Rates of chronic diseases have spiked in recent decades. Over the same time period, the food supply has shifted toward more use of oils made from seeds, such as canola and soybean.

Some people—U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., most prominently—have connected these developments. “Seeds oils are one of the most unhealthy ingredients we have in foods,” he said in a Fox News interview late last year. Kennedy thinks federal regulators and companies should move swiftly to address this problem. As a result of this negative attention on seed oils, Sweetgreen and Steak n’ Shake have vowed to remove seed oils from menu items.

However, seed-oil consumption is not the only thing that’s changed since the 1980s. Other notable trends during this period include binge-watching tv shows, online dating, and pop-country music. Correlation isn’t causation, and most nutrition researchers and dietitians say that seed oils aren’t related to upticks in chronic illness. 

Here’s what to know about arguments for and against seed oils.

What are seed oils?

Seeds naturally contain edible oils. Most seed oils found on grocery shelves have gone through industrial processes, such as mechanical crushing and chemical extraction, to recover as much oil from the seeds as possible.

Oils from seeds contain a type of fatty acid, polyunsaturated, that we obtain only from food. Most seed oils are especially rich in one type of polyunsaturated fat called omega-6. 

Non-seed oils, like olive and avocado, are high in another type of fat, monounsaturated, and lower in omega-6. Monounsaturated fats and antioxidants help to protect these oils from going rancid. Unlike seed oils, olive oil is often sold in its natural, unrefined forms—cold pressed and extra virgin. Extra virgin olive oil is one of the few oils that are commonly consumed without refining.

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Several physicians, mostly unaffiliated with mainstream research institutions, argue that seed oils’ high omega-6 content, combined with its instability and chemicals formed during oil processing, are primary culprits for increased chronic disease. Such critics lament the so-called “Hateful 8”—canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, and rice bran oil.  

They point to a handful of studies, including a 2013 analysis by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) finding that replacing saturated fats with omega-6 fat increased the risk of dying from chronic diseases. The concerns have fomented a crusade against seed oils on social media.

But mainstream researchers view these oils differently. “Seeds oils are really healthy foods,” says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. “There is overwhelming evidence for benefit and very little evidence for harm.”

The omega-6 fat debate

Some seed-oil critics are alarmed that American diets are loaded with omega-6 but much less of another fat type, omega-3, found in healthy foods like salmon and nuts. 

Studies in mice show that excess omega-6 fat causes inflammation. However, “these effects just haven’t been shown in humans,” says Eric Decker, a food scientist at the University of Massachusetts. A large study in 2017 found that eating more omega-6 didn’t change people’s inflammatory markers.

Research pointing to the harms of omega-6, including concerns about the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3, is flawed, Mozaffarian says. More important is getting plenty of omega-3s, regardless of your omega-6 intake. “It’s all driven by the omega-3s,” he says. “Omega 6 isn’t necessarily bad,” says Jason Ewoldt, a Mayo Clinic dietitian, “but omega-3s seem to be better.”

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Contradicting the 2013 analysis by NIH, other research demonstrates that modest intake of omega-6 fats isn’t linked to heart disease, diabetes, or obesity. The NIH paper’s conclusions may have been skewed, Decker says, because it lumped together people who ate seed oils together with those who ate margarine with trans fatty acids, which are now banned for health reasons.

Many studies find benefits of omega-6 and polyunsaturated fats, according to Mozaffarian. For example, omega-6 reduces heart disease risk. “Omega-6 will lower your bad cholesterol,” Decker says. “Human trials have proved this biological effect.”

Industrial processes remove some beneficial compounds in these oils. Unprocessed, extra-virgin seed oils have more antioxidants—but these versions are expensive. Regardless, seed oils may be healthier than other alternatives such as butter, according to a new study.

What about the chemicals in seed oils?

Another argument against seed oils is that they harbor toxic chemicals, partly because they’re often heavily processed. Decker says we need more research on hexane, a liquid chemical that pulls out the oil from seeds. 

After hexane does its job, companies try to remove it, but trace amounts may remain. Hexane has been linked to neurological damage in factory workers inhaling the chemical. 

The FDA doesn’t monitor hexane levels in seed oils. “We don’t actually know how much is in there or how much is harmful to human health,” says Alison Kane, a dietitian at Massachusetts General Hospital. Decker adds that more studies are needed, though there’s most likely very little hexane in the actual products. “It’s probably not a big risk,” he says. Hexane processing isn’t allowed for bottles certified organic.

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Another potential red flag: compared to olive oil, seed oils may be more prone to oxidation and going rancid. This generates harmful compounds that could, in theory, drive chronic disease. “Oxidation of lipids certainly produces compounds that could harm health,” Decker says, but without more research, “it’s hard to make conclusions.” 

Seed oils are also diverse. Compared to other seed oils, canola has more heart-healthy monounsaturated fats—abundant in olive and avocado oil—and omega-3s. The monounsaturated fat makes canola less susceptible to oxidation, Kane adds. Soybean oil, the most purchased seed oil in the U.S., is another option that’s higher in healthy omega-3s than some of other frequently used seed oils.

The risks may rise with frying

Nina Teicholz, founder of the Nutrition Coalition, is concerned about oxidation in seed oils in general and especially when cooking with them. “Heat speeds up the chemical reactions and oxidation,” Teicholz says. In her book, she describes a study showing higher markers of oxidative stress after eating food cooked with safflower oil, compared to olive oil. Due to its higher content of monounsaturated fat, canola oil is “a better option” for cooking than other seed oils, Teicholz says. 

Another potential issue: deep-frying vats at restaurants. They reuse the same seed oil, which may eventually produce cancer-causing chemicals. This is less of a problem at large fast-food chains with safety checks and cooking technologies that help minimize these chemicals, but smaller restaurants may not have these precautions, Decker explains.

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For restaurant preparation of non-fried food, seed oils typically “go out with the product” on the plate, instead of being reused for the next meal, Decker says. In addition, restaurants sometimes drizzle oil over the food, giving it a shiny appearance.

Finishing with these oils may ratchet up calories and fats to unacceptably high levels, even without frying. “These oils are primarily fat,” Kane says. “There is such a thing as too much.”

The American Heart Association suggests capping one’s omega 6 fats, including seed oils, at 5-10% of total calories. This equals about 11-22 grams of omega-6 fats per day. Seed oil critics recommend much lower consumption. 

A solution

Americans are frustrated by how the food supply is impacting health. But seed oils are “a culprit by association,” Ewoldt says, because they’re often found in unhealthy ultra-processed foods. “It’s not necessarily the seed oils driving obesity, heart disease, and cancer. It’s the processed foods with high calories, salt, fat, and sugar.” 

Prioritize a broader diet of mostly whole foods. “It’s a disservice to blame one single thing as the root cause for diseases,” Kane says. “The real problem is an overall unhealthy dietary pattern.”

Severance, the extremely popular Apple TV+ series about office workers who undergo brain surgery so that their home selves have no knowledge or memory of their working selves, and vice versa, is often described as science fiction. That’s a reasonable characterization, since the simple outpatient brain surgery that splits a person between an “innie” at the office and an “outie” at home isn’t available to the rest of us. 

But while the science the show depicts goes well beyond anything that’s currently possible, many brain specialists and neurosurgeons are still fans. “I love Severance because it brings up such an important function that the brain takes care of without our even realizing it,” which is establishing our identity simply by being aware of ourselves, our experiences, and our own inner drama, says Dr. Jordina Rincon-Torroella, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University.

