cancer, whether that's due to inherited genetic mutations, whether that's prior radiation, tobacco use."

Heart:

Controversially, there's some evidence that moderate drinking can be good for the heart, improving HDL cholesterol, and acting as a blood thinner. Federal data suggests that while roughly 178,000 Americans are killed by alcohol every year, there are about 16,000 other people across the US whose lives are saved by drinking, as they avoid more deadly heart disease, high blood pressure, and strokes.

The dose here may make the poison: heavy drinking can up a person's risk of developing irregular heartbeat issues like atrial fibrillation (AFib) and raise blood pressure, increasing the chances of a heart attack.

Breasts:

Breast cancer is responsible for most (60%) of the alcohol-related cancer deaths in women.

The risk gets stronger after a woman goes through menopause, and also increases the more she drinks. This is because drinking alcohol increases estrogen production in the body, upping the odds that cancer cells may sprout up.

The risk of developing breast cancer for a woman who drinks once per week is ~11%. But that goes up to 13% for women who have one drink a day, and 15% for women who have two.

Colon:

Irritation of the gut is probably the most important part of disease risk linked to alcohol consumption.

"It irritates the gastrointestinal lining," Aaron White, the senior scientific advisor at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told BI. "That sets off widespread inflammation."

Acetaldehyde and the oxidative stress from drinking also prompt DNA damage and cellular proliferation, which can lead to cancer.

Alcohol can also mess with the gut microbiome, increasing intestinal permeability, and suppressing the immune system.

Additionally, drinking alcohol can put a dent in a person's nutrition, preventing the body from absorbing folic acid, which is critical to all our cells. It can also block the uptake of important nutrients like B12 and zinc.

Liver:

Regular, heavy drinking can lead to cirrhosis, irreversible scarring and hardening of the liver.

Brain:

People often say that drinking can shrink your brain, and this is sort of true.

"By bathing all your neurons in a somewhat toxic substance, you are losing some neurons," Holt said. This can, over time, lead to early dementia.

The good news is that there is pretty solid evidence that even people who are heavy, lifetime drinkers, once they stop drinking, see much of their brain rebound in just six months, after an initial period of withdrawal.

"At any age, if you quit drinking, a lot of that damage looks like it can recover," White said. "You're not doomed."

• Increasingly, young people with clean diets and healthy lifestyles are getting colon cancer.
• Doctors say diet plays a role in the rising risk, but doesn't tell the whole story.
• We are learning more about ways microplastics, sleep cycles, and our environment may play a role.

At 30, Chris Lopez was hitting his stride. He was attending culinary arts school in Dallas. He was meal prepping and hitting the gym regularly, focused on getting a degree and setting up his life right.

His symptoms were easy to dismiss, at least at first. "I had a real bad stomach ache that was going on for about a month," he told Business Insider. "I thought, 'Oh, maybe I ate some sushi, some fish or something that was undercooked.'"

Except food poisoning doesn't typically last for weeks on end, and doesn't leave blood in your stool. He rapidly lost weight, from 175 pounds to 145 in a single summer — without eating less. "I was pretty much like a skeleton," he said.

Lopez went to his doctor, who eventually decided to do a colonoscopy to learn more. That's when they discovered a "grapefruit-sized" tumor in his colon, he said. Lopez saw the scan and couldn't believe his eyes. Colon cancer? He was so young, healthy, and fit.

Stories like Lopez's are increasingly common. Colon cancer rates are rocketing among athletic young people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and survival rates are dropping.

Take Chris Rodriguez, a 37-year-old improv actor and CrossFit enthusiast who adheres to a high-fiber, high-protein diet, with plenty of veggies. He was 35 when he was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer.

"The question pops in your mind, 'What else was I supposed to do?'," Rodriguez told BI. "That's really the unfortunate thing with a diagnosis like this, is there isn't really much else that you're supposed to do, outside of looking for symptoms."

The most convenient explanations for the rise in young colon cancer are diet and weight. We know diet can influence colorectal cancer risk, and it's something people can fix, to a degree. Plus, our diets have changed. These days we all consume more sugar, more ultra-processed foods, more oil and butter, while moving less.

Still, doctors say the trend we're seeing now defies neat categories of genetics or lifestyle, and it's baffling. Other factors are clearly messing with our digestive systems, but they're tough to pinpoint. Pollution, microplastics, and artificial light — all are pervasive in society, yet very tricky to study.

Thanks to recent research, we are starting to get a better picture of why young colon cancer cases are rising, and we're on the cusp of some pretty big results that may uncover better ways to prevent and treat it.

Young colon cancer is getting deadlier and more common

Something shifted in the 1960s. Everyone born after 1960 has a higher colon cancer risk than previous generations. This phenomenon is known as the "birth cohort effect."

"The rise that we're seeing cannot just be accounted for by inherited differences," Dana Farber colon cancer researcher Dr. Marios Giannakis told BI.

In the US, young colon cancer rates have been rising about 3% every year since the early 1990s, according to National Cancer Institute data.

"We do think since genetics haven't changed, the cancers that are increasing are environmentally based," Dr. William Dahut, the chief science officer at the American Cancer Society, said during a recent briefing to reporters. "Exactly what's doing it is really — more research is needed."

The biggest cancer centers in the US are opening units to investigate this trend. In 2018, Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York opened a first-of-its-kind center for "young-onset" colorectal cancer patients. Dana Farber in Boston, Mass General, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Columbia University Irving Medical Center followed close behind, all opening special programs for young colon cancer cases.

In 2021, the CDC took action, lowering the age of recommended colon cancer screening from 50 to 45. It's an effort to catch more young colon cancer cases sooner, upping the odds of people surviving.

It isn't a uniquely American issue. Wealthy countries, in particular, are seeing similar spikes. New Zealand, Chile, Norway, and Turkey are among 27 countries recording record-high rates of young colon cancer.

Diets matter — to an extent

It's hard to dismiss the role our changing food landscape has played. We are undoubtedly eating worse than our grandparents did 100 years ago.

Take fiber, for example. Found in abundance in whole plant foods like beans, it is a nutrient clearly associated with lower risk of cancer.

Some of the most popular foods in US supermarkets — prepackaged for our convenience — tend to have fiber stripped out during processing, and extra salt, sugar, and oils added in to make them more palatable and shelf-stable.

It started in the aftermath of World War II, when industrial processing and factory farming took hold nationwide.

"Essentially we redeployed what had allowed the United States and allies to prevail in that war to non-military applications, and it completely transformed agriculture," Dr. David Katz, a leading expert in chronic disease prevention and nutrition, told BI.

"You only have a certain total number of calories you can eat per day, and if a higher percentage of those is made up of hamburgers and Pop-Tarts, then a lower percentage ipso facto is made up of lentils and all the other good stuff."

Ultra-processed foods now account for a significant proportion of what we eat. Excess sugar, salt, and chemicals lurk in pasta sauce, breakfast cereals, and salad dressing. Brown bread labeled "heart healthy" can have a higher sugar content than white Wonderbread.

Upsetting the balance of nutrients in our guts has consequences. Compounds that aren't necessarily harmful in moderation, like omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils, take up a disproportionate part of our diets. That can lead to inflammation, infection, and diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and, yes, colon cancer.

Your microbiome is not just about what you eat. It's influenced by myriad factors, from how you were born to your work schedule.

