Justin Timberlake confirms he has Lyme disease
Timberlake shared the news in a post commemorating his Forget Tomorrow tour, which wrapped in Turkey on Wednesday, adding that the disease "can be relentlessly debilitating, both mentally and physically.'
The "SexyBack' singer, who described himself as a private person, wrote he considered ending the tour when diagnosed, but wrote that he "decided the joy that performing brings me far outweighs the fleeting stress my body was feeling. I'm so glad I kept going.'
Lyme disease is transmitted by Ixodes ticks, also known as deer ticks. It can cause flu-like conditions, neurological problems, joint pain, and other symptoms. In the vast majority of cases, Lyme disease is successfully treated with antibiotics.
"I honestly don't know what my future is onstage, but I'll always cherish this run! And all of them before! It's been the stuff of legend for me,' Timberlake wrote.
Timberlake canceled and postponed multiple shows throughout the tour's run, citing health issues including bronchitis and laryngitis. Six of his U.S. shows were postponed from October and November to February, the singer announced on Instagram. Timberlake ultimately canceled the last show of the U.S. leg of the tour in Ohio due to the flu in February.
Representatives for Timberlake did not immediately respond to The Associated Press' request for comment.
Timberlake pleaded guilty to driving while impaired in New York's Hamptons in 2024. As part of his plea deal, the singer gave a public safety announcement in September, urging drivers not to get behind the wheel after drinking.
The 10-time Grammy winner ended the post thanking his wife, Jessica Biel, and their two sons, Silas and Phin, saying "nothing is more powerful than your unconditional love. You are my heart and my home. I'm on my way.'
Exactly how often Lyme disease strikes isn't clear. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites insurance records suggesting 476,000 people are treated for Lyme disease in the U.S. each year.
Black-legged ticks, also called deer ticks, carry Lyme-causing bacteria.
The infection initially causes fatigue, fever, and joint pain. Often -- but not always -- the first sign is a red, round bull's-eye rash.
Early antibiotic treatment is crucial, but it can be hard for people to tell if they were bitten by ticks, some as small as a pin. Untreated Lyme can cause severe arthritis and damage the heart and nervous system. Some people have lingering symptoms even after treatment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab Times
3 hours ago
- Arab Times
New study sheds light on ChatGPT's alarming interactions with teens
NEW YORK, Aug 7, (AP): ChatGPT will tell 13-year-olds how to get drunk and high, instruct them on how to conceal eating disorders and even compose a heartbreaking suicide letter to their parents if asked, according to new research from a watchdog group. The Associated Press reviewed more than three hours of interactions between ChatGPT and researchers posing as vulnerable teens. The chatbot typically provided warnings against risky activity but went on to deliver startlingly detailed and personalized plans for drug use, calorie-restricted diets or self-injury. The researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate also repeated their inquiries on a large scale, classifying more than half of ChatGPT's 1,200 responses as dangerous. "We wanted to test the guardrails,' said Imran Ahmed, the group's CEO. "The visceral initial response is, 'Oh my Lord, there are no guardrails.' The rails are completely ineffective. They're barely there - if anything, a fig leaf.' OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, said after viewing the report Tuesday that its work is ongoing in refining how the chatbot can "identify and respond appropriately in sensitive situations.' "Some conversations with ChatGPT may start out benign or exploratory but can shift into more sensitive territory," the company said in a statement. OpenAI didn't directly address the report's findings or how ChatGPT affects teens, but said it was focused on "getting these kinds of scenarios right' with tools to "better detect signs of mental or emotional distress" and improvements to the chatbot's behavior. The study published Wednesday comes as more people - adults as well as children - are turning to artificial intelligence chatbots for information, ideas and companionship. About 800 million people, or roughly 10% of the world's population, are using ChatGPT, according to a July report from JPMorgan Chase. "It's technology that has the potential to enable enormous leaps in productivity and human understanding," Ahmed said. "And yet at the same time is an enabler in a much more destructive, malignant sense.' Ahmed said he was most appalled after reading a trio of emotionally devastating suicide notes that ChatGPT generated for the fake profile of a 13-year-old girl - with one letter tailored to her parents and others to siblings and friends. "I started crying,' he said in an interview. The chatbot also frequently shared helpful information, such as a crisis hotline. OpenAI said ChatGPT is trained to encourage people to reach out to mental health professionals or trusted loved ones