
Remembering Hulk Hogan And Was President Biden On Ambien!? (ft. Dr. Drew Pinsky & Link Lauren)
Story #1: The Host of 'Ask Dr. Drew' and Board-Certified Internist & Addiction Medicine Specialist, Dr. Drew joins Kennedy to reflect on the life and impact of Hulk Hogan following his death earlier today and breaks down what could have led to his death. Dr. Drew also shares his views on Hunter Biden's claim that former President Joe Biden was on Ambien during his presidency and Hunter's addiction history.
Story #2: Host of 'Spot On with Link Lauren,' Link Lauren, and Kennedy dive into the important stories of the day, including 'TIME' Magazine's insufficient Top 100 most influential podcast list, and the troublesome issue of single men not talking to women anymore.
Story #3: Kennedy and The Crew continue to reminisce on the loss of Hulk Hogan and his fellow cultural icon, Ozzy Osbourne.
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Politico
14 minutes ago
- Politico
Everything we know about the fatal shooting near CDC headquarters
Two CDC employees told POLITICO Friday evening that all staff at the agency were told to shelter in place. CDC Director Susan Monarez said Friday night that the agency is working with federal, state, and local authorities on the investigation. 'We at CDC are heartbroken by today's attack on our Roybal Campus, which remains on lockdown as authorities investigate the shooting,' Monarez said in a statement. 'A courageous local law enforcement officer gave their life, and another was injured, after a gunman opened fire on at least four CDC buildings. Political climate The shooting comes amid an already tumultuous time for CDC staff. Hundreds of agency employees received termination notices in April, and some got sporadically rehired . The Trump administration also has proposed slashing the agency's budget by roughly half . Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly raised concerns over the safety of the Covid-19 vaccine. Since being sworn in in February, the agency has stopped recommending the vaccine for pregnant people and to narrow the recommendations for healthy children. Kennedy said earlier this week that HHS would halt $500 million in funding for mRNA research , the technology that was used to create the first Covid-19 vaccines, citing safety concerns. The planned cancellation of contracts includes work with Emory University and Tiba Biotech. Proposals from Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, CSL Seqirus, Gritstone and others will also be rejected, according to HHS. Many public health experts pushed back on that decision, arguing that the technology is safe and a key tool for responding to future pandemics. One CDC official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO they were disappointed that neither Kennedy or President Donald Trump have publicly spoken about the shooting. On X, Kennedy reposted a statement from Monarez about the incident. 'As you might imagine, there is a lot of fear and anger among agency staff right now,' the official said. An HHS spokesperson said that Kennedy plans to address the incident Saturday morning.


The Verge
an hour ago
- The Verge
RFK Jr. wants a wearable on every American — that future's not as healthy as he thinks
I keep hearing the same sentence repeating in my head. 'My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years.' RFK Jr., our current secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said this at a congressional hearing at the end of June. Wearables, he said, are key to the MAHA — Make America Healthy Again — agenda. Kennedy positioned wearables for Americans as a means of 'taking control' or 'taking responsibility' over their health by monitoring how their lifestyle impacts their metrics. In the hearing, he also cited that his friends had shed pounds and 'lost their diabetes diagnosis' thanks to devices like continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). I'm a wearables expert. I obviously don't hate these devices. My problem with Kennedy's 'wearable for every American' vision is that it lends credence to the idea that everyone benefits from wearable technology. It's not that simple. I started wearing a Fitbit in 2014 to lose weight. I'd mysteriously gained 40 pounds in six months. I started running. Dieting. Obsessively tracking my steps, hitting 10,000 to 15,000 a day, rain or shine. I ate as few as 800 calories while logging 15,000 steps daily — for me, roughly 7.5 miles of walking. The promise of all this data, and what Kennedy is touting, is that people will have actionable data to improve their health. I had a ton of data. I could see things weren't adding up. But the way these products and their apps are designed, I didn't know how to 'take control' of my health. Instead, I continued to gain weight. I cried a lot during that time. So did my mom, who took my sudden aversion to carbohydrates as a personal offense. (How can you not eat bap? Bap is life!!) It didn't matter that I improved at running or that I measured everything with a food scale. Each time I went to my doctors, I'd show them my Fitbit data and beg to be taken seriously. My doctors didn't know what to do with what they were being shown. I also didn't know how to communicate what I was seeing effectively. Instead, they suggested everything from 'you must become a vegan' to 'people with slow metabolisms just have to try harder.' By 2016, I'd put on another 20 pounds and, after three years, was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome — a hormonal