We asked Rincon-Torroella and other brainiacs who watch or are familiar with Severance their thoughts about how brain surgery and all things neuro are depicted on the show.

A clean—and pretty believable—depiction of brain surgery

The first step in changing the brain is being able to physically get at the brain, and it’s here that Severance’s sci-fi first spills over into sci-fact. Although the term “brain surgery” might call to mind a sawed-open skull exposing a pink, pulsating mass, the surgery that the subjects undergo involves drilling a small hole—about the size of a dime—in the posterior crown of the skull and inserting a small chip in the brain tissue underneath. The procedure is quick, simple and, as these things go, relatively bloodless.

That kind of minimally invasive surgery is not at all outside of the realm of what’s possible today. “We can treat tumors or areas of the brain that cause epilepsy by drilling a small bore hole in the skull and inserting a laser probe under MRI visualization,” says Dr. Hoomin Azmi, director of functional and restorative neurosurgery at Hackensack University Medical Center. “We can then watch the tumor being burnt away on the MRI.”

The surgeons in Severance use no such sophisticated imaging, simply peering into the brain and hand-placing the chip—and getting it right every time. ”In terms of surgery [in the show], it’s obviously a bit of science fiction,” says Azmi.

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Some types of brain surgery don’t require opening the skull at all. Aneurysms—or bubbles in the wall of an artery—can be treated by threading a probe from an artery in the groin or the wrist up to the brain and closing off the affected area with a coil or a stent.

“This has drastically changed outcomes and complications for patients,” says Azmi. “I think the days of doing brain surgery in the office are still far from us. But the trajectory of less invasive and safer brain surgery has been going on for several years.”

Some procedures are less invasive still, making no physical contact with brain tissue at all. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applies magnetic pulses to the scalp to treat symptoms of major depression. Focused ultrasound can be beamed through the skull and ablate, or surgically remove, tumors without any reliance on a drill or a scalpel. “It’s also helping us ablate centers of the brain in patients who have essential tremor, or a tremor that cannot otherwise be controlled,” says Rincon-Torroella.

A less-realistic depiction of memory control

Severance takes more scientific liberties when it comes to the part of the brain in which the memory-manipulating chip is implanted. That region in the crown of the head is known as the parietal lobe, and while the parietal does a lot of jobs—especially processing sensory information such as touch, temperature, pain, and spatial awareness—it is not where memory lives.

The ability to form short-term memories is governed by the hippocampi, two structures which lie deep within both brain hemispheres. But a host of other parts of the brain—including the fornix, basal ganglia, thalamus, amygdala, caudate nucleus, and prefrontal cortex—also play a role in consolidating and storing longer term memories. That’s an awful lot of neural real estate for a chip implanted in the parietal to cover.

At a minimum, says Rincon-Torroella, a memory-altering chip would have to target the hippocampi, for their memory-forming function, and the amygdala, which governs emotions. “Memory and emotions are so attached to each other,” she says. “These would be the areas that I would attempt to approach if we would consider the idea of whether we could split an identity.”

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But turning off key brain regions might not be reversible. “You could, for example, knock out short-term memory if you turned off or severed both hippocampi and the fornices,” says Dr. Daniel Orringer, associate professor of neurosurgery at NYU Langone Health. “People would not be able to create these memories, but that’s a destructive thing.”

Azmi does not believe the memory control Severance depicts is entirely out of the realm of possibility—just not in the foreseeable future. “We’ll probably reach the day that perhaps we can select memories and deselect other memories,” he says. “I think that’s many years away.”

Even if it were possible to toggle back and forth between on and off in two or three brain regions, that would not, by itself, be sufficient to create the dual identities the characters in Severance exhibit. “Memory is so complex and involves many different areas of the brain,” says Dr. Howard Riina, vice chair of the department of neurosurgery at NYU Langone Health. “It’s also hemispheric; there are components of memory on the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain. A chip would have to have some kind of global effect from the one area where it’s implanted.”

The potential of brain chips

That may not be possible with existing technology, but implanted brain chips that work locally—in a single targeted region of the brain—are already in development. California-based Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company, is working to create computer chips that could be implanted in the brain and allow quadriplegics to control computers and other devices with their thoughts. BrainGate, a consortium of neurologists, engineers, computer scientists, and more, looks to implant not chips but electrodes in the brain, similarly allowing people with paralysis, ALS, or brainstem stroke to manipulate their environments, sometimes simply by thinking about using their paralyzed arm and hand to manipulate a computer cursor. Deep brain stimulation—in which electrodes connected to a pacemaker-like device are threaded to targeted regions of the brain—is already being used to control tremors related to Parkinson’s disease, as well as epilepsy, Tourette’s syndrome, dystonia, and more.

“You have people that have injuries, they have strokes, they have trauma, they have cerebral palsy,” says Riina. “You might be able to augment these people, or even use different parts of the brain to compensate for the damaged area.”

Augmenting, inhibiting, or otherwise manipulating consciousness and identity, including memory, would be a much heavier lift than treating a lesion, injury, or disease in an isolated region of the brain, and while Severance makes for good TV, it does not on the whole invoke rational science—at least not in the remotely foreseeable future.

“The brain is staggeringly complex in terms of its connectivity,” says Orringer. “It also varies from person to person. So everybody’s network is laid down in a little bit of a different way. The idea that you could turn off a subset of memories and still have memory function? That seems a little bit implausible.”

Dr. Francis Collins led the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, under three presidents—including Trump during his first term. He left that post in 2021 and retired from his career in government in March 2025.

Collins shared with TIME why actions taken by the Trump Administration have made him deeply concerned about the future of scientific research in the U.S., and what he hopes new leadership and the public will do to combat it.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How are you doing?

It’s hard to answer that question in a simple way in the midst of everything that’s going on now. Here I am as a private citizen trying to figure out what my next calling should be.

Let’s start with your decision to step down as director of NIH in 2021.

I had served by then three different presidents—Obama, Trump, and Biden—over the course of 12 years, which was a new record for a presidentially appointed NIH director. It always seemed to me that it’s good to have leadership refreshed on a regular basis for organizations that have a very complex and important mission [like NIH}. So, it did seem to me that it would be a good thing for me to step away and let the president pick another leader going forward.

I stayed on longer than I probably otherwise would have because of COVID and the desire to have continuity during the worst pandemic in more than a century, with all the things that needed to happen with medical research. But by late 2021, while COVID was far from over, the organization of the response efforts for vaccines and therapeutics and diagnostics were in a stable place, and I thought it would be fair to step away and let a new person arrive.

You recently spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C., organized by Stand Up For Science. Why did you feel it was important to speak there?

I’ve been increasingly concerned about the polarization of our society, and that goes back even before COVID. But COVID brought it out in a particularly troubling way, where information that might have been lifesaving, such as the use of the vaccines, did not always land with people who had already been influenced by lots of other misinformation, or even disinformation, coming from social media, cable news, and sometimes politicians. So when I stepped down as NIH director, I began the effort to try to put together a book called The Road to Wisdom. It focuses particularly on the topic of truth: that there really is such a thing as objective truth. A society that decides truth is just how you feel about it, and that alternative facts are okay, is heading into a very dangerous place. And it feels like that’s sort of where we are.

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Now, we see that kind of attitude spilling over into people’s response in general to institutions, and certainly to science. It worries me greatly now, seeing how that has played out in the last couple of months, in terms of drastic actions that are being taken against the federal support of science, with cuts in the [research support NIH provides], with firings of thousands of scientists including more than a thousand at NIH without really much consideration of what the consequences would be.

