U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday named eight new vaccine policy advisers to replace the panel that he abruptly dismissed earlier this week.

They include a scientist who researched mRNA vaccine technology and became a conservative darling for his criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines, a leading critic of pandemic-era lockdowns, and a professor of operations management.

Kennedy’s decision to “retire” the previous 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was widely decried by doctors’ groups and public health organizations, who feared the advisers would be replaced by a group aligned with Kennedy’s desire to reassess — and possibly end — longstanding vaccination recommendations.

On Tuesday, before he announced his picks, Kennedy said: “We’re going to bring great people onto the ACIP panel – not anti-vaxxers – bringing people on who are credentialed scientists.”

The new appointees include Vicky Pebsworth, a regional director for the National Association of Catholic Nurses, who has been listed as a board member and volunteer director for the National Vaccine Information Center, a group that is widely considered to be a leading source of vaccine misinformation.

Another is Dr. Robert Malone, the former mRNA researcher who emerged as a close adviser to Kennedy during the measles outbreak. Malone, who runs a wellness institute and a popular blog, rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as he relayed conspiracy theories around the outbreak and the vaccines that followed. He has appeared on podcasts and other conservative news outlets where he’s promoted unproven and alternative treatments for measles and COVID-19.

He has claimed that millions of Americans were hypnotized into taking the COVID-19 shots and has suggested that those vaccines cause a form of AIDS. He’s downplayed deaths related to one of the largest measles outbreaks in the U.S. in years.

Other appointees include Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist who was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 letter maintaining that pandemic shutdowns were causing irreparable harm. Dr. Cody Meissner, a former ACIP member, also was named.

Abram Wagner of the University of Michigan’s school of public health, who investigates vaccination programs, said he’s not satisfied with the composition of the committee.

“The previous ACIP was made up of technical experts who have spent their lives studying vaccines,” he said. Most people on the current list “don’t have the technical capacity that we would expect out of people who would have to make really complicated decisions involving interpreting complicated scientific data.”

He said having Pebsworth on the board is “incredibly problematic” since she is involved in an organization that “distributes a lot of misinformation.”

Kennedy made the announcement in a social media post on Wednesday.

The committee, created in 1964, makes recommendations to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC directors almost always approve those recommendations on how vaccines that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be used. The CDC’s final recommendations are widely heeded by doctors and guide vaccination programs.

The other appointees are:

—Dr. James Hibbeln, who formerly headed a National Institutes of Health group focused on nutritional neurosciences and who studies how nutrition affects the brain, including the potential benefits of seafood consumption during pregnancy.

—Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies business issues related to supply chain, logistics, pricing optimization and health and health care management. In a 2023 video pinned to an X profile under his name, Levi called for the end of the COVID-19 vaccination program, claiming the vaccines were ineffective and dangerous despite evidence they saved millions of lives.

—Dr. James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician from Los Angeles.

—Dr. Michael Ross, a Virginia-based obstetrician and gynecologist.

Of the eight named by Kennedy, perhaps the most experienced in vaccine policy is Meissner, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, who has previously served as a member of both ACIP and the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory panel.

During his five-year term as an FDA adviser, the committee was repeatedly asked to review and vote on the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines that were rapidly developed to fight the pandemic. In September 2021, he joined the majority of panelists who voted against a plan from the Biden administration to offer an extra vaccine dose to all American adults. The panel instead recommended that the extra shot should be limited to seniors and those at higher risk of the disease.

Ultimately, the FDA disregarded the panel’s recommendation and OK’d an extra vaccine dose for all adults.

In addition to serving on government panels, Meissner has helped author policy statements and vaccination schedules for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

ACIP members typically serve in staggered four-year terms, although several appointments were delayed during the Biden administration before positions were filled last year. The voting members all have scientific or clinical expertise in immunization, except for one “consumer representative” who can bring perspective on community and social facets of vaccine programs.

Kennedy, a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before becoming the U.S. government’s top health official, has accused the committee of being too closely aligned with vaccine manufacturers and of rubber-stamping vaccines. ACIP policies require members to state past collaborations with vaccine companies and to recuse themselves from votes in which they had a conflict of interest, but Kennedy has dismissed those safeguards as weak.

Most of the people who best understand vaccines are those who have researched them, which usually requires some degree of collaboration with the companies that develop and sell them, said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher.

“If you are to exclude any reputable, respected vaccine expert who has ever engaged even in a limited way with the vaccine industry, you’re likely to have a very small pool of folks to draw from,” Schwartz said.

The U.S. Senate confirmed Kennedy in February after he promised he would not change the vaccination schedule. But less than a week later, he vowed to investigate childhood vaccines that prevent measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.

Kennedy has ignored some of the recommendations ACIP voted for in April, including the endorsement of a new combination shot that protects against five strains of meningococcal bacteria and the expansion of vaccinations against RSV.

In late May, Kennedy disregarded the committee and announced the government would change the recommendation for children and pregnant women to get COVID-19 shots.

On Monday, Kennedy ousted all 17 members of the ACIP, saying he would appoint a new group before the next scheduled meeting in late June. The agenda for that meeting has not yet been posted, but a recent federal notice said votes are expected on vaccinations against flu, COVID-19, HPV, RSV and meningococcal bacteria.

A HHS spokesman did not respond to a question about whether there would be only eight ACIP members, or whether more will be named later.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Hey, protein-obsessed Americans: Starbucks sees you. 

On Tuesday, the country’s No. 1 coffee chain announced it was entering the frenzied protein market by testing a new beverage option: a sugar-free vanilla latte topped with banana foam containing 15 grams of protein. 

Starbucks announced its newest product on Tuesday at a company event in Las Vegas, Bloomberg reported. 

The new protein foam will come from a powder (of an as-yet-unspecified source), Starbucks told Bloomberg, and customers will be able to add it to any cold foam flavor. It will be tested at five U.S. locations and comes months after CEO Brian Niccol said, on a first-quarter earnings call, “Innovation is going to be a key piece of the puzzle to keep the brand relevant, to keep the menu relevant.”

