Brown rice dangers, plus 'Real ID' travel warnings as deadline approaches
RISKY RICE: A new study finds that brown rice may be worse for you than white rice when it comes to toxins.
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Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
What to know before visiting a chiropractor: Experts discuss benefits and risks
Nearly 62 million adults saw a chiropractor in the last five years and around 35.5 million did so in the last 12 months, a Gallup survey showed. While chiropractic treatment has been shown to have many benefits, experts also urge caution about potential risks. Fox News Digital gathered experts' input on when to see a chiropractor and when to consult a spine specialist. 'I'm A Spinal Surgeon – Here's How Your Posture Is Killing Your Back' One of the main differences between spine doctors and chiropractors is that spine doctors go to medical school and have highly specialized training. "The majority of our decision-making is based on science," said Dr. Gbolahan Okubadejo, an orthopedic spine surgeon located in the New York City metro area. "We do a lot of research … a lot about decision-making is research-based." Read On The Fox News App Chiropractors, on the other hand, are not medical doctors, but hold a Doctor of Chiropractic (DC) degree. They can have a variety of specialties and certifications, with a focus on manual spinal adjustments and other musculoskeletal issues. A chiropractor's methods are generally less invasive than a surgeon's. "The ultimate goal of chiropractic is to help your body move and function the way it's meant to," Tori Hartline, a chiropractor at Sunlife Chiropractic in Frisco, Texas, told Fox News Digital. "When your spine is out of alignment, it puts unnecessary pressure on muscles, causing them to tighten up." "The reality is, throughout our daily lives, we all do things that can throw our spine out of alignment — whether it's sitting too long, sleeping in a strange position, poor posture or repetitive movements." These small stressors might not seem like a big deal at first, but when they continue long-term and are unaddressed, they can lead to more serious injuries and chronic pain, Hartline warned. Some of the most noteworthy benefits of chiropractic care are reduced tension, inflammation and stress, according to the expert. Okubadejo noted that if you feel a joint is "out of alignment" or "you just don't feel right," a chiropractor's musculoskeletal expertise could be beneficial. On the flip side, seeing a chiropractor for a more serious issue can lead to significant complications that may not emerge right away following an appointment, according to Okubadejo. "Sometimes you may have underlying diagnoses without knowing, and you see a chiropractor, and if you have a setback, then you won't know until afterwards," he told Fox News Digital. "I think any kind of radiating pain, anything that travels down your arm [or] down your back … you definitely want to see an orthopedic specialist." Just 1 In 10 Back Pain Treatments Work, Study Says — What To Do Instead The doctor said this also applies to anything "potentially nerve-related," like numbness, tingling or weakness in any part of the body. If the chiropractor doesn't recognize that you may have deeper, more serious issues with your spine, the treatments could potentially lead to spinal cord injury, Okubadejo cautioned. That's why he encourages patients not to avoid a chiropractor altogether, but to use a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to care. "But if it's just primarily pain, then in those cases, if a patient has an interest in chiropractic, I wouldn't discourage it," Okubadejo said. "If it's something mild to moderate, strictly musculoskeletal, in that case, it's safe." There are a few things to look for when selecting a chiropractic professional, experts say. "Just like other healthcare professions, chiropractic has different specialties — so it is important to find the right chiropractor for your specific needs," Hartline told Fox News Digital. "Take a look at their office, certifications, areas of focus and the types of conditions they commonly treat to make sure it is a good fit," she advised. The goal of any adjustment is to help your body feel more at ease, so "your comfort should always be a part of the conversation," Hartline added. "I think if a chiropractor isn't linked to a spine surgery practice or doesn't have a strong relationship and maybe takes too much on, on their own, that could be potentially harmful," Okubadejo noted. The best "green flag," he said, "is someone who's very transparent, who explains everything to you, someone who shows you the imaging, who takes on the role as an educator … and has a very clear treatment plan." Click Here To Sign Up For Our Health Newsletter Someone who is vague on diagnoses or doesn't order tests or imaging after you've voiced your concerns is "definitely a red flag," he said. "One common misconception is that chiropractic always involves those 'popping' sounds," Hartline noted. "Those are called manual adjustments, but there are plenty of other gentle techniques that do not involve any cracking at all." For more Health articles, visit She added, "If that kind of thing makes you nervous, just let your chiropractor know — they can absolutely adjust their approach. " Similarly, Okubadejo noted, "It's critical that [patients] understand exactly what's going on with them — because that informed perspective makes the treatment much easier."Original article source: What to know before visiting a chiropractor: Experts discuss benefits and risks