What else is going on?

Doctors and lab scientists who spoke to BI for this story all said the rise in millennials getting colon cancer likely won't be attributed to one single thing.

Shuji Ogino, an epidemiology professor at Harvard Medical School, has been studying young colon cancer cases across the world. He published a study in Nature that showed the early life "exposome" — diet, lifestyle, environment, exposures — has changed dramatically, becoming conducive to cancer.

We've introduced lots of new things to our environment without knowing the ramifications. Now, we're starting to see the long-term effects.

Something as simple as artificial light could play a role. "That's something no human being experienced 200 years ago," Ogino said. Lights allow us to work and socialize at all hours, impacting how our body clocks regulate hormones and metabolism.

Dr. Heinz-Josef Lenz, co-lead of the gastrointestinal cancer program at the University of Southern California cancer center, is also studying how the environment may be damaging our DNA in ways we don't yet understand.

His data so far suggests the trend of more younger folks developing colon cancer isn't genetic, but our genes may affect how we respond to our exposures — the processed food we eat, the antibiotics we take, and the polluted air we breathe.

"When you are 16 years old or 20 years old, you cannot blame it on diet or exercise or obesity — it's just too short," he said. "We're just scratching the surface on better understanding the impact of the parents, particularly in the young onset: was their exposure part of it, or not?"

Here are five things we're learning:

1. Sleep cycle

We can't separate gut health from our internal clock.

Gut bacteria help regulate sleep, which cuts cancer risk.

Emerging evidence suggests that disrupting the circadian rhythm creates problems in the gut that can contribute to colon cancer, according to studies in mice and data in humans. Our sleep can be derailed by late schedules and artificial light from our homes and phones, which may be one factor in rising colon cancer cases.

2. Microplastics in air and water

Increasingly, researchers are finding evidence that microplastics play a negative role in fertility.

They can also be pro-inflammatory, driving diseases like cancer and obesity, hurting lungs, and possibly helping cancer to thrive in the body.

A new evidence roundup from researchers at UCSF analyzed 22 studies that compared microplastic exposure to health problems in mice and people, and found that all of them showed some harm.

"We basically saw this continuous effect that the more you get exposed to it, so in our environment, the more it gets produced, the greater the health harm," Nicholas Chartres, one of the study's authors and a former head of the science and policy team at UCSF's program on reproductive health and the environment, told BI.

Chartres says the time is now to act to reduce our microplastic exposure, and it must be done at a policy level. At home, Chartres runs around the house throwing out his kids' plastic toys, but he knows he's playing a losing game of environmental whack-a-mole.

"We don't need to have specific quantification of the level of harm, there's enough here to show that they're certainly contributing," he said.

3. What your parents were exposed to

Lenz is conducting research that aims to unravel why so many Hispanic patients in Southern California seem to be especially at risk of developing early colon cancer.

His team is studying cancer patients' blood, DNA damage, lifestyles, and ZIP codes to pinpoint where their exposure risks might be coming from, whether it be overuse of antibiotics, pollution that families are exposed to, or something else.

"It could be an epigenetic event, not only from the patient itself but from the family, from the parents and their exposure," he said. "Epigenetics can be influenced by lifestyle and by exposure to chemicals, or whatever it is that will actually react."

4. Antibiotics

It is well established that antibiotics disrupt the gut microbiome, killing off some beneficial bacteria. And humans aren't the only antibiotic consumers.

Most of the antibiotics (73%) in use worldwide are for meat production, recent research suggests. Some meat advertised as antibiotic-free has failed independent testing.

Red meat consumption ups a person's colon cancer risk, and so does antibiotic use, but these two factors aren't necessarily separate.

5. C-section

Newborns are exposed to trillions of their mother's microbes as they travel through the birth canal, giving an infant's microbiome an initial boost. Kids who are delivered through the abdomen via cesarean section don't get those same health benefits.

Recent research from Sweden suggests girls who are born via c-section have a higher risk of developing young colon cancer than those born vaginally.

Major colon cancer discoveries coming in 2025-2026

In 2024, a group of international researchers mapped 1.6 million cells in the gut to create the most comprehensive picture to date — the "gut atlas."

"It's rare that any one study squeezes out all the relevant biological insights," Ivan Vujkovic-Cvijin, a professor of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who was not involved in the study, told Business Insider.

"By identifying which components of tissue function are dysregulated in disease, the scientific community can design drugs to restore those functions," he said.

There's more to come. Multiple big, well-funded multinational studies are underway, including a US-UK collaboration that's giving out interdisciplinary cancer grants to teams around the world. The studies are expected to release results this year and next.

2 ways to reduce your risk today

Until we know better what's going on, researchers and clinicians say there are two steps you can take to reduce colon cancer risk.

First, control what you can control.

"Let's focus on the stuff we can change," Dr. Cassandra Fritz, a gastroenterologist and colon cancer researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, tells her patients.

That means no smoking, regular exercise, less alcohol, reducing your intake of ultra-processed snacks and processed meats, and no sugary beverages — factors directly linked with colon cancer risk. You could also consider microwaving food in glass or ceramic instead of plastic.

Second, know the signs of colon cancer and do not be complacent about them. Many young cases are diagnosed too late, making treatment complicated.

These four symptoms can occur up to 18 months before a colon cancer diagnosis:

• Abnormal diarrhea that lasts for weeks
• Persistent abdominal pain
• Bloody stool (red, magenta, or black)
• Iron deficiency anemia (determined by a blood test)

Don't fear the process of getting checked, experts told BI. Anyone dealing with these persistent symptoms can ask their doctor for a fecal immunochemical test (FIT) that is noninvasive and costs just a few dollars.

"If there are symptoms which could be associated with colon cancer, make sure you get the screening and don't just accept that they're saying 'It's unlikely' or 'I've never seen it,'" Lenz said.

When it's spotted early, colon cancer is a very survivable disease.

• The American Cancer Society reported that women under 65 are getting cancer at higher rates.
• Breast cancer cases are the most common, but female lung cancer diagnoses are also soaring.
• Racial disparities are a factor, too: More Black women are dying of breast cancer.

Working-age women in the US are now more likely to get cancer than men of the same age.

A new report out Thursday from the American Cancer Society showed that the number of women under 65 diagnosed with cancer has been steadily increasing.

The report, which tracked cancer incidence nationwide from 1991 to 2022, found that cancer rates in women under 50 are now 82% higher than for men the same age, signaling a dramatic, steady climb over the past two decades.

The biggest cancer risk for working-age women is still breast cancer, but researchers were alarmed to see female lung cancer cases are also ticking up and have crossed a threshold.

"For the first time, if you're a woman under the age of 65, you have a greater chance of developing lung cancer than a man," Dr. William Dahut, the American Cancer Society's chief scientific officer, said in a briefing with reporters.

"This is, I think, really a transformational change," he said.

The trend, building for years, reached a tipping point in 2021.

Dahut said that could be due in part to uneven smoking patterns between men and women in the 1960s. Women smoked "heavily later on, more likely in the mid- to late-'60s, while men peaked earlier," he said.

Still, around 20% of lung cancer diagnoses in women are not linked to smoking and are more likely due to environmental factors like radon and asbestos exposure, air pollution, or heavy drinking.