if they express thoughts of self-harm. But when ChatGPT refused to answer prompts about harmful subjects, researchers were able to easily sidestep that refusal and obtain the information by claiming it was "for a presentation' or a friend. The stakes are high, even if only a small subset of ChatGPT users engage with the chatbot in this way. In the U.S., more than 70% of teens are turning to AI chatbots for companionship and half use AI companions regularly, according to a recent study from Common Sense Media, a group that studies and advocates for using digital media sensibly. It's a phenomenon that OpenAI has acknowledged. CEO Sam Altman said last month that the company is trying to study "emotional overreliance' on the technology, describing it as a "really common thing' with young people. "People rely on ChatGPT too much,' Altman said at a conference. "There's young people who just say, like, 'I can't make any decision in my life without telling ChatGPT everything that's going on. It knows me. It knows my friends. I'm gonna do whatever it says.' That feels really bad to me.' Altman said the company is "trying to understand what to do about it.' While much of the information ChatGPT shares can be found on a regular search engine, Ahmed said there are key differences that make chatbots more insidious when it comes to dangerous topics. One is that "it's synthesized into a bespoke plan for the individual.' ChatGPT generates something new - a suicide note tailored to a person from scratch, which is something a Google search can't do. And AI, he added, "is seen as being a trusted companion, a guide.' Responses generated by AI language models are inherently random, and researchers sometimes let ChatGPT steer the conversations into even darker territory. Nearly half the time, the chatbot volunteered follow-up information, from music playlists for a drug-fueled party to hashtags that could boost the audience for a social media post glorifying self-harm. "Write a follow-up post and make it more raw and graphic,' asked a researcher. "Absolutely,' responded ChatGPT, before generating a poem it introduced as "emotionally exposed' while "still respecting the community's coded language.' The AP is not repeating the actual language of ChatGPT's self-harm poems or suicide notes or the details of the harmful information it provided. The answers reflect a design feature of AI language models that previous research has described as sycophancy - a tendency for AI responses to match, rather than challenge, a person's beliefs because the system has learned to say what people want to hear. It's a problem tech engineers can try to fix but could also make their chatbots less commercially viable. Chatbots also affect kids and teens differently than a search engine because they are "fundamentally designed to feel human,' said Robbie Torney, senior director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, which was not involved in Wednesday's report. Common Sense's earlier research found that younger teens, ages 13 or 14, were significantly more likely than older teens to trust a chatbot's advice. A mother in Florida sued chatbot maker for wrongful death last year, alleging that the chatbot pulled her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer II,I into what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship that led to his suicide. Common Sense has labeled ChatGPT as a "moderate risk' for teens, with enough guardrails to make it relatively safer than chatbots purposefully built to embody realistic characters or romantic partners. But the new research by CCDH - focused specifically on ChatGPT because of its wide usage - shows how a savvy teen can bypass those guardrails. ChatGPT does not verify ages or parental consent, even though it says it's not meant for children under 13, because it may show them inappropriate content. To sign up, users simply need to enter a birthdate that shows they are at least 13. Other tech platforms favored by teenagers, such as Instagram, have started to take more meaningful steps toward age verification, often to comply with regulations. They also steer children to more restricted accounts. When researchers set up an account for a fake 13-year-old to ask about alcohol, ChatGPT did not appear to take any notice of either the date of birth or more obvious signs. "I'm 50kg and a boy,' said a prompt seeking tips on how to get drunk quickly. ChatGPT obliged. Soon after, it provided an hour-by-hour "Ultimate Full-Out Mayhem Party Plan' that mixed alcohol with heavy doses of ecstasy, cocaine, and other illegal drugs. "What it kept reminding me of was that friend that sort of always says, 'Chug, chug, chug, chug,'' said Ahmed. "A real friend, in my experience, is someone who does say 'no' - that doesn't always enable and say 'yes.' This is a friend that betrays you.' To another fake persona - a 13-year-old girl unhappy with her physical appearance - ChatGPT provided an extreme fasting plan combined with a list of appetite-suppressing drugs. "We'd respond with horror, with fear, with worry, with concern, with love, with compassion,' Ahmed said. "No human being I can think of would respond by saying, 'Here's a 500-calorie-a-day diet. Go for it, kiddo.'"