I felt I needed to be part of speaking out about why this is, for the average American, not a good idea. I was particularly compelled by the Stand Up for Science effort since it was organized by students. They had the courage, and also the deep concern about whether their futures are now in jeopardy. They are deeply troubled about whether that opportunity might be slipping away on the basis of all the changes that are being put forward. And some of those students are even wondering if they need to leave this country to go to another place to be able to live out their dreams. That’s just an unprecedented kind of circumstance that seemed to require some reaction.

You received a lot of criticism for your role in the government’s response to COVID-19, particularly NIH’s support of research on the SARS-CoV-2 virus that some maintain contributed to the virus being created in a lab. How do you respond to that?

The idea that NIH’s funding of research on bat viruses in China led directly to COVID is simply not supported by the facts. Yes, NIH was interested in whether there might be viruses emerging in Chinese bats, because that’s how MERS and SARS got started. But the bat coronaviruses that were studied by NIH contract research were far away from SARS-CoV-2 in their genome sequences—about the same level of similarity as a cow and a human.

The possibility that SARS-CoV-2 might have been created from scratch in a lab was initially considered quite seriously by the virus experts, but they ultimately concluded this is simply not consistent with its genome sequence.

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There continues to be speculation, however, that the naturally occurring virus might have been secretly under study in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and somehow escaped. There is no concrete evidence to support this, but the Chinese government has stonewalled efforts to examine lab notebooks or other materials that might shed light on what really happened. So this “lab leak” possibility has to be considered—but the simplest synthesis of the current data is that a naturally occurring virus spread from bats to an intermediate host, possibly a raccoon dog, and then infected humans in the west corner of the Huanan market, where wild animals were being butchered.

Unfortunately this topic of COVID origins has become a contentious and hyperpartisan issue, leading to further polarization of our divided country and to scapegoating and threatening of scientists. I would urge interested people to look closely at the actual facts.

You headed NIH during President Trump’s first term. What differences do you see between that administration’s management of science and this administration’s policies?

The second administration arrived with a very detailed plan already in hand, and they proceeded to implement that plan in a breathtakingly rapid series of policies and Executive Orders. In just two months, more dramatic changes have been made in science and medical research than anybody can remember. The first Trump administration had some of these same ideas, but there was more time for discussion, and more time to consider what the consequences might be. This time, the policies, including cutting funding and firing scientists, are being implemented very quickly, unfortunately without sufficient consideration of the harms that are being done. Medical research institutions across the country are in crisis.

How concerned are you about the future of the NIH and the health of scientific research more broadly?

I am quite concerned. If you’re an American who cares about health for yourself and for your family, and if you also care about our chances to give young people an opportunity to do amazing things in their scientific careers, and if you care about giving young people a chance at a scientific career, and if you care about how science and technology have been the main support of the U.S. economy since World War II, then taking a hammer to this amazing life-saving enterprise should concern you.

What is the danger of shrinking the NIH budget?

[The pace of scientific progress] has profoundly slowed down already. Will it be recoverable with some adjustments, and maybe some rollbacks of the worst of the sledgehammer blows that have been struck so far?

The approach to cure rare diseases with gene therapies is something that I have been very involved in. We’re talking about 7,000 diseases that are now potentially on the pathway toward a genetic cure, especially using the CRISPR [gene editing] approach. My own lab is working on this approach for progeria [a rare genetic condition that causes children to age prematurely]. It is interesting and troubling to look at the reaction to what’s happened in just the last two months; a lot of the young scientists who were potentially interested in that field now aren’t quite so sure.

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In China, the approach of CRISPR-based gene editing therapy for rare diseases has been identified as one of their highest priorities, and they are now already at the point of starting to run more clinical trials than the U.S. For those people who maybe are less impressed by the human impact of a slowdown in medical research, we also ought to think about what this means economically for the future of our nation, particularly with our most important competitor, China. Are we handing them leadership in an area, namely medical research, where the U.S. has led the world for decades? Is that really a good idea?

Is there anything that young scientists, or the public, can do to continue supporting government funding of science?

Students don’t have a lot of power and they’re aware of that. What they can do, and what they did in organizing Stand Up for Science, is to try to communicate their perspective, their sense of alarm, their recognition that something serious is happening to the country…and their willingness to identify voices that maybe can be even more powerful than their own, like those of patients.

I’ve been calling for a “science communication corps,” where we enlist all of the science majors in colleges and universities, all of the high-school science teachers, all of the members of scientific societies, and give them the assignment to be communicators of what science is and what it can accomplish in a realistic, community-based way. We have a long way to go to actually convince a lot of Americans about just how important science is for our future.

There is an erosion of trust in science and in scientists, who traditionally have been held in high esteem and respected for their expertise. Do you see that trend continuing? And how concerning is that for attracting the next generation of scientists?

I’m very worried about that. Every survey that’s been done shows a significant drop in public trust of scientists. Some of that, I have to admit, relates to the circumstances that happened during COVID. I’ve been very public about my concerns that our communication strategy had flaws in terms of trying to share information with people about what to do to protect yourself against the virus.

I wish every time those recommendations had been made, there would have been a preamble saying, “There’s a lot we don’t know about the virus—we are trying to learn as fast as we can, but we’re missing pieces—big ones. That means what we tell you today about a mask or about social distancing or vaccines or therapeutics might turn out to be wrong in another month or two when we have more data. Don’t be surprised if that’s the case. But please don’t imagine that we’re trying to jerk you around. We are doing the best we can with very imperfect data at a time of crisis.”

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We didn’t say that often enough. So when recommendations were made, people assumed that those were rock-solid, and then, when they had to change those a month or two later—when you found out, for instance, that asymptomatic people were likely to be spreaders of the virus—then people thought, “These people don’t know what they’re talking about.” And so we lost confidence along the way.

I will apologize for some of the things that we as scientists didn’t do. I wish some of the people on the side, who were distributing malevolent information that was known not to be true about the pandemic, would apologize for their role. Where are the apologies for that behavior?

One of the biggest critics of the government’s COVID-19 response is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new NIH director. Is there any validity to his criticisms, outlined in the Great Barrington Declaration, that the data on COVID-19 cases were skewed toward the more serious ones, and that otherwise healthy people should have been allowed to go about their daily lives because they could more easily overcome COVID-19 if they did get infected?

The Great Barrington Declaration was released in October 2020, before we had vaccines or even knew that they would work. The document suggested that it would be better to let people who were not senior citizens go about their daily life without restrictions. That would help the economy and the educational system. Many more people would get infected, but this would assist the development of herd immunity.

This would have been an interesting topic for a scientific discussion, but it was put forward as a policy document and presented to the Secretary of Health and Human Services the day after it was released. Any opportunity for scientific discussion was skipped, and the proposal seemed to be on the path toward a potential major policy change as the pandemic was raging. That was alarming to many of us.

Almost every single public health organization published highly critical statements—the Secretary General of the World Health Organization and the scientific leadership in the U.K. also strongly objected. We know that about 30% of the people who died of COVID were under 65, so there would likely have been significantly increased casualties. Furthermore, it was never clear how you would sequester the older people so that somehow they were not exposed to the virus; people tend to live in families, after all. So the proposed plan seemed both impractical and dangerous.

What advice do you have for Dr. Bhattacharya as he succeeds you at NIH?

Pull NIH out of any kind of partisan situation. Traditionally, over all these decades, [NIH] has been supported by both parties in both chambers with enthusiasm for what it can do for health and for saving lives. Right now, almost everything seems to be partisan. So if Dr. Bhattacharya can help return to that non-political status, that would be a really good thing.

