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:
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.”
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:
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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.
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.
If all that bacteria has you wanting to do right by your water bottle, there are a few dos and don’ts to follow:
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.
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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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.”
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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.
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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."
© Getty | Andrew Harnik
Jeff Kravitz/Getty, BI
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.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
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.
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.
John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images
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.
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.
Fabio Lovino/HBO
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.
© Getty | Tasos Katopodis
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"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 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.
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.
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.
Courtesy of the author
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.
Courtesy of Harrison Pierce
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 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.
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.
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.
Megan Meyer
In the summer of 2024, Megan Meyer and her ex-husband, Tyler, were stressed.
It had been an eventful year for the former spouses. They split in September 2023 after three years of marriage and had to figure out how to co-parent their daughter.
A few months after the separation, Meyer reconnected with her high school sweetheart, Michael Flores. Soon, they were expecting a son together.
Meyer, 25, Flores, 26, and Tyler, 25, whose last name was omitted to protect his and Meyer's daughter's privacy, all agreed to settle in South Carolina to raise their children. Meyer, a stay-at-home mom and content creator, has family in the state, and Tyler found work as a police officer. Meanwhile, Flores works in the tree industry.
When they moved to South Carolina, Tyler lived about 30 minutes away from Flores and Meyer, who eventually wed in June 2024. He saw his daughter often, but the financial and emotional realities of the move were weighing on all three parents.
As they adjusted to their new life, Meyer thought of a way to solve their problems: she, her husband, and her ex-husband would live under one roof.
The financial strain of moving and the cost of living in a new area led Meyer to consider alternative housing situations for her family.
"Every time my ex and I would exchange our daughter, we would just constantly be complaining like, 'Oh, it's so expensive,'" Meyer told Business Insider, pointing to day-to-day costs like gas and rent.
Meyer's son was due at the end of the summer in 2024, and she knew life would only get more expensive when he arrived. Meanwhile, Meyer's daughter was struggling with her parents' separation.
"The transition was really hard on our daughter," she said. "She had just turned 2, and the back and forth was just so hard for her."
As she thought more about their situation — and saw that Flores and Tyler were getting along surprisingly well — Meyer decided to approach Tyler about merging their households.
Megan Meyer
"I finally was just like, 'What if we all got a place together?'" Meyer said. She was worried that the thought of living with her and her new husband might upset Tyler, but to her surprise, he was thinking the same thing.
"He was like, 'You know what, I wanted to mention something about this last week, but I was scared that you would get mad,'" Meyer told BI.
By July 2024, the three had signed a lease on a three-bedroom, three-bathroom house, which BI was able to review. Nearly a year later, Meyer said living with her ex and her husband has been the best thing for her family.
Meyer had some initial anxiety about sharing a home with her ex when they first moved back in together.
"I was 8 months pregnant at the time, so I was like, 'Am I going to be emotionally stable enough for this?'" she told BI. "But it actually ended up being so much easier than I had ever imagined."
Tyler works a two-days-on, two-days-off schedule, and when he isn't working, the three function like one family unit. Meyer said it's "pretty laid back," and they now "coexist as one big family."
"On the days that he's off, we'll all usually eat meals together, and then we'll either all go to the pool together or go on walks together," Meyer said. "Sometimes, my ex will just take my daughter somewhere, and my husband and I will have some time to hang out at the house."
Tyler's schedule also ensures Meyer still gets one-on-one time with her new husband, who was a huge source of comfort for her through the transition.
"My husband is just like my safe space, so even if my ex did something that ticked me off, my husband would cool me down," she said.
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♬ original sound - notbrotherhusbands
It also helps that Flores and Tyler have developed a close relationship.
The pair are unlikely friends, as Meyer documents on their shared TikTok account, jokingly called "notbrotherhusbands." Still, Tyler does refer to Flores as his brother, as seen in one video.
When it comes to raising their kids, all three parents are hands-on with both children. Tyler doesn't parent Flores and Meyer's son, but he has babysat him several times.
Meyer said her daughter is thriving now that she's living with both parents, and having her two children living together has also been a big benefit.
"I love seeing our daughter become a big sister, and having her around all the time has been great for my son," Meyer said. "He's starting to play and engage with her more, and it's been really great just seeing that bond."
Meyer said the living situation works so well for her, Tyler, and Flores because they all did substantial "personal growth" before moving into the same house.
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"There was a lot of work that was put into mending our co-parent relationship, healing ourselves of the reasons that we had split in the first place," Meyer said, adding that they addressed any "resentment" and "bitterness" before the move.
The three of them hope to continue living on the same property until their daughter is an adult. They plan to stay in their rental home for another year and are saving money to buy a house with land in 2026.
They plan to eventually have a family compound, and they envision Tyler living in a tiny home while they build him a full, separate house.
"If Tyler were to get a tiny home on the property, our daughter probably wouldn't have a room there, so he could come and go from the 'main house' as often as he wanted," Meyer said.
"A family compound is the goal," she added.
Courtesy of Melissa Noble
My parents recently celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary. They met while traveling through Spain in 1971 and married six months later.
My mom has always said it hasn't all been rainbows and butterflies. But they've worked through the hard times and persevered with their marriage, even when things have been tough.
Though I'd always secretly been terrified of commitment, I was also lucky enough to have their solid example of what a strong marriage could look like, and I married Sam — the love of my life — in 2015. The lessons I've learned by watching my parents' marriage have made it all the easier to walk in their footsteps, and now Sam and I have been happily married for a decade.
Aside from their shared passion for travel, my parents are opposites in so many ways. My mom loves art and languages, going to the theatre, and watching movies.
My dad, on the other hand, has always enjoyed playing and watching sports, collecting stamps, and doing crosswords. In his 50s, he randomly decided he wanted to run a marathon and ended up doing four. My mom has never run a day in her life.
However, they share a few fundamental values that have always kept them on the same page: a love of learning and acquiring general knowledge, a belief in seizing the day and making the most out of each moment, the importance of keeping the flame alive, and the belief that family always comes first, no matter what.
My husband and I are also polar opposites in many ways, but like my parents, our core values are aligned.
While I was growing up, my folks often had heated arguments. Sometimes, there would even be periods where they weren't speaking together because they needed to cool off.
However, my parents always resolved the issue with respect and open communication. Through watching them, I learned that conflict in a long-term relationship is unavoidable and normal. There are bound to be differences in opinion, values, needs, and wants, but it's how you handle and resolve the conflict that matters.
My parents have always made a habit of giving each other space — space to pursue hobbies they enjoy, space to travel independently, and time alone to recharge when needed.
My mom is hugely independent. During my childhood, she worked hard, saved up, and took my sisters and me on international trips while my dad stayed home and continued working. She's always said that it's important to be your own person and to follow your dreams.
My husband and I are similar in that we both have our own interests and give each other space in our relationship. We take turns going on solo international kid-free holidays, then come back recharged and ready for family life. Having downtime from each other helps us to keep the spark alive and to appreciate what we do have even more.
No marriage is perfect. Most of us derail at some point in our relationships, but if you truly love each other, you can usually get it back on track.
I know there have been times when my parents' marriage has been on the rocks. There have been enormous life challenges to navigate, and both of my parents would admit they've made mistakes.
But ultimately, they love each other deeply. This all-consuming, enduring love has helped them tackle every hurdle together and emerge stronger.
Of all the lessons they've taught me about relationships, this was the most important: Love is worth fighting for. Always.
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