Racial gap

The report emphasized that while there was major progress in cancer treatment over the 30-year study period, with roughly 4.5 million cancer deaths avoided nationwide from 1991 to 2022, there are still striking racial disparities in cancer detection, treatment, and survivability.

Though white women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, Black women are more likely to die from it, suggesting that both cancer screening and cancer treatment for people of color are subpar.

Native Americans have disproportionately high rates of kidney, liver, stomach, and cervical cancers. Death rates for Black people with prostate, stomach, and uterine cancer are twice as high as for white Americans.

Cancer cases rising in young people

The report does contain some good news: Overall cancer deaths across the US tumbled 34% in the 30-year period from 1991 to 2022.

Increasingly, though, young adults are now facing a higher risk of cancer. Colorectal cancer rates are up for people under 65; cervical cancer is on the rise in women between 30 and 44 years old; and teens between 15 and 19 are more likely to develop adolescent cancers.

"Continued reductions in cancer mortality because of drops in smoking, better treatment, and earlier detection is certainly great news," Rebecca Siegel, an ACS epidemiologist and the lead author of the new report, said in a release.

"However, this progress is tempered by rising incidence in young and middle-aged women, who are often the family caregivers, and a shifting cancer burden from men to women, harkening back to the early 1900s when cancer was more common in women," she said.

• Ultra-processed foods are associated with all kinds of poor health outcomes.
• But they're probably not all equally bad.
• An ongoing study suggests adding more high-volume foods into your ultra-processed diet could help.

It's no secret that ultra-processed foods aren't the greatest for our health.

"What we're trying to figure out is, very specifically, what is it about ultra-processed foods that seems to drive over-consumption and weight gain?" metabolism researcher Kevin Hall recently told Business Insider.

Hall works at the National Institutes of Health, where he is conducting an unusual experiment. He brings people into a tightly controlled food lab for one month, and tests out how four different diets — one unprocessed, and three ultra-processed, but all with the same levels of key nutrients — impact people's hunger, fullness, calorie consumption, weight gain, and fat loss.

While his study is still ongoing, he's been sharing some initial results with colleagues in the US and in Europe.

The early findings offer some hints about why UPFs can not only lead to weight gain but also make it hard to dump fat. The study is also showing that simple tweaks could make a huge difference. Perhaps, Hall says, you don't need to cut out ultra-processed products to have a satisfying, relatively healthy plate of food.

On an ultra-processed diet, patients gained 2 lbs a week

When Hall's patients switched diets, their calorie intake shifted dramatically.

During their week of unprocessed meals, full of fresh vegetables, beans, legumes, and whole grains, participants ate an average of 2,700 calories per day. They also tended to lose a little weight, about a pound of fat.

That changed when they switched to an 80% ultra-processed diet. Same amount of food offered, same levels of sugar, salt, fat, carbs, protein, and fiber on the plate.

The patients ended up consuming more food to achieve the same level of fullness — ingesting about 3,700 calories per day on average. On ultra-processed foods, the patients' weight shot up by over two pounds in a single week.

The results, while still preliminary, are even more striking than the last experiment Hall did like this, when patients ate 500 extra calories per day on ultra-processed diets.

People might not even feel like they're eating more when they consume those ultra-processed meals. Generally speaking, each bite of ultra-processed food is far more calorie-dense than a homemade meal.

Adding moisture made ultra-processed meals 'healthier'

Cutting out ultra-processed foods isn't realistic in the US, Hall said. But what if you could make a Western diet less bad?

Hoping to reduce people's weight gain and improve satiety with fewer calories, Hall (and his team of clinical chefs) devised two new diets to test this time.

Both diets were 80% ultra-processed but with some crucial adjustments.

In the first new diet, researchers lowered the amount of what are called "hyper-palatable foods" — foods that combine sugar, salt, and fat in ways that aren't typically seen in nature (think: rich, salty ice cream, a donut, or veggies in cream sauce).

Addiction researcher Tera Fazzino coined the term "hyper-palatable" as a way to collect data on the irresistibility of junk food. She hypothesizes that hyper-palatable ultra-processed foods might mess with our minds, and drive people to eat more than they would otherwise.

But that didn't ring true in Hall's new study. The patients who cut out hyper-palatable foods only saved themselves 200 calories a day, and gained over 1 lb in a week.

In the second diet, the chefs lowered the amount of hyper-palatable foods again, but also upped the moisture of people's ultra-processed meals, making them less energy-dense. Often, this meant adding more high-volume, non-starchy vegetables like a side salad to the ultra-processed plate.

"Basically, add very low-calorie mass," Hall told BI. "That typically is non-starchy vegetables."

On an ultra-processed diet with fewer energy-dense foods and less hyper-palatable items, people lost about a pound in one week — just like on the unprocessed diet. They also consumed about 830 fewer calories per day, very close to the 1,000 fewer calories consumed on the unprocessed diet.

"I thought, OK, gosh, we've solved this problem, this is great," Hall said during a presentation at Imperial College London in November, when he first revealed the new results.

There was a catch, though.

"A little bit of a monkey wrench was thrown in because we decided to look at the body composition changes," Hall said.

The nut we haven't cracked: Achieving the right kind of weight-loss

Only people on the 100% unprocessed diet lost body fat.

On the "healthier" ultra-processed diet, people lost about a pound of weight in a week, but it was coming from fat-free mass. That means muscle, bone, tissue, or maybe just water weight.

Hall is not yet sure why this is happening, but he says it could have to do with the "digestability" of the ultra-processed foods — in other words, how they are handled inside our bodies, compared to whole foods.

"If we can learn what those mechanisms are, then the really smart people who are ingenious food technologists and scientists can maybe re-engineer some of these foods," he told BI.

"There's so many narratives and hypotheses that sound reasonable, but until you actually do the studies to test that, then you don't know."

5 simple ways to make your meals healthier today

While it's still too early to say for sure exactly why people eat more calories and store more fat on ultra-processed diets, Hall says we can already begin to use his early findings to make some educated guesses.

Here are some tips:

• Bulk up a meal, any meal, by adding some vegetables to your plate. Could be salad. Could be a side of cooked broccoli or some carrots. They don't have to be fresh. Frozen is also just fine.

• Try some beans. You could whip up a hearty longevity-friendly minestrone soup, but if you don't have the time even ultra-processed refried beans are a decent option.

• Pick out whole grains, like oatmeal, brown rice, and quinoa.

• Pay attention to how much added sugar is in items like yogurt, granola, and salad dressing, and try to limit how much of it you consume. (Olive oil makes a great dressing, and it's filled with healthy fats and beneficial plant compounds.)

• Prioritize the satiating, nutrient-rich foods we know are associated with good health, like eggs (even the ultra-processed liquid kind might be fine).

"It's possible that there's some weird additive or some ingredient in that food that is not good for you," Hall said. "We don't have the science on that yet, but applying what we do know, I think you can still make educated choices."

• A nutrition researcher who studies ultra-processed foods doesn't categorically ban them at home.
• He relies on nutrition basics to choose snacks that are a bit healthier for his family.
• Prioritize beans, whole grains, and vegetables, while avoiding added sugar and excess sodium.

NIH scientist Kevin Hall pioneered the first study to definitively prove that ultra-processed foods — like chicken tenders and prepackaged snacks — drive us to overeat and gain weight.