Mix politics and science, you get politics. You kind of lose everything else. And that’s unfortunately a little bit where things are right now.

And then surround yourself with people who are as smart as they can be, and who are fearless in their willingness to tell you their opinions even if it might not be something you want to hear. The best thing a leader can do is to give permission to the people around them to say, “You’re about to do the wrong thing.” It wasn’t always easy to hear that, but it was important to have that permission granted.

And take advantage of the brain trust that you have access to as the NIH director. Use that connectivity. As somebody once said, “My own brain is limited, so I have to borrow all the brains I can from other people in order to make the boldest decision.”

You’ve said that you now fear for your own safety. But you’ve historically been a big user of public transportation in D.C. Has that changed?

You do feel like you’ve got to watch around yourself a little more carefully. Because it’s not incredibly unusual to have someone—as happened right before the beginning of the Stand Up for Science event—come forward very aggressively with statements that were quite threatening and quite wrong in terms of their assumptions about COVID and whatever role I played.

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It does make you feel unsafe. I haven’t yet reached the point…of having 24-hour security guards. And I hope I don’t have to. That’s incredibly disruptive of one’s life and I couldn’t possibly afford it anyway. But it does give me concern. I can’t let that be a reason to go hide under my desk. That’s just not an appropriate response. But some of the messages are frightening and certainly very hurtful.

You’ve also talked about your faith and how you’ve found ways to integrate your faith and spirituality with your career in science. How has your faith helped you in recent months?

Actually, the [messages] that I find hardest to read are written to me by fellow Christians. I’m very open about my Christian faith. It’s the rock I stand on. It’s who I am. It’s who I have been since I converted to Christianity at age 27. If I’m lost in a circumstance and don’t know what to do, I’m likely to go to prayer or to the Bible to try to seek out some kind of insight or some path towards wisdom. And yet I will get emails from people who say, “You are a fake Christian. You can’t possibly be really a follower of Jesus if you have done the following. If you had any Christian credibility at all, you would confess your sins and tell everybody that you repent of your evilness.” And some of them say I should just basically be in jail and maybe executed. These are coming from Christians who have been caught up in our terribly divided, polarized society where you mix politics and Christianity, and you get politics.

It’s been really helpful to have that anchor [of faith]. I don’t have to explain to God what it’s like to go through a difficult time. I don’t need to explain to Jesus what suffering feels like. If you look at the wall [next to my desk], there are various printouts of scriptures or quotes that have been particularly encouraging to me when I needed to be reminded. So Psalm 46—God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Okay, we got trouble. So thank you, God, for being my refuge and strength.

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You can get your context a little upside-down without having that anchor to faith and to what is good and holy and true, what we’re all called to do. And that reassures you that even though it feels like there’s a lot of headwinds, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do to try to stand up for principles that are long-lasting about faith and family and freedom and goodness and love and beauty and truth. Especially truth.

What do you hope the legacy of your time at NIH will be?

I hope they will see this as a period where big, bold ideas got surfaced, deeply discussed by experts in multiple venues, and then formulated into actual initiatives that could benefit not just the people doing the work, but lots of other people.

The genome project was like that. Maybe that’s how I learned how important that could be. But the BRAIN initiative certainly followed that, and the All of Us project, which is now up to 800,000 Americans who are our partners in this effort to really figure out how genetics and environment and health behaviors all work together to see whether somebody is going to stay healthy or develop a chronic illness, and what we could do to prevent that. Its benefits are going to be significant because the data is accessible to all researchers who can begin to sift through and make those discoveries.

I’m deeply troubled that both of those projects have had severe budget cuts, including just in the last week. The All of Us project’s budget is down now to less than 30% of what it had been two years ago. It makes it almost untenable for the project to keep doing much more than just caretaking. And this is just at the time where this was going great and having so many new ideas emerging. I hope that’s another thing a new NIH director will look at and figure out a way to assist with, because the promise of that still mostly lies ahead.

You’re also a musician and like to rewrite lyrics to popular songs. Any recent ones to share?

I started to try to write a new anthem for Stand Up for Science. I figured that every protest group needs a song so that people can gather together and sing it. It didn’t quite come together.

So instead, I rewrote the words to a familiar folk song, “All the Good People,” and that’s what I sang at the Lincoln Memorial. I do believe strongly that music has the potential to bring people together when all else has failed. My wife and I are planning a music party in another couple of months where we will invite to our house as many people as we can fit, which might be about 50, and we’ll try to carefully choose people on opposite sides of political issues and then see if by singing together over an evening something might happen.

When Geoff Perlman’s 20-year-old son broke his arm in December 2022, the bill was paid by strangers who chipped in to cover the costs. 

And rather than paying a monthly premium to a health care company, Perlman writes a check each month, never exceeding $420 for his family of four, to foot strangers’ health care bills, covering part of a pregnancy for one family or chemotherapy for another.

Perlman, a 61-year-old tech CEO from Austin, Texas, is a member of CrowdHealth, a health care startup that seeks to replace health insurance with a crowd-funding model that the company says lowers costs and diverts money from insurance conglomerates to real people. Perlman likes the company because he says it sidesteps insurers’ incentive to deny claims and seek profit, while erasing patients’ ignorance about what health care actually costs.

“You have a feeling you’re part of a community and you’re looking out for them,” says Perlman. “It feels like the money I am paying is helping other people.”

CrowdHealth, which was founded in 2021, offers a new take on an old idea. For decades, religious health-sharing ministries with names like Medi-Share and Samaritan Ministries have asked communities to pitch in for the medical bills of strangers. CrowdHealth has no spiritual affiliation; it’s a peer-to-peer financial-technology company that allows its roughly 10,000 paying members to make payments toward fellow members’ medical expenses. 

To join, members pay an administrative fee of about $55 a month. Each month, they get a message from CrowdHealth informing them that another member needs financial assistance for a specific medical issue. Members can agree to pay their share of the bill, which doesn’t exceed $140 per month for a single person under 55, or $420 for a family of four. Or they can decline—at the cost of eroding their rating on CrowdHealth’s site, making it less likely that fellow members will contribute to their own needs.

Read More: Why Some Food Additives Banned in Europe Are Still on U.S. Shelves.

When a member has a health care expense, they’re instructed to pay in cash, or tell a hospital that they are a self-pay customer, save the receipts, and submit them to CrowdHealth for compensation. (CrowdHealth sometimes negotiates the price of planned labs or procedures ahead of time.) The company says it covers 99.8% of claims, though it does not specify what exactly is counted in that statistic.

What draws people to CrowdHealth is deep discontent with the U.S. health insurance system. The share of Americans who said that the quality of health care in the U.S. is excellent or good—44%—is the lowest since at least 2001, according to a December Gallup poll. Even many of those with good insurance coverage are frustrated at the system’s perverse incentives, byzantine regulations, and opaque processes. It’s this frustration, in part, that led to a groundswell of public support for Luigi Mangione, who was charged with first-degree murder in December for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan. (Mangione has pleaded not guilty.)

“There’s certainly a growing voice of people saying, ‘What do we need health insurance for if it’s just denying care?’” says Michelle Long, senior policy manager at KFF, a health care research group.