Starbucks did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for more details. 

The addition of the test product follows the country’s No. 3 coffee chain, Dutch Bros, offering a line of protein lattes that contain anywhere from 13 to 39 grams of protein. Dunkin’, the No. 2 coffee chain in America, does not (yet) offer protein drinks stateside, but does in the U.K., with a Strong Brew coffee containing 20 grams of protein.

Starbucks also has a protein option in the U.K., as it launched a ready-to-drink protein coffee last year. 

The current protein craze has included people sharing protein Diet Coke concoctions, daily high-protein goals, and recipes for high-protein ice cream on TikTok, where there are over 204 million posts on “high protein” alone. 

Still, while protein is an important part of building muscle and can help support weight loss, many people tend to focus on its consumption and ignore the body’s other needs, especially fiber, nutritionists told Fortune recently. They debunked the message that people aren’t getting enough protein.

“If you’re meeting your caloric needs … you’re meeting your protein needs,” said registered dietitian Abbey Sharp.

Still, Niccol told Axios that the idea for the protein foam arose from observing Starbucks customers in action.

“I was watching people coming to our stores; they would get three shots of espresso over ice,” he said. “And in some cases, they pull their own protein powder out of their bag, or in other cases, they have a protein drink, like a Fairlife, and they’d pour that into their drink. I’m like, ‘Well, wait a second, we can make this experience better for them.’”

He added, “The good news is now I think we’re right on trend, and we can do it I think arguably better than anybody else.”

More on protein:

• Your protein needs change as you get older. Here’s how much you should be eating at every age
• You might be overdoing it on protein and not getting enough of another vital nutrient, dietitians say
• Here’s exactly how much protein you need based on your workout routine

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Sugar is the enemy. Right? Not always, as it turns out—at least according to a new study, which found it depends on how you consume it.

In analyzing data from over half a million people across multiple continents, researchers at Brigham Young University found something unexpected: that sugar consumed through drinks like soda—and even pure fruit juice, which is high in naturally occurring fructose—appeared to be more harmful than sugar that is eaten in foods.

“This is the first study to draw clear dose-response relationships between different sugar sources and Type 2 diabetes risk,” said Karen Della Corte, lead author and BYU nutritional science professor, in a news release. “It highlights why drinking your sugar—whether from soda or juice—is more problematic for health than eating it.”

Food sugar sources showed no such link and, in some cases, were even associated with a lower risk.

The findings, after correcting for body mass index and various lifestyle risk factors, include:

• Sugary drinks are risky. The risk for developing Type 2 diabetes (T2D) increased by 25% with each additional 12 oz daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages—including soft drinks, energy drinks, and sports drinks.
• Fruit juice is also a problem. With each additional 8-oz serving of fruit juice per day—including 100% fruit juice, nectars, and juice drinks—the risk for developing T2D increased by 5%.
• Individual responses may vary. The above risks are “relative but not absolute,” note the researchers, and depend on a person’s baseline risk of developing T2D; for example, if the average person’s baseline risk of developing T2D is about 10%, four sodas a day could raise that to roughly 20%, not 100%.
• Sugary food is in a different category. Comparatively, an intake of 20 grams a day (about 1.6 tablespoons) of total sucrose (table sugar) and total sugar (the sum of all naturally occurring and added sugars in the diet) showed an inverse association with T2D, “hinting at a surprising protective association.”

Why is drinking sugar worse?

It may come down to the differing metabolic effects, explains the news release. 

“Sugar-sweetened beverages and fruit juice supply isolated sugars, leading to a greater glycemic impact that would overwhelm and disrupt liver metabolism thereby increasing liver fat and insulin resistance,” it notes.

But dietary sugars consumed in or added to nutrient-dense foods, such as whole fruits, dairy products, or whole grains, do not cause metabolic overload in the liver. “These embedded sugars,” says the release, “elicit slower blood glucose responses due to accompanying fiber, fats, proteins and other beneficial nutrients.”

A note about fruit juice

While it might be counterintuitive to think that fruit juice could be in the same relative category of harm as soda, the researchers explain why it makes sense. 

Compared to sugars from sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), which provide empty calories, fruit juice, the study says, “can contain beneficial nutrients such as vitamins and phytochemicals; however, our study found that sugar consumption from fruit juice was positively associated with T2D risk. The high sugar content and lack of fiber in fruit juice are similar to SSBs, making it a poor substitute for whole fruits, which provide higher fiber content to support better blood glucose regulation.”

But sugar-sweetened beverages are still worse than sugary foods, as they supply isolated sugars leading to a greater glycemic impact. “Whereas other sources of dietary sugars, particularly when consumed in nutrient-dense foods such as whole fruits, dairy products, or whole grains, may elicit slower blood glucose responses due to accompanying fiber, fats, or proteins,” the researchers note.

Finally, they point out that, while future research is still needed to evaluate the long-term impacts of sugar consumption, the findings suggest the importance of sugar type in determining the association of dietary sugar, “with higher liquid sugar intakes apparently linked to greater harm.”

More on sugar:

• Being obsessed with blood sugar might be a mistake for older adults, research shows
• It’s time to rethink your relationship with sugar. Here’s how
• How much ultraprocessed food is too much? The exact amount that raises your risk of heart disease and cancer

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• A study found that more than 20% of reusable water bottles sampled contained coliform bacteria, or fecal matter. Here’s the best way to clean your water bottle and avoid harmful germs.

Like many people, Carl Behnke regularly totes a water bottle around throughout his day to make sure he stays hydrated. From the office to the gym and back home again, Behnke is rarely without it. But Behnke is also an associate professor in the school of hospitality and tourism management at Purdue University, and when he discovered a “biofilm” on the inside of his water bottle while cleaning it, it got his wheels turning. “I realized I probably wasn’t as diligent about cleaning my water bottle as I should be,” he explains. “And that made me curious: If someone who knows about food safety isn’t diligent, what about everyone else?”