And yet at home, he doesn't avoid convenience food, and buys ultra-processed snacks for his kids.

Hall says his strategy is not as contradictory as it seems, if you understand the nutrition science behind his choices.

What we know — and don't know — about ultra-processed foods

Six years ago, Hall was the first to show definitively that ultra-processed foods cause people to eat more food (500 calories per day!) and gain weight.

This was a big deal: beforehand, scientists could only draw vague connections between ultra-processed diets and long-term health outcomes. There wasn't a definitive cause-and-effect relationship established between ultra-processed foods and poor health.

Hall's team at the National Institutes of Health put people into a laboratory, gave them strictly prepared foods, and studied every morsel they digested for several weeks at a time, seeing what different diets did to their health.

Since then, research on UPFs has snowballed. Today, ultra-processed foods are the poster child for everything that's wrong with American diets. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are promising to weed them out of our diets as a result of all the new research that has cropped up since Hall's landmark study.

Do not let perfect be the enemy of good, Hall says

Hall is not so strict about cutting all UPFs out, and he isn't going to tell people what to eat.

"I don't stand on my soapbox to claim to know all the answers," he said.

Scientists still don't know exactly why ultra-processed foods are so bad for us. More importantly, he says that we don't actually know yet whether all ultra-processed foods are, by definition, bad.

The NOVA scale — used to differentiate between unprocessed, processed, and ultra-processed foods — only looks at how food was prepared. It does not account for nutritional value.

Is a can of ready-to-heat chili just as unhealthy as a jelly donut? They're both ultra-processed, but one contains meat, beans, and non-starchy veggies. The other is sugar, maybe some butter, refined flour, and lots of oil.

At home, Hall tries not to let perfect be the enemy of good. He makes educated guesses about which ultra-processed foods are the best for his health, while also being a realist about convenience.

Like many nutrition and longevity professionals, he prioritizes non-starchy vegetables, whole grains, fruits, legumes, and beans. He also stocks chicken nuggets in his freezer for nights when the kids need a quick dinner. Goldfish crackers are not forbidden.

Hall thinks big picture, and tries to avoid too much added sugar, saturated fat, and sodium in the ultra-processed foods he picks out for his family.

"Would it be better if you had made the homemade version of that?" Hall wondered aloud. "Maybe. It's possible that there's some weird additive or some ingredient in that food that is not good for you. We don't have the science on that yet, but applying what we do know, I think you can still make educated choices."

Plastic packaging doesn't mean it's bad for you

Canned and frozen foods can be great options for busy folks trying to eat healthier. And they're not all ultra-processed.

"People kind of mistake processed and ultra-processed," Hall said.

"There is some degree of confusion. It's typically people using these rules of thumb: if it comes in a can or a box or a package and has plastic around it, it's ultra-processed. I'm sorry, they put cucumbers in plastic at my supermarket, they're not ultra-processed!"

That kind of rigid thinking leads people into fearing foods like canned beans, tinned fish, or frozen vegetables, pantry staples that can make it easier to cook at home, and regularly eat foods that are great for longevity.

"There's so many canned beans that are just like, seasoned," Hall said. "They don't have some weird additives associated with them. A lot of people don't realize those are just processed foods."

• The tech founder Bryan Johnson has become the face of longevity; he's on a mission to live forever.
• A Netflix documentary details his journey into the world of longevity biohacking.
• I visited Johnson's home, and it's a bit different from what you see in the new Netflix doc.

A new documentary has arrived on Netflix, just in time for New Year's resolution season. It follows Bryan Johnson, or "that guy" in longevity, the tech founder who's tried pretty much everything — from fasting to infusing his son's blood plasma — to reverse-age his body.

The doc, "Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever," streaming now, attempts to peel back the curtain on Johnson, who's become a leader in longevity biohacking.

As a reporter covering longevity, I've met Johnson several times over the past couple of years. We first met in September 2023 at the RAADfest — which stands for Revolution Against Aging and Death — near Disneyland in California. I interviewed him in a hotel room to avoid crowds of his adoring fans.

In October 2024, I visited him at home — the same one depicted in "Don't Die." While the 90-minute doc travels back in time to Johnson's Utah roots in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (along the way, we meet his parents, his eldest son, Talmage, and his longtime business partner, Kate Tolo, who's largely responsible for Johnson's internet success), in real life, Johnson's home is a bit less picture-perfect than what viewers see on-screen.

His house is HQ for a growing longevity brand

As the documentary shows, Johnson's home is a private, shrubbed-in concrete mansion on an unassuming Los Angeles street. It's a big, empty space perfect for shooting everything from YouTube Shorts to naked photo spreads.

It's less a home than a well-equipped stage with studio lights, sandbags, and social media staffers.

Still, the house displays some small but humanizing details of his everyday life, ones we don't see as much in the film.

In addition to being a decent stage, this home is Johnson's safe house, seemingly shielding him from a world of pollutants in food, water, and air. The big windows all have UV filters. The water is purified. The fridge is full of nutty pudding prepared by his chef, and the garage has been transformed into a home gym.

When I was there, I saw a few subtle signs that Johnson actually lived in the house: a half-empty bottle of rosé left on the refrigerator door, some Xbox controllers on the couch, and family photos taped up above the kitchen range.

His 'Don't Die' pitch versus scientific reality

Johnson is always tweaking his longevity "protocols," but his ethos is consistent.

He says that the corporate forces of fast food and institutionalized healthcare are making us sick. He told me he started his Blueprint company to offer people an alternative so they could take control of their health and longevity.

In many ways, he echoes Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s call to "make America healthy again," extolling the health virtues of preventive care, clean eating, and hitting the gym.

Johnson started his Don't Die brand with a specially labeled olive oil. It now extends to a blood-plasma microplastic test, a Don't Die app, and a line of powders, supplements, drinks, and prepared meals you can order online.

The documentary highlights the deep disconnect between the influencing Johnson does online and the actual professional geroscience and human-longevity research.

The film includes interviews with some of the world's most esteemed longevity scientists, including Dr. Andrea Maier, Brian Kennedy, Matt Kaeberlein, and Steve Horvath, the guy who pioneered the scientific idea of a "biological age."

Perhaps the most apt scientific commentary in the film comes from the Havard aging researcher Vadim Gladyshev. "What Bryan does, I guess, brings attention to our field — this will be positive," Gladyshev says. "But it has almost no contribution to science, right? It's not science. It's just attention."

It's attention that many longevity clinics and elite longevity doctors are seeing drive new business. More than 70% of the 72 longevity clinicians who participated in an ongoing online survey by the website Longevity.Technology said that they felt Johnson "contributes to" instead of "hinders" the progress of longevity medicine. Some said he helped grow awareness for what longevity scientists hope, but can't be sure, could one day be some real human longevity science advances.

"We are experimenting, and we are trialing out, and I think we will have a revolution in the next coming 10 years of very specific interventions we can apply to humans," Maier says in the film.

Any real-deal longevity interventions that may exist for humans in the future would likely be tightly tailored to each individual, not one-size-fits-all protocols. Leading longevity scientists and doctors already agree on this. So far, not one supplement or drug has been proven to slow human aging. Instead, longevity experts have said regular exercise and good nutrition can help.

His following is growing

As I've covered longevity, I've met Johnson's followers, from curious onlookers to devout copycats of his evolving formula.