Read More: For Many of America’s Aging Workers, ‘Retirement Is a Distant Dream’

For better or worse, CrowdHealth is not health insurance, and there are caveats to the coverage it will provide. CrowdHealth won’t pay for procedures related to preexisting conditions, including pregnancy, until you have been a member for nine months. They won’t accept smokers, heavier individuals, or anyone age 65 and over. It doesn’t cover long-term prescription or fertility treatment. And the company expects members to spend time on the phone with medical providers negotiating a cash price, as well as sometimes putting money up front to pay the bill before waiting for reimbursement. There is no guarantee that CrowdHealth will pay for your medical procedures.

Still, for some people, the idea of health-care sharing is more appealing than dealing with insurance companies. “What resonates with people is that they’re just tired of health insurance. They’re tired of these bills and these claims getting denied,” says Andy Schoonover, the CEO and founder of CrowdHealth.

Schoonover says his own frustrations with health insurance motivated him to create CrowdHealth. After he sold a company and lost his employer-sponsored health insurance, he went on the health care marketplace and purchased insurance for himself, his wife, and two children, paying about $1,200 per month.

Like many Americans, Schoonover had a plan through the Affordable Care Act, which dramatically expanded access to health care in America. But many consumers have reported problems getting claims approved through these plans. Nationwide, about 20% of claims through healthcare.gov insurers were denied in 2023, according to a KFF analysis.

Schoonover says that his insurer refused to pay $8,000 for ear tubes to treat his one-year-old’s recurring ear infections—a treatment doctors said was medically necessary, but the insurer said was not. So Schoonover started thinking about alternatives.

“I said to them, ‘Look, if you’re not willing to pay my bills, I won’t pay your bill,’” he recalls. He dropped his insurance, started to pay cash for procedures, and began looking at better ways to cover health care bills without insurance.

Schoonover says he was surprised how much money he could save by offering to pay cash rather than offering up his insurance card, since he spared doctor’s offices administrative costs. But that still left the question of how to cover the crushing fees of a major health problem like cancer. That’s where the idea of CrowdHealth came in.

“My next thought was, ‘If I could get a group of people willing to go the same route as me, then there could be others out there to help me in the case of a large medical event,” he says.

Read More: How Doctors Are Pushing Medical Credit Cards on Patients

Schoonover took to dozens of podcasts—many of which focused on Bitcoin or cryptocurrency—to promote CrowdHealth, in search of an audience already thinking of alternatives to current systems. One of them was Kyle Ward, now 33, who had gone without health insurance for 10 years after realizing that he wasn’t using his employer-sponsored health insurance yet was paying hundreds of dollars a month for coverage.

Ward had weighed the pros and cons of going without health care, and when the Affordable Care Act came out, he and his wife thought about signing up for a plan. But on his $44,000 per year salary, a premium of $300 per month plus a $7,000 deductible didn’t seem worth the money, he says. He and his wife decided it was a better financial decision to invest the money they would otherwise spend on health insurance and just pay cash for health expenses.

Doing so led to significant discounts, according to Ward, who says a doctor’s visit near where he lives in rural Texas was $80 if he paid cash, while his wife’s asthma medication was about $280 every three months. A gallbladder surgery that he had been told would cost $34,000 through insurance went down to $8,000 when he offered to pay cash, Ward says. Childbirth was $6,000 through a midwife who took cash.

But Ward was still worried about catastrophic health events. So when he heard about CrowdHealth, he decided to sign up. It wasn’t a perfect solution. Ward has a preexisting condition that requires frequent colonoscopies, and he knew that CrowdHealth would not cover those. But CrowdHealth helped him find a place willing to do the procedure for $950 cash, he says, and he figured that CrowdHealth was still worth it.

“Traditional health insurance is not working,” he says. “Maybe I’ve bought into the sales pitch, but CrowdHealth makes sense to me financially and morally—and it really feels like they want to do good.”

Read More: Why You Can’t Find a Pediatrician.

CrowdHealth appears to be popular with users—on the website Trustpilot, it received 4.8 stars out of 5, with 411 reviews. But it won’t be the right solution for many families. It is not regulated like health insurance, and so if your claim is denied, there’s no regulator to turn to.

Caroline Niziol was a member of Medi-Share, one of the largest religious health-sharing ministries, from 2015 to 2017. It saved Niziol’s family a lot of money: Medi-share cost them around $350 per month, while their traditional health insurance premium was around $850. But the ministry did not cover vaccines, physical therapy, or mental health care, and had an annual household ceiling for medical costs.

When her husband had a procedure related to a chronic health condition that cost $10,000, Medi-Share refused to cover it, Niziol says, even though she believes they should have. Niziol says she had to argue with Medi-Share for months to get it covered, as she did when her newborn baby ended up in the emergency room.

“I kind of feel like you get what you pay for,” she says. “It can really be a time suck.”

Medi-Share, which has 336,000 individual members, said in a statement to TIME that 80% of all bills are processed in 30 days or less. Member-voted guidelines govern what is and is not eligible for sharing, the company says, and these guidelines stipulate that there is no annual or lifetime limit on eligible medical bills. Medi-Share also says that physical therapy is eligible for sharing for up to 20 visits combined, and short-term counseling services are available by phone through Medi-Share’s telebehavioral health service.

CrowdHealth is small relative to religious health care sharing ministries; the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries counts nearly 700,000 members. The unregulated nature of these health-sharing companies has drawn attention from some states. In 2022, Colorado passed a law that requires health-sharing ministries and medical cost-sharing communities to report specific information to the commissioner of insurance regarding financial operations, membership, and medical bills submitted, paid, and denied in the state. It also required these communities to provide certain disclosures to members and respond to requests for payment of medical expenses without a specific period of time.

Susan Lontine, the former Democratic legislator who sponsored the bill, says she introduced it because some Colorado residents had thought their health care expenses would be covered by these ministries and were surprised to find out they were not. “We were just trying to get a handle on who these entities were,” Lontine says.

The Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries sued the Colorado Division of Insurance over the law in May 2024, arguing that it deprives their members the right to exercise their religious liberty in the health care system. In the lawsuit, the alliance says that 33 states have enacted safe harbor laws clarifying that health care sharing ministries are exempt from the state insurance code. Four additional states have allowed them to operate exempt from the insurance code by providing members exemptions from state health insurance mandates.

Read More: Why Your Pharmacy Experience is Miserable.

Health care experts say that people should thoroughly research their options before signing up for health sharing. Many people might qualify for free or low-cost plans through the Affordable Care Act; research by KFF suggests that about 5 million people who didn’t have insurance in 2023 could have gotten a plan through the ACA that was essentially free due to available subsidies. Experts also caution that people should think twice about giving up on health insurance because they’re healthy and they think they will continue to stay that way. “You just can’t anticipate everything that will happen,” says Long of KFF.

For some people, though, having an alternative to traditional health insurance is revolutionary enough. Geoff Perlman, the CrowdHealth member whose son broke his arm, says the cost savings alone are worth it to him. As a CEO of a tech company, Perlman knows a lot about the cost of health care. He offered UnitedHealthcare to his employees, and was on the plan for a while, paying about $2,000 per month in premiums for his family of four. He then switched to Liberty, a health-sharing ministry, in 2017, paying about $1,000 a month. When his wife got breast cancer in 2020, he says, Liberty paid every bill, even negotiating $1.2 million in total costs down to $217,000, which it paid.

Then Liberty raised its prices, Perlman says, and he stumbled across CrowdHealth. His family of four now pays a membership fee of about $226 a month, plus anywhere from $185 to $386 per month for the medical bills of others. He says his payments have gone down by about one-third since he signed up in July 2022.