2 days ago
RFK Jr. has promoted 'freedom of choice' while limiting vaccines, food
Prior to becoming Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had espoused the idea of "medical freedom," the ability of people to make personal health decisions for themselves and their families without corporate or government coercion. It's an idea supported under Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement to reduce the prevalence of chronic disease in the U.S. by making healthier lifestyle choices. On topics, such as vaccines, Kennedy has said he wouldn't prevent children from being able to receive vaccines but would leave the choice up to parents. "I'm a freedom-of-choice person," Kennedy told Fox News host Sean Hannity during an interview in March. "We should have transparency. We should have informed choice, and if people don't want it, the government shouldn't force them to do it." Some public health experts told ABC News, however, that the HHS has been limiting choices on some products for many Americans despite Kennedy's talk about "freedom of choice." Just last week, Kennedy announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for certain groups. Additionally, Kennedy has called on states to ban recipients of food stamps from being able to use them to purchase soda. He has also praised states for banning fluoride from public drinking water and indicated he will change federal guidance on recommending adding fluoride. The public health experts said Kennedy's actions are setting up a dichotomy on public health. "I think that RFK Jr. has done a really good job of identifying some of the problems [in public health], but it's the solutions that are problematic," Dr. Craig Spencer, an associate professor of the practice of health services, policy and practice at Brown University School of Public Health, told ABC News. "What you're seeing with RFK Jr. and his approach to health is an individualization of public health. It's this idea that you can make decisions for your health, and that's always been true." He went on, "We need to be able to follow their guidance, not just have them tell us, 'Follow your own science.' As the focus shifts from community to individuals, we're losing a lot of that underpinning, which has led to a lot of the gains in public health." Limiting access to COVID-19 vaccines Kennedy has repeatedly stated that he is not anti-vaccine and that he supports vaccination. Shortly after Trump's election, Kennedy said in an interview with NBC News that "if vaccines are working for somebody, I'm not going to take them away. People ought to have choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information." During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy said he supported the childhood vaccination schedule and that he would not do anything as head of HHS that "makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines." Separately, in an opinion piece Kennedy wrote for Fox News in March on the nationwide measles outbreak, he said the measles vaccine helps protect individuals and provides "community immunity" but also called the decision to vaccinate a "personal one." However, last week, Kennedy announced the removal of the COVID-19 vaccine from the CDC's immunization schedule for "healthy children and healthy pregnant women." The CDC's immunization schedule is not just a guide for doctors but also determines insurance coverage for most major private plans and Medicaid expansion programs. Following Kennedy's announcement, the schedule was updated noting all children would be eligible for COVID vaccines, but now under a shared-clinical decision-making model -- allowing parents to choose whether their children are vaccinated alongside advice from a doctor. "Regarding the vaccines, HHS is restoring the doctor-patient relationship," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told ABC News in a statement. "We are encouraging those groups to consult with their health care provider to help them make an informed decision. This is freedom of choice." "If you restrict access, you necessarily restrict choice," Dr. Matthew Ferrari, a professor of biology and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University, told ABC News. "Those two things are antithetical. You can't do both. You can't say you're allowing choice if you're restricting access." Ferrari said the idea of "medical freedom" is catchy, but