curated by Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Megan Burbank
In September, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to impose new regulations on crisis pregnancy centers, nonprofit organizations that resemble abortion clinics — and often set up adjacent to licensed health care providers — with the goal of dissuading pregnant people from choosing to have abortions, often through deceptive practices and misinformation about abortion.
Continue reading City Council, Legislative Dems Are Trying to Regulate Right-Wing Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Will It Work This Time?curated by Vee Hua 華婷婷
by Sally James
Local health officials are concerned about a surge in respiratory illnesses, including flu and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), which can be severe in young children.
Continue reading Seasonal Surge in Respiratory Illnesses Hits Mostly Childrenby Kevin Schofield
This weekend’s read is a research study on the effects of drinking coffee — potentially a lot of coffee — on your health. Specifically it looks at whether people who drink coffee were more likely to die over a ten-year period from any cause (called a “mortality hazard ratio”).
The researchers from the National Cancer Institute and Northwestern University studied a sample of 490,000 persons from the United Kingdom whose medical records from 2006 to 2016 are in a research “biobank” along with data about their demographics and lifestyle. Biobanks like this one are essential resources for looking for connections with health and medical outcomes.
The results they found were surprising. According to the researchers, drinking coffee is inversely associated with mortality: that is, people who drank coffee were less likely to die over the ten-year study period. Even more surprising: even people who drank six or more cups of coffee per day — which, let’s be honest, sounds scary — had a lower mortality rate than those who drank fewer cups.
Continue reading Weekend Reads: Is Drinking Coffee Good or Bad For You?by M. Anthony Davis
When Dannett Cage, owner of Beyond Bodi, began a Black-owned business selling skin care and edible products infused with sea moss, it was in response to increasing requests from friends and family to try, and often buy, her homemade products.
“I was really only making it just for my family, like my mom and my household,” Cage recalls. “Then, I made some on a Friday evening as I was going out for a girls’ getaway that weekend, and everyone tried it and couldn’t believe the energy it gave them.”
Continue reading Renton Entrepreneur Brings Sea Moss to the South End and Beyondby Amanda Ong
For many elders, especially those who are low-income or face language barriers, access to exercise classes is often low, even as movement is vital to aging health. But the International Community Health Services (ICHS) has a counter to these issues: its “Tai Ji Quan: Moving for Better Balance” program has been running since winter of 2020, and recently has been made available in-person to the community as well as virtually.
Continue reading ICHS’s Free Tai Ji Quan Program Improves Elders’ Mobilityby Dr. Daniel Low
“I’ve never had a doctor ask,” he quipped. “Well, taxes are important, Mr. Jones,” I chuckled. Like many others, Mr. Jones had recently summoned the courage to come to his first clinic visit in nearly two years, previously avoiding the medical establishment as COVID-19 raged across the country. With so much time between our last visits, he was expecting questions about his diabetes management and colon cancer screening (which we covered), but whether he needed help filing taxes? That was not what he was expecting.
Continue reading OPINION: Wellness = Health + Financial Literacyby Kevin Schofield
This weekend, we have a pair of “reads” to consider, both related to activities closely associated with our health: walking and sleeping.
Continue reading Weekend Reads: The Era of ‘Personalized Medicine’ — What Our Steps and Sleep Say About Usby Amanda Ong
Community Action for Liberation Medics (CALM) is a street medic collective that has been in our streets since the summer of 2020, following George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent uprising. This October, CALM established a street medic hotline through which the community can contact them. The goal of the hotline is to support the extended community with medical and psychiatric decision-making.
Continue reading CALM Launches Medic Hotline to Provide Community Health Navigation