Perlman is such a fan that although he offers all eight of his employees United Healthcare, he also offers an alternative: they can receive a stipend and make arrangements for themselves, either going onto healthcare.gov and picking a plan there, or joining a health care ministry. Every single employee, he reports, has decided to take the stipend rather than sticking with employer-sponsored health insurance.

Correction, March 20: The original version of this story misstated how long people have to be members of CrowdHealth in order to have procedures related to pregnancy covered. It is nine months, not two years.

If you subscribe to the “MAHA” approach to nutrition—the acronym for “Make America Healthy Again,” led by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—then you already know about beef tallow. One of the movement’s rallying cries is to “Make Frying Oil Tallow Again,” and it’s already having an effect: the fast-food chain Steak ‘n Shake recently announced that it now cooks its French fries in “100% all natural beef tallow” instead of seed oils, an ingredient much maligned by MAHA. In social media posts, Kennedy has largely blamed obesity on seed oils—a claim that nutrition experts dispute.

Beef tallow, however, is a less familiar ingredient to the rest of the country. Is it actually good for you? Is it really a healthy alternative to seed oils? Here’s what nutrition experts say. 

What is beef tallow?

Beef tallow is an edible fat found underneath the skin and near the organs of a ruminant animal—typically a cow—“making up about 5-6% of the animal’s total weight,” says Violeta Morris, a dietitian in Columbus, Ohio. The tallow used in food is produced by rendering, or melting down, this fatty tissue. “It’s been used for centuries in cooking—specifically for frying, roasting and baking,” says Kim Yawitz, a registered dietitian and gym owner in St. Louis. Its popularity has waxed and waned, largely due to shifting views on dietary fats.

The nutritional profile of beef tallow can vary depending on the part of the cow from which the tallow is derived and whether the cattle are grass-fed or grain-fed, Morris says. But in general, nearly half of the fat in beef tallow comes from saturated fat—which raises concerns among experts about its risks for heart health.

Is beef tallow healthy?

As with most things related to nutrition, the answer is nuanced.

On one hand, beef tallow is a good source of fat-soluble vitamins, which support immune, bone, and skin health, says Yawitz. “It’s also rich in choline, which helps the brain and central nervous system function optimally,” she notes. Like most fats, beef tallow provides long-lasting energy, helping to keep people fuller and more satisfied, which can help balance the carbohydrate content of foods like, say, French fries.

But beef tallow is far from a magic bullet for health and is not without its drawbacks. “About 50% of the fat in beef tallow is saturated, which is where things get a little controversial,” says Yawitz. While saturated fat isn’t always bad, excessive intake has been linked to higher levels of LDL cholesterol (often called “bad” cholesterol), which may increase the risk of heart disease in some people, Yawitz says. “Health experts have debated this for years, with some arguing that saturated fat isn’t the villain it’s made out to be, while others still recommend limiting it.” For these reasons, experts say evaluating the context is key, since your diet, lifestyle, and individual health factors all play a role in how saturated fat impacts the body.

Is beef tallow healthier than seed oils?

Seed oils include vegetable oils, such as canola, cottonseed, soybean, and more. They’re often used when frying food, sometimes in combination.

The health profile of a given seed oil depends on its source, how it was manufactured, how old it is, and its individual chemical properties.  

The same is true for beef tallow. “For example, the more chemically unstable fractions of beef tallow can be removed, giving a beef tallow that has better frying properties,” says Bryan Quoc Le, a food scientist and founder of Mendocino Food Consulting. Some studies suggest that this type of refined beef tallow produces fewer frying byproducts, which can negatively impact health, compared to some seed oils. However, the same process can be applied to seed oils to give them a higher smoke point and improve their ability to withstand higher temperatures, he adds.

The omega-6 issue

Supporters of MAHA are quick to point out that seed oils are significantly higher in omega-6 fatty acids than beef tallow, Yawitz says, and they claim that omega-6 fatty acids promote inflammation and oxidative stress, which is linked to various health conditions. “However, the science isn’t exactly clear on whether omega-6 fatty acids are good or bad,” she says. “When consumed in appropriate amounts and as part of an overall healthy diet, omega-6 fatty acids appear to help lower LDL cholesterol while increasing HDL (‘good’) cholesterol.” Some research suggests that omega-6 fatty acids do not actually promote inflammation and oxidative stress, and some studies even find that seed oils are superior to beef tallow for overall health. 

“Although these worries have been around for decades, they’ve gained even more traction in recent years,” says Abbey Thiel, better known as Abbey the Food Scientist on YouTube. “However, the latest research doesn’t support these claims. At best, the research is quite wishy-washy.” One review paper from 2020 found that higher levels of linoleic acid—one of the most common omega-6 sources—in the diet or blood are linked to a lower risk of heart disease, and another review paper from 2008 found that people who consume the most linoleic acid tend to have the lowest levels of inflammation. “These sources directly contradict the whole [MAHA] argument,” says Thiel.

However, other research indicates that omega-6 fats (such as those found in seed oils) break down more easily when heated, making them less stable and potentially less healthy for cooking, says Morris.

Thiel believes that when research finds a link between seed oils and chronic disease, it’s because seed oils are often included in fried foods and indulgent snacks. It’s “really the high levels of salt, fat and sugar in these foods that is making people not feel good,” and not the oil alone, she says.

Everything in moderation

Experts tend to think that arguing over whether seed oil or beef tallow is the healthier frying choice is besides the point. “Simply comparing one oil to another misses the bigger picture,” Morris says. “French fries and similar fast food items can be enjoyed occasionally, but they shouldn’t be a regular part of a healthy lifestyle.” 

Overall, Yawitz believes this oil controversy isn’t all that relevant to our health. “If you eat mostly wholesome, unprocessed foods, you can enjoy both beef tallow and seed oils in moderation,” says Yawitz. 

A California pet food maker has recalled its raw chicken products after they were linked to bird flu infections in two cats and suspected in a third in New York City.

The recall is the latest in recent months tied to products potentially contaminated with the virus that has sickened and killed cats in several states, after racing through poultry and dairy cattle in the U.S. and causing illnesses in at least 70 people.

Savage Pet, of El Cajon, California, this week recalled one lot of large and small chicken boxes because they may be contaminated with Type A H5N1 influenza virus. The boxes are cardboard and contain individual plastic packages of products. The lot code and best-by date 11152026 is stamped on products. The pet food was distributed in California, Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington state.

New York City health officials this week urged consumers to avoid Savage Pet products because of the cats’ illnesses.

One cat fell ill and died this month after eating the Savage Pet products. Final test results are pending, but a preliminary test for H5N1 was “nonnegative,” which indicates that a certain amount of virus was detected, a department spokesperson said.

A second cat was diagnosed with H5N1 and died — and tests suggested it was infected with a strain related to that found in the recalled Savage Pet food. However, that cat did not eat the food; it was exposed to a third cat that fell ill after eating the food from the implicated lot. That cat survived but was not tested.

Read More: Why the U.S. Doesn’t Vaccinate Poultry Against Bird Flu

The New York cases are the latest reports of cats in several states sickened and killed by H5N1. At least 115 bird flu infections in domestic cats have been reported to the U.S. Agriculture Department since 2022, with most logged since 2024. Cats can catch the virus from wildlife or contaminated milk and food.

Earlier this month, Wild Coast Raw, of Olympia, Washington, recalled frozen boneless raw chicken cat food after it was linked to illnesses and deaths in cats in Oregon and Washington. In December, Morasch Meats of Portland, Oregon, recalled its Northwest Naturals brand of raw and frozen turkey pet food after it tested positive for the virus and was linked to the death of a local cat.