public health recommendations are made based on how to protect the most vulnerable individuals. "If you look at the outcomes, if you look at the consequences of that movement, it has been to disproportionately restrict access to -- and restrict support and infrastructure to allow people to access -- preventive medicine," he said. "It's sort of easy to say, 'Well, take the vaccine away. But [vaccines] prevent a future outcome of illness for yourself and for others in the community." Traditionally, the CDC's Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices decides if there is a benefit to a yearly vaccine and who should get it. The independent advisory committee then makes recommendations to the CDC, which has the final say. The committee was set to meet in late June to vote on potential changes to COVID vaccine recommendations. Spencer said Kennedy's bypassing of traditional avenues when it comes to changing vaccine recommendations is also taking away choice from people. "This did not go through the normal process that it should have, and he basically just made a decision for people while at the same time saying that he's going to let people make a decision," Spencer said. Restricting foods under SNAP Kennedy has also campaigned to prevent Americans from using food stamps -- provided under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- to buy candy and soda. "It's nonsensical for U.S. taxpayers to spend tens of billions of dollars subsidizing junk that harms the health of low-income Americans," Kennedy wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal last September. At a MAHA event in late May, Kennedy said the governors of 10 states have submitted waivers to the United States Department of Agriculture requesting permission to ban SNAP recipients from using benefits to buy candy and soft drinks. "The U.S. government spends over $4 trillion a year on health care," Nixon said in a statement. "That's not freedom -- it's failure. Secretary Kennedy is unapologetically taking action to reverse the chronic disease epidemic, not subsidize it with taxpayer dollars. Warning Americans about the dangers of ultra-processed food isn't an attack on choice -- it's the first step in restoring it." Nutrition experts agree that sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are unhealthy. Frequent consumption of SSBs is linked to health issues such as weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, tooth decay, heart disease and kidney diseases, according to the CDC. Kristina Petersen, an associate professor in the department of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University, told ABC News there is a crisis of diet-related diseases in the U.S., which increase the risk of disability and reduces lifespan. However, she said there needs to be strong evidence of the benefits of restrictive policies if they are to be put in place. "In terms of limiting people's choices, it is important to consider all the different roles that food plays in someone's life, and so obviously we want people eating nutritious foods, but also we need to acknowledge that food is a source of enjoyment," Petersen said. "A lot of social situations revolve around food. So, when we're thinking about reducing people's access to given foods, we need to think about the consequences of that." One unintended consequence could be an eligible family not signing up for SNAP benefits because of the restrictions, she said. Even if a ban on buying candy and soda with SNAP benefits does occur, Petersen said she is not aware of any evidence that shows banning certain foods leads to healthier diets. She added that the nation's dietary guidelines are written to emphasize healthy foods like fruits and vegetable rather than telling people to avoid or restrict less healthy foods. "All foods can be consumed as part of a healthy dietary pattern. It's really just the amount and the frequency that determines whether that pattern is helpful overall or less helpful," Petersen said. "People can have small indulgences, but really, we're interested in what is their pattern over a period of time." Providing incentives for purchasing healthier foods may be more effective and still allow people to have choice, Petersen said. A 2018 study used a model simulation to study the effects of food incentives, disincentives or restrictions in SNAP. One of the simulations involving incentives for foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, fish and plant-based oils found to have the most substantial health benefits and be the most cost-effective. "Things like fruits and vegetables, they do tend to be more expensive, so if you incentivize them by providing more benefits … that's making the dollar go further, and it's kind of making the economic piece of this a bit stronger," Petersen said. "A lot of this is framed around personal choice. Rather than restricting access to, how can we give people more access to healthy foods? I think that's going to have the greatest benefit here."