condition that often causes weight gain and insulin resistance. Wearables helped me realize something was off, but it was a bumpy ride getting to an answer. That's been true of my overall experience. Sure, this tech helped improve aspects of my health. I'm a much more active person. I went from being unable to run a mile to racing two half-marathons, a handful of 10Ks, and several 5Ks. My sleep is more regular. I went from being a night owl to an early riser. I've watched my resting heart rate decrease from around 75 beats per minute while sleeping to around 55 bpm. My cholesterol is lower. My weight has yo-yoed, but overall, I've been able to maintain a 25-pound weight loss from the 60 pounds I gained from PCOS. And, I've put on more muscle. What I haven't shared quite as publicly is that these improvements came at a heavy cost to my mental health. My first three years with wearables wrecked my relationship with food. Despite diligently tracking my data, I didn't get much by way of results. There also wasn't a ton of guidance on how to apply my data learnings in a healthy way. I ended up hyperfixating on trying anything that hinted at helping me reach my goal. I ended up with disordered eating habits. Food logging is also a prominent feature in these wearable apps, so I meticulously weighed and logged everything I ate for years. If I were even 15 calories over budget, I'd go for a five-minute run around the block to burn 50 calories and get myself back under. I avoided social outings because, when eating out, my calorie logs weren't guaranteed to be accurate. If I weren't making enough progress, I'd punish myself by skipping meals. According to my therapist, I had begun showing mild signs of both orthorexia nervosa and anorexia. I also started developing anxiety about my running performance. If I wasn't improving my VO2 Max or mile times, I was failing. It didn't matter that I'd gone from running 16-minute miles to recording a personal best of 8 minutes, 45 seconds. Any time I became injured, my numbers would go down, and I'd feel like a complete failure. When my father died, I was stuck in a funeral home in the Korean countryside, pacing around in circles so that I wouldn't lose my step streak. Ironically, in a bid to please my wearable overlords, I've ended up injuring myself several times through overexercise in the last decade. I'm okay now, thanks to a lot of work in therapy and the help of my loved ones. But healing isn't a one-and-done kind of thing. Ninety-five percent of the time, I use wearables in a much more reasonable way. I take intentional breaks the other five percent of the time, whenever old habits rear their ugly head. Mine isn't a unique experience. Several studies and reports have found that wearables can increase health anxiety. Anecdotally, when a friend or acquaintance gets a new wearable, I usually get one of two types of messages. The first is an obsessive recounting of their data and all the ways they monitor food intake. The other is a flurry of worried texts asking if their low HRV, heart rate, or some other metric is a sign that they're going to die. Most of these messages come from people who have had a recent health scare, and I usually spend the next hour teaching them how to interpret their baseline data in less absolute terms. And therein lies the rub. These devices overloaded the people in my life with too much information but not enough context. How can anyone effectively 'take control of their health' if they're struggling to understand it? There's never been, nor will there ever be, a one-size-fits-all solution. There's never been, nor will there ever be, a one-size-fits-all solution. That's why I'm skeptical that Kennedy's vision is even feasible. Doctors don't always know how to interpret wearable data. Not only that, it'd be a massive undertaking to give every American a wearable. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of products on the market, and everyone's health needs are unique. Would the government subsidize the cost? Where do health insurance companies, FSAs, and HSAs fit into this picture? So far, all we've heard from Kennedy is that the HHS plans to 'launch one of the biggest advertising campaigns in HHS history' to promote wearable use. But even if Kennedy were to solve this logistical nightmare, I take issue with framing wearables as a necessary component in anyone's health journey. You risk creating scenarios where insurance companies use wearables as a means of lowering or raising premiums, similar to how certain car insurance providers use telematics devices to monitor their customers' driving in exchange for discounts. It sounds good in theory, but it also opens the door to discrimination. Some, but not all, illnesses can be treated or prevented through lifestyle changes. Not everyone will experience the darker side of this tech like I have. But I know that many have, and many more will. Some, like me, will eventually find a healthy balance. For others, the healthiest thing they could do is to avoid wearables. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Victoria Song Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Analysis Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. 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Politico
21 hours ago
- Politico
Kidney patients see opportunity in RFK Jr.'s upheaval