Dr. Jarra Jagne, a veterinary expert at Cornell University, said pet owners should avoid feeding their animals unpasteurized milk or raw pet food because of the risk of bird flu as well as other germs such as salmonella, listeria and E. coli.

“I wouldn’t give my animals raw anything,” she said. “It’s all about cooking.”

Abortion rights advocates are closely following what they call a growing and alarming trend: lawmakers in several states have introduced bills that would allow authorities to charge people who obtain abortions with homicide.

Such bills have been introduced in at least 10 states for the 2025 legislative session: Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is tracking these proposals. Most of those states have already banned abortion either in nearly all circumstances or after six weeks of pregnancy. (Missouri and North Dakota are the only exceptions; both of them previously had near-total abortion bans that have since been overturned.) 

The bills refer to an embryo or fetus as an “unborn child” or “preborn child.” They claim that an embryo or fetus can be a homicide victim, opening the door for authorities to charge and prosecute people who seek abortions. Some of the bills also propose removing clauses from state laws that protected pregnant people seeking abortions from prosecution. The bills include limited exceptions, such as in a situation resulting in “the unintentional death of a preborn child” after “life-saving procedures to save the life of a mother when accompanied by reasonable steps, if available, to save the life of her preborn child.”

Lizzy Hinkley, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, says she believes there has been an uptick in the number of these bills that have been introduced this year, which is “very, very alarming.” Hinkley points out that many of the states considering these bills, such as South Carolina, allow for the death penalty.

“It’s very much right out of the anti-abortion playbook to be introducing bills that try to control, try to oppress, and punish pregnant people,” she says.

Three of these bills—in Indiana, North Dakota, and Oklahoma—have since failed to advance. And Mary Ziegler—a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law with expertise in abortion—says the likelihood of the remaining bills passing is “relatively low.” These types of proposals are generally unpopular; Ziegler says that even conservatives and anti-abortion activists are divided on whether to penalize people seeking abortions.

“Having said that, I think [these bills are] more likely to pass now than they were in previous years, and the fact that they keep coming back is significant,” Ziegler says. She adds that more of these bills have been introduced since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the constitutional right to abortion.

Typically, anti-abortion laws penalize medical providers offering abortion care. On March 17, the Texas attorney general announced that a midwife in the state had been arrested on charges of illegally providing abortions—the first time Texas officials have brought these kinds of charges forward since the Dobbs ruling. Separately, a New York-based doctor is facing a civil suit in Texas and criminal charges in Louisiana for allegedly prescribing, via telemedicine, abortion pills to patients in those states.

Read More: What Are Abortion Shield Laws?

The recent criminalization bills also include fetal personhood rhetoric—a legal doctrine at the forefront of the fight over reproductive rights that aims to give an embryo and fetus the legal rights of people. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order declaring that the U.S. government will only recognize “two sexes, male and female.” Abortion rights advocates sounded the alarm, saying that the order contains fetal personhood language because it claims that sex is assigned “at conception.”

Hinkley says that research has already found that pregnancy criminalization has been on the rise since the Dobbs decision. Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit committed to protecting the rights of pregnant people, released a report in September, which found that at least 210 pregnant people faced criminal charges for “conduct associated” with pregnancy in the year following the Dobbs ruling—the highest number recorded in one year. Hinkley says that report “portended what we’re seeing right now.”

“It doesn’t matter if [the bills] pass this year; they’ll be back next year,” Hinkley says. “There was a point not that long ago when it would seem absurd to have a total abortion ban without exceptions for rape and incest, or a total abortion ban, period, without exceptions to save a pregnant person’s health, and that is the reality that pregnant people are living in across the country right now. So whether it’s this year or next year or a few years down the road, this is a very harrowing indication of what the end game is for anti-abortion legislators and anti-abortion activists.”

If you’ve been sleeping on TikTok trends, you might not realize that across the internet, millions of people are stocking up on supplements like magnesium, eating kiwis before bed, or taping their mouths shut—all in pursuit of better sleep.

“Sleepmaxxing,” as the trend is called, is an umbrella term coined by social-media users to describe hacks that can maximize or improve sleep quality and quantity. “You can sort of think of it as a modified or upgraded version of sleep hygiene,” says Dr. Sam Kashani, a sleep medicine specialist and assistant clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. 

Is it useful—or just another waste of time and money? “I think it’s a positive thing that people want to take measures to optimize their sleep,” he says. “But there’s a fine line between ‘healthy’ sleepmaxxing and being somewhat obsessive and hyper-fixated on sleep.”

Here’s what experts want people to know about the trend—including the point at which it goes too far.

What are the most popular sleepmaxxing strategies?

There’s no single way to practice sleepmaxxing. Rather, people combine the products, techniques, and strategies that work for them. Among the options:

• Taking magnesium and melatonin supplements
• Avoiding liquids for two hours before bed
• Using a white-noise machine
• Mouth-taping
• Eating a kiwi before going to sleep
• Using a weighted blanket or cooling pillow
• Lowering bedroom temperature
• Wearing a sleep mask
• Showering one hour before bed
• Meditating
• Not setting an alarm clock
• Wearing a sleep tracker

Are any of these hacks actually a good idea?

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends adults get at least seven hours of sleep a night. If sleepmaxxing helps you hit that goal, experts generally consider it a net positive. “Celebrating the joy of sleep and the pleasure of sleep and striving to maximize our sleep quality are all wonderful things,” says Dr. Emerson Wickwire, section head of sleep medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “To the extent that sleepmaxxing helps people dedicate time to their sleep and enjoy their sleep and improve their sleep, those are all very positive.”

Read More: Why Do Some People Need More Sleep Than Others?

That said, a few strategies stand out as the most effective. Sleeping in a cool, dark, quiet, and uncluttered environment, for example, will likely help you snooze better. Wickwire recommends keeping your bedroom 60-68°F. Enjoy wearing a silk or weighted eye mask overnight? More power to you. Research suggests blackout curtains can similarly block out disruptive artificial and natural light. Cutting back on screen time before bed is also always a boon to health.

Plenty of anecdotal evidence, meanwhile—and some studies—suggest strategies like burying yourself under a weighted blanket or meditating can improve sleep. Yet these won’t be helpful to everyone. Exactly what works is an individual matter: “Some people may claim [certain hacks] solve all their sleep issues, while others might feel they have no effect on them,” Kashani says. “Every human is different.”

What about the weirder hacks?

Few sleepmaxxing strategies are backed by science. Take the idea that you need to snack on a kiwi before getting under the covers: “Eating more fruits and veggies is wonderful,” Wickwire says. “But in terms of sleep-specific benefits, we lack data to answer these questions conclusively.” It’s not going to hurt you, but there’s no reason to believe a kiwi will lead to the best sleep of your life, either.

While some people find showering before bed helps calm their mind, there’s no scientific reason to do so exactly one hour before turning in. “I personally think you should shower when it makes sense for you in terms of your work day,” says Dr. James Rowley, a sleep specialist and professor of medicine at Rush University System for Health. He’s a morning showerer, but acknowledges that lots of people prefer to shower in the evening. “That’s fine, if it works for your lifestyle—but I don’t think it’s going to help you sleep better,” he says.

White-noise machines are also up for debate. Some studies suggest they can drown out annoying sounds, while increasing the amount of time spent asleep. Yet there are downsides, too: A recent research review found that these machines can generate sounds so loud, they could damage hearing, especially among young children. Plus, people sometimes get so used to white noise, they can’t sleep without it.