CNN
3 days ago
- CNN
Despite Kennedy's claims, vaccines have been tested in placebo-controlled studies – nearly 260 of them
Vaccines New in medicine Children's health Federal agenciesFacebookTweetLink Follow US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly claimed in public statements that most vaccines recommended for children in the US have not been tested against placebos, and particularly inert placebos such as saline solution or water. 'The only vaccine that has been tested in a full-blown placebo trial against an inert placebo was the Covid vaccine,' Kennedy said May 14 in testimony before the US Senate's Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee. 'The other 76 shots that children in this country received between birth and 18 years old, none of them have been safety tested in prelicensing studies against the placebo, which means we don't understand the risk profile for those products, and that's something I intend to remedy,' he told Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut. In 2023, Kennedy told Fox News host Jesse Watters: 'Vaccines are exempt from prelicensing placebo-controlled trials, so that there's no way that anybody can tell the risk profile of those products or even the relative benefits of those products before they're mandated. And we should have that kind of testing.' HHS is acting on Kennedy's claims, too. The department recently announced it will require all new vaccines be tested in placebo-controlled trials before they're licensed for use, a change it called 'a radical departure from past practices.' These claims made Dr. Jake Scott's ears perk up. Scott, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University, knew that the assertions couldn't be true, and now he says he has the proof. Scott launched a project in April to round up every randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of vaccines in the medical literature, including studies run in other countries, since some vaccines used in the US are tested overseas. It took five weeks to arrive at a number: There have been 258 placebo-controlled clinical trials of vaccines, according to Scott and a team of volunteers who scoured databases of medical literature. More than half of those studies tested vaccines against inert placebos. Based on Scott's research, at least nine of the 16 vaccines that are routinely recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for children have been tested against inert placebos, while several more have been tested against active placebos. In scientific research, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials are considered to generate the highest-quality evidence. That's because they split their study participants into equal groups; some get the study intervention or treatment, while others get a placebo or dummy remedy. Placebos are often carefully designed to look, taste or even smell like the intervention that's being tested. The idea is to keep both the participants and the researchers themselves in the dark about who's getting the real thing until the end of the study, when the results are analyzed and reported, to prevent any potential bias. HHS did not respond to CNN's request for comment on the new project's findings or clarification on Kennedy's statements. On April 22, Scott posted a link to a shared Google spreadsheet online, along with some ground rules about which trials could and couldn't be included. The studies had to be in humans; no animal studies or lab-only investigations allowed. The researchers also used a particular set of search terms, with no limits on dates, languages or pathogens. The team then read each study that was found to make sure it met the specified criteria for inclusion in the review. 'It took off,' Scott said. He estimates that the project had five or six core contributors, but they had help from around the world. Together, they scoured PubMed, the database of medical research maintained by the National Library of Medicine, as well as reference lists from Cochrane, the World Health Organization and the CDC. Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, said he was blown away when he saw the final list of studies, which included about 2.5 million participants in total. 'The body of evidence for many of the vaccines that we use is very impressive, and the data is robust,' said Bogoch, who didn't contribute to the project. 'This type of work is extremely important in era of unprecedented vaccine hesitancy.' Scott said the research proves that Kennedy's statements are 'demonstrably false.' To understand why, it's useful to break down the parts of Kennedy's argument, which he has repeated in different iterations for years. Kennedy has shifted the goalposts, but there are a few things he has said would make a clinical trial meet his requirements: First, an inert placebo, meaning a placebo control that didn't have any biological effects on the body, like water or saline solution. Kennedy has said that without comparison to an inert placebo, the true side effects of vaccines can't be fully understood. He also uses the term 'prelicensing,' meaning the research is conducted before the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the vaccines. The FDA sometimes accepts enough evidence to approve a vaccine but then will require more safety studies and monitoring after approval. Kennedy and other critics argue that more safety testing should be done before the vaccines are approved in the first place. In some instances, Kennedy has also said that these studies should be large, including many participants, and long-running. In general, larger studies have greater statistical power to show subtle differences between groups. And the longer a trial follows its participants, the more confident researchers can be in the durability of their results. Although scientists agree that larger and longer clinical trials are the most reliable, these studies are expensive to conduct. They can take years to run, which delays the possibility of getting an effective intervention to people. It can also be difficult to find participants who can stick with the monitoring requirements of a study for longer periods of time. In recent testimony, however, even Kennedy seemed to be softening his stance on this particular stipulation, agreeing that other types of studies can provide solid evidence, too. 