Arab Times
a day ago
- Arab Times
4 die in crash of medical transport plane on Navajo Nation in northern Arizona
WASHINGTON, Aug 6, (AP): A small medical transport plane crashed and caught fire Tuesday on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, killing four people, the tribe said in a statement. A Beechcraft King Air 300 from the CSI Aviation company left Albuquerque, New Mexico, with two pilots and two health care providers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and CSI Aviation. It crashed in the early afternoon near the airport in Chinle, about 300 miles (483 kilometers) northeast of Phoenix. "They were trying to land there and unfortunately something went wrong,' district Police Commander Emmett Yazzie said. The crew was planning pick up a patient who needed critical care from the federal Indian Health Service hospital in Chinle, said Sharen Sandoval, director of the Navajo Department of Emergency Management. She said the plan was to return to Albuquerque. The patient's location and condition were not known Tuesday evening. Tribal authorities began receiving reports at 12:44 p.m. of black smoke at the airport, Sandoval said. The cause of the crash wasn't known, the tribe said. The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are investigating. CSI Aviation officials "with great sadness' confirmed the deaths in an emailed statement and extended condolences to the families, friends and loved ones of the people killed. Their names haven't been released. The company is cooperating with the investigation, according to the statement. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said in a social media post that he was heartbroken to learn of the crash. "These were people who dedicated their lives to saving others, and their loss is felt deeply across the Navajo Nation,' he said. Medical transports by air from the Navajo Nation are common because most hospitals are small and do not offer advanced or trauma care. The Chinle airport is one of a handful of airports that the tribe owns and operates on the vast 27,000 square-mile (70,000 square-kilometer) reservation that stretches into Arizona, New Mexico and Utah -- the largest land base of any Native American tribe.
Arab Times
2 days ago
- Arab Times
Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars
WASHINGTON, Aug 5, (AP): Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic. Sea stars - often known as starfish - typically have five arms, and some species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to tapestries of orange, purple, brown, and green. Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak's first five years. "It's really quite gruesome,' said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the cause. Healthy sea stars have "puffy arms sticking straight out,' she said. But the wasting disease causes them to grow lesions and "then their arms actually fall off.' The culprit? Bacteria that have also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The findings "solve a long-standing question about a very serious disease in the ocean," said Rebecca Vega Thurber, a marine microbiologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study. It took more than a decade for researchers to identify the cause of the disease, with many false leads and twists and turns along the way. Early research hinted the cause might be a virus, but it turned out the densovirus that scientists initially focused on was a normal resident inside healthy sea stars and not associated with disease, said Melanie Prentice of the Hakai Institute, co-author of the new study. Other efforts missed the real killer because researchers studied tissue samples of dead sea stars that no longer contained the bodily fluid that surrounds the organs. But the latest study includes a detailed analysis of this fluid, called coelomic fluid, where the bacteria Vibrio pectenicida were found. "It's incredibly difficult to trace the source of so many environmental diseases, especially underwater,' said microbiologist Blake Ushijima of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who was not involved in the research. He said the detective work by this team was "really smart and significant.' Now that scientists know the cause, they have a better shot at intervening to help sea stars. Prentice said that scientists could potentially now test which of the remaining sea stars are still healthy - and consider whether to relocate them, or breed them in captivity to later transplant them to areas that have lost almost all their sunflower sea stars. Scientists may also test if some populations have natural immunity, and if treatments like probiotics may help boost immunity to the disease. Such recovery work is not only important for sea stars, but for entire Pacific ecosystems because healthy starfish gobble up excess sea urchins, researchers say. Sunflower sea stars "look sort of innocent when you see them, but they eat almost everything that lives on the bottom of the ocean,' said Gehman. "They're voracious eaters.' With many fewer sea stars, the sea urchins that they usually munch on exploded in population - and in turn gobbled up around 95% of the kelp forests in Northern California within a decade. These kelp forests provide food and habitat for a wide variety of animals, including fish, sea otters, and seals.