WASHINGTON WATCH Advocates for patients with kidney disease are calling on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to go ahead and fire the members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. The American Association of Kidney Patients, whose corporate members include drugmakers Amgen, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi, has warred with the panel for years over whether to expand screening for kidney disease. The association wants it to; the panel says it's studying the issue. 'The president and the secretary are committed to making America healthy again,' said Paul T. Conway, the kidney patients' chair of policy and global affairs. 'If that means throwing out things that have been there a while and shaking up the status quo, especially the medical status quo, no problem.' The panel's recommendations determine what insurers must cover without cost-sharing under a provision of the Affordable Care Act. In a letter to Kennedy, the kidney association's president, Edward V. Hickey III, says it's lost faith the current members have kidney patients' best interest in mind. 'The Task Force has not adequately considered all available evidence supporting kidney disease screening, including patient insight data, nor has it kept pace with new diagnostics and FDA-approved therapies that slow disease progression.' The association says that, at a minimum, screening of patients with a family history of kidney disease, diabetes or high blood pressure should be standard. Why it matters: Kennedy canceled a meeting of the expert panel in July and The Wall Street Journal later reported he planned to fire its members. After the meeting was canceled, scores of medical groups, including kidney doctors, wrote a letter to top lawmakers in protest. The medical groups said disrupting the task force would politicize it and undermine confidence in its recommendations. 'The loss of trustworthiness in the rigorous and nonpartisan work of the Task Force would devastate patients, hospital systems, and payers as misinformation creates barriers to accessing lifesaving and cost effective care,' they wrote. But the kidney patients' letter shows that some see an opportunity to advance their goals in Kennedy's willingness to reconsider the status quo. What's next? Kennedy hasn't detailed his plans since the Journal report on July 25. The task force typically would next meet in November. WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. New research has uncovered clues about why some people who never smoked contract lung cancer. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@ Ruth Reader at rreader@ or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@ Want to share a tip securely? Message us on Signal: CarmenP.82, RuthReader.02 or ErinSchumaker.01. OPERATING ROOM xCures, which uses artificial intelligence to collect and organize patients' medical data, is launching a product that can help consumer health apps securely access patients' medical records. The launch will help advance individual access to medical records on the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, an ecosystem for sending and receiving health data overseen by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. 'The primary driver for this is getting me my data off of the network so that I can use it for my purposes,' xCures CEO Mika Newton told POLITICO. Health app developers can license xCures' product to allow patients to pull their medical data from multiple health systems into their apps. The new product can convert medical data into a usable format. Security concerns have previously prevented apps from being able to access patient records. Health systems and electronic health record companies want to ensure that patients requesting records are who they say they are. xCures works with CLEAR, an identity verification platform commonly found at airports, to confirm identities. To get access to their records, patients will have to submit a picture of a valid ID and complete a biometric face scan. The company is collaborating with a health system, which uses its own dedicated app through which patients can access their medical records, though Newton declined to name which health system is involved. TEFCA moves: xCures works with information broker Kno2, a qualified health information network, or QHIN, on TEFCA, to get patient data. QHINs can request data from others on TEFCA to help facilitate treatment, payment for services, health system operations, public health, government benefit determination, and individual access to health records. TEFCA is still in its early days. Even so, ONC reports that the ecosystem supports 41,000 unique connections to clinicians, hospitals, clinics, post-acute and long-term care facilities and public health departments. Last year, Epic, a large electronic health records company — and also a TEFCA QHIN — said it would let patients access their health records. While such technology can ease patient access to their medical data, it's unclear how secure their data will be outside of regulated health institutions. Federal health data rules don't protect consumer apps, raising questions about how secure patient data will be once it's transferred out of electronic health records. 'We ensure the security and proper storage of all data on our platform. Our data hosting supports essential processes like normalization, structuring, and source verification, which are key value additions we provide,' said Newton. He says his company requires app companies that license its individual access services to meet certain privacy and security standards. But once the data is transferred to the app, it is the responsibility of the app maker to protect it.