Author: paige laevy

The tightening in the stomach before something scary, the loose uneasiness that comes before a challenging conversation, and the way dread seems to settle somewhere below the ribs instead of inside the head, where we assume emotions are supposed to reside, are all experiences that most people have had at least once. Science used these feelings as metaphors for decades. They turned out to be closer to anatomy than anyone had imagined. A network of over 100 million nerve cells is concealed within the walls of your digestive tract, extending from the esophagus to the rectum. Johns Hopkins and other…

After a baby is born, a certain kind of silence descends upon a hospital room. The monitors become silent. The employees thin out. Within a day or two, a woman who has just gone through one of the most emotionally and physically violent experiences of her life is sent home with a pamphlet and a swaddled baby after the flowers arrive and the pictures are uploaded. The American healthcare system has largely chosen to ignore what goes on inside her head in the weeks that follow. Between 10 and 20 percent of American women suffer from postpartum depression; however, according…

An alert buzzed from an Apple Watch while a man in Maine was sitting quietly. His heart rate had fallen to 32 beats per minute, which typically indicates that there is a serious problem with his chest. He hadn’t experienced much. Perhaps a bit worn out. He received a pacemaker in a matter of days. Apparently, the watch had detected something that his body had not yet made public. These kinds of stories are getting more difficult to ignore. For many years, the notion that a consumer wearable could forecast cardiac events seemed like science fiction wrapped in marketing jargon,…

In medicine, there are times when a device intended for one purpose subtly begins to accomplish another, and the people present are unable to adequately explain why it is so effective. Psoriatic arthritis, a painful and stubborn autoimmune condition, and a class of weight-loss medications appear to be experiencing that moment right now. To be honest, it’s difficult to ignore the early results. Psoriatic arthritis often travels in bad company and affects the joints, skin, nails, and occasionally the spine. heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. These are linked by the same inflammatory machinery that propels the illness; they…

When something goes wrong and no one wants to speak out about it, a certain kind of silence descends upon institutions. It’s the type found in passive voice-heavy press releases, such as “routine review” and “coming weeks.” Whether or not the timing was intentional, public health experts nationwide were amused by the CDC’s April 1st announcement. The organization declared that diagnostic testing for over two dozen infectious diseases would be temporarily suspended. Rabies is on the list. Mpox is part of it. It contains a few viruses and parasites that the majority of people are unaware of, but state and…

A ball python, like most pythons, sits coiled in its enclosure in a lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, unhurried and unconcerned. It’s been 28 days since it last ate. This is not an issue. Burmese pythons, which are closely related to ball pythons, can go 12 to 18 months without eating in the wild. During this time, they do not waste away or develop the metabolic chaos that a human would experience on any similar fast. They just wait until they eat, and when they do, something remarkable occurs within them. Their hearts enlarge by twenty-five percent. They…

There have likely been more discussions about salary caps, stadium deals, and television rights in the Phoenix meeting room where NFL owners convened in late March 2026 than most people can remember. It’s the type of room where calm voices discuss enormous sums of money. However, this particular meeting resulted in a vote that was entirely focused on the fact that two young men who played professional football did not make it through the previous season rather than revenue. The Dallas Cowboys’ defensive end Marshawn Kneeland committed suicide. The Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Rondale Moore committed suicide. At the pinnacle…

Imagine a middle-aged man in a Cleveland suburb dozing off in a dark bedroom. His partner has long since relocated to the guest room due to the constant, grating snoring that permeates the house at night and eventually blends in with the furnishings. The snoring is dismissed as a joke, an annoyance, or just one of those things. His heart is not on anyone’s mind in the house. Stroke is not on anyone’s mind. Nobody is paying attention to the fact that, in between those long, rattling inhales, his breathing stops, sometimes hundreds of times every night, depriving his blood…

A pharmacist holds up a box of Wegovy pills for a news photographer somewhere in a Provo, Utah pharmacy. The product catches the light in a way that makes it appear almost ceremonial. It’s a fair representation of what these medications have turned into: the most talked-about pharmaceuticals in a generation, with enough cultural significance that their brand names have become commonplace, much like Kleenex and Band-Aid once did. However, a different, much messier, and much less photographed version of this story is unfolding in living rooms, telehealth portals, and compounding pharmacies across the nation behind the brand-name boxes, the…

There has always been a certain kind of pressure in the offices along Menlo Park’s Sand Hill Road: the low hum of high stakes, people creating things with enormous consequences and enormous valuations without always knowing which is more important. However, the clinicians who staff those offices on their calendars report that something has changed in the nearby therapy rooms. Conversations have evolved. The anxieties are distinct. The old Silicon Valley worries, such as imposter syndrome, burnout, and the never-ending cycle of iteration, are still there, but they now coexist with something more difficult to identify. Something nearer to fear.…