That question led to a study, conducted by Behnke and a cohort of academics and scientists, into how reusable-bottle contamination levels are affected by usage and cleaning behaviors. If you’re regularly drinking water from a reusable bottle, their findings might prompt you to reconsider your own water-bottle handling practices.  

Change your habits

While carrying around a reusable water bottle all day is healthy for you—and good for the environment—neglecting its care could lead to some negative consequences. “Do you wash your dishes after dinner?” asks Behnke. “Yes. But with water bottles, we often take them all over the place and don’t properly clean them.”

You might rinse your bottle out, but if you don’t wash it properly as often as you should, you’d be surprised at what might be growing on the surface and on the inside. The study consisted of two sections of surveys filled out by water-bottle users. The first set of questions centered on the type and age of bottle they used, what they put inside it (water, energy drinks, etcetera), and their frequency of use. The second section focused on cleaning behaviors, from the method to the frequency.

Essentially, said Behnke, typical water-bottle use has all the ingredients to foster bacterial growth: moisture, contamination, and, often, warm temperatures. Dr. Yuriko Fukuta, assistant professor of medicine–infectious diseases at Baylor College of Medicine, agrees. “We’re constantly touching our water bottles with our mouths and hands, so it’s easy to transmit bacteria to them, and then it just grows,” she says. “In some cases this can make you sick, especially if you have a weaker immune system.”

Fukuta suggested that bacteria might include staph or strep. And there’s this, from the cohort study: “More than 20% of our samples had coliform bacteria, which is fecal matter,” says Behnke.

Proper care and cleaning for water bottles

If all that bacteria has you wanting to do right by your water bottle, there are a few dos and don’ts to follow:

• Stick to just water in your bottles to lessen bacterial growth. Energy drinks, tea, or other powders and add-ins will only increase the likelihood of bacterial growth. 
• Keep your water bottles out of spots where they might heat up. “Don’t leave your water bottle inside your car and then drink from it,” says Fukuta. “Warm temperatures and time accelerate the growth of germs.”
• Rinse it after every day’s use, recommends Behnke. 
• Give it a good washing once a week, preferably by hand and with a special bottle brush. When finished, leave it upside down on a drying rack to dry completely—don’t put your bottles away wet.
• Avoid sharing water bottles with anyone else. “If it’s your saliva and just water, it’s not a big deal,” says Behnke. “But if you share, you’re introducing other contaminants.”

The best type of water bottle for mitigating bacterial growth

According to Fukuta, your best bets are bottles with a wide mouth, which make them easy to clean and dry, and those with a built-in straw that keeps your hands away if possible.

If your goal is to keep your water bottle from turning into a germy breeding ground, the simplest approach is Behnke’s, which he changed after conducting the research. “I rinse my bottle once a day,” he says, “and wash it once a week, using good detergent, a bottle brush, and a spray of Clorox bleach.”

A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on Aug. 1, 2024.

More health tips:

• It’s not 8 glasses a day anymore. Here’s how much water you should drink each day
• 5 tips for getting enough water if you struggle to stay hydrated
• Here’s how much water is too much water, according to experts

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

In his confirmation hearings to lead the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya pledged his openness to views that might conflict with his own. “Dissent,” he said, ”is the very essence of science.”

That commitment is being put to the test.

On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”

It says: “We dissent.”

In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly, 92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific review officers put their signatures on the letter — and their careers on the line. An additional 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.

The letter, addressed to Bhattacharya, also was sent to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH. White House spokesman Kush Desai defended the administration’s approach to federal research and said President Donald Trump is focused on restoring a “Gold Standard” of science, not “ideological activism.”

The letter came out a day before Bhattacharya is to testify to a Senate committee about Trump’s proposed budget, opening him to questions about the broadside from declaration signers, and it stirred Democrats on a House panel to ask the Republican chair for hearings on the matter.

Confronting a ‘culture of fear’

The signers went public in the face of a “culture of fear and suppression” they say Trump’s administration has spread through the federal civil service. “We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources,” the declaration says.

Bhattacharya responded to the declaration by saying it “has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months,” such as suggestions that NIH has ended international collaboration.

“Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive,” he said in a statement. “We all want the NIH to succeed.”

Named for the agency’s headquarters location in Maryland, the Bethesda Declaration details upheaval in the world’s premier public health research institution over the course of mere months.

It addresses the termination of 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in clinical trials or leaving them with unmonitored device implants.

In one case, an NIH-supported study of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in Haiti had to be stopped, ceasing antibiotic treatment mid-course for patients.

In a number of cases, trials that were mostly completed were rendered useless without the money to finish and analyze the work, the letter says. “Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million,” it says, “it wastes $4 million.”

The mask comes off

Jenna Norton, who oversees health disparity research at the agency’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, recently appeared at a forum by Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., to talk about what’s happening at the NIH.

At the event, she masked to conceal her identity. Now the mask is off. She was a lead organizer of the declaration.

“I want people to know how bad things are at NIH,” Norton told The Associated Press.

The signers said they modeled their indictment after Bhattacharya’s Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, when he was a professor at Stanford University Medical School.

His declaration drew together likeminded infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists who dissented from what they saw as excessive COVID-19 lockdown policies and felt ostracized by the larger public health community that pushed those policies, including the NIH.

“He is proud of his statement, and we are proud of ours,” said Sarah Kobrin, a branch chief at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute who signed the Bethesda Declaration.

Cancer research is sidelined

As chief of the Health Systems and Interventions Research Branch, Kobrin provides scientific oversight of researchers across the country who’ve been funded by the cancer institute or want to be. Cuts in personnel and money have shifted her work from improving cancer care research to what she sees as minimizing its destruction. “So much of it is gone — my work,” she said.

The 21-year NIH veteran said she signed because she didn’t want to be “a collaborator” in the political manipulation of biomedical science.

Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral fellow with the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, also signed the declaration. “We have a saying in basic science,” he said. “You go and become a physician if you want to treat thousands of patients. You go and become a researcher if you want to save billions of patients.

“We are doing the research that is going to go and create the cures of the future,” he added. But that won’t happen, he said, if Trump’s Republican administration prevails with its searing grant cuts.