'You know that the Cochrane Collaboration in 2016 published a study that showed that the predictive capacity of placebo-controlled trials, which are the gold standard, is actually not any better than good observational trials in retrospective trials. So we can do those kind of studies without subjecting people to an unethical experiment,' Kennedy said during a May 20 Senate budget hearing when asked about the need to test established vaccines in large, lengthy placebo-controlled trials. In his 2021 book, 'The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,' Kennedy repeats the claim that vaccines for children haven't been tested against inert placebos, saying that he and groups he's affiliated with have explicitly asked to be shown such studies. He cites two letters between the Informed Consent Action Network or ICAN, a group run by his close associate Del Bigtree, and HHS. The letter from ICAN asserts that in contrast to most other FDA-approved medications, 'vaccines are not required to undergo long-term double-blind inert-placebo controlled trials to assess safety. In fact, not a single one of the clinical trials for vaccines given to babies and toddlers had a control group receiving an inert placebo.' The HHS letter refutes this claim: 'Contrary to statements made on page two of your letter, many pediatric vaccines have been investigated in clinical trials that included a placebo.' The letter goes on to say inert placebos are not necessary to understand the safety of a new vaccine, and so they haven't been required. Still, Scott says the evidence is clear: Of the 258 placebo-controlled vaccine studies he and his colleagues found, about half – 128 – included inert placebos. When it comes to vaccines routinely recommended for children, specifically, Scott found that at least nine of the 16 on the CDC's regular schedule have been tested against inert placebos: These are the vaccines against Covid-19; rotavirus; polio; influenza; measles, mumps and rubella; human papillomavirus; varicella, or chickenpox; pneumococcal; and H-flu, or Haemophilus influenzae. One of the largest of these trials was on the polio vaccine. The placebo-controlled part of the study included more than 400,000 grade-schoolers. Half got the inactivated polio vaccine created by Dr. Jonas Salk, and the other half were given injections of an inert placebo, which was saline solution. The trial was conducted in 1954, and the results were announced in April 1955. So great was the urgency to get the vaccine to kids that the FDA licensed it the same day. 'It's frankly astounding that someone who made such easily disprovable claims is now heading HHS and continues to promote similar misinformation,' Scott said of Kennedy in an email to CNN. 'We compiled this evidence specifically to counter these false narratives with hard data.' Scott says he and his colleagues hope to have their project published in peer-reviewed medical journal soon. For now, it's available in a publicly posted spreadsheet. Vaccine trials that don't use inert placebos will sometimes use what are known as active placebos. These comparison shots have some biological effect but don't interfere with scientists' ability to interpret the results of their study. Active placebos are used for a variety of reasons. In some parts of the world, for example, where it might be difficult to recruit participants, researchers might give the control group an unrelated vaccine to make sure they're getting some benefit by enrolling in the study. One study published last year in the Lancet, testing a vaccine against malaria, gave participants in the control group a vaccine against rabies instead. Rabies vaccines don't protect against malaria, so they wouldn't interfere with researchers' ability to tell whether the malaria shot actually worked. Other active placebos in the studies in Scott's project included shots that contained only an adjuvant, an ingredient that's added to vaccines to trigger a stronger immune response. Dr. Greg Poland, who studies how adults and children respond to vaccines at the Mayo Clinic, said it would be a mistake to assume that active placebos can't be valid and rigorous ways to test vaccines. Adjuvants, such as aluminum, are often the reason people get soreness around an injection site. Giving just the adjuvant can guard against even psychological bias in control participants who might guess that they didn't get a real vaccine if they didn't feel anything after their shots. It also allows researchers to isolate the benefits and side effects of the vaccine proteins, since everyone got the adjuvant. 'You're literally saying, 'OK, we're testing a vaccine that has ingredient A plus B against a non-vaccine placebo that has ingredient B.' So the only thing different between the two of them is the actual vaccine,' Poland said. An active comparator might also be used rather than an inert placebo because of ethics. When there's already a vaccine that's considered to be safe and effective against an infection, it's considered unethical to deny study participants the chance to get it. In that case, companies that want to test a new and improved version of a vaccine against an older one would normally have to offer participants in their control group the older vaccine. Many modern vaccines have been compared against older versions of the same vaccine. Flu vaccines are a good example, Poland says. If you were testing an improved type of flu vaccine, chances are that the board that oversees your clinical trial wouldn't approve a study that used an inert placebo – especially if you were testing it in a vulnerable group, like people over 65, for whom an infection is more likely to be dangerous. 'It's unethical because the recommendation is that everyone, each flu season, receive an influenza vaccine. So it'd be unethical to enroll people in a study where they may just get placebo and not get any benefit of protection,' Poland said. Poland said he's been puzzled by Kennedy's statements, too. He's concerned that they are getting traction with the public now that Kennedy is the head of the nation's health agencies. 'This notion that there are no placebo-controlled vaccine trials is patently false, but it's a really interesting phenomenon that I have a hard time understanding,' he said.