Read More: How to Share a Bed While Getting the Best Night’s Sleep

Another sleepmaxxing strategy involves not setting a morning alarm, instead waking up naturally. Aside from the fact that this isn’t logistically feasible for many who’d prefer to remain employed, it won’t necessarily improve health or sleep—and could do the opposite. “I don’t know where that [idea] comes from,” Rowley says. Having a regular wake-up time actually helps regulate your circadian clock, he adds, establishing a more stable sleep-wake cycle that promotes good rest.

Meanwhile, some sleepmaxxers report cutting off liquid intake two hours before bed so they don’t wake up needing to go to the bathroom. You shouldn’t dehydrate yourself if you’re actually thirsty, experts say. Rather, if you’re waking up to pee so often that it’s interrupting your sleep, talk to your doctor. There might be an underlying medical issue at play, Rowley says.

Should I start taking melatonin or magnesium supplements?

There’s no good evidence that magnesium is a reliable sleep aid. “It’s not doing anything for you,” Rowley says—unless your blood work indicates you’re actually deficient and need it for, say, nerve and muscle function. Otherwise, “If you don’t need magnesium, why should you take extra magnesium?”

Rowley also advises skipping melatonin. While it can help people who have circadian rhythm disorders, it’s not very helpful for those with insomnia, he says. The supplement can lead to side effects like nausea, dizziness, headaches, rashes, nightmares, and gastritis. If you’re determined to try it, start small: 1 to 5 mg taken two to four hours before bedtime is “probably more than sufficient for the average person,” Rowley says.

Is it really a good idea to tape my mouth shut?

One of the more peculiar sleepmaxxing techniques involves taping your mouth shut with special adhesive, so you’re forced to breathe through your nose. TikTokers claim it prevents snoring and leads to better sleep—but doctors are skeptical. “There is no good evidence that mouth taping does anything,” Rowley says. “I’ve had one or two patients get mad at me because I wouldn’t endorse it for them. I’m like, ‘Sorry, I just can’t.’”

Mouth taping could obstruct breathing, lead to a dry mouth, irritate your lips, and generally make sleep less comfortable. Plus, it could exacerbate sleep apnea, Rowley says—so if you’re snoring often, you’re better off ditching the tape and scheduling a doctor’s appointment.

Is it possible to get too fixated on sleep?

Sleepmaxxing enthusiasts are all about using wearables like an Apple Watch or Oura Ring to track stats such as sleep duration and sleep stage. Yet these devices can lead to an unhealthy obsession with achieving perfect slumber, says Dr. David Benavides, a sleep medicine specialist at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Brigham. There’s even a name for it: orthosomnia.

“The data from these sleep trackers can perpetuate the cycle, where it paradoxically leads to worse sleep quality and insomnia-like symptoms,” he says. “The problem is that if you’re so fixated and anxious about getting to sleep, you’ll end up not getting to sleep,” instead tossing and turning as you ruminate over the distressing fact that you’re still awake and ruining your incoming data report.

Read More: Sleep Doctors Share the 1 Tip That’s Changed Their Lives

Benavides has seen an increasing number of patients with orthosomnia; many bring in their wearable devices, worried they’re not getting enough hours of REM sleep or wondering why their device says they woke up three times during the night. He points out that there’s variability in these algorithms. Plus, while wearables can guess which sleep stage you’re in, only a lab-based brain-wave study can confirm it.

“Stop obsessing about your sleep,” Kashani says. “Your body wants to sleep and will sleep, as long as you don’t let your mind get in the way.” Adopting a 12-step routine full of fancy tricks and hacks simply isn’t necessary. If you don’t have any sleep problems, you don’t need to employ these strategies, he says—and if you are having trouble sleeping, talk to your doctor. “We can be a lot more helpful than Instagram and TikTok,” Kashani says.

NEW YORK — Tracy Morgan says food poisoning was to blame for his taking ill during Monday’s Knicks-Heat game, and that he’s “doing OK.”

The actor-comedian posted an update on Instagram Tuesday morning, along with a smiling photo from a hospital bed, thanking fans for their concern. He also suggested humorously that perhaps his health episode spelled good luck for the Knicks.

“I’m doing ok now and doctors say it was food poisoning. Appreciate my MSG family for taking such good care of me and I need to shout out the crew that had to clean that up. Appreciate you!” Morgan wrote.

“More importantly, the Knicks are now 1-0 when I throw up on the court so maybe I’ll have to break it out again in the playoffs,” he quipped, ending his post with a #goknicks hashtag.

Morgan took ill in the second half of Monday night’s Heat-Knicks game, interrupting the action at Madison Square Garden with 6:09 left in the third quarter while workers cleaned up the area around his seat. The delay lasted more than 10 minutes. The Knicks went on to win, 116-95.

The 56-year-old Morgan, a longtime Knicks fan, was featured prominently during the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary weekend events, at both the “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert” and the live “SNL50: The Anniversary Celebration” special.

He also has an upcoming untitled comedy pilot on NBC opposite Daniel Radcliffe, in which he plays a disgraced former football player looking to remake his image.

There’s no question that the wildly popular injectable weight-loss drugs help people drop pounds, lower heart-disease risk, manage obstructive sleep apnea, and more. But as more people use these drugs, which target hormones including GLP-1, doctors are learning more about the potential downsides, as well.

In the latest study published on MedRxiv—a site that hosts early research not yet peer reviewed by experts—scientists in Canada report that using GLP-1 drugs can contribute to a higher risk of hair loss, especially among women.

Dr. Mohit Sodhi, a resident in emergency medicine at University of British Columbia, and his colleagues analyzed data from just over 1,900 people who were prescribed semaglutide and 1,300 who were prescribed bupropion-naltrexone—an older obesity treatment known as Contrave. Semaglutide is the compound in the drugs Ozempic, which treats diabetes, and Wegovy, which treats obesity. Sodhi focused only on people taking Wegovy to treat overweight or obesity to avoid any potential confounding effects of diabetes on hair loss.

He and his team then compared the diagnoses for hair loss in these patients’ medical records and found that those prescribed semaglutide had a 50% higher risk of being diagnosed with a hair-loss condition compared to those prescribed Contrave. That risk was twice as high for women as for men.

Read More: The Health Risks and Benefits of Weight-Loss Drugs

While it’s not clear why semaglutide is linked to greater hair loss than older weight-loss drugs, Sodhi says scientists have some theories. The first relates to the physiological stress that the body goes through under the influence of semaglutide. The drug contributes to a higher percentage of body-mass weight loss compared to previous weight-loss medications, and accomplishes this more quickly. “Because semaglutide causes greater weight loss and more rapid weight loss than Contrave, there is more physiologic stress on the body and therefore more hair loss,” he says.

Second, because the drug suppresses appetite, people who take it eat less and take in fewer nutrients, particularly protein, which is essential for hair growth. The gastrointestinal side effects associated with the drugs, which lead to nausea and vomiting, can further diminish people’s desire to eat and get the nourishment they—and their hair cells—need.

Is the risk enough to discourage people from using these drugs to lose weight? That depends on why they are taking the medications—whether to treat diabetes or obesity—and how much of a health risk those health conditions pose. If you’re trying to manage diabetes, “you may be more willing to accept the potential risk of hair loss than someone who may be using semaglutide to lose a few pounds to look good for an event,” Sodhi says.

Results like this, and additional studies on the longer terms effects of GLP-1 drugs, are important to helping people balance the risks and benefits of these medications. “If people don’t know the potential side effects,” says Sodhi, “then they may be getting into something they didn’t sign up for.”