The NIH employees interviewed by the AP emphasized they were speaking for themselves and not for their institutes nor the NIH.

Dissenters range across the breadth of NIH

Employees from all 27 NIH institutes and centers gave their support to the declaration. Most who signed are intimately involved with evaluating and overseeing extramural research grants.

The letter asserts “NIH trials are being halted without regard to participant safety” and the agency is shirking commitments to trial participants who “braved personal risk to give the incredible gift of biological samples, understanding that their generosity would fuel scientific discovery and improve health.”

The Trump administration has gone at public health research on several fronts, both directly, as part of its broad effort to root out diversity, equity and inclusion values throughout the bureaucracy, and as part of its drive to starve some universities of federal money.

At the White House, Desai said Americans “have lost confidence in our increasingly politicized healthcare and research apparatus that has been obsessed with DEI and COVID, which the majority of Americans moved on from years ago.”

A blunt ax swings

This has forced “indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes for ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science,” the declaration says.

Some NIH employees have previously come forward in televised protests to air grievances, and many walked out of Bhattacharya’s town hall with staff. The declaration is the first cohesive effort to register agency-wide dismay with the NIH’s direction.

The dissenters remind Bhattacharya in their letter of his oft-stated ethic that academic freedom must be a lynchpin in science.

With that in place, he said in a statement in April, “NIH scientists can be certain they are afforded the ability to engage in open, academic discourse as part of their official duties and in their personal capacities without risk of official interference, professional disadvantage or workplace retaliation.”

Now it will be seen whether that’s enough to protect those NIH employees challenging the Trump administration and him.

“There’s a book I read to my kids, and it talks about how you can’t be brave if you’re not scared,” said Norton, who has three young children. “I am so scared about doing this, but I am trying to be brave for my kids because it’s only going to get harder to speak up.

“Maybe I’m putting my kids at risk by doing this,” she added. “And I’m doing it anyway because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday removed every member of a scientific committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to use vaccines and pledged to replace them with his own picks.

Major physicians and public health groups criticized the move to oust all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Kennedy, who was one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine activists before becoming the nation’s top health official, has not said who he would appoint to the panel, but said it would convene in just two weeks in Atlanta.

Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the entire current roster of committee members were Biden appointees.

“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”

When reached by phone, the panel’s now-former chair — Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot of Vanderbilt University — declined to comment. But another panel member, Noel Brewer at the University of North Carolina, said he and other committee members received an email late Monday afternoon that said their services on the committee had been terminated but gave no reason.

“I’d assumed I’d continue serving on the committee for my full term,” said Brewer, who joined the panel last summer.

Brewer is a behavioral scientist whose research examines why people get vaccinated and ways to improve vaccination coverage. Whether people get vaccinated is largely influenced by what their doctors recommend, and doctors have been following ACIP guidance.

“Up until today, ACIP recommendations were the gold standard for what insurers should pay for, what providers should recommend, and what the public should look to,” he said.

But Kennedy already took the unusual step of changing COVID-19 recommendations without first consulting the committee — a move criticized by doctors’ groups and public health advocates.

“It’s unclear what the future holds,” Brewer said. “Certainly provider organizations have already started to turn away from ACIP.”

Kennedy said the committee members had too many conflicts of interest. Currently, committee members are required to declare any potential such conflicts, as well as business interests, that arise during their tenure. They also must disclose any possible conflicts at the start of each public meeting.

But Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Kennedy’s actions were based on false conflict-of-interest claims and set “a dangerous and unprecedented action that makes our families less safe” by potentially reducing vaccine access for millions of people.

“Make no mistake: Politicizing the ACIP as Secretary Kennedy is doing will undermine public trust under the guise of improving it,” he said in a statement. “We’ll look back at this as a grave mistake that sacrificed decades of scientific rigor, undermined public trust, and opened the door for fringe theories rather than facts.”

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called Kennedy’s mass ouster “a coup.”

“It’s not how democracies work. It’s not good for the health of the nation,” Benjamin told The Associated Press.

Benjamin said the move raises real concerns about whether future committee members will be viewed as impartial. He added that Kennedy is going against what he told lawmakers and the public, and the public health association plans to watch Kennedy “like a hawk.”

“He is breaking a promise,” Benjamin said. “He said he wasn’t going to do this.”

Dr. Bruce A. Scott, president of the American Medical Association, called the committee a trusted source of science- and data-driven advice and said Kennedy’s move, coupled with declining vaccination rates across the country, will help drive an increase in vaccine-preventable diseases.

“Today’s action to remove the 17 sitting members of ACIP undermines that trust and upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives,” Scott said in a statement.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who had expressed reservations about Kennedy’s nomination but voted to install him as the nation’s health secretary nonetheless, said he had spoken with Kennedy moments after the announcement.

“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy said in a social media post. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

The committee had been in a state of flux since Kennedy took over. Its first meeting this year had been delayed when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services abruptly postponed its February meeting.

During Kennedy’s confirmation, Cassidy had expressed concerns about preserving the committee, saying he had sought assurances that Kennedy would keep the panel’s current vaccine recommendations.

The webpage that featured the committee’s members was deleted Monday evening, shortly after Kennedy’s announcement.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Hundreds of workers at the National Institutes of Health on Monday openly protested the Trump administration’s cuts to the agency and consequences for human lives, writing in a sharply worded letter that its actions are causing “a dramatic reduction in life-saving research.”

In a June 9 letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, NIH workers said they felt “compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.”

“For staff across the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe,” they said.

Eric Harkleroad/KFF Health News

The letter is an extraordinary rebuke of the Trump administration’s actions against the NIH, which include: terminating hundreds of grants funding scientific and biomedical research; firing more than 1,000 employees this year; and moving to end billions in funds to partner institutions overseas, a move current and former NIH workers say will harm research on rare cancers and infectious diseases, as well as research that aims to minimize tobacco use and related chronic illnesses, among other areas.