On-screen, we watch an eye-popping transformation of a once devout Latter-day Saints kid who becomes a dad in his 20s, then a stressed tech founder operating on minimal sleep, losing his faith and sinking into a deep depression.

Johnson now has his own growing following worldwide. His adherents throw dance parties and organize hikes in California and Singapore.

Since filming wrapped, Johnson has traveled to China and India to promote the Don't Die movement in new countries. He's also created a Don't Die app for his followers to connect with one another wherever they live.

Once the cameras were turned off and the show was over, I left the documentary feeling much like I did when I left his house.

Johnson seems to be eagerly wrestling with how to live his healthiest, most fulfilled life. He's a dad of three who cried in the aisles of Target when his firstborn son went off to college. He's a dutiful son — according to the documentary, he's the only person who visited his dad in jail.

It seems what he's endlessly searching for — along with peace and well-being — is clicks, follows, and sales. It's a logical next business move for the guy who once ran Venmo: turning the longevity movement into one more thing we can shop for on the internet.

• Jimmy Carter has died at 100: the average life expectancy for men in the US is 73.5.
• Carter's 77-year marriage could have been key to his long life, longevity expert Dan Buettner said.
• Research suggests married people, especially men, live longer than their unmarried counterparts.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who died at age 100 on Sunday, said marrying his wife Rosalynn at age 21 was the "best thing" he ever did.

The couple were married for 77 years before Rosalynn died at age 96 last year — making their union the longest of any presidential couple. Rosalynn was diagnosed with dementia months before her death.

Together, they shared four children and 22 grandchildren. They resided at their modest family home in Plains, Georgia.

The former president surpassed the average US male life expectancy of 73.5 by more than 20 years, and his committed, loving relationship could have played a major role in his longevity, research suggests.

Marriage can have serious health benefits — especially for men

When researchers looked at the life expectancy and marital statuses of 164,597 Americans over age 65, they found that married men and women lived, on average, two years longer than their unmarried counterparts.

Even marriages that end can have a beneficial effect on our longevity. People who were divorced or widowed also tended to live longer than those who had never been married, according to the same 2020 study. (Important caveat: Unhappy marriages in which partners constantly criticize one another or are too demanding and controlling can erase these health benefits.)

Experts say the reasons marriage has great health benefits are numerous and complex, and the exact reasons why are still poorly understood. But there does seem to be something protective about the social bonds and support that a healthy union can provide, with more built-in opportunities to socialize and connect.

What we do know is that the health benefits of marriage seem to be greater for men than for women. Another study, published in March 2023, found that bachelors with heart failure were twice as likely to die within five years, compared to married men with the same heart issues.

Decades of other research point to similar findings. Being married can decrease a person's risk of heart disease, cancer, and other life-shortening health conditions like hypertension and high cholesterol.

Author and longevity expert Dan Buettner, the man who pioneered the idea that there are five "Blue Zones" for centenarians, told Business Insider that "investing in a spouse is a core value in all Blue Zones," whether a couple lives in Okinawa, Ikaria, Nicoya, Loma Linda, or Sardinia.

"Staying in a committed relationship is absolutely associated with about two years of extra life expectancy (and more for men) over being divorced or single," Buettner said.

It's a key part of the way that some of the world's longest lived people connect with their tribe, and put their loved ones first, reducing inflammation in the body, promoting healthy behaviors, and keeping loneliness in check.

• The smart ring market is exploding, with options available at Costco and Walmart.
• Rings aren't perfect health monitoring tools, but they can help detect patterns and some illnesses.
• Healthcare companies and the US military are increasingly interested in harnessing the tech.

The rich and famous have been wearing them for years, and competing for the very best sleep scores. Longevity doctors swear by them too. But 2025 may just be the year that smart rings become the "it" tracker for the masses.

"We call it a 'check engine' light for your body," Oura CEO Tom Hale told Business Insider. "It's a tool for you to become literate in the dynamics of your biometrics as they relate to your behaviors."

Oura has been the longtime leader in smart rings — the Finnish company debuted its first ring in a Kickstarter campaign 10 years ago. The undeniable giant in the smart ring space (for now), Oura recently debuted a slimmer and smoother 4th generation ring model, priced from $349 to $399.

Oura says it has been profitable for 14 months after many years in the red. On Thursday, the company announced a $200 million series D funding round, bringing its valuation to $5.2 billion.

There's also been an explosion of competitor rings, including the $349 Ultrahuman Ring Air, which debuted in 2022. In 2024, we've seen Samsung's $399 Galaxy ring enter the market as well as smaller devices like the longevity-focused and David Sinclair-backed $200 Virtusan ring.

It all heralds the beginning of a new wearables category that may eventually help people eat, exercise, sleep, and avoid illness a little better than we do now.

"I welcome all the competition," Oura's Hale said. "It makes us better, it's good for the market."

Every smart ring has a different competitive claim

Each smart ring company seems to have its own differentiator, the thing that they say makes them better than the rest, whether it's the thinnest ring band, the best battery life, or the biggest dataset.

They each generally track steps, monitor temperature, and log heart rate.

Dr. Daniel Kraft, a Bay Area-based physician-scientist and founder, says that's probably enough for the general consumer. We don't all need FDA-approved medical devices on our fingers. Instead, there's value in the consistency of the data a ring provides, monitoring trends day after day, learning about our bodies.

"We're all quite different and it's often the change from baseline that is most important," Kraft told BI.

Longitudinal trend lines can be useful for tracking things like how exercise, supplements, or stress are impacting a person's overall health. In Kraft's case, he watched his resting heart rate drop eight points over a roughly three-month period of daily exercise sessions.

"That gets people engaged, like, 'Wow, I make these small incremental changes and I'm going to see changes that show up in weeks and months and years,'" he said.

Until now, interest in Oura rings has largely been driven by word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, colleagues, and some longevity-focused physicians. Oura's friend referrals (a 10% discount) drive a lot of the business; almost half of Oura members were referred by a friend or family member, according to the company.

A smart ring is also "considered a little premium," Jeffrey Kim, Samsung America's senior product lead for the Galaxy smart ring, told BI.

2025 is shaping up to be the year that smart rings could go mainstream in a big way.

Multiple projections show the market for smart rings taking off, growing more than 20% year over year, until 2030. Over the past six months, Ultrahuman has started stocking its ring at major brick-and-mortar retailers in the US, including Best Buy, Verizon, Costco, and Walmart, and the company says more than 15,000 people in the US are picking up a new Ultrahuman ring each month.

Smart rings are about more than fitness tracking — they're being used for period tracking and to predict illnesses

Already, studies have shown smart rings are good at picking up when someone is about to get sick with a viral illness like COVID or the flu, by combining metrics like heart rate variability with temperature and breathing rate while asleep.

Some brands have also been carving out a niche among women, playing up their potential impact on women's health. In the US, women were not required to be included in medical research until 1993.

"We need more data," Dr. Umbereen Nehal, a fem-tech founder and pediatrician, told BI. "I would like to have accurate, personalized care. I would like to prevent bad things happening to me."

Women now make up the majority of Oura and Ultrahuman users (55% and 60%, respectively). Beyond sleep and fitness, a ring can use temperature to track a period — not a failsafe technique, but it's a non-invasive option to help people better plan when to have sex to conceive or avoid a pregnancy.

