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Author: Catherine Vercuiel

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14 min read Health

You’ve probably had a conversation that left you feeling like you did something wrong – even though you were the one who brought up a real concern. You walked into it clear-headed, and you walked out apologizing. Maybe you tried again later, only for the whole thing to flip on you again, faster this time....

12 min read News

On Tuesday, April 22, 2026, the Pentagon ended its decades-long requirement that all U.S. military personnel receive an annual flu vaccine. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military will no longer require all American troops to get the flu vaccine, citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom. A memorandum signed by Hegseth on Monday...

15 min read Health

Dr. Rhonda Patrick, biomedical scientist and host of the widely followed FoundMyFitness podcast, went on record in early 2025 warning people to stop handling paper receipts whenever possible. Her reason was direct: thermal paper receipts are loaded with bisphenol A, better known as BPA, a chemical that transfers easily to the skin and enters the bloodstream without...

16 min read Health

Certified trainer Chris Freytag has spent more than 35 years in the fitness industry, coaching women through the physical changes that come with midlife. She started as a journalist by degree before becoming a certified health coach, personal trainer, and group fitness instructor, and has spent 35 years helping hundreds of thousands of women move...

15 min read Health

Sleep affects nearly every system in the human body – but few sleep experiences are as disorienting, or as poorly understood, as sleep paralysis. A large-scale systematic review published in Current Psychiatry Reports found that up to 8% of the general population has experienced at least one episode of sleep paralysis in their lifetime. That figure may...

14 min read Health

A wellness writer and health columnist on Medium, Bridget Webber, recently published a personal account detailing 10 behaviors adults over 50 should stop for a happier, calmer life. The piece drew widespread attention from readers in midlife and beyond, many of whom recognized the patterns she described in their own daily routines. Webber’s core argument is...

15 min read Health

Two symptoms sit at the top of every gynecologic oncologist’s list when they talk about catching cancer before it becomes life-threatening: abnormal vaginal bleeding and changes in the breast. Both are primary early warning signs of cancer in women, and both are signals that women’s bodies send early enough to make a real difference –...

15 min read Food and Drink

Nutrition researchers have spent decades building a case for a plant that most North Americans overlook entirely. Guava leaves – the dark green foliage of Psidium guajava, a tropical tree cultivated across Asia, Latin America, and Africa – contain a dense cluster of bioactive compounds that multiple peer-reviewed studies now link directly to lower blood glucose...

16 min read Uncategorized

Two economists set out to measure something most people only feel in their gut: the idea that life gets harder somewhere in the middle. David Blanchflower, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and Andrew Oswald, a professor at the University of Warwick in the UK, spent years building one of the...

12 min read Health

When a parent reaches into the medicine cabinet for a bottle of children’s ibuprofen, they are trusting everyone involved in getting it there. That includes the chemist who formulated the liquid and the federal regulators whose job is to catch problems before those bottles ever reach a store shelf. Most of the time, that trust...

14 min read News

Rivers across the Pacific Northwest are missing something critical to how they function, and it’s not water. It’s wood. Fallen trees, root wads, whole logjams. A healthy river in this part of the country was never supposed to be a neat, fast-flowing channel. It was a tangle of downed timber, braided side channels, and seasonal...