Some NIH workers signed their names publicly, openly daring to challenge a president who has sought to purge the government of employees he views as disloyal to him. Others signed anonymously.

“It’s about the harm that these policies are having on research participants and American public health, and global public health,” said Jenna Norton, who works at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, one of NIH’s 27 institutes. “There are research participants who generously decide to donate their time and literal pieces of their body, with the understanding that that service is going to help advance research for diseases that they are living with and help the next person who comes along with that disease.”

“These policies are preventing us from delivering on the promise we made to them and honoring the commitment that they made, and putting them at risk,” she said.

The workers wrote that they hope Bhattacharya welcomes their criticisms given his vows to prioritize “academic freedom” and to respect dissenting views as leader of the NIH, which is based in Bethesda, Maryland. Its authors called it the “Bethesda Declaration” — a play on the controversial “Great Barrington Declaration” that Bhattacharya co-authored during the covid-19 pandemic.

Bhattacharya’s declaration advocated against lockdown measures and proposed that widespread immunity against covid could be achieved by allowing healthy people to get infected with the virus and instituting protective measures only for medically vulnerable people. It was criticized at the time by Francis Collins, then-director of the NIH, who called Bhattacharya and his co-authors “fringe epidemiologists,” according to emails the American Institute for Economic Research obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In their letter, NIH workers demanded that Bhattacharya restore grants that were “delayed or terminated for political reasons.” Those grants funded a range of projects, including those addressing Alzheimer’s disease, ways to boost vaccination rates, and efforts to combat health disparities or health misinformation.

“Academic freedom should not be applied selectively based on political ideology. To achieve political aims, NIH has targeted multiple universities with indiscriminate grant terminations, payment freezes for ongoing research, and blanket holds on awards regardless of the quality, progress, or impact of the science,” the NIH workers wrote.

The funding terminations, they said, “throw away years of hard work and millions of dollars,” “risk participant health,” and “damage hard-earned public trust, counter to your stated goal to improve trust in NIH.”

In an emailed comment, Bhattacharya said, “The Bethesda Declaration has some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months, including the continuing support of the NIH for international collaboration. Nevertheless, respectful dissent in science is productive. We all want the NIH to succeed.”

The NIH’s nearly $48 billion budget makes it the world’s largest public funder of scientific research. Its work has led to countless scientific discoveries that have helped improve health and save lives around the globe. But it hasn’t been without controversies, including instances of research misconduct and not effectively monitoring grant awards and the related research.

Researchers and some states have sued NIH and HHS over the grant cuts. An April 3 deposition by NIH official Michelle Bulls said Rachel Riley, a senior adviser at HHS who is part of the Department of Government Efficiency created by executive order, provided NIH officials lists of grants to terminate and language for termination notices. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, led DOGE through May.

Norton has worked at the NIH as a federal employee or contractor for about a decade. She said the current administration’s policies are “definitely unethical and very likely illegal,” listing a string of developments  in recent months. They include terminating studies early and putting participating patients at risk because they have had to abruptly stop taking medications, and holding up research that would predominantly or exclusively recruit participants from minority races and ethnicities, who have historically been underrepresented in medical research.

“They’re saying that doing studies exclusively on Black Americans to try to develop interventions that work for that population, or interventions that are culturally tailored to Hispanic-Latino populations — that that kind of research can’t go forward is extremely problematic,” Norton said. “And, as a matter of fact, studies that over-recruit from white people have been allowed to go forward.”

The NIH workers also demanded that Bhattacharya reinstate workers who were dismissed under recent mass firings and allow research that is done in partnership with institutions in foreign countries “to continue without disruption.” The NIH works with organizations around the globe to combat major public health issues, including types of cancer, tobacco-related illnesses, and HIV.

In addition to the firing of probationary workers, NIH fired 1,200 civil servants as part of a rapid “reduction in force” at federal health agencies. During a May 19 town hall meeting with NIH staff, a recording of which was obtained by KFF Health News, Bhattacharya said the decisions about RIFs “happened before I got here. I actually don’t have any transparency into how those decisions were made.”

He started at NIH on April 1, the day many workers at NIH and other agencies were told they were fired. Other workers have been fired since Bhattacharya took the helm — nearly all the National Cancer Institute’s communications staff were fired in early May, three former employees told KFF Health News.

The letter is the latest salvo in a growing movement by scientists and others against the Trump administration’s actions. In addition to in-person protests outside HHS headquarters and elsewhere, some former employees are organizing patients to get involved.

Peter Garrett, who led the National Cancer Institute’s communications work, has created an advocacy nonprofit called Patient Action for Cancer Research. The aim is to engage patients “in the conversation and federal funding and science policymaking,” he said in an interview.

His group aims to get patients and their relatives to speak out about how federal cancer research affects them directly, he said — a “guerrilla lobbying” effort to put the issue squarely before members of Congress. Garrett said he retired early from the cancer institute because of concerns about political interference.

Career officials routinely work under both Republican and Democratic presidents. It is par for the course for their priorities and assignments to evolve when a new president, Cabinet secretaries, and other political appointees take over. Usually, those changes occur without much protest.

This time, workers said the upheaval and harm done to the NIH is so extensive that they felt they had no choice but to protest.

In 11 years at NIH, Norton said, “I’ve never seen anything that comes anywhere near this.”

In the June 9 letter, the workers said, “Many have raised these concerns to NIH leadership, yet we remain pressured to implement harmful measures.”

“It’s not about our jobs,” said one NIH worker who signed the letter anonymously. “It is about humanity. It is about the future.”

Senior correspondent Arthur Allen contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Taurine, most commonly known as a main ingredient in energy drinks like Red Bull, is also a favorite supplement of biohackers: Bryan Johnson is a proponent, and includes it as an ingredient in his proprietary Longevity Mix. On TikTok, taurine receives accolades for being “the most underrated supplement in the world” and “the magic pill you’ve been looking for.”

Much of that was based on 2023 research which found that it improved multiple age-related traits and extended lifespan in worms and mice, despite there being no solid clinical data to show it had the same benefits in humans. 