Nehal hasn't bought into the ring hype yet. In part, she says it's because the current rings are too "ugly" for her. But she also cautions consumers to maintain a "healthy skepticism" toward their wearables, and not take the data insights or recommendations as health gospel.

"Try to understand: who was this tested on? Who was this built for? How do you want to use it? Do you think this is a good way for what you want to know?" she said. "Recognize that when you buy a product, you are still in the driver's seat of deciding what to do with that information."

Having more at-home data on everyday health may prove useful, but it doesn't have to come from our fingers or wrists. Kraft said we can also harness health insights from cameras, voice recorders, and other easily accessible tech.

Ultrahuman founder and CEO Mohit Kumar imagines that his customers will use the Ring Air as an entry point into what can be a whole body and house health monitoring system, complete with a CGM for tracking blood sugar and a CO2 scrubber for cleaning the air.

Oura has recently partnered with CGM-maker Dexcom and inked a $96 million deal with the Department of Defense. Some US Army airmen have been trying out Oura rings in an attempt to optimize performance by helping make decisions about when they might need more rest, or a caffeine boost.

Medicare Advantage plan Essence Healthcare says it will start offering free Oura rings to seniors in 2025, in the hopes of reducing healthcare costs.

"If I see Mrs. Jones's resting heart rate went from 65 to 95 over the last month, and it's not just because she's been climbing stairs, it's when she's sleeping, boy, I might want to call and figure out what's going on cardiopulmonary-wise," Kraft said. "A lot of our healthcare issues, they show up in subtle ways weeks, months, or years early, and they're just not picked up on, they can't be picked on that short clinical visit — if you're lucky enough to have primary care doctor at all."

Smart ring vs smartwatch

Smart ring pros

• Small, inconspicuous, and unobtrusive
• Great for sleep tracking
• Long-lasting battery (~1 week)

Smart ring cons

• Not as ideal for sports like weightlifting or running; you can't track your pace, and it gets in the way when you're lifting weights
• Can't pick up a phone call or respond to a text
• Expensive

• The Food and Drug Administration released new guidelines on what foods can be labeled "healthy."
• The new guidance now allows foods like salmon, avocados, and olive oil to be labeled "healthy."
• "Highly sweetened" yogurts and cereals however can no longer be qualified as healthy, the FDA says.

Your "healthy" yogurt may be getting a rebrand soon.

On Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration published its new and improved definition of what constitutes a "healthy" food, tightening up the limits on added sugars, salt, and saturated fat in foods that carry the label.

In a meticulous 318-page document, the federal agency details strict parameters for companies that wish to call their foods "healthy."

For example, a fruit-based food can't be "healthy" anymore if one serving has more than 2% of a person's recommended daily value of sugar. The same goes for veggies, meat, and eggs, while grains can have up to 10% DV of added sugars.

This could change how some brands currently market their food products as a healthy snack alternative.

The last time the FDA issued an update on the "healthy" label was three decades ago, according to the agency.

Under the new standards, the agency said foods such as "water, avocados, nuts and seeds, higher fat fish, such as salmon and olive oil will now qualify to use the 'healthy' claim."

The new guidance comes as competition in the heath food aisle intensifies — the global health and wellness food market was valued at roughly $878 billion last year, according to a 2024 market data study from Data Bridge.

The FDA's report estimates that the changes could make a dent in chronic diseases nationally, saving about $686 million over 20 years.

The cost to manufacturers, meanwhile, comes in at $403 million over 20 years for "reformulating, labeling, and recordkeeping," per the report.

The rule won't change food labeling overnight: it's not slated to take effect until 2028, and it's an optional one — food labels don't have to mention they're "healthy."

But it comes just as President-elect Trump prepares to take office. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump has tapped to lead the US Departmet of Health and Human Services, the umbrella federal health agency that oversees FDA, has recently proclaimed he's waging war against big food companies, vowing to "Make America Healthy Again" and take chemical dyes out of our Fruit Loops. (In case you were wondering: Fruit Loops, with 24% of a person's recommended daily dose of added sugars per serving, do not make the new "healthy" claim cut.)

"If the incoming administration is truly serious about making Americans eat healthier, then they should embrace the power of food labeling," former FDA official Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told The New York Times.

• A Greek doctor and nutrition scientist says it is possible to eat healthy on a budget.
• She cooks beans a few times a week, and recommends choosing small portions of meat.
• At home, she uses a DIY spread made from 50% butter and 50% olive oil, to make her toast healthier.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dr. Artemis Simopoulos. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Former chair of the nutrition coordinating committee at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Simopoulos is founder and president of the Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health in DC, a nonprofit focused on nutrition education.

I have dedicated my life to studying and eating good food. It's the dearest topic to me.

Scientifically, there is no confusion about how to eat to promote health and longevity. I think all the conflicting and overhyped diet advice you see has been created strictly for financial and political reasons.

So I want to tell you a little bit of my history, and what I've discovered over my 68-year career studying diet and chronic disease.

I hope this information will help you choose foods that will nourish your body, in an affordable, sustainable, delicious way.

In Greece, traditional diets included fresh produce, fish from the sea, lots of olive oil and sourdough bread

As a girl growing up in Kalamata, on the southwestern edge of the Peloponnesian peninsula, I found fresh food everywhere. On the weekends, we would visit our family farm, about 15 minutes outside the city. Traditionally, most Greeks had something like that, a place they could go to pick up fresh food, whether it was their own farmland or a daily market.

At our farm, we had olive trees, figs, pomegranates, walnuts, anything you can imagine. It was very easy for us to have fresh vegetables, fruit, and fish from the Messenian Gulf on the table. Greek people are very proud of their food, and like to make it very fresh. This was especially true when I was growing up, in the 1940s and 50s, as there wasn't much refrigeration outside the big cities.

We'd supplement local foods with some fatty tinned fish from Norway, like smoked herring or cod. That was especially useful on Fridays, when most Greeks, following the Greek Orthodox church tradition, don't eat any meat. But in general, our diet was pretty low on meat back then. We would eat small quantities of lamb, and some chicken. There was no beef. The backbone of our diet was legumes, like chickpeas, black eyed peas, and northern beans, great for soups and cold salads, plus lots of sourdough bread. People would also hunt and eat some wild birds, which are rich in iron, fostering healthy hemoglobin.

We also had many protein-rich snacks, like lupin beans, which people would often turn into a pickled snack with a little salt. My favorite sweet treat was a Kalamata dried fig stuffed with walnuts and almonds. What a shock it was when I arrived in America for college!

When I arrived in the US for college, I was shocked to find white flour everywhere

When I arrived in New York for college, snow wasn't the only thing that was new, fluffy, and bright white. I discovered that white flour was everywhere in the American diet. Chocolate-chip cookies, chicken à la king, and bread that tasted like cotton to me. I wasn't used to this, and it was a difficult adjustment.

In Greece, I was raised on thinner sauces created with lemon, olive oil, white wine, and maybe some butter. All of this rich, thick, floury food in the US was so different. I couldn't eat half of the meals they served in my dormitory. Sometimes I'd just have Swedish rye crackers with some cheese on them for dinner.

On the weekends, the Greek students would ride the subway downtown to a restaurant near Times Square called The Pantheon. What a great time we'd have, sitting around dishes of lamb and potatoes, big fresh Greek salads, and sharing fruit for dessert.

Once I moved to Boston for medical school, it was easier to get fresh, good food. There were plenty of Greek markets within walking distance of where I lived, and I had my own little kitchenette where I could prepare meals.

I have developed some traditional recipes, which I share in my Omega-3 diet book, but I tell people you don't have to be Greek to eat well, which is why I also have a new book called "The Healthiest Diet for You: Scientific Aspects," which I've made available for free online.

History tells us you can eat well and save money

For thousands of years, people around the world have found their own ways to eat a balanced, nutrient-rich diet that's aligned with their genetics.

While it's true the traditional Greek eating plan is great for health and longevity, naturally staving off many chronic diseases, the Greeks were not alone in figuring out how to source local, abundant items that were good for their hearts and minds. In South America, there are Chia seeds, in China, Camellia trees.

The key thing everyone has in common in these traditional eating plans is a focus on fresh foods, like omega-3-rich leafy greens, plus plenty of other vegetables and a base of legumes for protein.

Most traditional diets are rounded out with small amounts of meat, and fatty fish, as well as plenty of nuts.

It's an inexpensive, and sustainable way to eat. We don't need to buy into all these new highly-processed meat-free alternatives, or vegan and gluten-free packaged treats, which are not health foods.

I always advise my friends to select the freshest local meats and fish they can find. Some complain that this is a pricey strategy, so I tell them 'eat half as much.' You don't really need to spend so much money. Replace a third of the meat you eat with beans on the plate. We ought to be a lot more conscious and respect food.

It's this issue of imbalance, piling oil, sugar, and white flour into everything we eat, that I believe is at the core of the modern chronic disease epidemic in the US. Our processed foods are to blame. But I don't want people to lose hope. You can eat a healthy diet.

I take care to ensure, for example, that my eggs are rich in omega-3 — an essential fatty acid our brains need to thrive. In the late 1980s I did some studies comparing American chicken eggs to Greek eggs from my farm and found the ratio of essential fatty acids, which should be 1:1, was in complete balance on the farm, while in the US it was higher than 20:1! I couldn't believe it.

Even in Greece things are rapidly changing, and it's really sad. We all need to get back to our plant-based diets. For the Greeks, these were diets rich in local greens, extra virgin olive oil, and sourdough bread.

My simple trick: add olive oil into your diet — you can even mix it with butter

My recommendation: Cook beans at least a couple of times a week. Snack on nuts and seeds instead of processed foods filled with sugar and white flour, which are stripped of the nutrients and plant compounds that our bodies need to function well.

And if you can only start with one thing, may I recommend one of my favorite home cooking hacks? Mix your butter or your canola oil in a 1 to 1 ratio with extra virgin olive oil.

My butter and olive oil mix makes a great healthy spread for toast, while my go-to cooking oil mixture of 50% organic canola and 50% EVOO is a science-backed way to balance nutrition by improving the polyphenol composition of your meals and the anti-inflammatory properties of the dish.

Enjoy!

• Colon cancer rates for people under age 50 are going up across countries both rich and poor.
• In the US, rates for older adults are declining, while early-onset colon cancer is on the rise.
• Scientists are starting to uncover clues about how modern diets and lifestyles play a role.

Colon cancer is quickly becoming a young person's disease in countries around the world.

A new study released Wednesday in the Lancet Oncology documents rising rates of early-onset colorectal cancer across rich, highly-industralized parts of North America and Europe, and in middle-income areas worldwide.

"We found this trend is not just about high-income, Western countries," lead study author and cancer researcher Hyuna Sung told Business Insider. "It reaches the parts we didn't see before, such as South America and Asia."

During the 5-year period from 2013 to 2017, colon cancer rates in young people went up in 27 of 50 countries Sung's team examined worldwide. Though the study only includes one country in Africa (Uganda), it is still some of the most recent, comprehensive data available on colon cancer rates around the globe. And it shows colon cancer rates spiking in young people living in countries like Turkey, Ecuador, and Chile.

The trend is not hitting all countries equally, though. While in the US, early-onset colon cancer rates continue to rise to unprecedented levels, there are outliers in the data, like Italy, Spain, and Latvia, where the rates appear relatively unchanged year over year.

"This study is quite expected," associate professor Ganesh Halade from USF Heart Health Institute, who was not involved in this study, told BI, while poring over the new data, and noting the rising rates across several continents. "Fundamentally, our diet is changed"

Halade's own colon cancer research, published earlier this week, identified how ultra-processed foods can fuel colon cancer, wreaking havoc on the immune system, and worsening inflammation.

"It's very obvious the way that this disease trend is going on right now," he said. "We need to go back and consider our diet, sleep, and exercise."

Why colon cancer is striking younger people in richer countries

It still seems to be the case that the richer a country gets, the more young people are at risk of developing colon cancer. Countries with some of the steepest gains in under 50 colon cancer cases in recent years include Australia, New Zealand, the US, South Korea and Japan.

"Children and adolescents in these highly industrialized and urbanized countries were probably among the earliest to uptake detrimental dietary exposures and sedentary lifestyles associated with economic wealth," the study authors wrote.

In other words, driving around in a car, sitting at a desk, and eating more convenience food every day for decades on end may not be great for our overall health, and might have some connections to these cancer trends. Once inflammation skyrockets, Halade said, cancer has an easier time both sprouting and thriving. His anecdotes? More sleep, movement, and home-cooked food.

There seems to be a pronounced uptick in the incidence of early-onset colon cancer among people born after 1950, suggesting that there are lifestyle and environmental exposures impacting Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z in ways their baby boomer parents and predecessors like the Greatest Generation didn't experience.

At the same time, thanks to more cancer screenings and less smoking, colon cancer rates in older adults are going down in many rich countries around the world, including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, South Korea, and Israel.

What we eat and how we live matters, it seems

Scientists are still endeavoring to untangle exactly what is driving the early-onset colon cancer risk, but there seem to be some clear signals in the data about the food system we live in. Another new study released earlier this week suggested that our modern diets, filled with candy, sugary drinks, and processed foods, don't have enough of the healthy fats and nutrients our bodies need to keep cancer-driving inflammation in check.

Foods rich in omega-3, like leafy greens, fatty fish, nuts and seeds can help prevent the inflammatory processes that over time lead to cancer. But sweets, chips, sausages, and packaged cakes seem to fuel tumors, while also crowding out more unprocessed, healthier choices in our diets.

Still, food can't be the whole story. It's clear that a family history of colon cancer, as well as the unique dance your genetics and your environment play, have key roles in your personal level of colon cancer risk. Experts are looking into environmental factors like air pollution, microplastics, and more sedentary lifestyles for clues about what else may be driving the increase in young colon cancer.

Bryan Johnson spends $2 million a year on longevity treatments. We spent a day with the tech entrepreneur who wants to live forever, getting a close-up look at his antiaging meals, supplements, clinical procedures, and daily exercise routine.

• Novo Nordisk scientist Lotte Bjerre Knudsen paved the way for popular GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.
• Her work in the 1990s was instrumental in turning short-acting hormones into long-acting drugs.
• Her 'product mindset' is what keeps her going, she said.

Inventor and scientist Lotte Bjerre Knudsen has spent her entire career at Novo Nordisk.