Now, a new study published in Science has found flaws with how that research looked at the data—and that taurine levels either went up or remained unchanged with age in humans and two other mammals, suggesting that declining taurine is not a universal biomarker of aging.

“We clearly show that there’s no need for taurine supplementation as long as you have a healthy diet,” co-author Rafael de Cabo, a gerontologist at the National Institute on Aging, told Nature. 

What prompted the research, he explained in a National Institute of Health news release, was the recent research article on taurine, which “led us to evaluate this molecule as a potential biomarker of aging in multiple species.”

The previous study on taurine was cross-sectional in design, meaning that it collected data from animals of different ages at a single point in time; the new research took samples from the same individuals over time.

They used data from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging to examine taurine concentrations in blood collected from humans (ages 26 and over), rhesus monkeys, and mice, finding that the concentrations increased in all age groups (except in male mice, where it remained unchanged). They observed similar age-related taurine concentrations in data from two other studies. 

“On the basis of these findings, we conclude that low circulating taurine concentrations are unlikely to serve as a good biomarker of aging,” the researchers wrote in an article about the findings published in Science. 

The results, they note, “yield a more complex picture” than previously thought, and the effectiveness of taurine supplements for longevity likely depends on a range of individual factors.   

Below, all you need to know about taurine.

What is taurine?

Taurine (2-aminoethane-sulfonic acid) is an amino acid—an organic compound used to make proteins, nine of which are essential. Taurine, though, is considered “conditionally essential,” meaning that your body makes enough on its own, and it’s only in certain extreme conditions (such as with heart disease or kidney failure) that the body’s demand for them exceeds the ability to produce them. 

It plays a significant part in heart health, brain health, insulin sensitivity, electrolyte balance, hearing, and immune system regulation. 

Most animal-based food sources contain taurine, including beef, poultry, shellfish, eggs, and dairy. Vegan sources include seaweed and red algae, or supplements containing synthetic taurine that has been made in a lab.

What is taurine good for?

Taurine supports brain function, metabolism, vision, and immune system—with potential benefits, depending on more research, for heart function, diabetes management, and exercise performance due to its possibly increasing oxygen intake, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

But regarding supplementation, registered dietitian Julia Zumpano told the Cleveland Clinic, “For the most part, people are either consuming enough protein or your body is adjusting to make sure you’re getting what you need by creating and making taurine out of the other amino acids.” That includes vegans, she said.

“Now, if someone got tested and they were low on taurine or any of the other amino acids,” Zumpano added, “then I may recommend a supplementation trial, or a diet change that would better support those amino acids.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Adjustable weights from BowFlex are being recalled. Over 3.8 million units are impacted by the recall. More than 100 people have been injured by the weights so far.

Working out with BowFlex adjustable dumbbells? You might want to switch to another method for a while.

Over 3.8 million BowFlex 552 and 1090 adjustable dumbbells have been recalled, according to an announcement from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. That follows hundreds of reports of the plates dislodging during use. That has resulted in over 100 injuries such as concussions, abrasions, broken toes, or contusions.

The products were sold in stores, including Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Johnson Fitness & Wellness, and online on Amazon and the BowFlex website for between $200 and $800. The weights have been in stores since 2004.

Consumers are encouraged to stop using them immediately and return them for a refund.

Johnson Health Tech Trading, which sells the weights under the BowFlex name, is working with the CPSC to recall the products, including the ones sold under Nautilus, the former owner of the BowFlex brand.

To facilitate that, consumers will be sent a prepaid shipping label to return the handle and base for each returned dumbbell. Johnson Health Tech Trading plans to contact all known purchasers directly.

The black dumbbells were sold in pairs and single units. The 552 model adjusts from five to 52.5 pounds, while the model 1090 ranges from 10 to 90 pounds.

Recalls of exercise equipment by the CPSC are fairly rare. The most recent significant recall came in 2023, when Peloton was forced to recall 2 million exercise bikes, when it was discovered the seat could break during use, posing the risk of possible injury.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Over 300 researchers from the National Institutes of Health have published a letter rebuking its director and the Trump administration for deep, politically motivated cuts to research funding, as well as disrupting global collaboration, undermining scientific review processes, and laying off critical NIH staff.

"We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources," the letter states, linking to independent news reports on the harms of NIH trials being halted and that the administration's cuts to the agency have cost, rather than saved, taxpayer money. Since January, the Trump administration has terminated 2,100 NIH research grants totaling around $9.5 billion and $2.6 billion in contracts, the letter notes. The researchers also accuse the administration of creating "a culture of fear and suppression" among federal researchers.

The letter describes the researchers' action as "dissent" from the administration's policies, quoting NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya in his congressional confirmation hearing as saying, "Dissent is the very essence of science."

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Like his "White Lotus" character Saxon Ratliff, Patrick Schwarzenegger is a lover of smoothies determined to match his parents' stratospheric success.

While his arrogant and shallow character rubbed many viewers the wrong way, Schwarzenegger, however, is nothing but charming as we chat on the phone while he gets his steps in around LA. "I walk and talk," he explains.

I've discovered there are parts of Schwarzenegger's routine that Saxon would be positively allergic to, such as heading to the beach with his fiancée in the morning to say prayers and share a moment of gratitude.

For the latest installment of Business Insider's "5-9" series, which Schwarzenegger took part in to promote Venmo's new debit card, the 31-year-old actor shared how else he spends the hours of the day when he's not working.

What time do you usually get up, and what's your morning routine?

I've gone to a new state or country every week since "The White Lotus" came out, so it's been a whirlwind of not having a routine and waking up at the most random times.

This is my first full week in LA since the start of the year, and it's been great. I got up today at 6.15 a.m. — I never set an alarm clock, but I always wake up around 6 a.m. My fiancée and I went on a walk for our coffee and then down to the beach to say our gratitude and prayers.

Usually, I'd work out after, but I didn't today as my fiancée had to go to the airport. So we made some breakfast, I had a sauna, and then went to the office.

What do you have for breakfast?