"I started here fresh out of university," she told Business Insider from the company's glass-walled headquarters outside Copenhagen. She's sitting just across the road from where her career began in the late 1980s, developing color-safe laundry detergent.

It would have been impossible to predict then that she'd become instrumental in the development of the popular class of injectable diabetes and weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy that have become a roughly $47 billion global market.

It was her research and development of Novo Nordisk's first daily GLP-1 shot for diabetes (liraglutide, approved in the US in 2010) that would spur the development of those more powerful, longer-lasting weekly shots, which she also oversaw.

For years, scientists had known that the GLP-1 hormone played a key role in regulating appetite. But these hormones were so fleeting in the body, almost nobody in the diabetes world was convinced they'd make a successful drug. As Novo Nordisk tells the story now, the company was less than a year out from closing down the entire GLP-1 program when she had her breakthrough.

Today she's proudly wearing her new Lasker Prize lapel pin, as a 2024 recipient of the science award widely seen as second only to a Nobel Prize. It's in recognition of the pivotal role she played in developing the first long-acting GLP-1 drugs.

Here are the three key guideposts she said have helped her succeed with business breakthroughs for 35 years.

Develop a 'product mindset'

Knudsen's cardinal goal, she says, has always been to develop products that "help people at an everyday level" — a tenet she's held onto from her early days experimenting with laundry detergent.

"I've only ever had one job," she said.

She calls it a "product mindset," or "enterprise mindset" and says she learned it first from her dad. It's a type of energy, a way of being driven to solve problems, to make something that will be useful.

"It's the same mindset I have used in everything I've ever done, to just say, 'actually I want to help, make a product that can help' — either in society, or people with disease," she said. "That mindset is exactly the same whether you are making laundry detergents, which certainly help people, or you are making medicines to help people in a very different way, but still help people at an everyday level."

She's clear-headed about the fact that the approach only sometimes ends with success, but is not deterred by the failures, she says. Instead, they press her on to find new ways to solve the problems that pop up.

"I'm okay with being challenged, I don't mind," she said. "But it doesn't make me give up. I listen to the critique, or the feedback, and then I go think about whether there's something I should be doing differently."

Focus on what you know

Knudsen says her training at "Denmark's MIT" (actually called the Technical University of Denmark, or DTU) helped her chart a path toward a drug development solution rooted in biotechnology. Specifically, she focused her research on injectable peptides. This wasn't because she thought peptides were superior to pills. It was what she knew best.

"I think there's some kind of synergy between the background that I had and the problem that needed to be solved," she said. "I was very comfortable with peptides as a potential medicine."

To make the GLP-1 hormone "long-acting" her team found a way to attach a fatty acid to the molecule. She compares this structure to a steak — it's a one-two punch of protein and fat, protecting the hormone-mimicking shot from rapid degradation in the body.

Stay humble and curious

Even though Knudsen and her teams at Novo Nordisk invented an entirely new class of diabetes and weight loss drugs, she's still level-headed about these relatively new medicines.

She says more scientific studies of the drugs are essential to better untangle how they work, and reveal all the different aspects of our health they impact, from inflammation and addiction to dementia.

While she acknowledges there are serious concerns about muscle loss in many people taking GLP-1s, she says drug developers should exercise caution in combining GLP-1s with other medications, like those designed to help combat muscle loss.

"You can't start combining left, right, north, east, west unless you really understand what the foundational part of the biology means," she said.

Now a chief science officer at Novo Nordisk, her executive role is far more focused on mentorship and governance than technical knowledge. But she still aims to explore the basic science that can steer new discoveries. In 2021, she took a job rotation at Novo Nordisk's research site inside Oxford University to learn more about genetics, hormones, and machine learning.

"There's all these things that need to happen in the body after you've eaten," Knudsen said. "GLP-1 is involved in that, and that's why it has both effects on different organs, and the brain, and everything that needs to happen after you eat."

• California's biggest raw milk brand tested positive for bird flu.
• With a voluntary recall underway, the company has started sending out milk to be pasteurized.
• Raw cheese, kefir, and butter are still being sold.

One of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s favorite raw milk producers is temporarily going pasteurized, as bird flu sweeps across California's dairyland.

Raw Farms is California's largest producer of raw milk products, and a huge name in West Coast wellness circles. This summer, the company partnered with carnivore diet influencer Paul Saladino and trendy LA grocery store Erewhon to produce a $19 raw kefir smoothie.

Now, the company is recalling all of its raw milk and raw cream on store shelves statewide, after initial retail tests of at least two batches of milk turned up positive for H5N1 bird flu.

In the meantime, raw milk produced at the Fresno-based dairy is being processed like regular milk.

"It's going from our dairies directly to a processing plant owned by somebody else to be pasteurized," Raw Farms founder Mark McAfee told Business Insider on Wednesday, adding that the move is a "horrible" one for his bottom line.

"We're getting about 20%" of normal sales revenue, he said.

Raw Farms isn't recalling its raw cheeses, butter, or kefir, and McAfee said that's because those products have been fermented, heated, cultured, or aged, and therefore are somewhat less of a concern to regulators.

Can you get bird flu from raw milk?

It's normal for raw milk to have viruses or bacteria floating around in it. Unlike pasteurized milk, raw milk is not heated to kill pathogens.

That's why the US Food and Drug Administration advises against anyone drinking raw milk. There's a risk of contracting stomach bugs like Salmonella or E. coli, which can cause food poisoning, and in rare cases hospitalization or death. Kids are especially at risk.

It's not clear whether people can actually get bird flu by drinking milk from a sick cow. So far, there have been no reports of raw milk drinkers catching bird flu, but there have been several cases of cats drinking raw milk from cows sick with bird flu, and then dropping dead afterwards.

"Like many foodborne illnesses, illnesses from raw milk are often underreported because many people aren't tested by a doctor in time to identify a pathogen and link the illness to a specific food," the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, the agency that first identified bird flu virus in Raw Farms products in November, told BI in a statement.

The FDA declined to comment for this story, citing an ongoing lawsuit against Raw Farms, which accuses the company of selling raw milk across state lines (that's forbidden under federal law).

A spokesperson for the agency pointed BI to a recent letter to dairy producers nationwide, which mentions that bird flu is a virus, like other viruses, that can't withstand pasteurization.

A bird flu outbreak will not stop the raw milk trend, McAfee says

McAfee is trying to set up some raw milk bottling and processing in another area of the state that isn't as affected by the current H5N1 outbreak as the Central Valley. He said he hopes to start selling raw milk again soon, after performing (and clearing) some additional tests.

"Hopefully, within the next 10 days, we'll have a dairy that's up and going, and products will be flowing from a different area of California," he said.

That would be welcome news to President-elect Trump's pick to head up Health and Human Services next year.

Kennedy has promised to end the FDA's "war" on raw milk. McAfee said he's been tapped by Kennedy's transition team to apply for a position advising the FDA on standards and policy for raw milk production.

"People don't really appreciate the deep science of this," he said. "I do."

He pointed to the latest science that suggests the biggest hazard for bird flu transmission lies not in the milk itself, but in dairy cow udders.

So far, of the 32 human bird flu cases reported in California, 31 have been traced back to cattle exposure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been warning dairy workers to watch out for raw milk splashing into their eyeballs, and McAfee said his dairy workers wear eye protection.