This morning, I had egg bites and Greek yogurt with berries, which is what I have on most days: eggs, Greek yogurt, fruit, or oatmeal. I try to get 40 to 50 grams of protein and some sort of carbs and fat.

Do you eat before or after working out, or both?

Afterward, if I'm working out really early in the morning, but sometimes I'll have something light before, like some fruit and nuts or peanut butter and banana.

Much has been made of your character's love of smoothies on "The White Lotus." Are you a fan?

Oh yes, I am. I used to drink smoothies all the time. Now I don't drink them as much, but I do love them. This conversation is actually making me want to go get a smoothie.

If I'm gearing up for a role or a project and I need to gain weight, then I will bring in the smoothies because they help me get a lot of calories quickly. So I do love a peanut butter banana smoothie.

The best combo.

10,000 steps and recovering in the sauna

Tell me more about your approach to working out.

I work out in the mornings when I can and try to get my 10,000 steps in too.

Are you walking now?

I am. I walk and talk. I try to do five days of lifting a week, and some sort of cardio. I stay pretty active.

Do you follow a particular workout split?

I usually do a push day, pull day, and leg day, or a more cardio-focused full-body day. Sometimes I do typical weight training, other days more high-intensity interval style.

What are your recovery essentials?

Food, sleep, and hydration are the main things. I love the sauna, the jacuzzi, and massages, but they're less important.

When you're not working, how do you relax and have fun?

Working out is fun for me. It is part of my daily life and what I like to do, and I feel better. And the same with my eating.

I also like going on walks, hanging with my friends and family, hiking, biking, and watching movies and TV shows. I love cooking and baking and finding new coffee shops, and I use my new Venmo debit card for all of it.

Martinis and early nights

What do you like to have for dinner, and who cooks?

I would get in trouble if I said I always cook dinner. Abby cooks most of the time. I cook breakfast pretty much every morning, although she made the egg bites today.

We go out frequently, but try to cook as much as possible when we're in town because we're not often here.

What's your favorite thing to cook?

We cook sweet potatoes every night. We love Japanese sweet potatoes. We also make a lot of eggs and pancakes. Abby makes a really good chicken salad. She makes a bunch of good stuff for me.

Lucky you.

I know, seriously.

So what's your ideal evening when you're at home?

Well, last night Abby and I went and did a workout together. We did this hot Pilates class, and then we picked up some food, made dinner, had a little dessert, went on a walk afterward for the sunset, then watched a movie. If it's a date night, we go out, get some cocktails, and have fun.

Do you have a favorite cocktail?

I've been on a martini kick in recent years.

Nice. Do you have a nighttime routine?

No, I don't really. I kind of just get in bed, and I'm usually pretty tired from the day. I try not to watch TV in the bedroom, and I fall asleep pretty easily at around 10 p.m. I try to get eight hours.

I suppose when you're so active, you get into bed and you're exhausted.

Yeah, exactly … I'm always out in the sun and walking around, and I sleep better.

Smart wearables company Ultrahuman has launched a new device that monitors changes in home environments that could impact your health. Ultrahuman says its $549 Home gadget tracks air quality, temperature, noise, light, and humidity, helping users optimize the climate within their homes to improve breathing and sleeping habits.

The Ultrahuman Home resembles a Mac Mini in terms of size and appearance. Its air quality features monitor levels of fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and chemical pollutants like acetone and formaldehyde. The device also tracks noise levels and various types of light exposure, including UVA, UVB, UVC, blue, red, green, and infrared, to help users “align home lighting with their body’s natural rhythm,” according to Ultrahuman.

Users who have an Ultrahuman Ring wearable can pair it with the Home device to unlock an “UltraSync” feature that suggests how environmental data may be impacting heart rate, sleep, and recovery patterns. For example, Ultrahuman says that UltraSync can suggest if the user was woken during the night by elevated noise or light levels.

We should note that the Ultrahuman Home won’t actually address the concerns it detects. The device is equipped with sensors and microphones for monitoring environmental changes via a mobile app, but it doesn’t include features like a built-in dehumidifier or air purification, and it doesn’t offer any way to integrate it into smart home ecosystems. There’s no recurring subscription to pay, and Ultrahuman says the “data and insights are with the user, always.” 

Still, $549 is expensive for a device that doesn’t actually do anything — except maybe increase paranoia —  unlike smart indoor air quality sensors available from Ikea, Amazon, SwitchBot and others.

Notorious anti-vaccine advocate David Geier has begun working at the US Department of Health and Human Services and is seeking access to sensitive vaccine safety data that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had previously barred him from accessing—at least twice—according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal.

Geier and his father, Mark Geier, who died in March, are known for peddling the thoroughly debunked falsehood that vaccines cause autism, publishing a long list of dubious articles in low-quality journals that push the idea. In particular, the two have blamed the mercury-containing vaccine preservative, thimerosal, despite numerous studies finding no link. Thimerosal was largely abandoned from vaccine formulations in 2001 out of an abundance of caution.

In 2011, an investigation by the Maryland State Board of Physicians found that the Geiers were misdiagnosing autistic children and treating them with potent hormone therapies in a treatment they dubbed the "Lupron Protocol." Mark Geier was stripped of his medical license. David Geier, who has no medical or scientific background and holds only a bachelor's degree, was disciplined for practicing medicine without a license.

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• My maiden name is Lee Kelly, and people used my names interchangeably.
• I was named after my maternal grandfather and given his last name as my middle name.
• When I got engaged, I was sure I'd be taking my future husband's name.

"Kelly Lee!" chirped my 9th-grade algebra teacher during roll call, just as she had every day of the school year. But this time, a giggle rippled through the class.

When Ms. Wade — a woman who brooked no nonsense — demanded to be let in on the joke, a classmate blurted out, "That's not her name!"

My name was an honor and a headache

My maiden name is Lee Kelly. I used to joke that I had two last names and two first names because people used my two names interchangeably. Since Lee is traditionally a man's name, and I am not a man, people would look at me, see my name, and automatically flip my name around.

The male name was intentional. My parents named me after my maternal grandfather, who was sick when I was born and died when I was a year old. Carrying his name was an honor and a pain in my daily life. And I couldn't use my middle name to help bail me out. It was Pallardy, my grandfather's last name, giving me a full name that was all surnames. My family takes honorary naming very literally.

So I was stuck being Kelly Lee.

Kelly Lee could pop up anywhere — in school, mail, phone calls, or other interactions with strangers. Sometimes, I corrected the error. But a lot of the time, I didn't even bother. Even though the mistake drove me crazy, it didn't seem worth the energy to call out the other person.

It got to the point that I responded to "Kelly" just as readily as I responded to "Lee." The only thing that would end my name duality was a legal name change.

I knew I would take my husband's last name

When my husband and I got engaged, I was 100% ready to take his name. I had no qualms about shedding my family identity. There were no feminist hesitations about the patriarchal expectation to subvert my identity for my husband's. I wasn't going to be Kelly Lee anymore.

My husband's last name is O'Connell, and it was perfect. It wasn't weird or unattractive. When paired with my first name, it would have no unfortunate associations or sounds (think Lee Oswald or Lee Roy). And there was no way anyone would confuse it for a first name. I would never have to correct anyone about my name again. I would never be O'Connell Lee.

No one gets it wrong now

In the 14 years I've been married, I haven't had to correct someone about my name once. I am always Lee, never Kelly. My ears don't prick up when I hear "Kelly" anymore, and I don't feel compelled to answer to any name besides my own.

Strangely, I received a letter addressed to Kelley Lee O'Connell two years ago. When I took my husband's name, I followed the convention of making my maiden name my middle name, mostly so I had a female name somewhere in there. As soon as I saw that letter, I texted a photo to the high school friend who sat next to me in algebra, the one person who jokingly calls me Kelly Lee to this day. "She does exist!" I exclaimed.

Weighed against all the problems in the world, having people get my name wrong is pretty insignificant. It was a minor irritation that never meaningfully impeded my day.

What bothered me about it was that so many people were willing to initiate an interaction or a relationship with me based on an assumption of who I was or who they thought I should be. And that assumption was wrong. It would've been more refreshing and more generous to have them get curious about who I am, to explore whether my reality challenged their assumptions.

Now that it's behind me, it's easy to consider my double name as a quirky blip from my past, compared to my present ease of always being Lee and never Kelly. People occasionally still assume I'm a man, so you can't win everything.

• I'm a digital nomad and met my partner in Argentina two years ago.
• We talked daily for the next eight months, and I decided to return to Argentina in 2024.
• We fell in love and are building a life together in an unconventional way, but it works for us.

When I started traveling full-time almost four years ago, I promised myself I'd go on dates, but I also knew that a long-term relationship was out of the question.

As a digital nomad and freelance writer, I get the unique opportunity to travel all over the world and write about my experiences. It's truly a dream job, but sacrifices and tradeoffs must always be made — like relationships.

How could I develop a meaningful connection if I only spend one or two months in a city at a time? Even if I did find someone I wanted to pursue a future with, I knew I was unwilling to change my lifestyle. Full-time travel is a dream that I can't give up.

All of that changed when I met my partner.

I found love unexpectedly in Argentina

I spent the first few months of 2023 in Argentina, one of my favorite countries in the world.

In February, I received a message on Grindr, which is notoriously known as a gay hookup app with a low success rate for relationships. Still, I hoped for something more, and I figured if I was on the app, there must also be a couple of other people like me out there.

Over the next few days, I started chatting with this person, who introduced himself as Lauti. He asked me out on a date, but unfortunately, I was leaving Buenos Aires to go to a different city in Argentina the following morning. I told him I'd be back in six weeks, and we decided to meet then.

The day after I flew back to Buenos Aires, we went on our first date, and something clicked. For the next three weeks, we embarked on a whirlwind romance and were virtually inseparable.

Then, I packed up and flew to Mexico, and even though we liked each other, I knew nothing could realistically come from it. We decided to take things one day at a time and not put a label on anything — just see what happened while I was traveling.

Our relationship blossomed as I continued to travel

As the days went on, the texting and phone calls continued. After Mexico, I flew to Europe for the summer, and even with five or six hour time differences, we found ourselves prioritizing each other and making space for video call dates, life updates, and deeper conversations. Despite the distance, things got more serious month after month, and I realized I was essentially in a long-distance relationship.

So, I planned my return to Argentina for January 2024 — eight months after I left. We finally put a label on what we both felt, and a few weeks later, he told me he loved me for the first time. We faced yet another goodbye in April when I left for Peru. Luckily, this period of long-distance was short since he came to visit a month later for his birthday in May.

Then, we went seven months without seeing each other while I was off exploring Europe, Asia, and Australia. He came to Colombia in December 2024 for our first holiday season together, which was every bit as magical as we hoped it would be. I returned to Argentina at the end of January this year, and we've lived together for the past four months.

Luckily, our time apart seems to be getting shorter each year. I'll leave Argentina in a few weeks, and we will be apart for just three months.

Navigating an unconventional relationship

Each long-distance period has its challenges. During the first stint, we were still getting to know each other, which made communication tricky. The second time, we were much better at communicating, but it was more challenging in its own way. I often don't know where I'll live in a few months' time, so it's impossible to know when we will be together again.

Even so, we're embracing the challenges of a long-distance relationship. How do we prioritize seeing each other? How do we balance two different cultures? How can we accomplish our own goals while still growing together? These questions don't have simple answers, and they are constantly evolving.

Some aspects of our relationship progressed quickly, while others have been harder to nurture due to my lifestyle. However, this has become our normal, making us appreciate our time together so much more. In our time apart, we still prioritize each other, but also spend time planning our future and growing individually.

I had an idea of what a relationship was supposed to be, and I thought that a nomadic lifestyle would be antithetical to that ideal. I've realized there isn't a perfect relationship, and I can accomplish two things simultaneously: a loving relationship and an unwavering desire to see every corner of the world. I don't have to sacrifice one to achieve the other, but I must be intentional with my time.